Deadbeat

by Amy Sparling

  It's from Elisa, begging me to call her back because she has "life or death news" to tell me. It's a scam – it has to be. Her sneaky way of making me call her. She hasn't talked to me in two weeks, and she's nowhere near her due date, so she's faking. I shove the phone back into my pocket without replying.

  We're almost at the beach when my phone rings again. Now I worry that something may actually be wrong. Sarah is still happily texting god-knows-who and our conversation died a long time ago so I answer it.

  "Hello?"

  "Thanks for taking forever to answer my call."

  "What's up?" I ask casually so as not to catch Sarah's attention.

  "Well I thought you would like to know what-" Sarah starts singing along with the song on the radio and Elisa stops talking. I can almost feel her anger leaking in through the phone line. Elbowing Sarah, I put a finger to my lips and silently tell her to be quiet.

  "What do I need to know?" I ask Elisa as if we weren't just interrupted by the sharp voice of another girl.

  "Who the hell is with you?"

  "What do I need to know?"

  "Where are you? Why won't you tell me who's with you?"

  "Elisa – don't worry about it, just tell me what you called for."

  "Elisa?" Sarah whispers. Violently, I shake my head at her, hoping she stays quiet. She fucking doesn't. "Is that your ex girlfriend? Is she crazy?" Her voice gets higher with each word, like a drunken hooker ready to fight.

  "I fucking hate you, Jeremy!" Elisa shrieks into the phone, sounding like a teapot.

  Sarah overhears it; obviously - Elisa's so pissed off I bet the people in China can her.

  "Calm down, just tell me what you called to say and then we can go back to ignoring each other."

  "Right. Ignoring each other." She's hurt, but I don't know why because it's not like she's made any attempt to talk to me lately. "You know what, Jeremy? Just forget it. This may be a life or death situation for me, but you obviously don't care."

  "Elisa, wait –"

  Sarah giggles in the background. Then she sends another text message.

  "I hate you," Elisa says. "I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!"

  I sigh into the phone.

  "Oh, and by the way," she says in a softer voice right before she hangs up on me. "It's a girl."

  Chapter 17

  Sarah finally puts her phone away when we get to the beach. She seems to have a newfound interest in me after Elisa hung up on me and I threw my phone to the floorboard. It's probably broken now, but I haven't bothered to check.

  Everyone hangs out on the west side of the beach because we're allowed to drive on to the sand. I park next to Austin's Subaru. Sarah and I survey our surroundings – a big ass bonfire with crowds of drunken teenagers dancing to pop songs, people holding their shoes and wading at the water's edge, and my group of friends standing around a truck with two fifteen-inch speakers blaring Jay-Z's latest album.

  "There's my friends," I point to the truck. "Where do yours usually park?"

  She shrugs. "My friends are everywhere, basically. I come here a lot so I know everyone."

  Having no desire to talk to everyone, I take the initiative and start walking over to Austin, who's sitting on Chris's tailgate. Sarah slips her arm into mine.

  "Hey guys!" Austin waves both hands at us, legs dangling off the tailgate. Then he bursts into giggles.

  "Hey man." I motion to fist-bump him and he raises his fist but misses my hand completely, which makes him laugh even more. An array of empty beer cans decorate the bed of the truck. "How much have you had to drink?"

  "Shit, I dunno," he says, eyes sweeping up and down Sarah. "You're hot. Who are you?"

  "You don't remember me?" She reaches behind him and grabs a cold beer from an ice chest. "I'm Sarah." Austin suddenly remembers her and starts to nod so furiously he's in danger of getting whiplash. She hands a second beer to me and I twist off the cap, totally not wanting to drink it but knowing I have to.

  We chat about trite nothingness with Austin for a while and I notice that Sarah has drunk three beers to my one. She doesn't call me out on it though. Soon she is more bubbly than usual and pulling me through the crowds of people toward a secluded bank of sand.

  "Talk to me, Jermy." Her speech is on the verge of being slurred into one big word.

