by Sarah Dessen
At eight-fifteen Marion walked my mother to the door, standing on the stoop with her, arms crossed against her chest. My mother hugged her, then crossed back to our house, where my father and the Vaughns were already watching a movie with a lot of gunfire in it. A few minutes later she came up the stairs and knocked at my door.
When I opened it she was standing there with a bowl of popcorn and, of course, a milkshake. It was so thick with chocolate it was almost black, foaming over the edge of the glass. Her face was softer now, back to its normal state. “Peace offerings,” she said, handing them to me, and I stepped back and let her in.
“Thanks.” I took one suck off the straw in the shake but nothing budged.
“So,” she said, sitting on the edge of my bed, “why didn’t you tell me about Scarlett?”
“I couldn’t,” I said. “She didn’t want anyone to know.”
“You thought I’d be mad,” she said slowly.
“No,” I said. “I just thought you’d freak out.”
She smiled, reaching over for a handful of popcorn. “Well, to be truthful, I did.”
“She’s going to keep it, right?” I asked.
She sighed, reaching back to rub her neck. “That’s what she’s saying. Marion is still hoping she’ll change her mind and put it up for adoption. Having a baby is hard work, Halley. It will change her life forever.”
“I know.”
“I mean, of course it’s nice to have someone that’s all yours, that unconditional love, but with being a mother there are responsibilities: financial, emotional, physical. It will affect her education, her future, everything. It’s not a smart decision to take all that on now. And I’m sure that some of this is an attempt to hold on to a part of Michael, an extension of the mourning process, but a baby goes way beyond that.” She was on a roll now, her voice getting louder and smoother.
“Mom,” I pointed out, “I’m not Scarlett.”
She was taking a breath, readying herself for another point, but now she stopped, sighing. “I know you’re not, honey. It’s just frustrating to me because I can see what a mistake she’s making.”
“She doesn’t think it’s a mistake.”
“Not now, no. But she will, later. When she’s tied down to a baby and you and all her other friends are going off to college, traveling abroad, living other lives.”
“I don’t want to go abroad,” I said quietly, taking a handful of popcorn.
“My point is,” she said, putting her arm around my shoulder, “that you have an entire life ahead of you, and so does Scarlett. You’re too young to take on anyone else’s.”
From downstairs there was a hail of movie gunfire, then my father’s chuckling. Another Friday night, at home with the Vaughns. My life before Macon.
“So, about what happened today,” she said, but she’d lost the fire, the anger that had brought her up here earlier, ready to draw and quarter me. “We can’t just let this go, honey. Your punishment will have to stand, even if you thought you were helping Scarlett.”
“I know,” I said. But it was clear; by the pure fact of not being pregnant, I’d escaped the worst of her wrath. Scarlett had saved me, again.
She stood up, brushing off her slacks. I could see her at Scarlett’s kitchen table, a place that I considered mine, negotiating Marion and Scarlett to some kind of truce. My mother was good at all kinds of peace except my own.
“Why don’t you come down and watch the movie?” she said. “The Vaughns haven’t seen you for so long. Clara thinks you’re just fabulous.”
“Clara’s five, Mom,” I said. I tried another sip of the shake, then gave up and stuck it on my bedside table.
“I know.” She stood at my open door, leaning against the frame. “Well, you know. If you change your mind.”
“Okay.”
She started to leave, then stopped in the doorway and said in a low voice, “Marion says that boy you were with is named Macon. She says he’s your boyfriend.”
Marion and her big mouth. I lay down on my bed, turning my back to her and pulling my knees up to my chest. “He’s just this guy, Mom.”
“You never mentioned it to me,” she said, as if I had to, as if that was required.
“It’s no big deal.” I couldn’t look at her, couldn’t risk it. Her voice sounded sad enough. I had my eyes on the window, where the lights of a plane were coming closer, red and green blinking, the noise not quite loud yet.
Another sigh. Sometimes I wondered if she’d have breath left to speak. “Okay, then. Come down if you feel like it.”
But she lingered there, maybe thinking I figured she’d left, as that plane came closer and closer, the lights brighter, the sound growing louder and louder and finally starting to shake the house, the panes in the window rattling. I could see its broad belly, coasting overhead, white like a whale. And in the din of its passing, the shaking and thundering and noise, my mother slipped out of the doorway and down the stairs. When I turned back over, in sudden silence, she was gone.
Chapter Seven
At work, in the middle of a typical terrible Saturday rush, Macon stepped up to my station and grinned at me.
“Hey,” he said. “Happy birthday.”
“Thanks,” I said, taking as long as I could to scan his Pepsi and four candy bars. Scarlett reached over to poke him and he waved to her.
“So,” he said, “How’d it go this morning? Did you pass, or what?”
I looked at him. “Of course I did.”
He laughed, throwing his head back. “Halley with a license, look out. I’m staying off the roads for a while.”
“You’re funny,” I said, and he grinned.
“You didn’t answer the phone last night,” he said, leaning over my register and lowering his voice. “I called, you know.”
“That,” I said, hitting the total button, “is because I got busted.”
“For what?”
“What do you think?”
