“Rough day?” Jackson asks when neither of us speaks. He studies us in the rearview mirror. “What’s that?”
Cody slaps a hand low on his neck, just under his collar. “What’s what?”
“That.”
“Nothing.” Cody doesn’t move his hand.
Jackson smiles knowingly into the mirror. “It’s a hickey, isn’t it? C’mon, man, ’fess up.”
My eyes burn holes in the side of Cody’s head. He doesn’t turn. I am forced to wrestle his hand away from his neck.
“It is a hickey! Cody, who?”
He shrugs and turns red, and the smattering of freckles across his nose blend away. “No one you know.”
“Impossible. Need I remind you how small our school is?”
Cody lowers his hand. “She’s a freshman. Just forget it.”
She?
“She who?” Jackson is the one who says it. Our eyes meet in the mirror.
Cody’s jaw slams shut. “Nobody, okay? Leave it.”
I bounce a little on the seat. “At least tell me when? It’s the second day of school. You’re not ditching already, are you? Without me?”
“Art,” is all he’ll say. I knew I should’ve taken that class. Everyone knows how free Ms. Sheila is with that hall pass.
We pull into their driveway, and Cody jumps out before the car is fully stopped.
Jackson turns around. “That was weird.”
In a lot of ways. “He’s always been private. He’ll tell us when he’s ready.”
At least, that’s what I always thought. Now I’m not so sure. Something’s different with him lately, and I don’t like it. I also don’t like that Cody won’t tell on those jerks from earlier today.
“You okay?” He must see the worry on my face. I try to fake it, but he knows me pretty well. “Tell me. Maybe I can help.”
“It’s nothing you’d understand.” I wish Cody hadn’t made me promise not to tell. I wish I didn’t take that promise so seriously.
“Try me.”
If Jackson was still at our school, it might be his friends teasing Cody. It wasn’t that Jackson was mean to us last year, but his and my ideas of funny are pretty far apart. Like I’m supposed to find having my locker filled with a week’s worth of Jackson’s football-practice socks amusing. And his friends were worse, always with the bodily-fluid jokes and bra snapping. “Maybe you can guess?”
“Some guy is harassing you.” His hands clench the wheel and his shoulders are rigid.
“No, not me. Guess again.”
Jackson’s eyes light with understanding. “Cody? What’re they doing?”
I hook my pinky and wiggle it at him. “Guess.”
“You promised not to tell?”
“Bingo.”
He faces forward again. His shoulders slump. “Is it bad?”
“He’s taking it bad.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Picking my backpack up off the floor, I slide across the backseat and out the door. Jackson stops me with a honk.
I circle around to the driver’s side. “What?”
“I’ll drive you guys to and from school.”
A mixed blessing. “Why?”
“I want to get to the bottom of this. I want to be there if he needs me.”
There are a lot of reasons why riding to and from school with Jackson is not a good idea. I try to find one that he can’t argue with. “Don’t you have to go to A.U. soon? When does your semester start?”
“Yesterday.”
“What?” My eyebrows shoot up. “Are you kidding me?”
He closes his eyes for a second. “It’s no big deal. Just freshman orientation stuff. Real classes don’t start until next week.”
“But aren’t you a freshman?”
“I’ll catch up. Right now, I have some stuff I need to figure out. I can’t go off to college until my head’s back on straight.”
I look at Jackson, really look at him. He has been Cody’s pain-in-the-ass brother for as long as I can remember. Then, oh so briefly last spring, he was my hottie next door with the melty kisses. But what I see in his eyes now has never been there before.
“You’re different,” I say.
“The stuff I saw on my trip to Nicaragua . . . kids, little kids, living in the streets, starving, sick, dying, and no one doing anything to help them. I don’t think anyone could be the same after that. So I’m here, for a little while anyway, until I figure things out.”
I search his face, his eyes, for some clue about this change in him. “Maybe someday you’ll tell me more about your trip.”
“Maybe.”
We leave it at that.
