The How & the Why

by Cynthia Hand

  “There are scholarships.”

  “True. But—”

  “There are academic scholarships that I will definitely qualify for, and theater scholarships, and, and . . . the state drama competition next week!” I burst out.

  He scratches at his cheek. “State drama?”

  My mind whirls. “They award a scholarship to a senior who gives an outstanding performance in the competition. Ten thousand dollars a year, for four years, toward the college of your choice.” It’s the answer, I know it.

  “Oh,” he says. “Okay. Well . . . but that’s not a for-sure thing, Cass.”

  “We’ve won it every single year. Every year, Dad.” I grab his hand. “If I could get enough scholarships that C of I would cost the same as BSU, could I go to C of I then? Please, Dad?”

  “Of course.” He still looks mournful. “But . . . you’re sure you don’t like Boise State?”

  “It’s not that I don’t like Boise State,” I say carefully. “I can’t explain it, Dad. But I don’t feel like I belong there.”

  “And you feel like you belong at College of Idaho?”

  I nod. “Yes.”

  He sighs. Then after the longest two minutes of my life, he says, “Well, I don’t know how we’ll pay for it, but I’ll talk to your mother.”

  “You know what she’s going to say,” I venture.

  He smiles and squeezes me on the shoulder. “Right. I guess I do.”

  “I had a high school friend who went to College of Idaho,” Mom says later. She turns to Dad. “Dori was her name, remember, hon? We used to go and visit her sometimes. They’d have free movie nights in this old run-down theater near the college. We saw The Cutting Edge there.”

  “Oh yeah,” he says, holding her hand. “Dori. She’s a doctor now, right?”

  “A history professor. She loved the college so much I think she went back to teach there after she got her doctorate,” Mom says. “I should call her. See if she can give us some tips.”

  “So you’re okay with it.”

  Mom frowns. “Okay with what?”

  “With me going to C of I and not Boise State.”

  “Of course.” She gives Dad a stern look. “If this is what you want, where you know, deep down, is the place you need to be, Cass, of course we’re both going to support that.”

  I glance at Dad for confirmation. He nods distractedly. “But it’s so expensive,” I admit.

  “The money will come,” she says. “The universe unfolds as it should. I believe that.”

  “I want to believe that, too.”

  I can’t help but notice that Dad’s frowning, though. But then he notices me noticing, and gives me a wan smile. “Me too,” he says softly. “So there you have it. College of Idaho is mother approved.”

  “Parent approved,” Mom corrects him.

  “Yes,” Dad says.

  “Thanks,” I say, but I get the sinking feeling that we’re all acting. A sense of dread has been building in my stomach since I got here. Like this is a scene in some play I’m performing in, and no more real than my former daydreams about Juilliard. I’ve been having this feeling a lot lately. Like what I’m living isn’t really my life.

  The nurse bustles in. “Time for the official business,” she says, which is a version of what nurses always say when they want you to leave so they can work on their patient. Dad and I hop up from our chairs.

  “Stick around for dinner?” Mom says as we move toward the door. “I think it’s going to be beef stroganoff tonight.”

  “Oh dear God,” Dad says with a cringe. “Let’s go find us some salad.”

  I shake my head. “I have play practice from seven to nine. I mean, I could get out of it.”

  Mom frowns. “No, no, go to rehearsal, sweetie. There’s no sense sitting around here with us. We’re just going to be watching the dust settle, aren’t we, hon?”

  Dad gives me that weird nod again. “Yeah. Go. I’ll see you at home.”

  Dad waits outside Mom’s room, but I head for the elevator. I call Mama Jo from the parking lot and beg out of rehearsal. We’re working on the end of act two, and I only have a few lines because I’m dead. I’m tired. I’m processing a lot of new information right now. So I basically play the sick-mom card.

  “Sure,” Mama Jo says before I can even get out a full sentence. “Whatever you need.”

  “Thanks.” So I go to Rumbi and sit eating their veggie teriyaki bowl, and try to unpack tonight’s conversation in my mind.

  My phone buzzes a few minutes later: a text from Nyla.

