by Anna Cackler
“Did you just use the word ‘contrive’ in a sentence?” I asked.
“Yes I did. And what do you think?”
“About the word ‘contrive’?”
“No, about the idea.”
I shrugged. “I’m not the sort of person that usually plays mind games on people.”
“We don’t have to play any games at all,” Shannon said, casting off my worries carelessly. “We’d have to tell Finn exactly what we’re up to; he’d figure it out anyway. He’ll probably just think it’s funny.”
“You know, you’re right,” I said. “Finn does need a girl. By the way, how’s your dating life recently? I haven’t seen the usual line of boys around in a few weeks.” I noted her suddenly red face and smirked. Bull’s eye.
“My social life is not the issue here.” Her eyes were determined, so I decided not to push it.
“Fine, fine,” I said. “We’ll just focus on Finn then.”
“Good. Thank you.”
“Poor boy.” I climbed the steps to the library. “Has an evil genius for a sister.”
“And no love life, so it’s really all his fault.”
“If you say so.”
She shrugged as I pulled open the heavy door. “So why are we stopping by the library again?”
“Because I need to ask Finn a favor about Oscar.”
She just sighed and followed me inside.
Two
The Cornell Library was a very old red brick building, built during the twenties in the heart of town. It was two stories high, like every other storefront on the block, and was only distinguished by a low sign near the sidewalk that simply read the name, Cornell Library, est 1926. My body visibly relaxed with the rush of cool air from inside and the sweat on my temples now felt like an ice pack.
The building was mostly empty today. The only person in there was a youngish girl that was browsing through the young adult section near the huge spiral staircase that led upstairs to the fiction section.
Behind the front desk, his nose crammed characteristically into an old-looking book, sat Shannon’s twin brother, Finnegan. They looked like they should be twins, too, even though they were obviously fraternal. Like his sister, Finn was tall and lean with a wide mouth and green eyes. His hair, though, was dark brown and untidy. The untidy part was mostly because he never bothered to smooth it down after a shower.
“What do you want?” he asked in a smooth voice without looking up from his book.
“Whatcha reading?” I asked.
“Chaucer.”
“What’s it about?”
“Just trust me when I say it’s not your cup of tea.”
“I’m sure,” Shannon said, pulling herself up onto the counter where she sat and studied her ruined nails.
“Get your butt off of my counter, woman!” Finn warned his sister.
“Bite me.”
Finn grabbed the spray bottle of diluted rubbing alcohol he used to clean the counters every day. He sprayed his sister point blank until she jumped down, squealing.
“Jerk!” she exclaimed, rubbing at her white shirt in an attempt to dry out the wet spots that he’d left all over it. The girl in Young Adult looked over at her and frowned. She crossed over to the staircase and disappeared to the second floor.
“I warned you.” He winked at me and returned to his book.
“Can we get out of here now, please?” Shannon moaned, giving up on her shirt and giving me a pleading stare.
“Just a minute.” I turned back to Finn. “Finn, Oscar stalled out on me today.”
He didn’t even look up. “You got it started again, though, right?”
“Yeah. It took a couple of tries, and there’s a red Chevy pickup that’s gonna murder me the next time he sees me, but I got it going again. Could you come over and look at it for me later? See if there’s something we can do for the old thing?”
“Make Aaron do it.”
“Aaron?” I asked, confused. “Even if Aaron did know something about cars, he’d never do me a favor.”
“Maybe you should give him a try.”
“Maybe you should stop being lazy and just help me out here.”
He grabbed the spray bottle again and pointed it directly in my face without having to look up.
“I’m just teasing!” I assured him. “Come on, Finn. Please?”
He sighed and lowered his weapon. “Fine. I’ll come over tomorrow afternoon if Bill doesn’t call me in again.”
“You could just tell Bill no,” Shannon offered.
“You know good and well that I can’t do that.”
“Come on, Shannon,” I said, pulling on her arm. I’d done what I’d come to do and now we could get this shopping nightmare over with.