Although Kait is a second-time senior, she isn’t going to Union. She’s in some kind of alternative, study-at-your-own-pace program. It’s pretty sweet, because she doesn’t have to attend classes. She checks in with her adviser twice a week, and in between, she studies at home. Or at least, she’s supposed to study. What she’s actually doing is working extra hours at the Blockbuster.
“Pleeeeeease,” she begs me now from where she is propped against a mound of pillows on her bed. “I know you read it this summer. One measly paragraph, that’s all I’m asking.”
She is talking about me writing her summary for The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. I am disinclined to do her homework, especially considering I have plenty of my own to do. I beat a pencil against the notebook in which I’m trying to make notes about the genetic research on fruit flies. It’s not going well. I’d like to blame the fact that my bed is too hard, or that the overhead light is too bright, or that Meg and Drew are distracting me with their happy-in-love smiles on poster after poster, but I fear it’s just that fruit flies who got it on half a century ago are not intrinsically interesting.
“Please, please, please? I’m supposed to be at work at eight tonight. I have to leave in half an hour, and I haven’t even showered yet. I’ll never get this stupid essay done by tomorrow. ” Kait’s voice cracks like she’s about to start crying.
When I think about how much she has cried lately, I decide to do my future niece a favor and keep her mother away from Sylvia’s depressed and suicidal work.
“Sure, I’ll do it,” I say, deciding that perhaps the Kate and Leopold poster is hurting my concentration. Hugh Jackman is beaucoup distracting.
“You will?” Kait’s mouth actually drops open like you see in cartoons, but her tongue doesn’t roll across the ground.
I push my own homework onto the floor. “Are there guidelines or anything?”
I’ll tell you my secret. The main reason I do well in school is that I read the directions for every assignment and do exactly what the teacher asks for. No more, no less.
Kait hands me a paper that is—surprise, surprise—tearstained. “Thanks, Abs. I didn’t think you would.”
I’m not sure what to say to that. As I read the assignment, I see that it is not one measly paragraph but in fact an opinion essay with a minimum of five paragraphs. My future niece better appreciate the sacrifices I’m making for her.
“Abby?” Kait worries a fingernail between her teeth. She won’t bite it off, just sort of sucks it until the nail polish peels. “Can I ask you something?”
“I’m not doing your math, too.” I twirl my pencil while thinking of a stunning opening line for her essay. I look to Hugh for inspiration but he’s no help.
“Do you think Steve still loves me?”
“What?” I drop the pencil. “The Guitar Player? That Steve?”
Nail-polish chips gather on the shelf of her belly. “Of course that Steve. At the pig roast, he said some stuff.”
The jerk. “What stuff?”
“How when the baby came, he hoped we could all be a family. A real family like on TV.” She reaches under her pillow and brings out one of the books she bought at the mall. She taps the cover of Dr. Patty’s Guide to Peaceful Parenting. “Dr. Patty says a child creates an immutable bond between a man and a woman
that lasts for life. Don’t you think that’s what Steve means? That we’re tied together forever and we have to do our best to make a happy home for our kid?”
I try to think of a happy family on one of my soaps. Drawing a blank. “Are you sure he was talking about your baby?”
Kait glares at me. “What else?”
“Um, Mom’s baby?”
She starts to say something back, but gasps and grabs her belly instead. Her face contorts and I think she’s going to cry again.
“Hey, I didn’t mean—” There is liquid dripping down Kait’s leg. “Kait, what’s happening?”
She pants. “Too early, this is too early. . . .” She cries out and tries to stand. Her legs collapse, and now she is lying on our hardwood floor, tears pooling beside her head, something else pooling under her legs.
I shove aside the sheets hanging on our window and check the driveway. No Mercedes. Kait’s car is there, but I don’t know how to drive a stick yet. She was supposed to teach me but always managed to blow off our plans at the last minute.
“Ooh,” she moans, and squeezes her thighs together. “She’s not due until September—how can this be happening now?”
Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap.
“Abby, help me.” Her eyes are glazed with pain.
