My Life as a Rhombus

by Varian Johnson

  “You know you’re supposed to be on bed rest.” I checked her forehead to see if she was hot. “I can’t believe your brother let you come to school.”

  “My bed rest doesn’t start until tomorrow.” She smiled. “At least, that’s what I told David.”

  “Sarah … ”

  “It’s just one day,” she said. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

  I started to argue more with her, but before I could, someone pushed past me, spinning me around and almost knocking me over. I turned back toward Sarah to see Johnnie Chang glaring at her, a scowl etched into his face.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded. His voice was low, but forceful.

  “Johnnie, calm down.” Sarah looked around quickly before stepping closer to him. “This is not a conversation we should be having at school.”

  “I’ll leave you alone, once you explain why you’re not at home,” he said. “You’re not only endangering yourself, but you could be harming our child as well.”

  My mouth dropped open. Our child?

  Sarah’s hand dropped to her stomach. “Johnnie, stop overreacting.”

  “I’m the one that took you to the hospital this weekend, remember? If anything happens to you … ”

  It seemed like my mind was working in slow motion. I knew what I was seeing, but my brain was having a hard time processing the information. It was like I didn’t want to believe what was in front of me.

  Sarah started to speak, but Johnnie placed his pale fingers on her red lips. “I’m not going to argue about this. You know I’m right.”

  Sarah stared at him for a few seconds, and slowly nodded. “I promise, this is the last day. I’ll go on bed rest tomorrow.”

  Johnnie sighed, and the wrinkles relaxed around his eyes. “I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “I won’t hurt myself,” she said as she stared deep into Johnnie’s eyes. She almost looked like she was going to fall into him.

  I cleared my throat, and they broke their gaze and looked at me. “He’s the father?”

  Sarah winked. “Not who you were expecting, was it?”

  Johnnie wrapped his arm around his girlfriend. “It was Sarah’s idea to keep it quiet.”

  “Just for a few more weeks,” she said as she pulled away from him. She looked around again. “You know you’re not supposed to be talking to me like this here.”

  He took her hand. “You know I can’t help it.”

  Sarah looked hypnotized as she grinned back at him.

  I shook my head and tried not to gawk at Sarah and Johnnie. The way they stared at each other, it seemed like they would spontaneously combust at any second.

  “Hey, guys.”

  All three of us jumped. Johnnie immediately yanked his hand away from Sarah. I clutched my chest and spun around.

  David smirked. “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle y’all.” He walked over and playfully slapped Johnnie on the back. “What are you doing here? You don’t have lunch until next period.”

  His gaze dropped to the floor. “I just felt like skipping class.”

  David frowned. “Since when do you skip class?” He looked at Sarah, and his grimace deepened. Like Johnnie, she was staring at the floor. Both of their faces were beginning to redden.

  David turned to me and crossed his arms. “What happened? Did I interrupt something?”

  I shrugged. What else was I supposed do?

  Johnnie finally looked up. “David, there’s something you should know about Sarah and—”

  “Johnnie, don’t,” Sarah said.

  He shook his head. “It’s time he found out.”

  David glared at them, and the frown on his face turned permanent. He took a step closer to Johnnie. “It was you, wasn’t it?”

  Johnnie didn’t back down. “I wanted to tell you earlier, but—”

  “I figured it was best that we wait,” Sarah interjected. “Johnnie wanted to tell you, but I thought it would be better to break the news to you after the baby was born.”

  “After the baby was born!” David yelled. A few students turned and looked our way.

  My heart began to thunder in my chest. “David, calm down,” I said. “You’re upset.”

  “Damn right I’m upset!” By now, a small group was forming around us. Before I knew it, David had dropped his books, grabbed Johnnie by the shoulders, and flung him against the wall.

  “You got my sister pregnant, and you didn’t even have the fucking guts to tell me?”

  “I was going to—”

  Before Johnnie could finish his statement, David punched him in the stomach. Johnnie grunted and lurched forward, and David punched him again.

  I brought my hand to my mouth and watched as Johnnie slid to the ground.

  David towered over Johnnie as the entire cafeteria sat in stunned silence. Then, just as quickly, the room erupted into screams. A group of football players rushed over to us and pinned David’s hands behind his back.

  “Let me go,” he shouted. His voice sounded like it could rip through metal.

  I dropped my books and tried to push through the crowd forming around David and Johnnie. As David struggled to break away from the mob of students holding him, Johnnie rolled around on the floor, wheezing for air.

  I glanced at Sarah. Her eyes seemed like they were going to pop from their sockets. She looked like she wanted to scream, but no words were coming from her mouth.

  The jocks continued to hold David back, no matter how much he struggled. They dragged him away from Johnnie and shoved him against a brick wall. As David’s backside hit the wall, it looked like all the air got knocked from his body. I cringed and accidentally bit my tongue.

  I nudged Sarah. “Go check on Johnnie,” I said. “I’ll talk to David.”