“No wait!” Shannon said, realization dawning on her face. “I can’t believe we forgot. Guess what Finn!” she asked, and I suddenly felt the dull weight in my stomach roll back into place.
“What?” he asked in a bored voice.
“Mrs. Bates is pregnant. Emily’s gonna be a sister!”
“She’s already a sister, Shannon.”
“A big sister, numb nuts.”
“Congratulations.” Finn looked up at me, eyebrows furrowed. “You know, you’d think this would be news you’d hear straight from the horse’s mouth.”
My eyes hit the floor. “What do you mean?”
He shrugged. “You just don’t seem so excited about all this. A new baby is big news!” He threw me an exaggerated grin and two thumbs up, finally putting down his book to do so.
“I don’t seem excited because I’m not excited,” I said quickly. “There, I said it. I’m a terrible person. I’m not looking forward to having a new baby in the house.”
Shannon pulled a sympathetic face, but Finn just shrugged. “So long as you’re not fooling yourself, I guess.”
I reached across the counter and smacked him playfully upside his head. He was faster than I’d bargained for, though, and I was suddenly being drenched in the rubbing alcohol. The fumes burned my nose and I backed away with my arms up in mock surrender, laughing. “All right! All right! Sorry!”
He put the bottle back down on the desk firmly. “That’s right you are!” he said. “And don’t worry about the baby thing. I’m sure that it will all work out.”
“Just because you’re sure of something doesn’t make it true,” I said.
“Of course it does,” he said, his attention back on Chaucer. “For I am Finnegan O’Malley.”
“No, I’m serious. Didn’t Jill Knox’s sister get Down syndrome because her mom was so old when she was born?”
Finn rolled his eyes.
“Probably,” Shannon said with a hesitant frown.
“See! She’s too old for this.”
“No she isn’t! She’s going to be fine.”
I frowned at Shannon, but didn’t argue with her. I didn’t feel like exerting the effort, especially since I didn’t have any concrete evidence yet that this pregnancy was a mistake. Her admission about Jill’s sister just wasn’t enough.
That evening when I got home, not even the blissful barrier between the scorching heat of outside and the cool, refreshing, air conditioned indoors could diminish the aching hole in my gut where my own guilt was chewing its way through my innards. I had thought about it long and hard while Shannon tried on outfit after outfit that afternoon and I stood outside of her changing room with various sizes of the same clothes piled up in my arms. The twins were right, it would all work out, but not if I came at the situation with an angry attitude. And Aaron was right (unfortunately) that Mom needed our support instead of my stubborn annoyance.
When was it going to be my turn to be right about something?
So if attitude was the key, then I’d just have to fake it until even I believed it. I still did not want this baby in my house, but there was nothing I could do about it now. Positive attitude.
And forgiveness. I needed some of that too.
I foun
d Mom in our wide, airy kitchen, patiently browning three pieces of chicken breast in a skillet with some onions and garlic. Cream sauce was simmering in a sauce pan on the back burner. My mouth began to water immediately, but the guilt burning a whole in my chest pushed my sudden appetite to the back of my mind.
My eyes scanned the kitchen and I saw that the sink was full of dirty dishes. Wanting to be helpful, I went over to the ancient dishwasher and began to unload it. Mom turned to glance at me as I stacked clean plates in my arms. “Thanks,” she said with a self-satisfied smirk. “I was putting that off in hopes that one of you kids would feel guilty about making me do all the work around here.” She grinned at me and winked. I smiled back, but couldn’t put quite as much enthusiasm into it as she did.
“Listen, Mom,” I said, my arms still loaded down with plates and bowls. “I’m sorry I freaked out this afternoon. I think it’s really great that we’re having another baby.”
Mom laughed, true delight sparkling behind her eyes. “Oh honey, you’re such a terrible liar!” she cried, but immediately sobered up when she saw my hurt expression. She crossed the room in an instant, took the dishes away from me to set them on the counter, and wrapped her arms around me.
