Giftchild

by Janci Patterson

  I saw the hammer sitting on top of Dad's toolbox, and felt like I'd been socked in the gut. I hurried out the side door to our garbage cans, already knowing what I was going to find.

  The morning air was thick with mist, but I could see the few feet to the garbage cans just fine. I lifted the lid on the one for trash. On top of one of the bags of garbage were the shattered remains of several ovulation predictors and pregnancy tests. They lay spread over the top of a white liner from the kitchen garbage, and smelled of rotten orange rind. Stuffed in the side of the recycling can were the cardboard boxes, torn open on one end like they'd been ripped in a hurry.

  My stomach twisted tighter, and I closed the lid again. When had Mom done this? Last night? Yesterday? Before or after she dismantled the nursery?

  What must she have been thinking?

  I grabbed the edge of the garbage can, afraid I was going to be sick in it, but I breathed in the wet air, and my body relaxed.

  I was going to fix this.

  I walked quietly back up the stairs and waited outside Mom's door again. I could let Rodney drive me to school, but I pictured myself walking Rodney to the women's hygiene aisle. So, I'd say casually. I was thinking I'd get pregnant.

  A headache began to form at the base of my neck. No. I'd have to introduce the idea to him somehow, but not like that.

  I knocked quietly on her door.

  "Hmm?" Mom called. "Yes?"

  I nudged the door open. "Can you drive me to school?"

  Mom sat straight up in bed, the covers unwinding from around her shoulders.

  "Not now," I said. "In half an hour. I need you to drop me off at the Walgreens to get some snacks for a class party."

  Mom blinked at me, and then leaned over, pulling aside the bottom of her curtains. Fog wafted across the lawn. "I can wait for you in the parking lot," she said. "Then you won't have to walk in this weather."

  If there was one thing you didn't announce to your mother, it was that you were about to try to have sex. Mom would talk me out of it. She'd have to. So it'd be better if I didn't tell her until after. "It's fine," I said. "I'll take my camera. I like to walk in the fog."

  Mom squinted out the window, and I could see her measuring the risk in her mind. Was it dangerous for me to walk? Would some car fail to see me?

  "Okay," she said.

  "Thanks," I said, and I pulled her door closed again. I only hoped she didn't decide to take the hammer to the crib while I was at school. After she'd lost her first adoption, I'd faked being sick to stay home with her, but Dad told me I couldn't babysit her all the time.

  He was right, but that didn't stop me from wanting to.

  I texted Rodney: I need to run to the drugstore before school. Mom's taking me. See you at lunch.

  I braced for what I knew was coming. My phone beeped.

  I could take you.

  The phone felt slick in my palms. It's girl stuff, I texted back.

  All Rodney said in response was K.

  I dressed quickly, wondering what he thought that meant. He'd been with me when I bought tampons before; it embarrassed me way more than it did him. Other guys might have cracked jokes, but not Rodney. He'd just stepped away from the register so I could buy my tampons in peace.

  I packed up my camera in my backpack, and Mom drove me to Walgreens at about five miles an hour.

  "What are you getting for class?" she asked.

  "Chips, I think," I said. "I have a note somewhere."

  Mom nodded.

  My headache began to pulse. I could tell her. I should tell her. But I knew what she'd say—what she'd have to say. No, Penny. Don't do that. Don't even think about it.

  And who could blame her? No one wants their teenage daughter to be pregnant. She was going to flip when she found out what I'd done. But there'd be no undoing it. And would my pregnancy really hurt her more than the years of longing, and the pain of giving up hope?

  I looked at the circles beneath Mom's eyes as she squinted into the fog before turning into the parking lot of the Walgreens. There was no way anything I did could make her situation worse.

  I opened my door before Mom had the car parked. "Thanks!" I said. "See you after school!"

  I sounded far too chipper, so I closed the door before Mom could respond, and ran into the store without looking back.

  There were a couple girls from school on the cosmetics aisle, smearing the sample lipsticks onto their hands. I didn't know any of them by name, and they probably didn't even recognize me.

