My Life as a Rhombus

by Varian Johnson

  I froze. “What? Julie said the punch was alcohol-free.”

  “I’m sure it was when she originally set it out. Darryl decided to add some kick to it.”

  I thought about Sarah. She didn’t drink soda. If she had gotten thirsty, she would have drunk some of the punch.

  “Can you at least taste the alcohol in it?” I asked.

  “I doubt it. Darryl probably added enough sugar to cover up any taste. Knowing him, he could have—”

  Immediately, I was on the run. I stormed into the kitchen to see Sarah propped against the counter. She was sandwiched between Darryl and Johnnie. A plastic cup dangled in between her fingertips.

  I marched over to her and grabbed the cup from her hands. “How much punch have you had tonight?”

  “We’re having a conversation here, you know,” Darryl said.

  I ignored him. “Sarah, did you drink any punch tonight?”

  “Only a few sips,” she said. “Why? It’s not like it’s alcohol.”

  By now, David had followed me into the kitchen. “Sarah, what’s going on?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  I thought about flinging the cup at Darryl, but instead I poured it into the sink. “Why don’t you tell Sarah what you put in that punch?”

  He sheepishly grinned at us. “Just a little Everclear,” he said. “Maybe half a bottle.”

  As Darryl began to laugh, Sarah’s eyes widened like she had just been doused with freezing water. Before I knew it, she was clawing at Darryl’s face, as if she was trying to scratch his eyes out.

  “You fucking idiot!” she yelled, as Johnnie wrapped his arms around Sarah from behind. She continued to thrash around, trying to get back at Darryl.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Darryl yelled as he retreated behind David. “It’s not like you haven’t had a drink before.”

  Johnnie finally got Sarah’s arms pinned to her sides. “Sarah, calm down. I know Everclear’s pretty damn strong, but come on. Don’t you think you’re overreacting?”

  Sarah shook her head and finally stopped resisting. She looked at Johnnie for what seemed like hours, and he slowly let her go. Her gaze then bounced from me, to Darryl, and finally settled on David.

  “The problem is … I’m pregnant.”

  The first few minutes after Sarah’s revelation passed by in a flash. David looked like he wanted to punch someone—anyone, while Johnnie’s face had turned crimson red. Darryl just mumbled an apology and quickly slinked out of the kitchen.

  Somehow, we pushed our way through the crowded house and were on our way to Sarah’s car before I could blink. In that entire time, we didn’t speak a word.

  Upon reaching her car, Sarah spent a few seconds rustling through her purse, before finally locating her keys. She tried to stick the key into the lock, but her hand was shaking so much, she ended up scratching the side of the car.

  Still not speaking, David walked over to her and took her keys. He unlocked the car and slid into the driver’s seat. With her gaze glued to the ground, Sarah circled the car and took the passenger seat. I was barely in the car myself before David started the engine and pulled off.

  We were well on our way home when Sarah finally broke the silence.

  “Do you think I did any damage? I only took a few sips, I promise. Maybe if I throw up … ”

  I reached into the front of the car and put my hand on Sarah’s shoulder. “It’s probably okay.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course.” I really wasn’t sure, but Sarah didn’t need to know that.

  Sarah seemed to relax a little. “I’ll call the doctor first thing on Monday.” She sighed and turned on the radio.

  David reached over and snapped it back off.

  Sarah just stared at her brother. He looked ahead, only changing his gaze to glance in the side and rearview mirrors.

  She lightly touched David’s hand, but he shook her off and placed his hand back on the steering wheel.

  “David, please say something,” Sarah said.

  He remained silent.

  “David?” she whispered. “Are you mad?”

  “How the hell do you think I feel?” He quickly looked at her, before shaking his head and staring back at the road.

  “I wanted to tell you, but I was scared. I wanted—”

  “Who the fuck is he?”

  Sarah’s mouth dropped open. “Is that all you can say?”

  David stopped at a red light and turned his gaze on me. “Do you know who did this to her?”

  “No,” I replied, my voice low.

  “Are you lying to me?”

  I wanted to sink out of his view. “David, I don’t know who the father is.”

  “Don’t yell at Rhonda,” Sarah said. “This isn’t her fault.”

  David took a long breath and leaned his head back. “Does Mom know?”

  “No.”

  “When do you plan on telling her?”

  Sarah shrugged. “After the baby is born?”

  “Not funny.” The light turned green and he put the car into motion. “So does this mean you’re actually going to have this baby?”

  She nodded.

  “But you’re so young. A baby could ruin your life.”

  She shook her head. “I’m having this baby.”

  “But—”

  “David, this is my choice, not yours.” Sarah was surprisingly calm as she talked to her brother. “I know it’s not going to be easy to have this child. But I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I had ended the pregnancy.”

  “So you wanted to have a kid?”

  “No,” she said. “But I’m having one, nevertheless.”

  David didn’t respond to Sarah as he slowed and pulled onto my street. I didn’t think I was ever as happy to see home as I was that night.

  “You have to tell Mom tomorrow,” he said.