He thought back. “Oh. Skipping school? Or helping Scarlett go AWOL?”
“Both.” I held out my hand. “That’ll be two fifty-nine.”
He handed me a five, pulling it out of his back pocket all wrinkled. “How bad did you get it?”
“I’m grounded.”
“For how long?”
“A month.”
He sighed, shaking his head. “That’s too bad.”
“For who?”
The woman behind him was murmuring under her breath, irritated.
As I handed him his change he grabbed my fingers, holding them, then leaned over the register and kissed me fast, before I even had a chance to react. “For me,” he said, and with his other hand slipped a candy bar into the front pocket of my Milton’s apron.
“Really?” I said, but he just grabbed his bag and walked off, turning back to smile at me. Everyone in my line was watching, grumpy and impatient, but I didn’t care.
“Really,” he said, taking a few steps still facing me, smiling. Then he turned and walked out of Milton’s, just like that, leaving me speechless at my register.
“Man,” Scarlett said as my next customer stepped up, slapping a carton of Capris on the belt. “There’s something wrong with that boy.”
“I know,” I said, still feeling his kiss on my lips, saving me from all the Saturdays ahead. “He likes me.”
That evening we had my party at Alfredo’s: my parents and me, Scarlett, and of course the Vaughns. Scarlett sat next to me; the way she told it, my mother had saved her baby. She said when Marion had come storming in she’d already made another appointment for the next day and planned to sit outside the operating room, chair blocking the door, if that was what it took to see it was done. They had a huge blowout, and she said she’d been packing a bag, ready to leave to go somewhere, anywhere, when my mother appeared at the front door in her red cardigan sweater like Mr. Rogers, ready to handle everything. She held Scarlett’s hand and passed her tissues, calmed Marion down, and then mediated throug
h the twists and turns of what Scarlett had done. In the end, it was decided: Scarlett would go through with the pregnancy, but would honor Marion’s wishes of seriously considering adoption. This was the truce.
“I’m telling you,” she said to me again as I ate my pasta, “your mother is a miracle worker.”
“She grounded me an entire month,” I said, keeping my voice low. “I can’t even go out later.”
“This is a very nice party,” she said. “Noah looks especially happy for you.”
“Shut up.” I was already sick of my birthday.
“I’d like to propose a toast.” My mother stood up at her seat, holding her glass of wine, with my father smiling from where he sat beside her. “To my daughter Halley, on her sixteenth birthday.”
“To Halley,” everyone else echoed. Noah still wouldn’t look me in the eye.
“May this year be the best yet,” my mother went on, even though everyone had already drank. She was still standing. “And we love you.”
So everyone clinked their glasses again, and drank again, and my mother just stood there with her cheeks flushed, smiling at me, as if yesterday had never happened.
When we got home we opened presents. I got some clothes and money from my parents, a book from the Vaughns, and a silver bracelet from Noah, who just stuffed the box in my hand when no one was looking and ignored me for the rest of the evening. Scarlett gave me a pair of earrings and a keychain for my new car keys, and when she left to go home she hugged me tight, suddenly emotional, and told me how much she loved me. As I hugged her back I tried again to picture her with a baby, or even just pregnant. It was still hard.
I was getting ready for bed around eleven when I heard it. The slow, even rumble of a car passing slowly on the street, then pausing, the engine humming. I went to the window and watched, my eyes on the stop sign that faced my house. A few seconds later the car slid back into sight, facing my window, and blinked its lights. Twice.
I put on my shoes and crept down the stairs in my pajamas and jacket, past my mother’s half-open bedroom door, past where my father was dozing on the couch in front of the TV. I opened the back door, mindful to go slow because of the creak it made halfway. I slipped outside, across the deck, and down around the house to the side yard, past the juniper bushes, to the sidewalk and across the street.
“Hey,” Macon said as I leaned into his window. “Get in.”
I went around and climbed into the passenger seat, pulling the door shut behind me. It was warm inside, the dash lights giving off a bright green glow.
“Ready for your present?” he asked.
“Sure.” I sat back in my seat. “What is it?”
“First,” he said, putting the car in gear, “we have to go someplace.”
“Go someplace?” I took a panicked look at my house. It was bad enough to sneak out, but the further away I got the better chance I had of getting caught. I could see my father sticking his head in my room to say good night, seeing me gone. “I probably shouldn’t.”
He looked at me. “Why not?”
“I mean, I’m already in trouble,” I said, and I sounded like a wimp even to myself, “and if I got caught—”
“Oh, come on,” he said, already starting to head out of Lakeview. “Live a little. It’s your birthday, right?”
I looked up at my dark house. I had just an hour left of my birthday, and I had the right to celebrate at least that much of it the way I wanted.
“Let’s go,” I said to him and he smiled, hitting the gas as we took the corner, tires squealing a little bit, carrying me away.
He took me all the way out to Topper Lake, a good twenty minutes from my house. We stopped about halfway and I drove, watching him as he squirmed, just like my dad, as the speedometer edged higher and higher.
“You nervous?” I asked him as we went across the bridge, the water black and huge all around us.
