Immaculate, page 10
“Wow. Thank you, Hannah,” I said quietly, shoving the rest of my sandwich back into the brown paper bag and crumpling it up into a tight ball in my hands. “Thanks for putting my life so perfectly into perspective for me. I needed that.”
She winced and I looked away, frustrated with both of us. In a moment of weakness, I couldn’t stop myself from peeking over at the exact spot that I so painstakingly avoided each lunch period, the big oval table closest to the counter where Hannah and I had sat every day for the last three years of high school. It was the traditional home table for the popular kids—not necessarily the trendiest or the most attractive or the most intimidating, but the kids who were the full package deal. The best athletes, the best students, the best of the best all around in everything there was to be best at, really. Smarts, talent, ambition, good looks—all wrapped up together, a killer combo. They were the people who most of the other tables aspired to be and aspired to be friends with. The people whom they wanted to be partnered up with for projects, wanted to hang out with on the weekends, wanted to be seen with in the hallways. I had always secretly questioned if I would ever have made it there on my own—my perfect grades alone weren’t enough, not without other, cooler attributes to round me out, make me more of a Renaissance girl. Izzy had her dazzling athletic talents and Hannah was blonde and blue-eyed, but they were both so much more than that. They were intelligent and outgoing and confident. They lit up rooms. Between them and then Nate, I was carried along by association. And I had convinced myself that I belonged in that crowd, no matter how I’d landed there in the first place.
But now, after seeing how quickly and neatly I could be removed from the equation, I couldn’t help but think I’d never belonged as much as I had let myself believe. They looked unchanged to me now, sitting there at our old table, as if nothing at all had shaken up the established equilibrium. Sasha, Molly, Quinn, Erin—we’d sat together in classes, cheered at Nate’s soccer and basketball games, celebrated birthdays, primped for dances. But maybe I’d still been Menius to them all along, the nerdy good girl who probably thought that she was above everyone else. Only I had never thought that—I was just proud of my grades and proud of how hard I worked. Maybe I could have gone to more Friday night football games, said yes to more shopping trips to the mall, cared more about hair and makeup and girl talk with anyone besides Hannah and Izzy. But I’d stupidly felt secure about my place there. And even if I had tried harder to fit in, I’d still be sitting at a different table right now, wouldn’t I? I’d still be the girl who used to date Nate, the girl who used to be friends with Izzy. I couldn’t have altered the natural order of things, not permanently.
I watched Nate and Izzy, their chairs on opposite ends, as far apart as two people could be without sitting at two different tables. I could tell, even from my position halfway across the room, that they were carefully avoiding each other. They’d nod and laugh along with the group when the other talked, but they didn’t go out of their way to say anything one-on-one—probably because the one thing and the one person they’d most like to talk about wouldn’t make for appropriate lunchroom conversation. Otherwise, they looked entirely normal, happy, and at ease. No one would ever have guessed that either of them was secretly torn up on the inside, devastated with missing me. Maybe that was because they weren’t. Maybe they’d both already moved on.
A sudden thought banged against me like a fist to the gut. Had they been talking outside of school? Were they comparing notes about me? Going over all the reasons why I was a horrible best friend and a horrible girlfriend? The idea of the two of them bonding over some newly discovered mutual hate made me feel sick. And it also made me furious. I had done nothing wrong. Not a single thing. They just couldn’t believe that—they couldn’t believe me.
But I wouldn’t cry. I wouldn’t cry. I wouldn’t cry.
“I’m sorry, Mina. I didn’t mean for it to sound like that,” Hannah said.
I tore my eyes away from Nate, who was in the middle of telling a story that had the entire table in hysterics. But just as I was about to turn back to Hannah, I noticed that I was being watched, too, the target of a too-pretty girl with glossy black hair and red lips twisted up in a smirk. Arielle Fowler—I’d known who she was since the first day of kindergarten, but we’d never been friends, or anything close to friends. She hadn’t sat at our lunch table before, though she moved in the same circles as most of the people who did. But there she was now, taking up a spot that would have belonged to me or Hannah before.
Arielle was the head cheer captain and the shoo-in lead for school plays, a blending of after-school worlds that usually didn’t collide. But she was unnervingly beautiful—a real-life Snow White with her wavy raven hair and flawless porcelain skin—and so normal rules didn’t apply to her. Though unlike Snow White, she had never been friendly, at least not to me. I had always gotten the feeling that she could see right through me with her dark-lashed doe eyes—that she knew I didn’t really fit in. That she, too, wondered why Nate would choose someone like me, when she’d openly had a crush on him for as long as I had.
“Meen?” Hannah asked, forcing me to break away from Arielle’s unsettling stare. “Are you listening to me? They have no clue what’s really going on, so you need to just do your best to ignore them. You can’t let them bother you and stress you out too much . . . It’s not healthy.” There was the look. Again.
I took a deep breath to stop myself from exploding, to remind myself that her intentions were good, even if they weren’t always spectacularly executed. She was trying her best; she genuinely was. She could have sat at our old table with all her other friends who didn’t hate her, but she hadn’t. I doubted that the idea had even crossed her mind. I exhaled and looked into her brilliant blue eyes.