  Sarah nodded. “I’ve put it off for long enough. Now that you know, I may as well tell her. It’s not like she’ll care one way or another.”

  David parked along the street in front of my house. The lights were off, making the house look almost haunted. But I knew there was at least one soul lurking in the shadows, waiting for me to arrive home.

  “Good luck with your mother,” I said to Sarah. “Call me if you need me.”

  “See you on Monday,” she said.

  I turned to David. He stared back at me like I was a stranger.

  “Good night, David.” I smiled at him and hoped a flicker of a smile would grace his lips.

  David just stared through me, his lips sealed tighter than a crypt. Whatever magic we had shared earlier that night had disappeared.

  “How long have you known?” he finally asked.

  “Since I began tutoring her.”

  David slammed his fist into his hand. “You’ve known for that long? And you didn’t tell me?”

  I struggled for the right words to say. “It wasn’t my place … I didn’t think—”

  “You’d better go home,” he said. Freezing rain was warmer than his voice.

  The winter chill stung my eyes as I flung open the car door and ran to the house. I knew things would probably end badly between me and David, but I didn’t expect it to end quite so badly or quite so soon.

  As I searched my pockets for my keys, I heard footsteps behind me. I turned around, expecting it to be Sarah, coming to console my bruised ego. Instead, David jogged up the driveway and stopped a few feet from me. Maybe he was coming to apologize for acting like such an asshole.

  David crossed his arms and stared me down. “Rhonda, I swear, if you know who the guy is that did this to my sister, you’d better tell me.”

&nb
sp; So much for an apology.

  “How many times do I have to say I don’t know?” I nodded toward her car. “Ask Sarah. She’s the one that’s pregnant.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t believe she did this. What was she thinking?” David slammed his fist into his palm again, so hard that he could have broken a few fingers. “After everything I’ve done for her. After all the time I’ve spent trying to protect her—”

  He sounded so absurd, I couldn’t help but laugh. “David, get over yourself. I promise you, she didn’t get pregnant just to spite you or your mother.”

  “But why wasn’t she more careful?”

  “People make mistakes.”

  “Mom is going to have a fit—”

  “Sarah doesn’t care what her mother thinks. It’s you she was worried about telling.” I stepped closer to him. “Don’t you see how important you are to her? Can’t you see that she needs you?”

  The hard, rigid frown on David’s face began to soften. “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Stop being her protector and just be her brother.”

  David sighed. “She could have told me earlier, you know. I would have understood.”

  I patted his cold cheek. “No, you wouldn’t have understood. You would have tried, but you couldn’t—you can’t—understand what she’s going through.”

  David remained silent for a long time. He looked like he wanted to say something, but his lips couldn’t quite form the words. Finally he gave me a half-smile and took my hand in his. He ran his thumb over the back of my hand, and my entire body heated up.

  Still smiling, David turned over my hand and softly kissed the inside of my palm. “Thank you,” he said. And with that, he turned and ran back to his sister.

  I went to unlock the door, but before I could turn the key, the door swung open. Dad wasn’t frowning, which was a good thing. However, he wasn’t smiling either.

  I waved at David and Sarah and watched them drive off. I wasn’t ready to speak to Dad yet. I was trying to play back the conversation David and I had just had. If Dad had been standing there for a while, he may have overheard us.

  After David and Sarah had driven out of my view, I turned back toward Dad. He was still standing in the doorway. What—did I need a password to come inside? Did I not execute the secret knock correctly?

  “How was the party?” he asked. He finally backed up a few steps and allowed me to enter the house.

  I shrugged. I didn’t want to talk about the party. I hadn’t had a chance to sort everything out yet. Besides Sarah’s revelation, there was still David and my—well, I didn’t even know what to call it. Was it a budding relationship or was it a mistake between two friends? And after Sarah’s confession, did we even have a chance at a relationship?

  “I heard a car park outside the house,” he said. “When I didn’t hear the door open, I decided to come see what was going on.”

  I nodded. “Sorry, I was just talking—”

  “Who’s the boy?”

  I sighed. “David Gamble, Sarah’s brother.”

  Dad scrunched up his face and began to rub his jaw. I could tell he couldn’t quite place the name. He knew he had heard it before somewhere.

  I thought about not telling Dad anything else about David and just disappearing to my room. But I was tired of all the half-truths I had been concocting about Sarah and David. If Sarah could come clean, so could I.

  “He plays on the basketball team. The shooting guard.” I could have recited more information. The jersey number. The number of points, rebounds, assists, and steals he amassed during the game. The number of times he kissed me (in my dreams). But by the look on Dad’s face, he didn’t need any more information.

  Dad went to the pantry and pulled out a bag of potato chips. “I thought you were going to the party with Sarah.” He shoved a handful of chips into his mouth and sat at the table. “Why didn’t you tell me about this boy going to the party with y’all as well?”

  I sat down across from Dad. “I didn’t know he was going to the party. He showed up after the game.”

  “Are y’all friends?”

  I nodded. He crunched on his chips.

