“Before we get started on our new unit on financial responsibility, Ms. George has a disciplinary matter to discuss,” Mrs. Einhorn says.
Then Ms. George pulls out one of our little pamphlets. I probably could have predicted this, but it doesn’t stop my pulse from quickening or my palms from getting sweaty. I feel like everyone is looking at me. If they don’t know that I made the pamphlets, I’m sure they can guess.
Ms. George wastes no time cutting to the chase. “There are rules regarding the distribution of written materials in our schools. Any flyer, brochure, or informational literature must be approved by the administration before it can be posted or distributed. Let me be totally clear: any literature that contains lewd or pornographic material is not only breaking this rule, it is also offensive and will be treated with serious disciplinary measures. Anyone caught distributing any kind of lewd material will receive an automatic suspension and possible expulsion. Are there any questions?”
A boy that we know from GSA, Paul, raises his hand. “Can you explain what in that particular brochure is so offensive? We’ve had pretty frank discussions of that type of thing in this class, and I’m wondering if you can clarify what constitutes lewd material?”
I appreciate his question. I think maybe he’s standing up for me. Then he glances quickly in my direction. It’s totally not subtle.
“You know what, if you are ever planning to distribute something and you aren’t sure if it’s lewd or not, bring it by the office,” Ms. George says. “Because I think all of you know, instinctively, if something is school-appropriate or not.”
Theo raises his hand, and I want to kick his chair to stop him from engaging in this discussion. Why am I the only one of us who wants to keep a low profile? “How does the administration feel about lessons that teach their students to be ashamed of their bodies?”
“Theo, if you have an issue with a lesson, you are free to come talk to me anytime,” Ms. George says tiredly. Theo got in frequent trouble for fighting during freshman and sophomore years, so he and Ms. George have spent some time together. I think she understood that he didn’t start the fights. He was just quick to return anything that was thrown at him. His fuse has gotten longer since then. Or maybe people don’t mess with him now that he’s taller than most people. Theo has told us that he likes Ms. George.
“I honestly think some of the policies at this school are a little outdated,” Theo says.
“That’s not up to me, Theo. But I want to be totally clear: whether or not you think something is appropriate isn’t up for debate. You are not to distribute any material without administration approval. Does everybody understand?” Ms. George asks.
Most of the class nods.
“Thank you, Mrs. Einhorn,” Ms. George says.
“Are you talking to all of the classes about this?” Paul asks.
“I will, if it becomes a more widespread problem,” she answers, and she looks right at me.
My cheeks burn, and I find it hard to swallow. Still, I know that I’m lucky to have had a warning. I want to do things to help people. But there have to be ways to help that don’t involve getting suspended.
Ms. George leaves, and Mrs. Einhorn starts a lecture on credit cards and debt. It’s super boring, and my eyelids feel heavy from lack of sleep. I make eye contact with Paul at one point, and he smiles at me and gives me a sly thumbs-up.
* * *
“Are you okay, Lace?” Evita asks me as we drive to my house. I told her I wanted to hang out there instead of her place today. I just feel on edge. About the pamphlets. About the school policies. But mostly about Theo.
“Tired, why?”
“You’ve seemed quiet. Is this about the brochures? Because I think we’ll find another act of resistance. And no one’s been suspended yet.”
“No. It’s not that. I really am just tired.” I want to tell her why I couldn’t sleep. I want to be able to let out the giddy squeal I had trouble holding in. I want to tell her everything, like I always do. But it really didn’t seem like a big thing to Theo. Aside from that one comment, he acted like nothing had happened. I’m not willing to hurt Evita over something that didn’t even matter to Theo. “Honestly, I’m pretty surprised Theo is going to hang out with Lily Ann.” That’s not the whole truth, but it is true.
“Right? What the hell? He broke up with her last night and they need to talk about it already? Like, give it a minute.” She puts her feet up on the dashboard until she notices me glaring. “We do not want him to get back together with Lily Ann. Maybe we need to find another girl for Theo.”
