She stops her search for a shoe, thinking. She smiles.
“Yeah. I dreamt my little brother could fly, too, like the way I flew in that dream about the asshole.”
We both laugh at the memory of her “dumping” dream.
Dericia and I don’t always get along great. She doesn’t get along great with anyone. But we haven’t come even close to a fight since we started telling each other our dreams. Maybe my mom had been right about her dream theory.
While everyone else is at breakfast, I scribble a quick note to Madison. I thank her for being my friend and tell her I’ve figured out what to do about the baby, so I’ve got to go somewhere else. I tell her I hope I’ll see her again some day, and that’s true. I ask her to say goodbye to Dericia for me, then fold the note, sneak into Madison’s room and put the note under her pillow. I walk out the front door to wait for the TAPP van.
I’m sorry I couldn’t say goodbye to Miss F., or Ms. Lee, because they both did everything they could to help me out. But you can’t really run away if you’re going to tell everyone you’re leaving.
In class this morning, I finally have something to write in my baby journal:
Friday, November 16
Dear Baby,
I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I don’t want to write a bunch of lies to you. The other girls are writing to their babies about how much they already love them, and how they can’t wait to hold them in their arms. Now that I’ve seen your picture, and I feel you moving around all the time, I like you a little. I can’t say I love you, though. I’ve known from the beginning I don’t want a baby. But I think I know someone who will want you. My life has been so messed up lately that I haven’t even been able to think right. And when I do think, all I can think about is me. I haven’t always been like that. I used to care a lot about other people, just not lately. But I just now figured out how I can do something for someone else, and it’ll work out better for you, and for me, too.
All of the other girls sign their letters to their babies with things like “Love you forever,” or “Your loving mother, ” but even if I know it’s true, I don’t feel like anyone’s mother.
Autumn
When the van drops me at the county home Friday afternoon, I walk quickly past the entrance, down the street and around the corner. It’s four blocks to the bus stop and I hope the bus comes soon, before anyone at the home figures out I’m missing. I drop my backpack on the bench. All that’s in it is my notebook and Ordinary People. I didn’t take any of my textbooks from school because I don’t expect to be going back. I hope someday I can get the stuff back that’s still locked up at the home, especially Dad’s wallet and Gram’s purse. Not only for the money, but because it’s something from them, something they touched every day.
I try to make sense of the posted bus routes. I’m pretty sure the red line will take me in the right direction, but San Remo isn’t even shown on any of the routes.
Even though it’s November, the afternoon sun is warm on my face and I soon feel tired and sleepy in that relaxed way the warm sun can bring. I lean my head against the back of the bench and wonder if Madison’s found the note I left for her yet, and how long it will take me to get to San Remo. I don’t even know if I can find their house or not. And what if they already have another adoption started? I hadn’t thought about that possibility until this minute.
I feel the swoosh of the approaching bus and open my eyes.
“Can I get to San Remo from here?” I ask the bus driver.
She laughs. “Yeah. If you’ve got all day and half the night.”
I heave my backpack up the steps and dig money from my book.
“$1.85,” she says. “That’ll take you to the end of the blue line, then you’ll have to transfer to the red line.”
“Thanks,” I say, walking to the back of the crowded bus, to the first vacant seat.
I sit by the window, watching the neighborhood change from trash-littered, graffiti-ridden sidewalks, and buildings with junk cars lining the streets, to freshly painted buildings with flower boxes and clean sidewalks, and back to graffiti and trash.
There are now only two passengers on the bus, me and an ancient lady who keeps muttering to herself, sometimes laughing and sometimes seeming very angry.
In another mile or so the driver calls out, “End of the line. Every-body off.”
I pick up my backpack and make my way to the front of the bus.
“You’ll get the next red line bus, probably in ten minutes or so, and then you’ll be halfway there.”
“Thanks.”
“Hey, Irma! End of the line. Honey!”
The old woman keeps talking to herself and the bus driver walks back to where she’s sitting. I get off and plop down on the bench. The digital clock in front of a bank across the street says 2:47 p.m., but it also says it’s forty-four degrees, which must be at least twenty degrees off. Not that it matters much to me what the accurate time is. It’s not like I’ve got an appointment or anything.
It’s dark by the time I get to San Remo. I’m tired, and my back aches from sitting for hours on buses, and from hauling my backpack on the bus, off the bus, on the bus, off the bus, from the blue line, to the red line, to the green line. The baby keeps kicking me in the gut and I’ve got to pee so bad I’m about to burst.
I get off at the San Remo shopping center and rush into the Safeway in search of a restroom. Luckily, it’s near the front of the store and I make it into a stall just in time. I wash my hands and splash cold water on my face. I don’t even look like the same person I used to be. My hair is dull and lifeless, nothing “glowing” about it now. Pale face, dark circles under my eyes, fat as a cow—will Nikki even recognize me when she sees me? I smear on some lip gloss, run the brush through my hair and pull it back tight in a scrunchy, then pat my cheeks hoping to bring some color to them.
