“I don’t know,” Audrey said softly. “That’s the problem.”
“Or are you scared?” her mom asked. “Because fear can be a strange thing. It can do strange things to your mind. You have to see through that and remind yourself of your own truth. Getting you was the best thing that ever happened to me, and maybe it seems strange to say that what you’re going through right now might be the best thing to happen to you, but it really might. You have your whole life ahead of you, Audrey. You have no idea what good things are going to happen.” She stepped back and smiled wide, pulling Audrey toward the car. “And good things are going to happen for you, kid. I can feel it.”
Audrey allowed herself a small smile as they got into the car and began the drive home. She closed her eyes as her mom drove, thinking about Laura’s words ringing through her head.
Are you scared?
Yes, Audrey thought. Yes, I am scared. But I hope that I’m doing the right thing. She pressed her hands together. No. I am doing the right thing. This baby isn’t my baby, the baby. My baby is years away, when I’m older and wiser and hopefully happy. So I can make that baby happy, too. I know that. I know.
They pulled up to a red light, and Audrey opened her eyes. She reached across the space between them and laid her hand on top of her mom’s on the steering wheel, making Laura turn to look at her curiously. “Thank you.”
“What for, love?”
“Nothing,” Audrey smiled. Everything. “Thanks. That’s all.”
FORTY
When school finished on Friday, Audrey looked out from her hiding place by the stairs, watching Jen at her locker. Her red ponytail bounced as she heaved a bunch of textbooks inside before slamming it shut, and Audrey swallowed past the knot in her throat. She’d never felt weird with Jen before—they didn’t really fight, only two-minute spats over stealing fries or being late for the movie. This feeling was so new to Audrey that she didn’t know how to handle it. She hadn’t known what to do the other day, watching Jen react to the news of her abortion with . . . uneasiness? Whatever it was that Jen had been feeling, it was definitely way less than positive. At first Audrey had thought she might have imagined it, turned it into a bigger thing than it was, but the past couple of days Jen had definitely seemed a little off with her. And Audrey had been trying not to let it get to her, because—what had her mom said? Right: she was decided on this. It was her life, and she was in control. It didn’t matter what other people thought.
Audrey stepped out into the hall, filled with the usual leaving-school rush. It didn’t matter what other people thought, no. Except that Jen wasn’t other people. She was one of Audrey’s best friends, and it did matter to her what Jen thought. She hadn’t imagined that any of her friends wouldn’t immediately support her. Arrogant? Maybe. Optimistic? Sure. But if things were reversed and Jen were the one all this was happening to, or if María decided to give up her MIT dream and join the circus, Audrey would throw everything she had behind them, no doubt. So it kind of hurt, now that she was realizing that something she’d taken for granted might not be true.
Jen was about to leave, hoisting her bag onto her shoulder, and it was now or never. Audrey pushed through the stream of people, watching as Jen joined them, and then reached a hand in her direction. “Jen! Wait!”
Jen turned sharply, that ponytail whipping around and almost taking out some short kid’s eye. “Audrey?” She sounded more bemused than annoyed, but her eyes narrowed. “What’s up?”
Audrey elbowed a linebacker-size kid out of her way and fell in with Jen. “Listen,” she said. “Can we talk?”
Jen hesitated for a second—Audrey saw it in the twitch of her mouth—but then she nodded. “Okay.”
“In here.” Audrey grasped Jen’s elbow and steered her into an empty classroom, the remnants of an algebra problem set smeared across the whiteboard. She made sure to shut the door before she chose a desk to sit on and pushed herself up, her feet resting on the chair. Then she focused on Jen, taking up the same position two desks down. “So.”
“So,” Jen repeated, and she tugged the sleeves of her sweater down over her hands. “What’s up?”
“The other day,” Audrey started, and then she clamped her mouth shut. No; she was sick of talking in circles around things after the past couple of months. She started over. “Jen, me getting this abortion—is this going to be a problem with us? With you?”
Jen’s eyes widened. “No. Oh my God, Audrey, no, it’s not. I mean . . .”