  I hoped.

  I found the pregnancy tests near the tampons and the tubes of Monostat cream. As I reached for them, my stomach turned. Pregnant meant fat, it meant nausea, it meant labor.

  I swallowed, and pulled a two pack of tests off the rack. Labor meant pain. Lots of pain. Supposedly more pain than I'd felt in my life.

  The edges of my vision turned white. I leaned over, putting my hands on my knees, and gazed down the row of ovulation predictors.

  Mom had been through pregnancy and labor twice. She survived, and more than that, she wanted to do it again. She wept for years that she couldn't. Nine months was just a school year. The same length as sixth grade, when I grew breasts before every other girl in school and Cassandra Templeton hung an endless stream of lacy, worn, second-hand bras on my locker. I lived through that.

  Four predictors came off the rack. I held the boxes in both hands. A baby would mean an end to the crying.

  I could do this.

  I went through the line cashiered by the middle-aged woman, instead of the one with the twenty-something guy. If the cashier did happen to make a comment, it would be less embarrassing this way.

  I stood behind a woman with a toddler and a stack of ads, holding the boxes down at my side and waiting for the cashier to price-match every item in her basket.

  The male cashier waved at me as his line cleared. "I can help you," he said.

  I shook my head. "I'm good."

  His confused look was interrupted by the lipstick girls bearing cans of soda.

  I should have told Rodney. He'd have breezed over and handed this guy the boxes without a second thought.

  When the lady with the ads left, I stepped up close to the register and set my purchases down at the end of the conveyor belt. The cashier picked one up and looked at it. "Are these the ones that are a dollar off?"

  I blinked at her. "I don't know."

  She picked up the phone next to her register. "Let me have someone check."

  I spoke too quickly. "I don't care."

  Now she looked at one of the predictors. She looked at me. Crap. I hadn't meant to draw attention.

  "It's for my mom," I said.

  The cashier squinted at my pile of products. "She might care."

  I squirmed. "She'll care more if I'm late to class."

  As they passed by, cracking open their sodas, both girls looked at the predictor in the cashier's hand. Just ring it up, I thought. Just put it in a bag. When she finally did, I realized the bag was translucent.

  Outside the store, I wrapped the bag around and around the boxes and then shoved them in the top of my backpack. I couldn't take them home where my mother might find them, and I couldn't put them in my locker where Rodney kept his book for trig. Maybe after I talked to him about it, but certainly not before.

  My gym locker would work. As I walked to school, the fog was lifting, only shading the passing cars as if through a veil. But instead of feeling relieved, I just felt exposed. Even if no one knew what I was doing today, I still didn't want to be seen.

  In the locker room, I stashed the predictors and the pregnancy tests underneath my long gym pants. It was still too warm to be wearing those anyway. Unless they did some spontaneous locker search, no one would find the tests there.

  I unwrapped one of the predictors, pulled out the stick and the instructions, and carried them up my sleeve into the bathroom. I passed a couple girls coming in to change for first period gym, but if they noticed a
nything, they didn't speak.

  I unwrapped the predictor with shaking hands, peed on the stick, and stayed in the stall, checking the time on my cell phone and waiting the two minutes for the results.

  Only one line appeared. I wasn't ovulating yet.

  Relief rushed through me, followed by a wave of guilt. I wanted to be ovulating, didn't I? The longer I had to wait, the longer Mom had to suffer.

  But I'd also have longer to talk to Rodney about it—longer to figure out exactly the right thing to say.

  I held the stick with two fingers. I couldn't flush it—it was too long, and probably wouldn't even go down. Instead, I wrapped it in the instructions and stuck it in the little metal box inside the stall where you're supposed to put used pads. A janitor probably wouldn't look too hard at the contents of that. Plus, if they did find the stick, there wouldn't be any way to tie it back to me.

  It's not like anyone was going to run a DNA test on the locker room trash.

  Rodney had chess club again at lunch, so I spent the day thinking about what I was going to say to him. I drummed my fingernails on the classroom desks, rehearsing. You know my mom has been trying to get pregnant forever. You know how hard that's been on my family. Well, I was thinking . . .

