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“Thanks,” Chloe said.
She was staring straight up at the ceiling, her hands on top of her stomach, which was now covered by her yellow T-shirt. The doctor shot me this look as she walked out, like she was telling me to take care of Chloe, then she closed the door. Take care of Chloe? Did she not notice I was about to go down? I pressed my palms together—they were slippery with sweat—and tried to breathe.
“It’s okay,” I whispered. “It’s okay it’s okay it’s okay.”
“Are you kidding me?” Chloe sat up so fast it scared the crap out of me. “Omigod. What am I going to do? What am I going to do, Jake?”
Her eyes filled with tears and she clutched her stomach. Right. Clearly it was time to focus. I squinted at her, waiting for my brain to reset itself.
“Okay, okay, calm down,” I said again. “It’s go
“No! It’s not! It’s not go
“I know … I, yeah, I know.” I had no idea what I was saying.
Wait. Did she just say she can’t have an abortion?
“But, Chloe, we can’t be, like, parents,” I said, panicking. “I mean, can we?”
“No! No, no, no. We can’t. We definitely can’t,” she replied, rambling. “We sooooo cannot be parents.”
“Well then, what’re we go
Chloe did this groan-whimper thing that made her sound like a dying puppy. She turned sideways and slid off the table, pacing back and forth in the small room. “My parents are going to kill me.”
“No, they’re not,” I said automatically. I wiped my hands on the butt of my jeans. But then I realized I had no idea what her parents would do. Some people were crazy about this kind of thing. They, like, threw their kids out of the house over stuff like this. “I mean, they’re not actually going to murder you. Right?”
“Oh. God.” Chloe covered her face with both hands and cried. Her shoulders bounced and she started making these scary choking sounds. Okay, clearly someone was going to have to hold it together around here, and it wasn’t going to be her. I walked around the table, thinking of the doctor’s silent look, and put my arms around Chloe.
“It’s okay. We’ll figure it out.” I pressed my lips together and tried to think. What would make her feel better right now? What could I do or say to make myself feel like less of a prick? “What if we tell my parents first? Like a kind of test run?”
Chloe let out what I thought was a laugh. It was hard to tell with the snorting and blubbering. How the hell did I end up here? Chloe and I had always been casual friends, but until this summer we’d never even talked much. How was it me here, holding her and talking about babies? It should’ve been Hammond. It should’ve been Will. It should’ve been anybody but me.
“You can’t be serious,” she said.
“What?” I leaned back to see her face. Her nose was swollen, her eyes were puffed, and her lips were rimmed with red blotches.
Chloe’s hands dropped. “Your parents are way stricter than mine. If we tell them, your dad will definitely kill you.”
I swallowed hard as Chloe grabbed up her denim jacket and bag. I wanted to tell her she was wrong, but she wasn’t. In fact, I was kind of thinking about hiding my dad’s shotgun as soon as I got home.
“I think we should wait,” Chloe said, sniffling. She stared at a painting of a sailboat on the wall, like she was talking to it instead of me. “Yeah. I think we should wait to tell our parents until we figure out what we’re going to do. It’ll go better if we have, like, a plan.” She glanced at me then, and swiped the back of her hand under her nose. “Okay?”
I nodded. “Okay.”
As I trailed her out of the room I bit my tongue to keep from saying what I was thinking. If we couldn’t even get through a doctor’s appointment without freaking, crying, and almost ralphing, then how the hell were we going to figure out what to do?
ally
The metal soccer bleacher seat cut into the back of my legs as I watched Hammond take the ball upfield toward the goal. I had to remember not to wear shorts to these games from now on. When I stood up, I was going to look like I’d been sitting on a cheese grater. But then, it would be too cold to wear shorts soon anyway. It was so weird to think that this was our last fall in high school. That this time next year, I’d be cheering for some random dudes on some random college team. Last night over pasta at the Olive Garden, my dad and I had narrowed my choices down from twenty-five to ten, but the schools were still all over the country—everywhere from Stanford to Texas to UCo
Freaky.
“Pass it!” Sha
Hammond did not pass the ball. Instead he took the shot, even though he had two defenders all up in his face, and it sailed way wide of the goal. Everyone in the stands groaned, even A
Faith looked up from her texting. “What? What happened?”
“We just didn’t score a goal, thanks to Hammond,” Sha
Coach Martz called time-out and the team jogged toward the sidelines, sweating and grumbling. They were losing one–nothing and looked lost out there, possibly because one of their captains was hogging the ball away from their other captain. The sun beat down on Jake’s face as he jogged over to Hammond to ask what the hell he was doing, I assume. Hammond shoved Jake away from him and when Jake tried to grab his shoulder, Ham whacked his arm so hard Jake almost fell over. My fingers curled around the edge of the bench, but Jake didn’t retaliate.
The guys grabbed water and gathered around their coach while the backslappers, including Chloe, made a loose circle around the huddle. Chloe tried hard not to look at Jake as Jake tried hard not to look at Chloe, and Hammond gazed longingly at Chloe from behind. Yeah. Deciding not to do Backslappers this year? Best idea ever. That triangle was even deadlier than the one in Bermuda.
“Shouldn’t you two be down there getting your rah on?” A
“I decided to abstain from joining anything nonathletic this year,” Sha
“And I’m concentrating on drama,” Faith said, twirling her blond hair around a finger as she read another text.
A
Sha
“Huh?” Faith said. A
“You are?” A
“I didn’t think you were into that stuff anymore,” Sha
I shrugged. “It’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, which is, like, the only Shakespeare play I ever understood, so I figured I’d give it a shot. Tryouts are on Monday, so—”
“Auditions. We call them auditions,” Faith corrected me.
“What about work?” A
“I’ll still have time to pick up a few shifts a week,” I replied. A
“Great. More shifts with Ancient Alice and Smelly Sal for me,” A
Faith’s eyes lit up in a fake way and she turned to look at A