Audrey waited, but Jen didn’t continue. “You mean what?”
“I mean, I hope not.” Jen’s voice was quiet, and she gave this almighty sigh before turning to face Audrey. “Look. It’s your decision to make, your choice, and what I might happen to feel about it isn’t your problem. Okay?”
“No! Not okay,” Audrey said. “It’s easy for you to say that, but if what you think I’m doing is wrong, then how is that not going to affect us?”
“It’s not that I think it’s wrong, but—I don’t know, Audrey. I think it’s that I can’t feel like it’s one hundred percent right. Abortion.” Jen said the word carefully, as if she was afraid of it. “And I know that’s terrible of me; it’s supposed to be me cheering on women and their ability to do whatever they have to do, but . . .” She stopped, holding out her hands. “Okay, I’m not there yet. But one day I will be. I hope to be.” She paused, her eyes narrowing as she looked at Audrey. “Do you really think that I would let how I feel about it affect us, though? I could see it in your face the other day, when you were telling us. You didn’t want to say it to me. That makes me feel like shit—I would never let what I believe change anything about our friendship. Would you?”
Audrey squeezed her shoulders to her ears. “I was worried that—I don’t know. You would hate me. Think I’m wrong or whatever.”
Jen rolled her eyes, a small smile on her face. “Audrey. You are not your abortion. Right? How I feel about that isn’t about how I feel about you. I don’t think you’re wrong for choosing that. You know what you want to do, and I’m going to support you in whatever it is. You’re one of my best, best friends.” She laughed. “I’m not going to let this change anything about us.”
“What if it does, though?” Audrey circled the snagged thread in her tights. “What if I come back afterward and I’ve had an abortion and you can’t look at me the same?”
“Audrey, listen to me.” Jen hopped off the desk and walked until she was in front of Audrey, staring her down. “Here’s what I think. It’s like . . . you don’t believe God is real, and I do. You don’t believe there’s any such thing as fate, and I do. But do you ever make fun of me for that? Do you talk shit when I say that . . . God showed me a sign?”
“No.”
“Right. So why am I going to be any different to you?”
“You’re not.”
“Okay, Audrey,” Jen said, with a gentle shake of her head. “Now you’re getting it. So . . .” She leaned back against the desk opposite, crossing her arms. “When are you going? Do you actually have an appointment?”
Audrey nodded. “Wednesday.” At a clinic two towns away that Dr. Miller had directed them to, and all for the low, low price of a few hundred dollars. “It’ll be fine.”
“Is your mom going with you?”
“Yeah,” Audrey said. “And Julian. A little family outing.” She laughed, maybe a little too loud. “Sorry. I’m very weird right now.”
“You’re always weird,” Jen said, and Audrey wanted to laugh again, but she kept it in.
Everything would be fine, soon enough. Right now was limbo, a different kind than before when she’d been going back and forth about the decision; now she was waiting for Wednesday to come and for it to be over. So she was trying to focus on other things instead—like how things between her and Rose were mostly back to normal, how Rose herself was mostly back to normal (sharply so). Now Audrey could text her in the middle of the night when she knew Rose was awake, could burrow her fe
et under Rose’s legs when they sat on the couch in the way she knew Rose hated. Next week Julian’s band was opening for a violin-playing, raspy-voiced girl María loved, and they were all going. Tomorrow Audrey had plans to clean up her room, maybe take a bag of clothes down to the Goodwill, and after that . . . well, she’d find something to do between school and sleep. Something to keep her as occupied as possible so that she wouldn’t drive herself to distraction thinking about The Procedure (that was how she saw it in her head, capitalized and in big letters).
“You are going to be fine,” Jen said. “It’s like Rose said: you’re the unstoppable Audrey Spencer. One day when you’re properly recognized for your genius artistry—”
“Get real.”
“—when everyone who is anyone knows your name, and you’re living a beautiful life, you’ll look back to now and be amazed this all happened.”