Standing in front of the Safeway, I try to get my bearings. This is where we got paper plates for last summer’s team party at Nikki’s place. I’m sure we drove out the far end of the parking lot, by the Starbucks, and turned right to get to her house. But then what? I’ve only been to her house twice. Once for the party, when Danni drove, and then the night Dad and Grams were killed. I wasn’t noticing much about how we got anywhere that night.
There’s a pay phone outside the gas station across the street and I waddle over there to see if I can call Nikki, or find her address, or something. There are about thirty Nicholsons in the phone book. I remember from grade reports and notices home that her first name is Jean, but there is no Jean Nicholson listed. There are seven J. Nicholsons. I guess it’s worth a try.
A man picks up at the first J. Nicholson.
“I’m trying to reach Jean Nicholson,’’ I say.
“Not here,” he says, and hangs up.
No answer at either the second or third numbers.
On the fourth try I get a familiar voice.
“You have reached the home of Jean and Penny. Leave a message and we’ll get back to you soon.”
“I . . . Nikki? This is Autumn Grant. I . . . I need some . . .”
“Autumn! Don’t hang up!”
“Nikki?”
“How are you? Where are you?”
“I’m across the street from the San Remo Shopping Center.”
“San Remo? You’re just around the corner from us! What’re you doing there?”
“I came to talk to you.”
“Jesus! I’ll come get you. What’re you close to?”
“I’m at the Arco station across from Safeway.”
“Okay. I’ll be right there.”
“Thanks.”
“Wait! Autumn! Are you okay?”
“Sort of.”
“I won’t be more than five minutes.”
I’ve barely hung up and walked out to the sidewalk when I see Nikki’s silver Subaru turn the corner. She honks when she sees me, then pulls to a stop at the curb and rushes to greet me. Gad it�
��s good to see a familiar face from my old life!
“Autumn! Where’ve you been?” she says, throwing her arms around me and giving me a tight hug.
She pulls back, her eyes on my belly.
“Oh, my God!”
I look away, trying to hold back the tears.
“Come on,” Nikki says. “We’ll go back to my place and you can tell me all about it.”
She opens the door for me and I heft my tired, clumsy body up into the passenger seat. Nikki tosses my backpack on the floor behind me and comes around to the driver’s side.
“Thanks for coming to get me,” I say.
She starts the car and pulls away from the curb.
“Thanks for calling,” she says. “Danni said she talked to you on the phone yesterday but you got cut off before she could find out how to reach you.”
“Yeah. I ran out of time on the pay phone.”
“Where’ve you been? Your friends, teachers, we’ve all been so worried about you.”
“But didn’t Danni know where I was?”
“She knew her mom had taken you to another foster home, but she didn’t know where. She kept expecting to hear from you.”
“I was in the county home. I couldn’t call out.”
“County home? Clear out there by the old fairgrounds?”
“I guess,” I say, thinking about the big fenced off place of vacant land we passed every day on the way to TAPP.
Nikki pulls into her driveway and shuts off the engine, then comes around to meet me as I get out of the car. I reach for my backpack but she gets to it first.
“I’ll take that. You look like you’re dead tired.”
“Yeah. I’ve been on buses since early this afternoon.”
“So . . . Did you run away?”
“I just left.”
Nikki unlocks the front door and we go inside.
“Does anybody know you’re here?”
“No. I left a note for my friend, but I didn’t tell her where I was going.”
“Hmm,” Nikki says. “Sounds a lot like running away to me.”
Nikki goes straight to the kitchen and I follow close behind her. “I’m starved. I bet you are, too,” she says. “Want a quesadilla?”
“Okay.”
“Here. Have a seat.”
She pulls a chair away from the table. I sit down, tired and achy. Nikki sets my backpack on the floor beside me, then opens the refrigerator and peers inside.
“Penny usually does the cooking but she told me she stocked up on a few things that would be within the range of my culinary skills—all microwaveable.” Nikki says, laughing.
She pulls a package of grated cheese, tortillas and salsa from the refrigerator, sticks a spoon into the salsa jar and sets it on the table.
“You want onions?” she asks.
“No, thanks.”
“Penny always visits her parents at Thanksgiving. They live clear across the country in New Hampshire. I’d just walked in from taking her to the airport when you called. Lucky timing.”
Putting a big, flour tortilla on a plate, she loads it with cheese and puts it in the microwave. She slices an avocado onto a plate, puts it on the table next to the salsa, then readies another quesadilla for the microwave.
“Milk? Soda? Water?”
“Just water is fine,” I say.
Nikki gets two bottles of water from the refrigerator and puts them on the table, then takes the first quesadilla from the microwave and puts it in front of me.
“Dig in,” she says.
“Thanks.”
It tastes soooo good—made especially for me, not like something cooked in huge pots to feed fifty people.
Nikki brings her finished quesadilla to the table and sits across from me. She adds avocado and salsa to it and takes a big bite.
“Mmm. That’s tasty! I don’t care what Penny says about my culinary skills. I make a mean quesadilla!”
Nikki waits until I’ve swallowed my last bite of quesadilla and then she says, “Talk to me. Why did you run away? What’s with the pregnancy? How can I help?”
