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“Stop,” I said, practically choking on the word. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” I turned my steps toward my mother’s car. It was parked in the faculty lot, waiting for me. Gray had gotten out of work early and picked my mother up for some kind of wedding meeting—flowers or limos or table linens or something. “Are we getting food or what?”
A
“Good.” I opened the driver’s side door and tossed my bag inside. “Try not to look so disappointed that I’m not as suspicious and negative as you are.”
“You will be.” A
I smiled, but inside I just felt sad. Because I had an awful feeling she was right.
jake
Okay, it was time to get my ass in gear. I hadn’t done any homework in about a week. Not that my teachers were surprised. I’d never been a big homework-doer. But over the summer I’d taken this college class and I’d actually worked and I’d landed myself an A. And I’d kind of liked it. So I’d had this whole resolution to do real work this year.
Until I found out I was go
Now it was Friday afternoon and there was no practice because we had a game tonight, so I was going to spend the next three hours catching up. Pretending life was normal. I straddled one of the lounge chairs on our back patio, my precalc book open in front of me, and started to write down the first equation from Tuesday’s assignment.
“Jake?”
My pencil point broke. Chloe had just stepped out from behind one of the flowering bushes. She was wearing sweatpants rolled at the ankle and a wrinkled Abercrombie T-shirt. There were tear streaks on her face and she had no makeup on. It was so weird. Every day at school she was just Chloe, all perfect hair, perfect body, perfect clothes. In fact she was so Chloe it was hard to imagine anything was off. But right now she looked nothing like herself.
“What’s wrong?”
I stood up and my foot knocked my notebook closed over my broken pencil.
“I just … I can’t do this anymore.” Her flip-flops slapped as she walked over to me and pressed her face into my chest.
Crap. Crapitty crap crap. I put my arms around her and she cried for a minute or two, soaking the front of my white T-shirt. I never thought I’d look longingly at a math book, but I did right then.
“What happened?” I asked. “Can’t do what anymore?”
She turned her face to the side so she could talk, but her ski
“I’m starting to get fat,” she whimpered with a sniffle. “My mom even noticed. And now that Faith and Sha
“Okay …”
“And every five seconds? It’s like I know for absolute sure what I want to do, and then five minutes later I want to do the exact opposite.” Her voice caught and she turned to hug me again. “I haven’t slept in, like, weeks…. I’m totally losing it.”
My throat was dry and my heart pounded so hard it hurt. “You can, like, talk to me about this stuff, you know. You don’t have to avoid me in school all the time. If you’re freaking out … you should tell me.”
Chloe gave me this tight smile. “I don’t want to bother you.”
“You’re not. I mean, we’re …” I paused and cleared my throat. “We’re in this together. We should be figuring it out … together.”
Her eyes were so hopeful right then I knew I’d said the right thing. For once. “But what about Ally? Won’t she mind if we’re talking all the time?”
“Ally’ll understand,” I said automatically.
Chloe nodded and stepped back from me. “So, what do you want to do? If you had to decide right now, would you keep the baby or …”
My mind went completely blank. Here I’d just offered to be there for her and I had no answer to that question. I didn’t want to be a father. I knew that. But ever since hearing that heartbeat, the whole abortion thing gave me the skeevs. So there was adoption, but if we did that, then everyone would know. What would it be like if everyone knew?
“God, Chloe, I have no idea.”
She teared up again, but smiled. “Yeah. Me neither.”
“Okay. It’s okay,” I said. “Look, we just … have to tell your parents. That way they won’t find out from anyone else and they can help us figure out what to do.”
“But they—”
“I know it’ll suck at first, but your parents, like, worship you,” I reminded her. “They’ll be okay and they’re go
Chloe pressed her swollen lips together. Her whole face was wet. “You think?”
“Definitely. And if I’m wrong and they throw you out, you can totally stay here.”
Chloe snorted a laugh and pressed her cheek against my chest. “Thanks a lot,” she said sarcastically.
I hadn’t been joking, but I figured I’d go with it. Her laughing was better than her crying. I smoothed her hair down her back.
“No problem,” I said, shrugging. “You can sleep on the floor in your condition, right?”
Chloe laughed for real this time and looked up at me, just as the back door from the kitchen slid open and Ally came bouncing out with a big grin on her face. She took one look at us, Chloe smiling with her arms locked around me, me with my hand on her hair, and the grin completely disappeared.
“Ally! Hi!” Chloe said, pushing me away from her. She wiped her face again, then swiped her hands on her sweatpants. “Jake and I were just—”
“Chloe was upset about—”
“It’s okay. I get it,” Ally said.
She took a couple of steps toward us, fiddling with a small book. I awkwardly leaned in to kiss her hello. She turned her face so I got her cheek. Great. So maybe she would mind if Chloe and I started talking more. I cleared my throat.
“So … what’s up?”
Ally had this look in her eyes. This look like she was trying really, really hard to like me, and it wasn’t happening. She forced a smile onto her face and lifted the book.
“I got a part in the play,” she said with some seriously weak enthusiasm. “I’m go
“That’s great!” I said, hugging her for real.
“Congratulations, Ally!” Chloe said with a smile.
“Thanks.” Ally looked back and forth between the two of us. She twisted her lips sideways, like she always does when she doesn’t know what to do. “I can go if you—”
“No. It’s cool. I was just go
“Yeah,” I said with a nod.
“Cool.”
“Cool.”
And then she was gone. I looked at Ally. She was watching me carefully, like she’d never met me before and was trying to decide if she trusted me.
“So … wa
“You’re doing homework? Go, you,” she said.
“I figured someone’s gotta do it,” I said, sitting down again. I stared at the closed notebook and suddenly felt very tired. I wished it was five minutes ago, when I’d actually felt like doing work.
“Well, I’ll leave you alone, then,” Ally said. “I just wanted to tell you about the play, so …”
“You don’t have to go.” But I had to turn around to say it, because she was already at the door. I was kind of dying for her to stay so we could get past the awkward. Plus I had a bad feeling I wasn’t going to get anything done anyway. “We could watch a movie.”
“No. Do your work. I’ll see you at the game tonight,” Ally said, halfway inside now.
“Okay,” I said. “Hey, Al?”
“Yeah?”
It felt like there was a sharp rock stuck in my throat. “I love you.”