“No way,” he said. But he was, and I laughed at him. I was barely doing the speed limit.
We passed all the boat ramps and docks, all the tourist traps, and finally went down a long dirt road that wound through woods and potholes and NO TRESPASSING signs into complete darkness. In the distance I could see the radio towers of my father’s station, blinking red and green against the sky.
We got out of the car and I followed him through the dark, his hand holding mine. I could hear water but I couldn’t make out where exactly it was.
“Watch your step up here,” he said as we climbed a steep hill, up and up and up with me barely able to keep from falling. I was cold in my pajamas and jacket, disoriented, and out of breath by the time the ground beneath my feet got more smooth and stable. I still had no idea where I was.
“Macon, where are we going?” I said.
“Almost there,” he called out over his shoulder. “Walk right behind me now, okay?”
“Okay.” I kept my eyes ahead, on the blond of his hair, the only thing I could make out in the dark.
And then, suddenly, he stopped dead in his tracks and said, “Here we are.”
I wasn’t sure where here was, since I still couldn’t see anything. He sat down, dangling his legs over the edge in front of us, and I did the same. I could still hear water, louder now.
“So what is this?” I said, shivering in my jacket.
“Just this place I know,” he said. “Me and Sherwood found it, a couple of years back. We used to come out here all the time.”
It was one of the only times he’d mentioned Michael, ever, in the whole time I’d known him. Michael had been on my mind a lot lately, with the baby. Scarlett said she had to get up her nerve to write his mom; whether she had moved to Florida or not, she had a right to know about a grandchild. “I bet you miss him,” I said.
“Yeah.” He leaned back against the thick concrete behind us. “He was a good guy.”
“If I lost Scarlett,” I said, not knowing if I was going too far or saying the wrong thing, “I don’t know what I’d do, I don’t think I could live without her.”
“Yeah,” he said, there in the dark. He turned his head, not looking at me. “You think that, at first.”
So we sat there, in the pitch black, the sound of water rushing past, and I thought of Michael Sherwood. I wondered how this year would have been different if he hadn’t taken that road that night, if he was still here with us. If Scarlett would be keeping that baby, if I’d ever have met Macon or come this far.
“Okay,” he said suddenly, looking down at his glowing watch. “Get ready.”
“Ready for what?”
“You’ll see.” He slid his arm around my waist, pulling me closer, and I felt his warm lips on my neck. Right as I turned my head to kiss him, there was a loud whooshing noise and the world suddenly lit up bright all around us. It was blinding at first, and frightening, like a camera flash going off right in my face and turning the world starry. I pulled back from Macon and saw that I was sitting on a thin strip of white concrete, surrounded by DANGER DO NOT ENTER signs, my feet dangling over the edge into the air. Macon grabbed my waist as I leaned forward, still dazed and blinking, to peer over the edge and finally see the water I’d been hearing gushing past a full mile below. It was like opening your eyes and finding yourself suddenly in midair, falling. The dam was groaning, opening, as I twisted in Macon’s arms, suddenly terrified, all the noise and light and the world so far below us.
“Macon,” I said, trying to pull away, back toward the path. “I should—”
But then he pulled me back in, kissing me hard, his hands smoothing my hair, and I closed my eyes to the light, the noise, the water so far below, and I felt it for the first time. That exhilaration, the whooshing feeling of being on the edge and holding, the world spinning madly around me. And I kissed him back hard, letting loose that girl from the early summer and the Grand Canyon. At that moment, suspended and free-falling, I could feel her leaving me.
Chapter Eight
“Okay, let’s see.... Food cravings.”
“Check.”
“Food aversions.”
“Ugh. Check.”
“Headaches.”
“Check.”
“Moodiness,” I said. “Oh, I’ll answer that one. Check.”
“Shut up,” Scarlett said, grabbing the book out of my hands and flopping back in her seat. We were in her car, before first bell; since I’d gotten my license, she let me drive every day. She was eating saltines and juice, the only things she could keep down, while I tried to eat my potato chips quietly and unobtrusively.
“Just wait,” I said, popping another one in my mouth. “The book says morning sickness should end by the beginning of Month Four.”
“Oh, well, isn’t that special,” she snapped. She had been moodier than hell lately. “I swear those chips smell so bad, they’re going to make me puke.”
“Sorry,” I said, rolling down my window and making a big show of holding them outside, my head stuck sideways to eat free and clear of the confines of the car. “You know the doctor said it’s normal to feel sick a lot of the time.”
“I know what she said.” She stuck another saltine in her mouth, swigging some juice to wash it down. “This is just crazy. I’ve never even had heartburn before and now I do, like, all the time, my clothes look terrible on me, I’m sweating constantly for some weird reason and even when I’m starving, everything I look at makes me feel sick. It’s ridiculous.”
“You’ll feel better at Month Five,” I said, picking up the book, which was called So You’re Pregnant-What Now? It was our Bible, consulted constantly, and my job was usually to quote from it to rally and strengthen both of us.
“I wish,” she said in a low voice, turning to glower at me with a face I hadn’t even seen before Month Two, ever, “that you would shut up about Month Four.”