I pick up the phone. Mom’s in Phoenix with the Guitar Player at a show, and Shelby’s at work. I call Cody, even though I’m not exactly sure what he can do. Only it’s not Cody who answers on the first ring.
“Jackson, I—” I can’t get the words out. “It’s Kait, she’s—I think she’s . . . oh God . . .”
“Hang on, Abby. I’ll be there in three seconds.” Jackson hangs up.
“He’s coming.” I see my sister on the floor, both hands gripping her stomach, legs shaking. “Can I help get you on the bed?”
“N-no.” Her teeth chatter. Her body is still, knees curled against the bottom of her big belly.
There are a lot of surprise labors on Veterans’ Hospital, so I know that I should rush off and get towels or boil water, but I don’t want to leave my sister. I whip the comforter off Kait’s bed and tuck it around her. Then I do the only other thing I can think of. I get down on the floor, pillow her head in my lap, take her hand in mine, and hang on.
Chapter 6
We are born in pain.
It is a great first line for Kait’s Bell Jar essay. Too bad there is nothing to write on in the waiting room. Cody and Jackson are camped out in the stiff plastic chairs closest to the muted TV. They are the only ones here with me.
On Moments of Our Lives, when someone is in the hospital, all the characters gather and pace the corridors, drink coffee, and rehash all the plot threads. Emotions run high. There is arguing and beaucoup drama. My family won’t even come to the hospital.
“I can’t leave work,” Shelby said when I called her on Cody’s cell phone. “You know evenings are my busiest time at the store.” Apparently, most people like to buy their booze after five p.m. Before hanging up, she added one more thing, which I just can’t seem to get out of my head.
“Abs,” she said, “going into labor today doesn’t necessarily make the baby premature. Think about it.” But I really don’t want to dwell on August birthday versus September due date, or who the baby’s dad is or isn’t. I just want someone to meet me at the damn hospital!
Mom and the Guitar Player are unreachable. I left messages on their cells and on our home phone. Now, I pace the entirely too small room. FAMILY AREA, the sign on the door says. It’s better than when we first arrived two hours ago and had to sit in the ER waiting room with twenty other people, most of them coughing or bleeding, trying to keep Hannah from eating an old bag of chips someone’d left behind. Thank God Barbara showed up after a quick call from Cody and took Hannah off our hands. The Family Area is private, quiet, but after another tense hour of waiting, I want to break down the door, run screaming down the halls.
“How long does it take to have a baby?”
“Relax,” Cody says. “Shelby took hours, remember?”
Hannah’s birth was a big deal, like everything Shelby does. Kait was her breathing coach since Hannah’s dad was out of the picture long before the divorce was final, and Shelby insisted we all be in the room for Hannah’s arrival. Cody was spared the sight, but I will carry that bloody, slimy memory to the grave. They really should wipe a baby off before they show it to anyone. I totally respect Kait’s desire to be alone in the delivery room.
I squeeze myself into the empty chair between Cody and Jackson. Leaning my head on Cody’s shoulder, I breathe deeply and slowly. He shifts and readjusts us until he gets an arm around my shoulders.
“Better?”
“I hate this.”
“We’re here with you,” Cody says. “We’re not going anywhere. ”
I keep breathing, try to think about Kait’s essay. Will her adviser believe she wrote it before the labor hit?
Jackson stretches his legs out in front of him and toes off his Nikes. “Might as well get comfortable. We could be here for hours.”
It feels late. Jackson drove us here at approximately the speed of light, but I haven’t seen the time since they whisked Kait to a back room just after eight thirty. No one else is in the room with us. It’s like we’re in a bubble, out of time and place. Only Cody’s arm around me feels real, the sound of Jackson’s raspy breath beside me. I feel Cody’s fingers comb through my hair, which usually relaxes me but isn’t working tonight.
Sitting, waiting, is driving me nuts. Cody, too. In the first five minutes, he straightened all the chairs, rearranged the fake plants according to height, and adjusted the blinds on the one window so they were level. Now he’s stuck with nothing to do but pick imaginary—I hope!—flecks of dandruff out of my hair. I want to do something, anything. The first line of Kait’s essay rolls through my head again. I sit up.