“Emily, dear, I know that this is a big change and it’s going to be difficult. I understand that it’s hard for you. It’s hard for all of us to wrap our heads around this.” She held me away at arms length. “I do appreciate the intent, though, and the apology. Thank you.” She brushed my wild hair out of my face to kiss my forehead and went back to the stove.
“I want you to know that I was serious, though. About you being too old.”
Mom rolled her eyes.
“Don’t roll your eyes! I’m serious!”
“You said that.”
“No, Shannon confirmed it. Jill Knox was right about the Down syndrome thing, and you could develop high blood pressure and diabetes because you’re over thirty-five. Are you sure you want to be sticking yourself with needles every day for the rest of your life?”
Mom laughed and faced me. “Regardless, the deed is done. It’s too late.”
I slouched in defeat. “I know.”
“And don’t worry about me,” Mom said. “I will be just fine, even if I do have to stick myself with insulin every day. I like to think it’ll be worth it.”
“If you say so.” The sarcasm was thick in my voice, but I smiled anyway, just to appease her.
She patted my arm and the guilt-hole in my stomach began to heal. It was instantly replaced with a heavy weight in my gut as the reality of the situation suck in a little deeper. A new baby. The whole household would change. We’d all have to shove over to make room. There would be toys everywhere, and screaming in the middle of the night.
That’s exactly what I needed, sleepless nights in my last year of high school. Knowing my luck, I’d flunk out in the home stretch.
“Positive attitude!” I hissed at myself under my breath.
“What?” Mom asked, turning around.
“Hmm? Nothing. I didn’t say anything.” I went back to putting away the dishes, doing my best to ignore the growing lump in my gut.
The next day I mostly stayed in my room tooling around on the Internet. As it turned out, a lot of good advice for older pregnant women was floating around on the web, and I spent all day pouring through the articles. I skipped over the ones that applauded women for waiting until their thirties because it meant they were “emotionally stable and more ready for the responsibility.” That wasn’t the sort of thing I needed to hear just then. What I needed was for someone to offer a specialized diet for older women or something, anything I could offer as advice for my own elderly mother.
I couldn’t find one.
Finn never showed up to look at Oscar’s engine. Either he’d forgotten about it or he’d been called in to work again. No, scratch that. Finn never forgot anything, not that I’ve ever noticed, so he must have been at work. I toyed with the idea of going to the library myself just to bug him, but gave up on the idea. Odds were he’d bug me more than I’d bug him.
I called Shannon, though, and talked with her for a while about nothing at all. When I hung up the phone after half an hour of, “What do you want to do?” “I don’t know. What do you want to do?” “I asked you first.” “Well I asked you second.” “I don’t know. Nothing sounds like much fun. What do you want to do?” I flopped down on my bed with a groan.
“I am so ready for school to start!” I said to myself irritably. It might be too crowded for my taste, but at least then I wouldn’t be so bored all the time.
“Freak,” Aaron said as he passed my open door.
“Psycho!” I yelled after him.
“You two leave each other alone!” Mom’s voice echoed up the stairs from the living room.
The days passed slowly, almost too slowly, but finally I got my wish. It was Sunday night, and school would start the next morning. Shannon was lounging on my bed, making good use of my prolific manicure supplies to try to salvage her nails before the fated first day of school.
“You know, you wouldn’t have to scramble like this if you would just stop biting your nails,” I told her from the floor. I sat surrounded by all of my new school supplies, bought at the last minute that afternoon. I was removing label stickers and filling notebooks with loose leaf paper.
“Shut up,” Shannon mumbled, distracted as she carefully covered one nail at a time with a fleshy pink shade of polish. She held her hand out to examine her work. “Why do you have all of this stuff anyway? You never use it.”