“What? Why? I didn’t think you’d want him to be with anyone.”
“I don’t know. Yeah. Well. Maybe just a rebound. Someone who makes him feel like he doesn’t need Lily Ann. There are more fish in the sea. That kind of thing.”
I know this is my chance to say something. If not about the kiss, then maybe about my feelings for him. How I’ve been jealous of Lily Ann, and how it goes so much deeper than just being jealous of the time Theo spent with her.
“So … you wouldn’t … I don’t know … want to try being with him again?” I ask. The lump in my throat is back.
“No. I thought about that. But I think he’s definitely, totally moved on from me, and I don’t feel like going through that again. We’re good, him and me, right now. I would not trade that for anything, even though he’s adorable in tight pants, right?”
“Okay.” Even agreeing that he looks good in tight pants would feel like an admission. I feel like the moment where I could ask if she’d be okay if I liked Theo is slipping away.
“I’m texting Alice your address, is that okay?”
“That’s fine,” I say. She starts talking about Alice and the band and I kind of just let her chatter away. I listen for an in, a way to get her to talk more about Theo. Maybe I’m hoping she’ll create that moment. Like somehow she’ll say, Well, Lacey, if you still need your first kiss and Theo is single … But she doesn’t, so I bite my lip, hoping for another chance to tell her.
Eighteen
Once we’re at my house and have described Ms. George’s announcement, my mom starts fixing us snacks. “I’m proud of you for taking a stand, anyway,” she says as she rummages through the fridge and produces a bag of baby carrots.
“I want to take a stand, but I don’t want to be expelled,” I say to my mom.
“No one would expel you. For telling your friends how to protect themselves? That’s absurd.” My mom plops the carrots down on the dining room table and sits with me and Evita. She flips the one pamphlet I have left over and over. “I don’t know. I think these are great.”
“Right, but I can’t keep handing them out,” I say.
“So, you keep talking to kids in the bathroom,” Evita says. “Besides, even if the pamphlet was short-lived, I think it firmly established you as the school’s sex-ed guru. Like, people know to ask you stuff now. We can just let word spread naturally and make the office hours in the bathroom a regular thing.”
“Yeah. That’s true,” I say.
There’s a knock on the door, and I’m not sure who’s happier to see Alice: Evita or my mom.
“Alice, you remember my mom.” I give my mom a look that says Try to look a little less excited to see her.
“Hi, Ms. Burke,” Alice says.
Evita jumps up from her chair. “I missed you,” she says as she squeezes Alice just a little too tightly.
“It’s been, what, like fifteen hours since you saw me?” Alice says, laughing.
“So much has happened. First, we booked another gig. Second, Theo broke up with Lily Ann. Third, Theo ditched us for Lily Ann anyway. Am I missing any big developments?” Evita asks me.
I just shake my head.
“Another gig! When?” Alice asks.
“Two weeks, a Friday night! Should be a big crowd.”
“Two weeks should be fine,” Alice says. She presses her lips tightly together.
“What?” Ev
ita asks.
“At some point this baby is going to be born. Like, two weeks is fine. But in two months? Who knows.”
“Then you get a babysitter,” Evita says.
Alice looks grim. It’s the same way she looked when she was sitting all alone in the waiting room. “Things are gonna change, you know? I’ll probably need to get a job as soon as I can, so I can afford a place to live.”
“You aren’t going to live at home?” I ask.
“Only if I put the baby up for adoption. But I honestly haven’t even considered it. It’s not what I want.”
“Honey, you’ll figure it out,” my mom says.
“Wait, your mom is going to kick you out?” I ask.
“I don’t know if she actually will. That’s what she’s said all along, but she hasn’t brought it up recently, and she let me put a bassinet in my room. It’ll be okay, plus Eric says he’ll pay child support or whatever,” Alice says. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to put a whole damper on everything. It’s just starting to get more real. There’s a lot I need to figure out. For so long it was me wondering if I was pregnant, and then just trying to get through the days with morning sickness, and then about hiding the fact that I was pregnant from people at school because I was so embarrassed. But those worries, they were nothing in the grand scheme of things.”