“But it’s not just how it looks from the outside, is it, Hannah? Nate really did break up with me, and one of my best friends really does hate me. My dad can’t bring himself to look at me, let alone speak to me, and everywhere I turn, I find my mom hiding out somewhere and crying to herself. Last night I found her sitting on the washing machine in the basement and sobbing when she thought I was up in my room doing homework.”
“You have Gracie, though.”
She said that as if it made up for everything else—as if this one vote of support in my favor could make all the difference. And maybe it did, to be honest, because I don’t know how I could have woken up every morning if Gracie had turned against me, too.
“Seriously, Meen, little kids are like a litmus test for right and wrong. She believes you because she knows that you’re a good person and that you wouldn’t lie to her. She’s not old enough or jaded enough to question it.”
“And you’re not old enough or jaded enough, either, I take it?”
“I have a uniquely optimistic sensibility. I like to hope for the best in people.” She smiled and squeezed my hand under the table.
I smiled back at her, a real smile, even though I still sensed her uncertainty. “I can live with that answer.”
And I meant that—for now, at least. I didn’t know what she did or didn’t believe, but as far as I could tell, she didn’t know either. She may have still thought that I was repressing the real explanation, locking the traumatizing truth away so deep and dark in my mind somewhere even I wouldn’t know where to find it again. But in that case, she wouldn’t think I was straight out lying to her, or at least not any more than I was lying to myself. I wanted her to know as absolutely as I did that that was not what had happened, but I had no proof. I could accept whatever doubts she had, though, because she was still sitting there next to me. That mattered most.
“So your dad . . . He isn’t budging at all, then?”
My smile evaporated as quickly as it had appeared. “Nope. Still a total stalemate. I don’t think he’s looked at me, not once. He won’t even sit at the dinner table with us, just gets his food and goes straight to his office and shuts the door. My mom and Gracie both keep a straight face and chatter away while we eat as if everything’s all normal, but I know they miss him, even if they’re angry at him, too, for my sake.”
“I’m sorry, Meen . . .”
“Don’t be. It’ll be fine. He has to come around at some point.” I hoped that if I thought and said that out loud enough, it would inevitably become true. I could make it true; I just had to want it and will it with everything I had in me. But I couldn’t know anything for sure, obviously. I couldn’t predict how my dad or Nate or Izzy would ever come to terms with my pregnancy, or if they would ever come to terms with it at all. There wasn’t exactly a precedent to guide me for this type of real-life drama. Except for the Bible, I suppose, but the people in my life didn’t seem to swallow the magic miracle pill quite as easily as they did back in the day.
Go figure. Mary had it so easy.
Not that I thought that I was actually the next Mary. I didn’t know what I was or what I was doing, but to even think for a second that I was carrying some world-altering gift from God—not just a gift, but the next Jesus, the next Messiah, the almighty savior of the whole damn universe—seemed like total blasphemy, a surefire way to send myself straight to the Devil’s flaming lair of tortured souls. If I even believed there was a Hell to be sent to, anyway, let alone a God, or at least a God in the way that the Bible described.
I didn’t know what I really thought or what I really believed about anything anymore. I couldn’t separate absolutes from myths, facts from fiction. I couldn’t say what was real and what wasn’t real.
How could anything in the world ever be predictable after this?
How could there ever be any certainty? Any guarantees?
Maybe I’d wake up tomorrow and the sky would be tangerine orange and dotted with fluffy green clouds. Grass would be hot pink, puppies would be singing, kittens would be dancing with top hats and canes, and we’d all be soaring like eagles through the sky, flying with our arms fanned out behind us to catch the gusts of wind.
If a virgin like me could suddenly wake up pregnant, wasn’t anything possible?
A nearby chair slammed against the tile floor—along with the unlucky but deserving football hero who had been leaning too far on its back legs—and the cafeteria broke out in its typical round of applause and catcalls. I shook off my questions like an odd, hazy dream and looked back over at Hannah. She still seemed caught up in our conversation, hesitant to say anything too hopeful or too positive for fear of misleading me. I saw the struggle going on behind her eyes, the internal battle as she tried her hardest to think of an optimistic follow-up.
“Hannah . . .” I started, then stopped, debating what I actually wanted to know and what would be better left unknown. Curiosity won out—I was never one for tucking questions away for later. “Can you tell me what people are really saying about me and Nate, and me and Izzy? They must be coming up with some sort of creative explanations, right?”
She sighed and stared out the big bay window next to our table. I already wished I hadn’t asked—I didn’t want to push between her and everyone else at school any more than I already had. Her reputation and social ranking were in free fall, plummeting just as fast and steadily as mine were, like a tiny, fragile hummingbird chained to a massive barbell. Not quite the golden senior year we’d been anticipating.