Audrey exhaled slowly, feeling each beat of her heart vividly. “You really think so?” she asked. “Because I’ve been thinking about that. How one day this might be, like, a footnote in my life. But then I feel bad, because this is a big deal, right? It feels like if I forget this, then I’m a horrible person. And I’ve felt like that so much lately. I’m done with it.”
“I don’t think that makes you a horrible person,” Jen said. “I think it makes you human. You know how there are those things that you think you’ll never get over? They’re such a big deal when you’re going through it, and it feels like the end of the world that the person you like isn’t interested or your friend told somebody a secret about you or your parents found out you got high and lost their shit. And when it’s happening you can’t imagine anything worse, but then it’s a year later and you think, that person’s not even worth my time. My friend made a mistake. My parents were only looking out for me. Know what I’m saying?”
Audrey looked at Jen, the gray afternoon light turning her blue eyes darker, full of wisdom. “Yeah,” she said. “I get it.” Maybe it was strange, to be thinking of a future so far ahead when she hadn’t even made it through this moment yet, but for the past couple of months all she had felt was that even getting through it would be a miracle. And honestly, she was still scared and sometimes confused, and sometimes wondering how it was that her life had come to this point. But what Jen said was true. And one day she would look back on this with that fogginess that memory brought. At least, that was what she hoped.
And hope was a pretty powerful thing.
“Now.” Jen smiled a real smile then, sweeping a lock of hair out of her eyes. “How about we go get doughnuts?”
Audrey laughed for real then, a sound full of relief. “Your foolproof cure for everything,” she said, smiling. “Okay, let’s go.”
FORTY-ONE
Look relaxed,” Audrey instructed. “Pretend I’m Sofia Coppola and she’s just yelled ‘Action.’”
“You really have no idea how film sets work, do you?” Laura laughed and pushed her hair out of her face. “Okay. Whenever you’re ready.”
Audrey lifted her weighty camera and took two steps back on the sidewalk, framing her mom in the viewfinder. Laura sat on the front steps of their house in her winter coat and a huge white scarf, her hair brilliant against it. This was the last set of photos she had to take for the project that had finally crystallized in her mind: a series of portraits, a story of the people who had made her into the person she was now, the person she might be in ten or twenty or thirty years.
She had let them choose where the pictures were taken. She’d shot Adam in the house, sitting in front of his shelves of meticulously organized design tomes. Julian in the music room at school, behind the piano, his hands a blur on the keys. For Rose, they’d gone back to the dance studio, and Audrey had shot what felt like a hundred frames of her sitting or dancing happily in front of the mirrors.
Laura had picked here, right in front of the house that they’d called home for ten years now, even though blustery snow was blowing. “Do you want me to move?” her mom asked. “Stay completely still?”
“You can move around some,” Audrey said. “Or talk, that would be good. I know—tell me a story of something. Your favorite high school memory.”
“Huh,” Laura said. “Well, I only went to high school for that one year, when I wasn’t working so much,” she started. “The rest of the time was tutors on set. But that one year was strange, because I was starting to be known, and people thought it would be fun to have me hanging out with them. I went to a lot of parties that year.”
Audrey shot as her mom talked, and exactly how stunning Laura was hit her all over again. Not because she had beautiful eyes or a nice smile or that rich, red hair. It was the happiness behind the smile, and love behind the eyes; that was where her beauty came from. She looked almost fairy tale–esque right now, that hair and her perfectly scattered freckles and red lipstick—the princess all grown up, Audrey thought. She still wondered at the differences between their looks, but she remembered that time when she was younger, when kids on the playground had teased her about it, how she’d cried to her mom later. And Laura had said that they didn’t need to look alike to be mother and daughter, that there were plenty of kids who didn’t look like their parents, some of them adopted and some of them not. “All that matters,” she’d said, “is that we love each other.”
Now it felt more like a game, noting their differences: holding the copper-brown of her arm next to her mom’s always pale skin, mapping the irregularities of her freckles compared to Laura’s uniform ones. Sure, they didn’t look alike; they weren’t so biologically linked. But what did that matter in the end?