  "About what?" I ask, tugging at my hair. Although darkness has descended upon the beach, a dozen campfires are glowing on the sand. Elisa would have called it romantic. I call it eerie and weird.

  Sarah steps closer to me, her toes sinking into the sand next to mine. "About whatever it is that's put you in this shitty mood all night."

  "You can tell, huh?"

  Her arms slide up my chest, stopping at my neck. "Duh," she says, tugging at the strings on my hoody. "So spill it."

  Some girls from the closest campfire are staring at us. I recognize them from school, so I grab her wrists and slowly pull them away from my neck. "That phone call I got earlier was weird."

  "That's because ex-girlfriends are weird." She pokes a finger on my ribs.

  "I'm sorry I'm being all depressed, but I can't stop thinking about it. She said it was a life or death situation."

  Sarah rolls her eyes so big that her head rolls too. "Oh please! Girls are so dramatic. If she was on the verge of death she wouldn't have time to call you."

  "I guess."

  "Why are you worried about her? You are here with me."

  "Yeah I know," I say, staring not directly into her eyes, but at the line of silver glitter on her eyelids. "She's more than just an ex-girlfriend though." Sarah's eye's flash. "Oh, God, don't tell me she's your first love." She says the last words all gooey-like and makes air quotes.

  "It's not that, its-" I'll probably regret saying this later. "She's pregnant."

  Sarah doesn't look as shocked as I had imagined. She just shrugs and says, "How do you know it's even yours?"

  "Trust me, it's mine."

  "I heard the way she was yelling at you." She grabs her beer and takes a huge gulp from it. "If you were the father of her kid, she'd want to be nice and make sure you stick around, ya know? To pay child support and what-not."

  "You make a really valid point," I say. "For a drunk chick."

  "I'm not drunk!" she says playfully, shoving into me. I stumble backward in the sand.

  "I know for a fact it's mine though, I've got the broken condom to prove it."

  She crinkles her nose. "You kept a broken condom? What a freak."

  "Hell no, that was just an expression."

  "Right, I use that ol' broken condom expression all the time!" She laughs, swaying her drink back and forth. She sinks knees-first into the sand, motioning for me to follow. I bend down and sit next to her. The sand is cold, even through my jeans.

  Sarah leans her head against my shoulder. "So why exactly are you upset?"

  "I don't know." We stare into the ocean, which is now just a black oil slick in the horizon.

  "Are you worried about her?"

  "No."

  "Do you miss her?"

  "No," I lie.

  "I'm not a rocket scientist, Jeremy. But if you aren't worried about her and you don't miss her, then why bother being in a bad mood?"

  "I guess it's because I can go a few days without thinking about it and then she calls and I suddenly remember that I'm going to be a dad in a couple months."

  "You don't have to if you don't want to," she says.

  "Yeah I do. My parents already know and everything."

  "So you're going to give up college and everything? For some stupid kid your ex-girlfriend is forcing you to have?"

  "It's not like that."

  "Well what is it like, Jeremy? Where are you tonight? You're with me. What does that tell you?"

  My head sinks into my hands. "It tells me that I don't want to be a dad."

  "So don't."

  "The deed is already done, I can't just not be a dad."

  "Sure you can. Just si
gn over your rights."

  My head snaps up. "What?"

  "You know, just sign the paper that says you're giving up rights. Then you don't have to raise the kid and you don't even have to pay child support."

  "No shit?" I ask, wondering why I've never heard of this before.

  "No. Fucking. Shit." She winks at me.

  The rest of the night flies by because I'm in a daze. The last six months of my life were spent worrying about a situation I could never get out of. Thanks to Sarah, there was now a light at the end of that tunnel. A way out.

  Chapter 18

  It's Sunday morning. I wake up at seven but stay in bed staring at the ceiling until noon. Then I roll over and stare at the wall for several more hours. I don't even know what time it is when I finally sit up. I'm heavy, full of emotions and thoughts, and all sorts of shit that I don't even know I am capable of feeling.