  Still silent, Sarah nodded and inched toward Johnnie. Likewise, I began to force my way through the crowd to get to David.

  “Get the principal,” someone yelled. “We can’t hold him forever.”

  “I said to let me go,” David yelled again as he tried to yank his arms free. “I won’t hit him anymore.”

  I finally elbowed my way to David’s side. “Let him go,” I commanded to the guys pinning him against the wall. To my surprise, they released him, and he immediately began to fall.

  I grabbed his arm and tried to steady him while he got his legs under him. “Are you okay?”

  “Of course he’s alright. He’s not the one who got sucker-punched.”

  I knew that voice anywhere. I turned around to see Christopher McCullough standing behind me.

  Christopher pushed me out of the way and got in David’s face. “Man, what the fuck are you thinking?” he asked, poking him in the chest. “What made you hit Johnnie like that?”

  David glared at Christopher for a few seconds. Then David slowly turned to me. He locked his eyes with mine, and I knew he wasn’t thinking about his sister anymore. David turned his gaze back on Christopher.

  And then David hit him.

  David and I sat in his living room. He was on one side of the room, I was on the other. As far as I was concerned, the more space between us, the better.

  “Rhonda, don’t you have anything to say?”

  “No.”

  “I guess I really messed up this time, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, you did.”

  He sighed. “Thanks for bringing Sarah home.”

  “Who else was going to? You got suspended, remember.”

  David began picking at his fingernails. He was probably scraping dried blood from around his cuticles.

  The phone rang. “That’s probably my father,” he said, rising from his seat. “He’s going to want to ring my neck.”

  “Good. You deserv
e it.”

  David answered the phone, and immediately I could hear yelling from the other end of the line.

  I stood from my seat. “I’m going to check on Sarah.”

  “Dad, will you calm down for a second?” David yelled into the receiver, before turning toward me. “You can stay,” he said, his voice quieter. “I won’t be on the phone for very long.”

  I cut my eyes at him. “I don’t want to stay.”

  Before he could say anything else, I slipped out of the room. As I headed down the hallway, David and his father resumed their shouting match.

  “Come in,” Sarah said, after I knocked on her door.

  I opened the door and slid in. Sarah was in bed with a half-empty glass of orange juice on her nightstand and countless blankets at her feet.

  I sat on the bed. “How do you feel?”

  “Bored.”

  Sarah’s stomach formed a small mountain underneath her blanket. I resisted the urge to rub on her belly. I had heard pregnant women hated that.

  I traced my fingers around one of the squares in Sarah’s blanket. “So …”

  Sarah blushed. “I guess you want to know how Johnnie and I ended up together.”

  “I have to admit, out of all the guys I was picturing, his face wasn’t the first to come to mind.”

  Sarah sat up in bed and flung her blanket off her. Her stomach looked even bigger without the covering. “I really didn’t get to know Johnnie until this year—we were in trig together.” She paused to take a sip of her orange juice. “To be honest, I didn’t think he was my type. I like guys with money. I want to be spoiled.”

  “So what happened to make you change your mind?”

  “We started studying together. Every Wednesday, we would meet in a back room at the public library and do our homework. And things stayed like that for a few weeks. Then we went from meeting once a week to three times a week. And then we started meeting every day. And then … well, you can gather the rest.”

  I laughed. “At least now I understand why your grades were dropping.”

  Sarah reached out and clutched my hand. “It got to the point that I couldn’t stop thinking about him. We would try to study, but we would end up talking about everything but math. He made me laugh. He made me think.” Sarah’s voice was growing animated. She held my hand so tightly, it felt like she was going to squeeze the blood out of my fingers. “I still remember the first time we kissed. We had been slaving away for twenty minutes on a homework problem. When we finally got the answer, I was so happy, I kissed him. Before I could apologize, he was kissing me back.”

  I shook my head. “If you liked him so much, why did you keep your relationship a secret?”

  “Have you met my mother?” She laughed. “Seriously, I just couldn’t deal with Mom and David turning their nose up at Johnnie, like I knew they would.”

  “But David wouldn’t have minded that you were dating him.”

  Sarah snorted. “David means well, but sometimes he acts less like a brother and more like a parole officer. And as much as he likes Johnnie, David wouldn’t have been happy about me hooking up with him.” She leaned back. “Now that I think about it, David’s the reason why my last two boyfriends broke up with me.”

  “He can’t help it. It’s in his nature to take care of you.”

  “It’s in his nature to take care of you as well.” Sarah paused for a second. “He really loves you.”

  “He has a funny way of showing it. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  “But—”

  Sarah was interrupted by two short raps on her door.

  “I know it’s you, David,” Sarah said. “You can come in.”

  The door creaked open and David poked his head into the room. “I just got off the phone with Dad,” he said. “He’s on his way here from Charleston, just to chew me out some more. Maybe I should have waited until the middle of the night to hit Johnnie and Christopher.”

  David smiled, but neither Sarah nor I smiled back.