“I’m sure they are, Meen, but no one’s saying anything in front of me, either,” she said, turning back to look at me. She didn’t seem angry that I’d asked, thankfully, but I could still see unfamiliar shadows on her face—it was like a sparkly, glowing piece of the Hannah I’d known forever had somehow gotten lost, had faded away. Because of me and because of everything she was putting herself through to make my life easier. “I think I’ve made it pretty obvious whose side I’m on. And to be honest, I don’t even want to know, since it’d be all lies, anyway. Hearing it would just make me hate people for gossiping about something they know nothing about. It’s easier to pretend that they’re not talking, to smile along like everything’s fine, everyone’s okay, and just get on with this last year together.”
She was right: it was probably better not to know. But I still couldn’t help the urge to find out more. I could ask someone else, but I had barely talked to anyone but Hannah and my teachers since classes had started. I didn’t want to do or say anything that would put the spotlight on me, at least not more than it already was.
“Yeah, we’ll see. But you’re probably right. Best not to know.” I looked over at the clock and leaped up, scrambling out of my chair. “We should head out now, ahead of everyone. The more I can avoid all their beady eyes in the hallway, the better.”
We grabbed our trays and started toward the exit, my head ducked to avoid any accidental interactions.
“Hey, Meen, isn’t that the busboy from Frankie’s? What did you say his name was? Jesse Spero?”
I jerked my head up, almost smacking straight into the bright yellow trash can in front of me. It was Jesse, wearing the same green cap and another blazer, though this one was a faded camel brown with a matching bow tie at his neck.
“Shhh!” I hissed at her, turning my back to him. “I don’t want him to see me.” I threw the rest of my sandwich in the garbage and ducked behind a nearby pillar. “I didn’t realize he went here. I thought he was homeschooled or something like that.” Not that we’d had much actual conversation—but I could have sworn I’d overheard him mention homeschooling to one of the guys in the kitchen. Obviously, things had changed, because here he was at Green Hill High.
He was sitting alone at the table closest to the trash and the dirty tray counter, which was, hands down, the least desirable property in the cafeteria. It was the zone where all the loners sat, scattered a few seats away from one another at the long rectangular tables, a random mix of goth hermits and special needs kids and the occasional new student, like Jesse, who either hadn’t found any potential friends to rescue them, or didn’t care to be rescued in the first place. I had always felt a small burst of shame when I rushed passed their tables, wondering if there was anything I could or should do to make their lunches even just a little bit less lonely and miserable. But I was realizing now that that was probably presumptuous of me—that maybe they didn’t mind being alone. That maybe not everyone cared about everyone else’s opinions as much as I did. Jesse certainly didn’t seem to notice or worry that his social status was at any sort of risk. He had a thick book in his hand with an unmistakably sci-fi cover, and he looked far more interested in that than the fact that he was potentially hurling himself into isolation for the rest of his high school career.
I envied him. I wished that he could teach me to stop caring. To let go.
The end of lunch alarm blared, and students started swarming from all directions, buzzing in circles around me. Just as Jesse put his book down and glanced up, I ducked my head and ran. I pushed through the double doors and into the hallway, leaving him and every other face I couldn’t stand to see safely behind me.
• • •
A few hours later, back in the sanctuary of my room, I stared down at my backpack, deliberating: to open or not to open. To face reality, or to keep pretending that grades and GPAs had ceased to exist. The zipper was stretched dangerously close to splitting from the jumble of textbooks and notebooks and folders that I had somehow managed to magically squeeze inside. I’d been in school for almost a month, but I couldn’t recall learning much, if anything at all, and I’d barely so much as touched a textbook outside of class. I had, of course, signed up for almost all advanced-track classes. And while this meant less day-to-day busywork, hugely significant essays and tests and projects were looming on the horizon. The exceptionally close horizon.
Before I could change my mind, I yanked the zipper down and dumped every last spiral pad and piece of paper out onto my bed. I couldn’t put off what I could see with my own eyes, the physical evidence of just how momentously screwed I’d be if I didn’t start being the student everyone expected me to be again, and soon.
It wasn’t that I was doing nothing with my nightly study time in my room. I was reading and researching into all hours of the night, every night, but I wasn’t enlightening myself about the finer points of European history or calculus or classic American literature.
I had two tall stacks on my desk, towers of books I’d ordered online and books I’d scavenged from my parents’ bookshelves. A–Z pregnancy guides with week-to-week growth charts and how-to’s and suggestions: what to eat, what not to eat, caffeine or no caffeine, how much exercise is too much exercise and how much weight is really acceptable to gain? I had already read through five different books, highlighting and penciling notes in the margins, notes that I’d typed up afterward so that I could reread the most important ideas again and again and probably even again until I was convinced that they had been permanently seared into my memory.
I didn’t know why I was having this baby, but that only made the whole process infinitely more terrifying. What if I did something wrong, one tiny little thing, an innocent accident, and that ended up hurting or . . . ? Just thinking of anything worse made me break out in cold sweats. The fear hit me harder every day, every morning when I woke up worrying that I would somehow let this baby down. Let Iris down, disappoint whoever or whatever was holding the strings behind all this.