  “Are y’all … more than friends?”

  I wished I knew.

  I shrugged. “I’ve gotten to know him better as I’ve been tutoring Sarah.”

  Dad shook his head. “I don’t like this.”

  I was tempted to grab a pint of ice cream from the freezer. I didn’t know if I was going to make it through the night without it.

  “I’m eighteen years old,” I said. “I should be dating.”

  I could hardly believe what I was saying. Maybe David had changed my opinion on dating.

  “But he plays on the same team as that other punk.” Dad refused to call Christopher by his name. “He’s trying to use you.”

  “Use me?”

  “Come on,” he said. “You’re smart. You have to realize that guys talk. That Gamble boy probably thinks he can—that you’ll give him whatever he wants.”

  I thought back to the way Johnnie had approached me at the party. “David isn’t like that.”

  “Didn’t you say the same thing about the other boy?”

  That shut me up real quick.

  “I should have said something to him at the basketball game,” Dad continued. “That boy needs to be taken down a notch.”

  “Why did you want to talk to David?”

  “Not him,” Dad muttered. “The other punk.”

  I frowned. “Dad, you told me you wouldn’t say anything to Christopher or his father.”

  “But it’s not right,” he said. “He deserves to be punished.”

  I shook my head. “You promised, remember?”

  Dad grimaced, but nodded. “I remember.”

  Christopher was an asshole, but his father was one hundred times worse. Christopher had a hard time staying out of trouble, and his father didn’t have any qualms over using extreme discipline to force him back onto the straight and narrow path. As much as I hated Christopher, no one deserved punishment like that. Not even him.

  When I finally agreed to terminate the pregnancy, I made Dad promise not to say anything to Christopher or his father. I told Dad that getting the McCulloughs involved would drag the situation out in the open, and that I just wanted to get it over with. Dad didn’t like it, but he agreed. So that following weekend, while Christopher went on a church retreat with his youth group, I headed to Atlanta.

  Dad rose from the table, his chips still in his hands. “Is there anything else about your new friends I should know?”

  I rubbed the back of my neck and looked down at the table. “Sarah’s pregnant.”

  “Why am I not surprised?” Dad gave off a condescending laugh. “You’d think you high school kids would learn from each other’s mistakes.”

  My stomach lurched. “That’s a mean thing to say.”

  “No, it’s a cold and hard truth.” He started toward his bedroom, but stopped at the edge of the kitchen. He passed his bag of chips back and forth from one hand to another.

  “Well, is she going to have an …”

  I didn’t reply. I just watched Dad struggle with the words he couldn’t bring himself to say.

  He cleared his throat. “Is she going to end the pregnancy?”

  I narrowed my eyes and glared at my father. “No, she isn’t getting an abortion.”

  Dad’s gaze immediately shifted off me. I had said the forbidden word. The A-word. The word we had danced around for the past three years. The word that had ripped us apart.

  Dad finally looked back at me. For a few seconds, his eyes were vulnerable. His mouth dropped slightly open, and he shuffled a half-step toward me.

  “Rhonda …”
>
  I stood up and inched toward him. Something in his voice caught me off-guard. Hearing him speak my name like that made me feel like I was teetering on the edge of a waterfall.

  “Dad?”

  Dad shook his head, and his eyes returned to their cool and impassive state. “It’s getting late,” he said, his voice gruff. “We’ll talk about this more in the morning.”

  I sighed as Dad left the room. I should have known better than to hope for a meaningful conversation with my father. Dad refused to talk about my pregnancy and abortion. He had tried many times before, but just like tonight, he could never find the words.

  Sarah’s pregnancy was the main topic of discussion on Monday morning at school. While I’d like to think that Piedmont Academy was fairly progressive, Sarah’s pregnancy was a big deal. Like me, I was sure there were plenty of girls that had gotten pregnant while in high school, but Sarah was the first girl that actually planned to carry the pregnancy to term.

  Sarah wasn’t the only one being dragged through the rumor mill. Because of my theatrics at the party, my name was being thrown around as well. It was just like it had been when Christopher dumped me. Groups of students would turn silent as I neared them, only to erupt into a fit of giggles as soon as I passed. I could feel hundreds of eyes on me as I made my way down the hallways. It was a strange feeling—going from being popular during my freshman year, to being a nobody, to suddenly becoming famous again. No, not famous—infamous.

  I had the chance to talk to Sarah briefly, right before my English class. Sarah had abandoned her usual glamorous look—no lipstick, no eye shadow, no fancy jewelry. She looked naked.

  I waved her over. A large smile came to her face once she saw me, and she made her way through the horde of students in the hallway to me. Actually, it wasn’t that tough for her to navigate through the dense hallways. The student body looked to be avoiding her like she was diseased.

  “How did it go last night?” I asked.

  “I’ll have to tell you later,” she said. “Right now, I’ve got to go to the guidance counselor’s office. Supposedly, there are some ‘issues’ she wants to discuss.” Sarah tilted her head to the side and rubbed her chin. “Hmm, I wonder what that could be about.”