I sighed and looked around at the primping and polishing equipment that I usually kept stashed away in a set of white plastic drawers in the back of my closet. Shannon liked to pull those drawers out from time to time and rummage through my beautifying products. I didn’t mind. She was right; I had no use for most of them. If I ever used nail polish, I used the clear kind only.
“Crazy Aunt June’s been giving me this crap for years,” I replied. “Christmas, birthdays, you know.”
Shannon shuddered on the bed. “Ugh, Crazy Aunt June!” she groaned in mock horror.
“Shut up!” I said, throwing a pillow at her. “You don’t have to spend any time with her at all. You have no idea how crazy she really is!”
“Oh, so she gives you nail polish and outstays her welcome at Christmastime. What’s the big deal?”
“Just trust me,” I said. “You’ve met her. Don’t you remember the time when you and Finn came over for my birthday, and Crazy Aunt June showed up?”
Shannon’s shudder of horror seemed pretty real this time. “Ugh, yes. How long ago was that?”
“Five years. You guys had just moved here, and you didn’t have any friends yet except for me, and Mom thought it would be a good idea for me to have a big party so you could meet people, remember?”
“Yes, and Aunt June came.”
“And Aunt June came,” I confirmed. “She thought she could add some life to the party by making us all sit around while she told us stories.”
“You know, some of her stories are funny,” Shannon said.
“What about the one where she described in full detail about her do-it-yourself ingrown toenail surgery?”
“Oh, my ears!” she wailed, rolling over and clutching at her ears. “Don’t remind me!”
I held up my old backpack and dumped out the leftover debris from the previous spring into a trash sack. “My toes hurt just thinking about it.”
Three
The next morning, I drove to school in a haze of sleepiness. A thick fog hung low over the road, but it would burn off in no time. The weather man had promised us another sunny day, of course. I wouldn’t have used the word sunny, though. Sunny was supposed to infer peaceful, beautiful weather. What we got was angry heat. The kind that fried the hair right off your arms.
Finn still had not come by to look at my car, but fortunately I hadn’t had a repeat of the stalling-out-nightmare from the previ
ous week. Maybe it was just a fluke. Maybe Oscar was fine after all. I chose to believe that.
I was sitting behind a row of cars at a stop light in front of St. John High School when I noticed the vehicle behind me. A red Chevy pickup truck, shiny and new. It looked like the same one that I had stalled in front of the previous week, but I couldn’t be sure.
“Don’t worry. It’s not the same truck. It’s not the same truck.” I drummed on the cracked steering wheel and stared at the red truck through my rear view mirror. A glare across its windshield prevented me from seeing the driver’s face. “And if it is, there’s no reason for you to freak out because you’re never going to meet the driver.”
Every other car in line turned right into the student parking lot. I turned on my blinker as well, and to my horror, so did the red Chevy.
“Oh crap.”
I pulled into the parking lot and squeezed in between two cars. There were no other spaces in the row. The plan was to shut off the engine and dash inside before the owner of the Chevy could see who I was.
The plan half worked. I bolted out of the car as soon as the engine whined to a stop, but I forgot to take off my seat belt first. An involuntary grunt stumbled through my teeth as the nylon bit into my stomach. Quickly I ripped off my seat belt and again tried to exit the car. This time the long shoulder strap on my bag caught on the parking brake. I was jerked off of my feet and almost went sprawling onto the black asphalt. Somehow I managed to catch myself on the door, which screeched open even wider, and skinned my bare knee on the asphalt in the process.
And then it got worse.
The Chevy had parked in the spot right behind me, and the driver had gotten out long before I managed to stand up straight, my knee stinging in the hot wind. There was no way that he wouldn’t recognize my car if it was the same person.
Of course it was the same person. The driver was a boy about my age with dark hair and dark skin. He didn’t look Hispanic, but he definitely wasn’t black, either. He was tall with tousled black hair and a cheerful face. He was good looking enough that my face flushed red when I realized that he was grinning at me. And of course, the embarrassment of blushing made me blush even more.