“You just take each obstacle as it comes. They will all become less daunting,” my mom says.
“Wow,” Evita says. She reaches across the table and grabs Alice’s hand. “You know we’ve got your back, right?”
I nod. “Definitely.”
“And Theo, too.”
Alice blinks back tears. “You guys are the best.”
“You’re a Sparrow. We’ve got your back no matter what,” Evita says.
“Can you believe all this shit is because I didn’t know how to get on birth control? Evita was telling me about the advice you were giving people,” Alice tells me. “I wish I could be in the bathroom so I could grip these girls by the shoulders and tell them to run, don’t walk, to get on the pill.”
“Or condoms, Jesus,” I say. “Like, I want to just hand them out to everyone I meet. Like those attendants in bathrooms at the fancy places in the movies. ‘Hi. How are you? Breath mint? Hand towel? Condom? Tampon? Pregnancy test? Toothpick?’”
“Ha. That’d be awesome. Forget a new stadium. That’s what the school board should pay for next,” Alice says.
“Yeah, oh I’m sure. They are so progressive,” Evita says.
It is a good idea, though. I mean, getting condoms isn’t actually that difficult, but it seems like a lot of people are just too nervous to buy them or go to the clinic. “What if we did give out condoms?” I ask Evita. “Like when we have office hours. Everyone who asks a question gets a condom.”
“That is a great idea!” my mom says. “Then your classmates could get them without even having the hurdle of asking for them or buying them.”
“Let’s do it. Where will we get all of them?” Evita asks.
“I’ll chip in a few boxes,” my mom says. “Then, I bet the clinic would give us some. And I think there are organizations that’d probably send us some. I think they do that for colleges. They should do it for small mountain towns, too.”
“I bet if everyone walked around with condoms, no one would feel so embarrassed about having them. Or about asking to use them. I always felt so sheepish suggesting condoms. Even though, hello, I should have insisted. That’s why I wanted to be on the pill,” Alice says.
“Maybe get some pregnancy tests, too?” Evita suggests. “Or are those expensive? Like, same deal—if they were readily available, maybe it wouldn’t feel like such a big deal to take one if you weren’t sure. People would just feel so much less embarrassed about what was going on in their bodies.”
“You can actually get cheap test strips online. I took about twenty before I finally let it sink in that I was pregnant. I would have gone broke if I hadn’t found those,” Alice says.
“Absolutely, that’s what they use at the hospital,” my mom says.
“Can I borrow your notebook?” I ask Evita.
I write CONDOM PROJECT at the top. We brainstorm and doodle. We think about ways to package them and hand them out. Evita grabs the notebook and draws a cartoon little condom guy. She draws him with a frown and a speech bubble that says, “Don’t make me sad. Use me!”
My mom answers the door when there’s a knock. The three of us are at the kitchen table, too busy laughing to get up.
“But the real question is: What do we name our cartoon condom?” Evita asks.
“Dicky? Peter?” Theo says from behind us. “What is all this?”
“We are going to get prophylactics for everyone!” Evita says.
“Trying to figure out a distribution scheme,” Alice tells him as he squeezes a chair in between mine and Evita’s.
“It would be great if people could just help themselves. Obviously, we can give them out at office hours, but that sort of leaves the male contingent out…,” I say, tapping my pencil against the table.
“Wait. We don’t need all three of our lockers, do we?” I ask. “Like, we can keep our stuff in two of them and then just stock the third one full of condoms and pamphlets and pregnancy tests or whatever. And tampons and pads, because it’s also stupid that they don’t have those in the bathroom. We can still give some out in the bathroom and stuff. But we can store them there.”
“You guys shouldn’t risk that. Maybe my old locker is still empty,” Alice suggests.
“Do you remember your combo?” Theo asks.