  I am excited, thrilled, to have a way out of this situation. I don't even think my parents would care. I should take my chance while I have it, go to college like I had planned and have a real life.

  I justify these thoughts by telling myself that Elisa is the one who wanted this baby. She's the one who picks out baby names and gushes over fancy strollers. I don't care about that stuff. I didn't even want to see the stupid ultrasound pictures. Why should I force myself to be in Elisa's life when my heart isn't in it?

  Elisa wants a baby. I want college.

  I would be a bad father anyhow. I don't know a thing about babies.

  My parents wouldn't help me out with fatherhood - they've made that perfectly clear.

  Elisa seems to hate me lately, so would she even care if I signed over my rights?

  My cell phone sleeps on the nightstand. I turn it on just long enough to see what time it is, and then I shut it off before it has a chance to connect to the network and tell me if I've received any texts or missed calls. Because if by some chance Elisa really was in a bad situation last night, I don't want to know about it. I can't face news like that.

  It's three in the afternoon. In just my boxers, and socks too for some reason, I pad down the hallway and into the kitchen. None of the lights or TVs are on, so Mom and Dad must be out somewhere. Fine by me.

  I shove a box of Lucky Charms under my arm, grab a bowl, a spoon and the gallon of milk, and head back to my room. There's a basketball game on ESPN. Three bowls of cereal later, I pass out again and sleep for the rest of the night.

  On Monday, I try to remember which classes Elisa has so I can find her. These last two months of avoiding her have taken its toll on my memory capacity. And then in the fifteen-minute window of free time between homeroom and fourth period, I remember where to find her.

  She's sitting there on the fluffy bay area window in the library, eating a bag of peanut M&Ms. Her favorite. I used to buy them from the gas station next to my house and leave a bag on the seat when I picked her up from school.

  Students are walking past me, not caring that their heavy ass backpacks just slammed into my bad elbow because they're trying to get to the snack cart before the bell rings. Laughter and catcalls and profanity bounce off the walls in all directions but I only see her. I'm standing there, a total nuisance to everyone walking down the hallway, just twenty feet away from Elisa and if she looks up, she'll see me.

  And she'll wonder why I'm standing here like a fucking retard.

  Taking a deep breath, I take one step closer. An overwhelming scent of whore-ish perfume bombards me and the shrill voice of a cheerleader I once tried to make out with says, "Get the fuck away from her."

  Elisa's head snaps up, horrified. Our eyes meet for a split second and then the blond bitch in front of me side steps into my view. "Turn. Around."

  "Fuck off," I say, straightening up and using all of my five foot eleven to tower over her.

  She doesn't flinch. I guess I shouldn't expect her too – cheerleaders thrive on drama like this. "She doesn't want to talk to you."

  I turn to Elisa, my eyes soften. "Please?" I ask her. She nods. The pompom-wielding bitch asks her, "Are you sure?"

  Elisa nods and the girl steps to the right, giving me the stare of death until she walks away, blending back into the crowd of people who have stopped to watch the scene we were making.

  I glare at the onlookers until they turn away, and then walk up to Elisa. "Can I sit?"

  She gives me a nod-shrug combo in reply but at least it wasn't a no, so I sit. We're looking at each other for the first time in days, and the look turns into a stare and then it gets awkward so I smile. And she smiles back. And for nine and a half entire seconds, I forget about our situation. I am in love with her. Love is all I can feel, and all I can think right now.

  "I didn't expect to talk to you today," she says.

  "Yeah, I had a proposition for you," I say.

  "Huh?" Her beautiful face contorts with confusion and the entire world stops as I realize what I just said. Oh, my fucking god – I said that. I wasn't supposed to fucking say that. Choking on air, my throat is trapped. I can't talk, I can't breathe, I can't think straight enough to realize what I was supposed to say next. A proposition? Those are the words I had rehearsed during lunch, back when I wanted to give up my rights. Back when Elisa and I hated each other, before she had just smiled at me so warmly that my heart melted for her all over again.

  "I didn't mean to say that."

