Exit, Pursued by a Bear

by E. K. Johnston

  Mrs. Itesse’s timing is perfect. I get to the lineup just as the bell rings. The guy who operates the register winks at me, like he usually does, and then catches himself. He drops my change into my hand, very careful not to touch me, and it’s all I can do not to yell “I’m not contagious!” like Clarence did that morning. I’m not quite that brave, though, so I just take my food and head for the table Polly and I claimed in grade nine and never relinquished. She’s already there, because she packs lunch, and after a few minutes, we are joined by the others. Six of the girls on the squad are in grade twelve, and we’ve all sat together since grade ten, when they joined the team. The boys usually hang around stealing French fries before going out into the courtyard to play Frisbee, but today none of them show.

  “This is going to get on my nerves,” I say to Brenda, because she happens to be the closest. “Am I a horrible person for expecting them to treat me normally? I mean, should I be more considerate of how they’re feeling?”

  Polly looks at me like that’s the dumbest thing she’s ever heard anyone say, and as I repeat it to myself in my head, I realize that it pretty much is.

  “Don’t you fucking dare,” she says. I don’t remember Polly swearing this much, to be honest. Maybe I’m hypersensitive. “Don’t you even fucking dare.”

  “Polly’s right,” Mallory says. “You don’t owe them anything.”

  “My mother says it’s a natural instinct for you to retreat, but that you shouldn’t, if you can manage it,” says Karen. Her mother is a psychiatrist I will not be seeing, not because I don’t trust her professionalism, but because I don’t want my psychiatrist to be someone in whose house I’ve attended dozens of slumber parties.

  “What Karen means,” says Chelsea, “is that you should go out into the courtyard and beat the crap out of your boyfriend, and then probably dump him, and that we will all back you up.”

  “Oh, and Clarence is on board with that,” adds Mallory. “He said we could find another guy to take Leo’s spot on the team, no problem.”

  “Okay,” I say. “Um, watch my food? Polly, I’ll shriek if I need you.”

  —

  It goes quiet the moment I step into the courtyard. Last year, after nationals and the whole thing with Leo started, I had eaten lunch with him and the other boys out here a few times. I didn’t like Frisbee, though, so I usually got bored and wandered back inside to sit with Polly and the other girls. Leo hadn’t liked that much, but school had ended pretty soon after, and it stopped being a problem, or at least a problem that I noticed. Noticing things was apparently not my strong suit.

  They’re playing now, or they had been before I arrived. Clarence has the Frisbee, and he worries it in his fingers as he waits. Leo’s back is to me, but he has to know who it is. Everyone who can see me is looking at me like I’m a pariah. For the first time all day, I feel like one. I think that’s what makes me hate him most of all.

  “Hermione,” he says, turning around slowly. He almost always calls me Winters. We are so, so breaking up. Now it’s just a race.

  “I was thinking we should break up,” I say. “Because you’re clearly uncomfortable in this relationship.”

  “At least I respected it while it lasted,” he says. Clarence narrows his eyes, and even Tig looks taken aback, but no one says anything. This will be the conversation the secretaries wished they could have overheard.

  “If you think I’m going to apologize for being drugged and raped, you have another thing coming,” I say. I am surprised and impressed at how level I manage to keep my voice.

  “Yeah,” he says, and the temper he’d mostly held in check at camp burns too hot, and right at the surface of his skin. “Because up to that point, you were a freaking saint. All your mingling so you could spy, and your practiced smiles. You basically told me before we left Palermo that I didn’t matter to you, but I didn’t see it until it was too late.”

  These are the secrets a small town knows what to do with.

  There are about a million things I could say to him. I could beg and plead for him to understand. I could fly into a hopeless rage. I could break into a million pieces. Each of those are valid options that everyone present would understand and, in all likelihood, support. I could also probably get away with inflicting significant bodily harm, if I choose to.

  “Leo,” I say, deciding on none of the above and reverting to childhood in what is not exactly my most glorious moment, “you are a bum.”