“Yeah. I’ll write it down for you.”
“But how will we get all this in there?” I ask.
“I can hide boxes upon boxes in my oversize sweaters!” Evita says. “I’ll be like a condom mule! Theo will be of no use here. He can only cram one in his tight pants. And who knows if he’ll even need to do that anymore, provided he didn’t get back with Lily Ann today.”
“I’m sitting right here,” Theo says. “We did not get back together. I did get my ukulele back. And I think I could probably manage four condoms, one in each pocket.” He stands up and sticks his hands in all the pockets of his faux-moto skinny jeans. The pants are ridiculously cute on him.
“So that’s three boxes of condoms for me, and four condoms for Theo. How many can you smuggle in, Lacey?” Evita asks.
We are all so into this little covert operation. “I could add some into my viola case and my backpack.”
“Who knew condoms could be so fun?” Alice laughs.
“Oh. I did,” Theo deadpans.
“Gross,” Evita says. “But, don’t worry, we’ll find you another willing participant again sometime.”
“I think you mean an ‘enthusiastically consenting participant,’” I say with a giggle.
“Naturally,” Evita says. “I was never that enthusiastic, was I?”
“You were fine,” Theo mumbles, glancing at my mom, his ears turning as red as mine feel.
“Sorry,” Evita says, realizing how uncomfortable most of the room is at this moment.
“Should I go buy some?” my mom asks.
“Get the best variety you can,” I tell her.
“I’d offer to go with you, but I’m not sure how that would look,” Theo says.
“Eww!” Alice giggles.
I wouldn’t mind a moment alone with Theo. For lots of reasons, though mostly to talk. I wonder if I can somehow suggest Alice and Evita go with my mom, but my mind draws a blank.
* * *
By the time my mom comes back from the store, we’ve got a system set up. Evita found simple condom instructions on my computer, and we printed them out as small as we could legibly make them. We’re all sitting on the floor of my room and cutting them out when my mom tosses boxes of condoms at us.
“Don’t have too much fun,” my mom says, closing my door.
“Who knew there was such a wide variety of products,” I say.
She tosses him a few in yellow wrappers.
“Banana flavor is the worst fake flavor. Like, banana candy is always gross,” Alice says. “Blech.”
“We’ll set aside all the vanilla ones for you,” I say.
Evita nudges Theo with her foot. “What’s your deal?” she asks him. He does not seem to find any of this nearly as fun as Alice, Evita, and I do.
Maybe he’s feeling as weird about sorting condoms with me as I do with him. But I doubt it. I feel this extra weight with each of our interactions, wondering what it means and what he’s thinking. I cannot get that kiss out of my head. But Theo mostly seems mopey. He might be sad about his breakup, and that possibility is more than I can handle.
“Maybe he’s just sad he doesn’t need condoms anymore,” I blurt out. As soon as the words fly out, I want to shove them back in.
“Whoa. Lacey. You just went there,” Theo says.
“My girl speaks her mind now. It’s a whole thing,” Evita says. “Apparently she told Bruno that smoking was gross.”
“I did. He told you that?” I ask her.
“Yeah. Oh, Bruno and I are super tight. He told me he thought you were maybe into him and that you were hot, but that you were not into kissing a smoker. Ah well, Lacey, we will get you kissed by a nonsmoker one of these days.”
“You did seem pretty into him,” Theo says, one of his eyebrows raised. I want to ask him right now if that bothers him. “Okay, honestly, I think I feel weird about this whole thing because I am the only person here who would … you know … wear one of these.” He holds up a condom.
“Darling. Give yourself more credit.” Evita grabs the condom from him and hands him one that’s branded for bigger men.
“Yeah. Gee. Why would I feel weird about any of this?” Theo says, a smile finally creeping onto his face.
“You shouldn’t feel weird,” I tell him. “That’s the whole problem at school, right? Like. You have a penis. If you’re gonna use it, you should wrap it up.”
The Birds, the Bees, and You and Me Page 12