  "Jeremy? What are you talking about? You look like you've just seen a ghost."

  "Nothing, I- I thought I had something to talk to you about but I just realized it was stupid."

  "Stupid, why?" She thinks I'm trying to pull one over on her.

  I lean back against the glass of the library walls. "I've just been thinking about how to deal with our situation, and there's this legal thing we could do, but-"

  "Legal thing?" Her hand grabs her stomach as if she's worried I'm going to rip the baby out of her womb right now.

  "There's just this thing I've heard about, that I thought would help us-" a voice inside my head tells me to shut the hell up, and apologize for rambling like an idiot. But for some reason, I keep talking. "-about my rights and how I can give them – up."

  "What?" She stares at me in disbelief. "You don't even know what that means, Jeremy."

  "Well it would be a way for me to still go to college, and-"

  "No." She says plainly. It catches me off guard. "What?"

  "No." She throws her hands up in the air. "You can't do that. I just won't let you."

  "I wasn't asking you to let me." Inside, I grasp and struggle to hold onto the last strands of love I have for her, but her lips are drawn into a thin line and the look she's giving me makes it hard to even hold on to one.

  "So you just want to give up your rights and have nothing to do with the child you helped to create?"

  "It's not that I would have nothing to do with the kid. I would go to college and get a degree, then I would come back and start giving you money and stuff."

  She grabs her purse and slings her backpack across her shoulders. "It isn't about money. I don't want your money. I don't need your money."

  "Then what do you need?" The two-minute bell rings warning us to get to last period. We stand up and start walking toward our English class.

  "I thought I needed you." Students who normally bounce off each other in the hallways step to the side to give her room to walk when they see Elisa's belly. "But I guess I don't need anyone." She tries to walk faster than me, lose me in the crowd. But it's not happening because my legs are twice as long as hers are.

  "So what's the deal now? Am I allowed to give up my rights?" I have to say it loud enough for her to hear among the hallway noise but quiet enough to remain between us.

  She stares straight ahead. "You can do whatever you want, but I suggest getting a lawyer or something because I don't know anything about your supposed rights."

  I groan. "Seriously, Elisa? It's gonna come to that?"

  "Why should I let you off the hook so
easily?" she says happily while smiling at a group of her friends as we walk past them.

  "Because I don't want to be on the hook. I never wanted a stupid baby. You want it, I don't."

  She stops so suddenly that I slam into her, causing us both to tumble into the wall. I catch her arm before she falls to the ground and hoist her back up. She yanks her arm away from my grasp.

  With a face of stone, she says, "Did that whore Sarah tell you to say all of this?"

  "She doesn't have anything to do with us." I stare at the wall and rub my temples.

  "It's funny how you suddenly want to give up your rights after you started hanging out with her. You know she's nothing but trash, right?"

  I sigh, loud and exaggerated.

  "She's the worst sort of trash," she says pointedly, as if it's a scientific fact and not a matter of her opinion. "I bet she has every STD in the book."

  The final bell rings. We're officially late to class.

  Halfway through English, Elisa walks to the back of the classroom to staple a stack of papers. She takes the long way back to her desk. She walks past my desk and a folded piece of paper slips from her hand and into my open textbook. Casually, I glance to my left and right and am happy to see everyone absorbed in their work. I unfold the paper as quietly as possible, hoping that none of these nosy assholes see it and demand to know what it is.

  It's Elisa's handwriting, but it isn't all curly and swoopy like the love letters of our past that I have tucked into a shoebox under my bed. It's blotched, jagged and written in a hurry. The words are pressed in, deep enough for a blind person to read.

  When you came up to me after lunch, I just knew you were coming to ask what was wrong with me on Friday night. But instead, you chose to disappoint me once again. I can't believe I ever had faith in you. I hope you and Sarah are happy together. Try not to knock her up and ruin her life too, k?

  I read it over again, and then crumple it up into the smallest ball I can make. I don't know if Elisa is watching me, but I hope she is because I aim for the trashcan across the room – shoot – and score.