  “Stop being a jackass,” Sarah said. “You had no right to hit Johnnie.”

  “But he—”

  “It was as much my fault as it was his,” she said. “Are you gonna hit me, too?”

  David’s gaze fell to the floor. “But he got you pregnant.”

  “He’s my boyfriend,” Sarah said. “No, better yet, he’s the father of my child. The father of your niece or nephew. Whether you want to admit it or not, Johnnie is going to have a permanent place in my life, in one way or another.”

  David walked over to Sarah, leaned over, and kissed her cheek. “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re apologizing to the wrong person,” Sarah said, her voice cold.

  “You’re right, I shouldn’t have hit Johnnie.” David planted his hand on the bed, inches away from my thigh. “I’ll go over to his place tonight and apologize.”

  Sarah snorted. “That’s the least you could do.”

  I looked at my watch and faked a yawn. “I’d better get out of here.”

  David turned to me. “You want me to walk you out?”

  “No, it’s okay,” I said, already heading toward the door. “See you tomorrow, Sarah.”

  Sarah waved goodbye, and I left her room. But I hadn’t made it halfway down the hall before I heard a set of footsteps echoing behind me.

  “Wait up,” David said. “I’ll walk you to your car.”

  I quickened my pace. “Like I said before, I can let myself out.”

  I plowed through the kitchen and slipped out the back door. The scent of an impending downpour was in the air—large, billowing clouds blocked the stars and the moon. I kept my head down and focused on the path before me, and marched toward my car.

  As I threw my books into the trunk, David strode toward me. He positioned himself in front of the driver’s side door, making it impossible for me to escape without confronting him.

  I shut the trunk and walked to him. “What do you want, David?”

  “Don’t tell me you’re mad at me, too.”

  “Of course I’m mad at you. You looked like you wanted to kill Johnnie.”

  “I was upset.”

  “Upset?” I rolled my eyes and leaned against the car. “More like you were possessed.”

  “I know. That’s why I’m going to see Johnnie—”

  “Not just Johnnie,” I said. “You need to apologize to Christopher as well.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.” He finally moved away from the car door. “I can understand if you’re mad about me hitting Johnnie, but Christopher had it coming.”

  “Why? What did he do to you?”

  David fidgeted with the cuff of his shirt. “Christopher is the worst kind of guy.”

  I folded my arms across my chest. “Don’t tell me you’re jealous.”

  “You know I’m not the jealous type.” David looked at me like he was searching my eyes for some dark, hidden secret. “Doesn’t it make you feel good knowing that I knocked the shit out of Christopher?”

  “The last thing I need is another person trying to fight my battles,” I said. “I’m past trying to punish Christopher for what he did.”

  “Yeah, you’re punishing me instead.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “And just what is that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re not over the abortion,” he said. “If you were, we’d still be together.”

  I shook my head. “That’s exactly why I broke up with you. You’ve only known about my past for three days and you’re already throwing it back in my face.” I opened my car door. “You’re just like Christopher.”

  “Don’t you dare compare me to Christopher.”

  “Why not?” I began counting off on my fingers. “You play basketball.
You sleep around, or did you forget about all of the girls you’ve had sex with over the last few years.”

  “I was dating them.”

  “That doesn’t change the fact that you slept with them.” I blew a renegade strand of hair out of my face. “You come from a rich and powerful family, just like him. You don’t get along with your father, just like him.” I glared at David. “You tried to sleep with me, just like him.”

  David grimaced. “You’re forgetting one big difference,” he said. “I don’t get my girlfriends pregnant and make them get abortions.”

  My mouth dropped open. His words rang in my ears like church bells. I stepped back for a moment and tried to digest what he had just said.

  Then I slapped him.

  “Fuck you, David Gamble!” I shoved him in the chest, hard. David stumbled backwards, tripped over his feet, and fell into a bed of roses.

  I jumped into my car and slammed the door shut. My hands were trembling so much, I could hardly get my keys out of my pocket. I paused to wipe the tears from my eyes with the back of my hand, and finally jammed the key into the ignition. But before I could start the engine, David opened the passenger side door and slipped into the car.

  “Get out!” I yelled, loud enough for the entire neighborhood to hear.

  “No.”

  “David, I’m warning you—”

  “You know what, I’m sick of this bullshit. You break up with me because I like you, and I’m the bad guy?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want to have this conversation.”

  “Of course you don’t. You don’t ever want to talk.”

  I started the engine. “Get out of my goddamn car.”

  “Why won’t you talk to me? Why are you pushing me away?”

  I didn’t bother to wipe the tears away at this point. “Just get out,” I moaned. “Please?”

  David didn’t move, and neither did I. There was a trashy love song on the radio I tried to ignore. The engine hummed, but it wasn’t quite loud enough to drown out all of the thoughts bouncing around my head.

  Finally, David opened the door and stepped out of the car. But instead of closing the door, he leaned down and peered at me.