  Nyla: You’re not here. Why are you not here? Is Mama Cat doing okay?

  Me: She’s fine. I required a mental health night.

  Nyla: Are YOU doing okay?

  Me: I did a search on an adoption registry.

  Nyla: !!! What happened???

  Me: Nothing. There was nothing there. And then I told my dad about C of I.

  Nyla: And?

  Me: He’s cool with it.

  Nyla: Told you so.

  Me: Yes, you did. You were right. It’s annoying.

  We text banter back and forth, and then she goes quiet for a while when it’s her scenes she’s rehearsing, and comes back about forty-five minutes later.

  Nyla: What’s up?

  Me: Pineapple upside cake.

  Nyla: Wow, so we’re in THAT place. I thought you’d be happy about your dad being down with C of I.

  Me: I am. But it turns out there are financial concerns. BIG financial concerns.

  Nyla: How big?

  I text her a screenshot of the tuition page.

  Nyla: Frick.

  Me: This might even call for a double frick, Ny. So we’re definitely going to need to win the state drama competition and get that scholarship. Okay?

  Nyla: You know it. We’ve got that in the bag. You want to come in early tomorrow and rehearse the crap out of it?

  Me:

  Nyla: Excellent. K brb onstage for a while.

  I head home when she’s gone this time. I’m in my pajamas when she texts again.

  Nyla: Okay, you’re never allowed to skip rehearsal again.

  Me: What happened?

  Nyla: Alice is ticked off at Bastian. She had a meltdown in front of the entire cast.

  Me: Why?

  Nyla: He has to drop out of the state drama competition.

  Me: Shut up. WHY?

  Nyla: Something about his dad not letting him go on an overnight trip.

  Me: Oh, wow. Wowwwwww.

  Nyla: I know, right? He seemed really upset about it. I feel bad for him. He kept saying he was sorry, and Alice started crying, which only made him feel so much worse.

  Me: It doesn’t sound like it’s Bastian’s fault. It sounds like he’s got dad problems.

  Nyla: But Alice wanted a shot at that scholarship, too, and she can’t compete alone.

  I’d be upset, too, if I were Alice.

  Nyla: I think I’ve finally decided about Bastian btw.

  Me: ???

  Nyla: I think I like him.

  Me: WHAT? What do you mean, you like him?

  Our earlier weird conversation with Bastian where he, I don’t know, proposed marriage to Nyla, comes flooding back. The green monster lifts its head.

  Nyla: I mean, I think he may be good people. As in, I approve of you liking him.

  Me: O-kay. I approve of you approving of me liking him. Not that I’ve ever said I liked him. (But I do like him. Is it super obvious?)

  Nyla: It’s obvious.

  Me: Do you think he likes me?

  Nyla: He’d be a fool not to, and he doesn’t seem like a fool. Anyway. You should ask him out. Now I have to get home if I’m going to rise at the crack of dawn to rehearse our scene tomorrow.

  Me: Okay. Good night.

  Nyla: Sleep tight.

  Me: Don’t let the bedbugs bite.

  Nyla: You’re a poet, and you don’t even know it.

  Me: Because I rhyme all the time?

/>   Nyla: See, this is why I love you. But now that I think about it, if I had bedbugs, I would not be sleeping in my bed. I mean, obviously I’d need to get a new bed, if I had bedbugs.

  Me: Or a new house. Ew.

  Nyla: Seriously, how is that a saying?

  Me: Right? How are you going to stop these supposed bedbugs from biting you? What, you just ask nicely? Use bug spray? And how exactly am I supposed to sleep tight? What does that even mean?

  Nyla: That’s it. I’m googling it.

  Nyla: Oh my gosh never google it.

  Me:

  Nyla:

  Me:

  Dear X,

  Today was the last day of school. Now all the other students are gone, and it’s just me, Teresa, and Brit. Plus Melly, who works here year-round. And the Salvation Army people. It’s like a ghost town. There’s nothing good on TV. It’s weirdly hot today, and Melly made us walk to the ice cream shop as our daily exercise, which is kind of funny. But, long story short: I’m bored. I’m bored and it’s midnight and you keep squirming around in my belly so I can’t sleep.