  In history class, I took furious notes. By the end of the period, I'd written down about every word of the lecture, but I didn't remember a bit of it. Instead, these words kept running through my mind: Hey, we're friends, right? So let's have sex and give my mother a baby.

  Shoot me now. Rodney was a sensible guy. There had to be a way to explain this that didn't sound like he needed to check me into a psyche ward.

  I was no better off at the end of the day, when I found him waiting at my locker.

  "Hey," I said.

  "Hey," he said back. He didn't even look up—just finished shoving his books into the locker and then held it open for me.

  It's just a normal day, I thought. A normal day on which we might kiss or we might not. A day like any other in the history of our friendship.

  I wiped my palms on my jeans. What if he was. . .over me? Could you get over someone you'd never actually crushed on? Was that a thing?

  As we headed out to the parking lot, Rodney gave me a sideways glance. "So, are we not talking about it, then?" he asked.

  My heart picked up pace. "About what?"

  Rodney raised his eyebrows at me. "The test?"

  My eyes went wide. How could he know? The girls from the store? Had someone seen me in the locker room? Did half the school know already?

  Rodney looked confused. "Didn't you get yours back?"

  My face flushed. Physiology. Duh. The test Rodney was supposed to know about.

  Way to act like a spaz, Penny.

  I let my hair fall into my face, trying to cover my blush. "Yeah," I said. "I got it."

  Rodney waited for a long moment. "And?"

  I sighed. "C plus."

  Rodney winced. "Ouch," he said. "No wonder you didn't bring it up."

  Yeah. It totally wasn't because I was distracted by other things. "What about you? B?"

  "A minus."

  Ugh. His usual half a grade was funny. A full letter and a half was just sad. "Like, ninety percent, squeaking by?"

  "Ninety-four percent."

  "That's not even a minus."

  "Depends on the scale." Rodney bumped me with his shoulder, like he was waiting for me to laugh, but I didn't. Even on a regular day, it wasn't that funny.

  We reached Rodney's car, which he'd parked at the back of the parking lot. His mom had given him her old station wagon, which still had a bumper sticker announcing that his kid was on the honor roll. Rodney tried to compensate by hanging a stuffed Moogle from his rear view mirror, but it didn't work. The upside of the car was that we could have fit just about everyone we knew into it, even though it was usually just him and me.

  Rodney unlocked the door for me, and I climbed into the passenger seat and leaned back, putting my feet on the dash and taking deep breaths. This was my opportunity to talk to him, and I knew it. But my heartbeat kept thudding in my throat, and I didn't get the words out. I just kept thinking them over in my head: I was wondering . . . I was thinking . . .

  It wasn't until we'd driven a couple of blocks that Rodney broke the silence.

  "Seriously, what's up?" he asked.

  I dug my nails into the armrest. "What do you mean?"

  "You're all quiet again. That's the second time this week."

  "Sorry," I said. "I'm just . . . steaming about the test."

  Rodney waved an arm at me, and for a second, I thought he was going to touch me, but he didn't. "What do you need physiology for anyway? You're not going into medicine."

  I crossed my arms. "I need it to get into college." Oh, jeez. College. My grades. What if I was really sick in the mornings and missed school? Junior year was supposed to be the year colleges cared about most.

  Rodney shrugged. "What's the worst that can happen? Say you fail physiology, and that messes up your applications. Then you have to go to a community school for a year or two first. Would that be the end of the world?"

  I took a deep breath. Rodney always knew how to put things into perspective. "You're right. Thanks."

  Rodney smiled. "That's what I'm here for."

  I squirmed in my seat. I had to talk to him about what was really bothering me, but I would die if I asked him to sleep with me, and he turned me down.

  What we needed was to do something normal. Then I'd be able to work up some nerve.

  "Do you have your camera today?" I asked.

  Rodney nodded. "It's in the trunk."

  "The leaves are turning at the park," I said. "Maybe we could stop on the way."