  I go back into the cafeteria with my head held high. Brenda changes the subject as soon as I sit down, but my food is tasteless and the whispers around me only intensify.

  CHAPTER 14

  I’VE KIND OF BEEN IGNORING my parents. To be fair, they’ve let me do it. They’ve let me put off following up on the psych referral. They’ve let me pick at my food, night after night, without a single comment. And they’ve let me disappear into my bedroom and stare at the ceiling for hours at a time. I know they’re talking about me—they’re my parents—and I’m pretty sure my dad has been watching me sleep, but aside from that, they are waiting me out. I wish they’d be my parents again and order me to do something. I haven’t washed the dishes or done laundry or dusted since I got home from Parry Sound, and nothing. I guess I broke that part of them too.

  On Friday at dinner, I decide that enough is enough. My schoolmates can pretend that nothing has happened, and that is useful to me. But I need my parents to do something else. Anything else. They can try to wrap me up in cotton wool, and I’ll rebel. They can fight with each other, and I’ll sit tearfully in the corner. I don’t care. Just something.

  “School is going really well,” I say, stirring my soup. “I was worried I’d be behind, having missed a week, but I’m doing okay. I like my classes.”

  “That’s good,” says my father. I miss the way he used to laugh with me and ask questions about the cheerleading squad. Not every father would treat cheerleading with the respect it deserves, but my father has always treated me like the athlete I am. Until now.

  “What did you end up taking?” Mum asks.

  “I got all of my classes,” I tell her. “History, chemistry, calculus and PE this semester, drama, English, geography and a spare after Christmas.”

  “I thought you were going to take two spares?” Dad says.

  “I thought about it,” I admit. “But the only thing I can give up is PE, and I don’t want to do that.”

  “Well, as long as you’re not overworked,” Mum says.

  This could be any night, any conversation we have ever had. It’s about to take a turn, though.

  “Can I borrow the car tomorrow?” I ask.

  “Of course,” says my dad at exactly the same time my mother says, “Why?”

  That’s fairly typical. Dad always assumes I’m up to good while Mum wants reasons. He’s not just humouring me. In fact, this is the most normal he has been since the night he couldn’t hug me.

  “I thought I’d go to the hospital,” I say. I don’t mean to be flippant, but it comes out sounding absolutely awful, and they both freeze.

  “Do you want us to come with you?” Mum asks, after a quick and wordless conversation with my dad.

  “Do you want to come with me?” I say. I really, really doubt my father wants to come, but to be honest, at the moment he looks less freaked out than Mum does.

  “Honey, you know we’re here for you,” my mum says. “Whatever you need.”

  “I really appreciate that,” I say. “Um, if you both come with me, the doctor can just tell all of us at the same time, and that’ll spare us from having an awkward conversation later.”

  Dad starts to laugh, then looks guilty and tries to stop, but he can’t. He just keeps giggling, and I start laughing too. Mum is looking at the pair of us like we are insane. We probably are. I am, I know it.

  “Okay,” she says, shaking her head,
“we’ll all go together.”

  And that’s how the three of us end up in the hospital waiting room at nine the next morning. Mum and Dad are holding hands, and I am holding my knees. Dad tries to put his arm around me when we sit down, and I do my best not to flinch away, but I am way, way too keyed up. Any minute now, the nurse will call my name, and then I will try to pee on command, and then I’ll know, one way or the other.

  “Hermione Winters,” says the nurse. She knows. Everyone in the room knows, but at least the hospital staff is professional about it.

  I stand, and follow the nurse into an examination room. Usually, she would leave me alone until the doctor arrives, but my family doctor is male, and I don’t think I’ve been alone with a male person since I was raped. Everyone is so considerate.

  “It’s a really easy test,” she says. “Noninvasive, you just go into the bathroom.”

  “Thanks,” I say. I can’t tell if she’s glad I’m holding together so well or if she wishes I’d have a breakdown so her story would be better later.