  Sometimes you’re really a pain, X.

  Heather was back here last week, by the way. She must have had a C-section because she was gone way longer than the two-week maternity leave. I thought maybe we wouldn’t see her again, but she’s a senior and she wants to graduate, obviously, so she came back for the last week.

  Most of the girls come back here with their babies. They leave them at the daycare on campus and shuffle into class that first day with red eyes because they were crying because they hated to leave their babies, even one building away.

  Heather’s eyes were red, too, but for a different reason.

  She didn’t seem excited to tell her birth story, or to answer any questions the rest of us had about what it was like to squeeze something the size of a watermelon out of a hole the size of a lemon. She sat there in algebra reading the textbook, and then she started to work on some worksheets she’d missed. She did talk a little, though. She told me she’d missed me, although she might have been referring to my superior understanding of polynomials. She laughed at a joke I told. She raised her hand and asked Miss Cavendish a question.

  She was better than I thought she’d be. She was keeping it together. An inspiration to us all, I’d say.

  Then the daycare lady came in with a baby.

  It wasn’t Heather’s baby, of course. It was this other girl Jennifer’s baby. About three months old or so. A boy. The lady from the daycare walked in and passed the baby to Jennifer. So she could breastfeed. It’s one of the benefits of going to school here. You can still breastfeed. In the middle of class. In the lunchroom. During PE. Whenever.

  It took a while for me to get used to that. Breastfeeding is not something I’ve been exposed to much in my life, or, like, ever. And now at any given time of day, in comes the daycare ladies with the babies, and out come the boobs. They don’t even try to cover up because, I think, they want it to seem normal or natural or whatever, and so the babies get their meals right out in the open. I was pretty uncomfortable with it the first few times it happened. It was hard not to stare. But it doesn’t bother me anymore, so when Jennifer whipped out her breast to feed her baby, I kept doing my work. And then I happened to glance over at Heather.

  Her face was red—completely beet-colored, starting from where her neck went into her shirt all the way up her cheeks and her ears to her hairline. She was staring at Jennifer. Well, she was staring at Jennifer’s baby, at that fuzzy little head pressed into Jennifer’s chest. There was this swirl on the back of his head. That’s about all we could see from our table.

  It got quiet. The other girls noticed Heather’s face, too. We could all hear the sucking noises the baby was making, the little grunts and sighs, and the squeaks and scrapes of Miss Cavendish obliviously writing on the chalkboard.

  Heather stared at the baby.

  We all stared at Heather. We watched as her shoulders started to shake and then two big fat tears rolled down her cheeks.

  “Hey,” I said, reaching over, putting my hand over hers. “Hey. It’s okay.”

  “I know,” she said in this small voice.

  I raised my hand. “Can Heather and I go to the chapel?”

  Miss Cavendish spun around, annoyed. “What have I told you about raising your . . .” She looked from me to Heather. She followed Heather’s gaze to Jennifer’s baby. Then back to Heather’s face. Then at me. “Yes,” she said. “Go ahead.”

  In the chapel, Heather stopped crying. She seemed embarrassed at the fuss she’d made, which really hadn’t been much of a fuss at all, if you asked me.

  “I punched Amber last month,” I told Heather.

  “You didn’t.”

  “I swear.”

  “How were you not expelled?” Heather asked.

  “Because Amber was asking for it,” I explained, but I don’t go into details. “She provoked me.”

  Amber hadn’t been in class today, I realized, and I was glad. The last thing Heather needed right now was to be told she’s abandoned her baby so she could go party.

  I patted Heather on the shoulder. “So a little crying’s nothing to worry about. That happens like every day around here.”

  “I guess you’re right.” She wiped at her cheeks.

  We were quiet again.

  “It was a boy,” she said after a while. “My baby.”

  “I know.” We all knew. Every time a girl at the school had a baby there was a birth announcement posted to the front of the school bulletin board. Heather’s baby was a boy, seven pounds, nine ounces.

  “He had all this curly hair all over his head.” She smiled at the thought.

