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59
AVA AND I DIDN’T TALK MUCH on the way to the clinic. I was too nervous, and Ava was still waking up. She sipped the coffee she’d dumped into a travel mug on our way out of the dorm and honked at a trucker who cut us off.
“Dickhead,” she grumbled, then, “Sorry, A
She smiled at me, then patted my leg. “You didn’t sleep at all last night, did you?”
I shook my head.
“You think you’re scared now,” said Ava, “imagine if you didn’t have a choice.”
She flicked the turn signal on and pulled into the parking lot. “Well, chickie. Here we are.”
The nurse called me in to sign some papers and talk over what was going to happen during the abortion, and then I had to go back out and wait for almost another hour. The waiting room was filled with teenage couples and twentysomething college students and grown women with kids. I wished I’d brought my headphones to tune out all the chaos. Instead, Ava and I hunched over a crossword puzzle in a magazine.
“What if the doctor goes out to lunch before she gets to me?” I kept saying. “Do you think the nurse forgot I’m here?”
“It’s okay, A
Finally, the nurse came out and called my name. Ava squeezed my hand. “I’ll be right here,” she said.
In the exam room, I undressed and put on the paper gown the nurse had left for me, then took out the tiny bottle of lavender oil Ava had given me in the car.
“Take a deep breath of this if you’re feeling scared,” she’d said. “It helps.”
Now I dabbed it on my wrists and under my nose, anointing myself like a priestess about to enter a holy mountain. I couldn’t believe that in five or ten minutes, this would be over. They would take it out of me, and when I walked out of this room it would not be there anymore. Good-bye, I thought, and then there was a knock on the door, and the nurse and doctor came in.
60
AVA’S FRIEND WAS RIGHT. THE awkward, tense, scary thing I’d been bracing myself for all night had barely gotten started when the doctor said, “And we’re done.”
I couldn’t believe how quickly it was over. I kept thinking there were other steps, but no, said the nurse, I was really done.
As I walked out with Ava, the world was bright and snowy, noisy with traffic. I wondered what Noe was doing. I wondered if Mom was having a good day at work. It was amazing that things could go back to normal so quickly. I guess I hadn’t realized it, but part of me had expected something terrible to happen. It was taking my brain a moment to get reoriented to the new, disaster-free reality.
I was hungry, and a little crampy, and woozy from the sedative drugs. On the drive home, Ava stopped at a coffee shop to get us blueberry scones. When we got back to the dorm, Ava’s roommates had pooled together to buy me flowers. They were sitting in a vase on Ava’s desk, dahlias like fireworks, yellow bursting out of pink. Get Well Soon, said the card, with a picture of a cartoon frog. Love, your friends at Mackenzie House.
“What do you feel like doing now?” said Ava. “Want me to stay with you, or would you rather be alone?”
“I think I want to be alone for a while.”
“You can use my computer if you want. Or take a nap or a shower. Eat whatever you want in the kitchen. You know where the tea is, right?”
“Yeah.”
She smiled at me, her blue hair bright against the white wall.
Fu
61
WHEN AVA LEFT, I WENT THE kitchen to make tea. The dorm was quiet. While the water boiled, I took my time choosing from a dozen jars of flaky stuff with names like Peppermint Passion and Ginger Fairy. When my tea was ready, I carried the mug up to Ava’s room and started to read one of her theater books.
Outside Ava’s window, people were trickling across the quad like colored dots, hurrying to their classes. A few intrepid squirrels were venturing out to inspect post-lunchtime contributions to the garbage cans. I imagined that this was my life. Curling up in a dorm room, reading a smart book, waiting for my friends to get back from their classes so we could cook something delicious and figure out what we were doing that night. On the weekends, I’d go rock climbing or hiking, or lie in the grassy quad watching leaves fall. I wondered if I’d think about this day—if I’d remember myself at seventeen, throwing up on the Greyhound, sliding down Half Moon Mountain, going to the clinic with Ava, sitting on her bed and looking out the window after it was all done.
You’re doing okay, I thought to myself, and it was like there was a future A
It was nice to think there was a future A
You’re okay, too, I said back, and I put my head on Ava’s pillow and fell asleep.
62
WHEN I WOKE UP FROM MY nap, it was almost time to walk to Pauline’s house for di
I got out of bed and took a few of the pills the nurse had given me. Just go to Pauline’s and get it over with, I thought. At least tomorrow, I wouldn’t have to do anything except ride a bus and sleep.
Ava must have come into the room and left again. There was a piece of leftover birthday cake on her desk, with a note that said, Call me if you need anything!
I wrapped up the cake and put it in my backpack for the bus ride tomorrow. Who knew? Maybe I would meet someone who needed a magic spirit friend, and I would give it to them.
Pauline lived only a mile from campus, but somehow the walk drained the life out of me. It felt like the day had already lasted a hundred years. I wanted to talk to myself some more; to attend to those quiet i
It’s just di
I rustled up a smile and rang the doorbell.
63
“ANNABETH!” EXCLAIMED PAULINE, SWINGING open her front door that was festooned with a wreath and a clutch of jingling bells. “Come on in.”
Pauline was shorter than me by a few inches. She was fond of long skirts and linen shirts with wooden beads for buttons. Mom had told me that Pauline had been in Earth First! in college and chained herself to a tree. Now she was a lawyer for an environmental nonprofit and fought for the trees in a courtroom instead. When I was little, I thought Pauline was weird because she brought her own food when she came to visit us, sacks of bulgur wheat and lentils and seaweed, as if she was going on a camping trip and not visiting someone’s house. What was wrong with frozen pizza from No Frills?
Pauline and Mom went to high school together, but Pauline hadn’t lived in our town since before I was born. When she came to visit, it always used to surprise me that she knew where everything was; that it was her town, too, from a previous lifetime. It bothered me that people could have repertoires of towns; I found it slightly offensive. In my childish way, I told myself Mom and I were superior. Sometimes after Pauline’s visits, Mom would talk about finishing her paramedic training and “traveling around a little” after I went away to college. This always freaked me out. Not the going-away-to-college part, which was still a distant abstraction, but that Mom might pack up our little house and go away too. I need you here, I would say, and stamp my foot. As if Mom going anywhere would unhinge east from west, and I wouldn’t be able to find myself anymore.