  "Done," Rodney said, and he took the next right, driving the few blocks to the park near the city center.

  The leaves weren't just turning. They were also falling. We walked beneath the towering trees on a carpet of red and yellow and orange, each with our cameras in our hands. I aimed my lens at the treetops, taking pictures of the branches backlit against the sky. I focused on my camera, avoiding eye contact with Rodney. I kept glancing at him and then glancing away, but he just fiddled with his own settings, like he didn't notice.

  I couldn't believe so many leaves had dropped when the trees looked as full as ever. Still, leaves rained down around us. One caught in my hair, and Rodney turned his lens on me.

  I lowered my camera. "What do you want me to do?" I asked.

  Rodney smiled. "Just hold still."

  I turned so the sun would fully light my profile, to give him more to work with.

  "Check it out," Rodney said, inclining his screen toward me so I could see the shot. "Once we color correct that, it's going to be awesome."

  Rodney had tilted the lens, so I looked off balance. The line from my forehead to my nose pointed to the vibrant red leaf.

  "We'll have to brighten the leaf," I said. "Make it look larger than life."

  Rodney grinned. "Exactly."

  I turned my camera back to the sky, and then thought again and flopped down in the leaves.

  "Are you getting anything from down there?" Rodney asked.

  My heart thudded. "Come down here and see."

  Leaves crunched as he lay down beside me and leaned into my shoulder so he could see my screen. I squinted at my camera, letting the exposure alternate bright and dark, depending on whether I focused on the branches or the sky.

  "Switch it to manual," Rodney said.

  I fiddled with the settings, finally bringing out the crisp, dark branches against the bright sky. I punched the shutter, taking bunches of shots at a time. My skin prickled, like every hair was aware of how near he was.

  "Nice," Rodney said. He turned his camera along the ground away from me, focusing on a leaf four feet away. I propped my head on his shoulder so I could see, and he snapped a picture. The foreground and background blurred, but the leaf looked crisp, on the small screen at least.

&n
bsp; Rodney turned back toward me, his face only a few inches from mine. I held my breath to keep from hyperventilating.

  "That's a keeper," he said, still looking at the camera screen.

  The corners of his mouth turned up in a smile, and a tendril of hair fell into his eyes. This was my moment. My heart beat faster. What was wrong with me? Was I laying a trap for him? Sneaking up to surprise him?

  No. I was just trying to relax. Then we'd talk. I held my breath, and leaned in until my nose brushed his.

  Rodney's face faded to serious, and he lowered the camera. His eyes wavered on my lips. A breeze picked up, scattering a bucketful of paper-thin leaves over the top of us. One caught behind Rodney's ear, and as he reached up to grab it, I kissed him. Leaves crunched under my hair as he leaned into me, rolling over me on the grass. More leaves tumbled over us, and our hips pressed together. Rodney's arm wrapped around my shoulders, pulling me closer. For a moment we moved in tandem—my mouth against his, his knees wrapped around mine. The world blurred like an out-of-focus picture as we disappeared beneath the shifting pile of leaves.

  Then my stomach started to tingle, like a wriggling worm.

  I giggled. Our mouths broke apart.

  "What?" he asked. "Is my breath bad?"

  I laughed harder. Rodney rolled over and watched me struggle to catch my breath. "No," I said finally. "It's nothing."

  Rodney turned back to his camera. "Sure," he said. "I totally believe you."

  But he didn't push. Rodney never pushed.

  I brushed the leaves from my shirt, and they skittered away, becoming part of the traveling detritus.

  Rodney held his screen up, pretending to look at it, but I caught him eying me.

  "What?" I asked.

  He smiled and shook his head. "You still have leaves in your hair."

  I shook my head, trying to free them. "Help."

  Instead, he held up his camera, snapping a picture of me.

  I threw a fistful of leaves at him. "Sure," I said. "Take my picture when I look ridiculous."

  Rodney bit his lip.

  "What?" I asked.

  "You look gorgeous," he said, looking down at his screen. "You always look gorgeous."