  “Did you hold him?” I asked. This had been Amber’s question, but I really wanted to know.

  “Yeah. For a few minutes,” Heather answered. “They say that skin-to-skin contact is important right at first. And I . . .” Her voice wavers. “I fed him. The milk you produce right after you give birth is full of all this good stuff the baby needs. But after that I let his parents take him.”

  I squeezed her hand.

  “They looked right together,” she said.

  “You did good.” The door to the chapel swung open and I yelled “Go away!” to the startled face of the girl who was about to come in.

  The door swung shut.

  Heather laughed. “You’re funny. You act like a tough girl, but you’ve got a soft chewy center.”

  “I do not,” I said. “So I have to ask. Did it hurt?”

  “Yes.”

  “Bad?”

  “It was the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life.”

  “Great.” I stared down at my ever-expanding belly. “That’s fantastic news. Couldn’t you have lied to me?”

  Heather looked serious again. “The labor pains were pretty bad, too.”

  That was about a week ago. Heather’s gone home. I’m trying to picture her in her bedroom, playing the flute. Going to college, maybe even going to college parties. Going on dates. And I wonder if I’ll ever see her again. Someday. If we’ll ever be in the supermarket, say, wandering among the tomatoes, and I’ll see her and say hi. And she’ll say hi, too, and we’ll go about our business, not revealing how we know each other, but smiling, because we remember that one day we had together in the chapel at Booth.

  I had to take a little break from writing, because someone was knocking on the front door. It was after midnight and Melly’s a sound sleeper, so she didn’t answer. I went out in the hall and Teresa and Brit were already standing there, the three of us in our pajamas, listening to whoever it was knocking—pounding hard—on the door downstairs.

  “We should call the police,” Brit whispered.

  “We should wake up Melly,” Teresa said.

  “We should see who it is.” I went to the door and opened it.

  It was Amber. She was dressed in pj bottoms and a big T-shirt that was ripped at one shoulder. But her eyes were the thing that
immediately caught my attention—they were so dark that they looked like holes in her face, and there were two gleaming trails of tears down her cheeks. She was panting like she’d been running. She looked like a wild animal.

  “Can I come in?” she gasped, and then looked behind her like someone was chasing her.

  “Go wake up Melly,” I told Brit. I pulled Amber inside and closed and locked the door. Then I walked her to our living room area and sat her on the couch. She leaned back against the cushions and closed her eyes and put her hand on her swollen belly like she was glad it was still there.

  I turned on the lamp. Then I had to try not to look shocked.

  There was a big purple bruise on Amber’s neck, circling it like someone had tried to choke her. And another matching bruise blooming on her shoulder half hidden by the ripped shirt.

  I didn’t ask her if she was okay. The answer to that was obvious. And I didn’t feel any kind of satisfaction that this girl who’d been so full of herself before was now brought so low. I just thought, well, shit happens to everyone, doesn’t it?

  Melly appeared in the doorway, hair a mess, wearing a robe but fully alert. Teresa and Brit trailed behind her.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, sitting down next to Amber.

  Amber shook her head. She lifted a hand to wipe at her nose, and her hands were shaking violently. “My dad kicked me out.”

  Melly’s gaze went straight to the bruise on Amber’s neck. She grabbed the blanket from the back of the couch and wrapped it around Amber’s shoulders.

  “Teresa,” she said calmly. “Call the police.”

  Amber, out of all of us, had the best laid plans for her baby. But maybe all along she was telling us a story, a pretty fairy tale about her supportive family and her accepting friends and her perfect life.

  I guess we’re her village now.

  S

  18

  “I’ve got you,” says Nyla.

  “I know.” We’re sitting in the hallway of the theater building at Boise State (oh, the irony!) waiting to be called in to our next round at the state drama competition. I’m extra nervous, for obvious reasons. We’ve made it through the first two rounds of the competition, last night and this morning. Bam. But now we’re at the final round. The one that counts.

  “Don’t slap me so hard this time,” Nyla says, moving her jaw around like it’s sore. “You really clocked me last round.”