“Do you have a pen?” I ask. “Or any paper?”
“Nope.” Cody’s chin bumps my forehead when he talks.
Jackson fishes a pen out of his front pocket. “No paper, though. Sorry.”
“This is great.” It’s a felt-tip, much better for writing on skin than a ballpoint. I click it open and start. It’s good that I’m wearing a tank top. The first line goes on my upper arm.
We are all born in pain.
“Not too bad.” Jackson is done reading. My left arm and both legs are covered in sentences.
“It’s a little rough,” I say.
Jackson rubs the two-day-old shave on my legs. “No kidding.”
I slap his hand away. “Hands off the masterpiece.”
“That reminds me,” he says. “You still writing poetry? Like the ones you showed me? They were really good.”
Breath hitching, I stare at my ink-covered knee. He’s not supposed to remember that, the me that was such a sap I actually wrote poems about us. And everything else, too. Friends and enemies, the environment, politics, my favorite shows. The truth is, I still do write poems. Usually late at night, in the journal I keep under my bed next to Mr. Manly. But I don’t say yes to Jackson’s question.
“You ever gonna return that book?” I ask. Not only had I shown him my poems, I’d lent him my favorite book, The Essential Rumi, a translation of writings from the thirteenth-century poet Jalal al-Din Rumi that I never cease to find completely amazing.
“Maybe I’m rereading it.” He flicks hair out of his eyes. His eyes shift away.
Like I’m supposed to believe that. “If you lost it, just say so.”
“I love Rumi,” he protests.
I’m not impressed he remembers the name. It was in big black letters on the cover. I am about to tell him I want a new hardcover, that he won’t get away with some used bookstore paperback replacement, when the door from the hallway opens.
I pop out of my seat, hoping for news. But it’s Mom, thin body wrapped in a tight black dress that shows off her long legs. Her hair is curled and flows down her back in layered waves.
“Kait’s still in labor,” she announces as if we don’t know why we’re here. She paces the room just like a Veterans’ Hospital character would. “Three weeks early! My goodness! And can you believe that nurse wouldn’t even let me in the room? Said Kait doesn’t want me there. Me, her own mother!”
And rival for the affection of her baby’s father. I don’t say that, though. Unlike everyone else in my family, I’ve outgrown the need to stir things up. Slumping onto the floor, I take the pen and design a tattoo for my ankle.
“She’s been in there for over three hours,” Cody says after checking the time on his phone. “Did the nurse give you any more information?”
“No, no—just told me to take a seat in the maternity ward Family Area and they’d let me know. Not an easy place to find, this little room,” Mom says.
I look up from my swirling vine. “Where’s the Guitar Player?” The father.
Mom totters on her extra-high heels. “You know he had a gig down in Phoenix. That’s where we were. I took the car. He’s staying with a friend tonight, and she’ll drive him up here tomorrow.” She manages to look both annoyed and pathetic as she settles on the edge of one of the end tables.
Not even here for the birth of his child. Living, breathing proof that I am dead-on accurate when it comes to Rules #3 and #4, Looks Aren’t Everything and Don’t Need Him. You should never need any guy, especially one as good-looking as the Guitar Player. I’m only guessing, but my bet is the friend he’s staying with is a gorgeous Guitar Groupie.
“Where are Shelby and Hannah?” Mom asks, just now noticing that it is mostly the neighbors waiting it out in the Family Area. You’d think there’d be another family crowded in here with us, waiting for their own good news, but Tuesday’s apparently not a big night for deliveries in Cottonwood.
I tell her and watch as her mouth thins into a tight line. She thinks that all of us crammed into three bedrooms makes us close, but that’s only geography. Her eyes take in the writing on my arm and legs. “What’s this? You’re not getting a tattoo, are you?”
“Yes, I’m having Kait’s English essay tattooed on all visible parts of my body.” I add more inky swirls to my ankle and a few angry dots.
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