Audrey watched her mom through the lens, trying to capture the effervescence of her smile. They stayed out as long as they could stand the cold. When Audrey’s fingers felt frozen, she reluctantly put away the camera. “Okay,” she said through chattering teeth. “That’s enough.”
Laura got to her feet, dusting snow from her legs. “I really like this idea,” she said to Audrey. “If you need anything else, let me know. I hope they come out good.”
“Me, too.” Audrey smiled. Maybe they didn’t look the same, but they had the same heart. That was all that mattered.
Later that evening, Audrey combed her fingers through her hair gently, teasing out her curls to their maximum volume. Her simply made-up face stared back in the mirror: mascara, a smudge of soft copper-gold highlighter on her cheeks, and a slick of plummy-red lipstick. Any minute María would be there to pick her up—they were going to hang out at Olivia’s, watch movies, and talk over the parts they’d memorized long ago.
To go with her black dress she pulled on thick black tights, a pair of black boots, and the leather jacket handed down from her mom’s grunge heyday—armor against the cold outside world. Five minutes until María would be there—that left her time to do something she’d been meaning to for quite a while.
“Mom?” Her boots clunked on the stairs as she ran down them, stopping outside the bathroom door. She tapped her knuckles three times. “You in there?”
“In here, honey.” Her mom’s voice came not from behind the bathroom door, but from across the hall in her and Adam’s bedroom. “Are you looking for me?”
Audrey stuck her head around the bedroom door, covering her eyes. “You’d better be decent.”
“I suppose that depends on your definition of decent.”
“Mom, please.” Audrey opened her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of Laura sitting at her dressing table in a fluffy white robe, dabbing yellow moisturizer under her eyes. “Do you have a minute?”
“For you,” her mom said, “always.” She turned to face Audrey, smiling while she rubbed the cream into her flushed skin. She waited expectantly for Audrey to speak. “Honey?” Her mom’s smile didn’t drop, but her forehead creased as she moved on and began smoothing cream into her hands. “What is it?”
“Oh, yeah,” Audrey said, and held out her left hand. In it was the now-crumpled and creased envelo
pe that contained the letter from Amanda Darby. “I wanted to give you this.”
Her mom stopped moving. “Is that . . . ?”
“Yeah.” Audrey stepped forward, nodding in what she hoped was an encouraging way. “I thought you might want to read it.”
She proffered the letter once more, waiting for her mom to make some move, to take it or stand up or something. But Laura sat there, staring at the envelope suspiciously until Audrey’s hand began to shake from holding it out so long.
“Or not,” Audrey said brightly, too brightly. “It’s okay if you don’t. It’s not a big deal, I’ll . . . I’ve read it, so I’ll put it away somewhere. I only thought you might—”
“Yes,” her mom said, snatching the letter out of her fingers. “I would like to read it. I wasn’t sure you’d want me to or if you had even . . . That’s not important.” Laura took a deep breath and nodded. “Thanks, sweetie. Are you sure?”
Audrey lifted one shoulder and smiled. “It’s kind of as much a letter to you as it is to me. And even if it wasn’t, I would want you to read it.”
Laura twisted the paper in her hands, looking down at it. “Well,” she said finally. “That’s very kind of you.”
“‘Very kind’?” Audrey laughed and placed her hands on her mom’s shoulders, bending down so they were eye to eye. “How very formal of you!”
“Audrey!” Adam’s yell rang up the stairs. “Your friends are here!”
Audrey smacked a kiss on her mom’s forehead, leaving a smeared-lipstick print. “And that is my cue to leave. Have a nice evening, okay?”
“You too.”
She hitched her bag onto her shoulder and had her hand on the doorknob when her mom called her name again. Audrey looked back. “Yeah?”
“You look beautiful,” Laura said. “I love you, little hell-raiser.”
Audrey tipped her head back and laughed. Hell-raiser? Yeah, right. “Love you, too, Mommy. Don’t wait up.”
You Don’t Know Me but I Know You Page 22