  “Hello, Hermione,” says Dr. Leigh, bustling in with a clipboard. He delivered me, just down the hall from here, actually. I’m pretty sure this isn’t a talk he ever planned on having with me.

  “Hi, Dr. Leigh,” I say. I’m using my cheerleader voice. It’s not as bulletproof as Polly’s, but it does well enough.

  “Okay, so Samantha is going to stay right here while we talk about the test, and then you just go into the bathroom,” he starts off. Professional. The medical people always go with professional. “So, this measures a hormone that will tell if you are pregnant. The urine test gets faster results, so you don’t have to wait after taking the test. If it’s negative, we’ll do the blood test to be sure, and if it’s positive, we’ll set you up with the obstetrician.”

  “Okay,” I say. Seems straightforward enough.

  Samantha passes me a specimen cup, and for the first time, I notice the bulge under her scrubs. She’s pregnant, just starting to show. My hand shakes, and I nearly drop the cup, but I manage to recover.

  “Hermione?” Samantha sounds concerned, and when I meet her gaze, she figures out what finally shook me.

  “I’m good, I’m good,” I assure her. It’s not her fault she’s pregnant. Well, I mean, it probably is, or at least I hope it is, and also I wish I didn’t instantly think the worst of almost everyone now, but the real point is that it’s not her fault that I’m overreacting.

  I take a deep breath and head for the bathroom. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to pee for specimen collection. They routinely test all high school athletes for performance-enhancing drugs. This is the first time, however, that I’ve done it without knowing what the result is going to be. Still, it’s not exactly rocket science. I try not to think about Leo and Tig teasing the girls at nationals last year about how much easier it was for them.

  I pee in the cup and then secure the lid.

  “Okay,” says Samantha, when I pass her the sealed container. “You just go back into the exam room.”

  “Can you get my parents?” I ask. “For the result, I mean? I’d rather they just hear it than have to tell them in the waiting room or the car.”

  “Of course, honey,” she says. “I—I really hope, I mean, I don’t know what to say.”

  “It’s okay,” I tell her. I don’t tell her that I hope she is the only pregnant woman in this room. I’m not sure if that’s polite.

  “You just go on in,” she says, recovering.

  I sit on the table, rustling the paper and swinging my legs over the edge. Mum and Dad come in, and Dad takes the chair. Mum gets right up on the table with me, and squeezes my hand so tightly it turns red. Nobody says anything for a moment, and then I can’t take it anymore.

  “What was it like?” I ask. I had accepted that I was going to think about which university I was going to go to and what my major would be, but that’s about as far into the future as I’d looked. Children hadn’t even entered my periphery. “When you found out you were having me, what was it like?”

  “It was the happiest day of my life,” my dad says, without a moment’s hesitation. “I mean, I’ve had a lot of those. The day I married your mother, the day you were born, the first time you won at nationals, the time I won the bowling league. But it’s on my list too.”

  “I was terrified,” Mum admits. “I mean, I had thought we were ready, and then as soon as the doctor said the words, I thought of all the things I didn’t know, and I was scared. But I saw your dad, and I knew we’d be okay.”

  “You understand that I don’t feel any of that, right?” I say. “I mean, I’m not sure I feel anything right now.”

  “Sweetheart,” Dad says, “if you were glad about this, we’d have made you go to the psychiatrist already.”

  Mum doesn’t talk as much as Dad does, so sometimes it’s hard to read her. I can tell she’s angry now. Her eyes bulge a little, and her knuckles are white. There’s a sadness to her too. It makes her fragile around the edges. I don’t like it. “The only thing that’s kept me from breaking heads is the part that I don’t know whose head to break. I know you think that Polly is your superhero, but in this case, she’s going to have to get in line.”

  That makes me laugh, and this time when Dad gets up to hug me, I let him.

  “I hate this,” he says, and he’s crying. “I hate this so much.”

  “I do too,” I say. “And I promise that after the result, I’ll stop stalling. I’ll see the therapist and I’ll do all the workbooks and I’ll do my best to be—whatever it is I am now.”