I take a deep breath, hardly knowing where to start.
“Was it awful at the county home?”
“Well . . . the teacher and counselors were nice. Some of the girls were pretty crazy, but . . . they were okay, I guess, considering what they’d been through.”
“Do you have any friends there?”
“Yeah, a girl named Madison. She’s there because her mom is in jail and there’s no one else to take care of her. She’s been there lots of times.”
“And you’re pregnant,” she says—a statement, not a question.
“Yeah.”
“How far along are you?”
“About six and a half months.”
I can see Nikki doing the math in her head.
“So you were already pregnant when volleyball season began?”
I nod.
“Probably four months or more in the play-offs with Wilson?”
“About.”
“You played a pretty good game for a pregnant chick,” she says, laughing.
She gets up and goes to the counter where the quesadilla fixings still sit.
“Want another one?”
“No thanks.”
She stacks cheese on another tortilla and stands waiting for the microwave to beep. When it’s finished, she sits back down at the table.
“You know, I’ve had a lot of surprises in my teaching career, but if someone had asked me to rank our team in order of who was most likely to get pregnant, I’d have put you at about the bottom of the list.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
“So? What happened?”
“I just. . . I was really stupid and . . .”
“And?” Nikki prompts.
I tell her the whole story, except I don’t name Jason.
“It wasn’t Nathan, was it?”
“No!”
Nathan was a guy I was in love with for about five days last spring. He was such a total jerk, even Nikki knew about him.
“It was just a guy I went out with, this guy who was really only a friend and . . .”
“What does this guy think about being a dad?”
“He doesn’t know. I don’t want him to know. I wanted an abortion. I’d gone through the counseling at Planned Parenthood. I had an appointment and everything. But then, I guess I sort of lost it after the accident. I don’t know how to explain it. It was like I was in a fog, like my brain stopped thinking.”
“Understandable.” Nikki says. “That was a horrible shock.”
“By the time I came out of the fog, it was too late to get an abortion.”
“Did your dad and grandmother know you were pregnant?”
“No. I didn’t want them to know. I didn’t want anyone to know.”
“Danni?”
“Not even Danni.”
The big grey cat ambles into the kitchen, jumps up in Nikki’s lap, then walks onto the table.
“Off the table, Elvis,” Nikki says.
Elvis lies down on the table, twitching his tail. Nikki picks him up and puts him back on the floor. He jumps up again. I sit watching, trying to get up the nerve to say what I want to say. Nikki holds Elvis on her lap, scratching behind his ears. I take a deep breath, then just blurt it out.
“I want to give you the baby!”
Nikki freezes. Her hand sits unmoving on the cat’s head. She looks up, wide-eyed, not seeming to notice when Elvis gets back on the table. She blinks.
“What?”
“I want to give you the baby—you and Penny. I want something good to come from this.”
Chapter
14
The luxury of a long, hot, private shower—no one yelling to hurry up, no one casting sideways looks at my naked belly—I’ve missed privacy! I sit on the edge of the tub rubbing cocoa butter across my midsection, thinking about Nikki’s reaction to my offer of a baby. I expected her to be rea
lly happy about it, but all she’d said was, “We’re both tired. Let’s talk in the morning.”
In the pink room, the crib is folded flat against the wall. The bare mattress leaning next to it. No teddy bears. No baby monitor. No framed Disney characters looking down on me from the walls. It is quiet here, no sweet snoring sounds or outbursts of motherfucker-cocksucker. I take the heart-shaped stone from the back pocket of my notebook for a bedtime talk with my dad.
“Hey, Dad. I’m at Nikki’s. I figured out how I can be part of the solution.”
“You’re awesome. I know you’ll . . .”
His voice is getting harder and harder to hear. I hold the stone against my chest, hoping the beat of my heart brings new life.
“Dad? . . . Daddy?”
In the morning on the patio, while we’re eating cereal and toast and watching Elvis stalk a sparrow, Nikki tells me she’s got to call the county home and let them know where I am.
“By law, I should have called them last night. But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. You were so tired, and there was so much to talk about.”
“But . . . I’ve been reading about adoptions and . . . can’t I just stay here with you and Penny until the baby is born? And then you can have the baby?”
“Maybe we’ll work something out further down the road, but for right now . . . I don’t want to lose my job over this.”
“But lots of people who adopt let birthmoms stay with them while they’re pregnant,” I say.
“It’s not about that. You’re a minor, someone who’s been in my program at Hamilton for four years, you’re here illegally and I’m harboring you. That’s definitely grounds for dismissal. And even though I’m a popular coach with winning teams, there are some people who’re just waiting for a chance to get rid of me.”
“That’s ridiculous! You’re the best coach in the whole league. Who’d want to get rid of you?”
“Well . . . some of the people from Danni’s church. And some others from that big church just off the freeway . . . You know, they think people like Penny and me are trying to corrupt the youth. Like we’re trying to influence you all to become lesbians.”
“That’s crazy!”
“I know that, but they don’t. Things can get pretty nasty sometimes.”
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