  “Honey,” Mum says, and she’s crying too. “Honey, we don’t care about that. You’ll heal the way you need to. We’re not going to push.”

  “You will if I ask, though, right?” I say.

  “Of course,” Dad says. “Like the woman said, Polly’s not your only superhero.”

  It would be more reassuring if the pair of them weren’t tearstained messes, but it would mean a hell of a lot less.

  There’s a very polite knock, and then Dr. Leigh comes in. I can tell as soon as I see his face.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry, but it’s positive.”

  CHAPTER 15

  I DON’T REMEMBER HOW WE got home. I also know that this isn’t a dream I’m just going to wake up from. Mum must have helped me to the car. Dr. Leigh probably said something helpful, and I know he took blood, because I have the bruise on the inside of my elbow I always have when I give blood. Dad drove home. But I don’t remember any of it. I have enough blanks in my life. I’ve lost enough time. I refuse to lose any more. Even for this.

  They’re squeezing me in with the ob-gyn on Sunday afternoon. I don’t remember making the appointment, but it’s written on the calendar in the kitchen, so I know it’s true. They must be rushing the blood test. The ob-gyn is Short Sarah’s Mother. Living in a small town was always comforting before this. Everyone knows me. They still do. I just have things I want to keep from them, and that is hard to do when you are a cheerleader and actually like being the centre of attention, most of the time. I decide right then that I am going as far afield as possible for my psychiatrist.

  Mum and Dad don’t say the word options even once. I don’t call Officer Plummer. I’m not going to until the ob-gyn tells me to. On Sunday morning we pick up Polly, and Mum drives us to the hospital again. Dr. Short Sarah’s Mother must be on call this weekend. That’s how they were able to fit me in on such short notice. Small-town doctors have to be able to multitask. Dad is at work already when I wake up. I hope he doesn’t have to do anything too focused today.

  The appointment passes in a fog. I can’t remember Short Sarah’s Mother’s name, but at least I don’t call her Short Sarah’s Mother. She confirms that I am pregnant, and does me the courtesy of not telling me the odds. I know them, and they are pretty steep. Mum and Polly keep offeri
ng to leave, and I keep turning them down. I get that at some point I am going to want privacy, but right now, every person in the room is a person I love (or, in the case of Short Sarah’s Mother, a person I trust), and that’s what makes it real.

  Finally, I am back in my clothes and still feeling more naked than I ever have before, and Short Sarah’s Mother turns to me with a handful of pamphlets.

  “I’m getting an abortion,” I say. I hadn’t thought about it until right that moment, except in the theoretical sense, but I know it is the only option I will accept. I am seventeen years old and I did not choose this. The sooner I end it, the better off I will be. Maybe that is selfish, but right now I am pretty sure I have earned a bit of selfish behaviour. Polly’s face is carefully neutral, and Mum just looks resolute.

  “Okay,” says Short Sarah’s Mother without missing a beat. She drops about half the pamphlets onto the table and passes me only the relevant ones. “The closest clinic is in Waterloo, but the best ones are in Toronto. You don’t need me to set it up, just the paper that says you’re pregnant. Take your health card, and you’re all set.”

  I wait for Polly to make the obvious joke about being glad we’re not Conservatives, but she’s not in a joking mood, and so nothing happens.

  “Just out of curiosity, who knows my result?” I ask.

  “Just the people in this room,” she says. “Usually the lab techs would know, but there were six other tests with yours, and we numbered them to maintain your anonymity.”

  “Thank you,” I say. I absolutely mean it. Hopefully this means there will be no rumours. Or at least not too many rumours.

  “That’s all from me,” says Short Sarah’s Mother. “You can stay in this room for as long as you need to, and then the door is at the bottom of the stairwell.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Mum says. “We’ll see ourselves out.”

  She leaves, and I turn to Polly. “Want to walk me home?” I ask.

  Polly looks at Mum.

  “Of course,” Mum says, even though no one asked her directly. “I’ll start lunch.”