“Heck yeah!” I took my grey jacket off and unbuttoned the sleeve of my shirt. I rolled it as far up as I could and showed off what she had bought me almost a whole year ago. She traced the filled in spaces that were now colored in with deep blues, reds, and yellows with her fingers and bit her lip.
“It’s amazing,” she squeezed my bicep and looked down at her belly, something she did whenever she was being careful what she said or did. “Oh.” She looked over at me with big eyes, grabbed my hand, and put it right below her belly button. I waited, not knowing what for, exactly, but then a little something nudged my palm.
“Whoa! Was that a kick?!” Lucy nodded, grinning from ear to ear. I felt a sudden rush of affection for this little person I had no real idea about. “Do you know what it is?” I asked, putting my other hand near the one already on her huge stomach.
“No.” She rested her eyes somewhere on the window behind my head. “I wasn’t sure if I was going to keep it or give it up for adoption so when the time came to find out I didn’t think I could handle it.” I tried to keep my face as neutral as possible, but I failed. I felt my face get a “I feel sick” look.
“What have you decided?” I asked. I started to rub little circles around her belly button, wanting to comfort that little life inside of her.
“I don’t know yet, to be honest.”
I nodded and sucked my lips in, not knowing exactly where my new place was in this situation. This didn’t seem like the time to voice my opinions. I busied myself with rolling down my sleeve so I didn’t have to look at her and give myself away.
“You okay?” She reached out for me and put her hand on top of my head, then pulled my hair behind my ear.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” The weight of the entire day and the emotional rollercoaster I had ridden suddenly dropped on me. I reached in and kissed her lips, taking extra time to put my hand against her cheek and feel her clean hair slide easily thru my fingers. But then I backed up, remembering something she had said earlier that day. When I had apologized for saying I wish I had never saved her, she had told me she knew I hadn’t meant that part.
“Lucy?”
“A-huh?” She looked at me with raised eyebrows.
“Earlier, when I apologized for my bit, you made it sound like there was something I said that you did believe. What was it?”
She bit her lip and closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
“When you called me a stupid girl.” She didn’t look up at me and I think I actually heard my heart rip.
“Oh Luce, you know I didn’t mean that--” But she interrupted me.
“I’ve spent my whole life seeing words and numbers backwards and feeling like an idiot all the time. Other people have to tell me I’ve been moving for the last ten minutes; I don’t even realize it. I read my own way and move my own way because it’s what works best for me, but I’ve spent my whole life either explaining myself or defending myself from people who think I’m being dumb.”
“I don’t think--”
“David, you’re not the first person who has called me stupid.” She looked so hurt I wanted to crawl into a freaking hole and die.
“Lucy, I’m sorry. I am so sorry. I think you are perfect.” I wished I could convince her of the amazingness that was Lucy Peterson.
“Thank you.” She said, simply looking at me and giving me a half smile.
“Can I make it up to you, for like, ever?”
“Ha, yeah. Sure.” She laughed at me while I stole another kiss before I opened the car door.
“So, I’ll see you tomorrow then?” Lucy asked me.
“And every day after that.” I winked at her, shut the door, and walked into the hotel feeling like I was going to be sick. I had just been served two bombshells. One was that I had made Lucy think she was stupid, even with me just saying it in my head, I felt awful for being such a jerk. And the other was her admission that she still wasn’t sure about keeping the baby.
Why would it affect me so much that Lucy was going to do something like give her baby up for adoption? I mean, aside from the obvious fact that it hadn’t really done me much good. I couldn’t spend too much time thinking about it. Lucy had to make that choice.
It nagged me, though. I had known for exactly five and a half hours that Lucy was pregnant and that the father wanted nothing to do with the baby, but I already had strong feelings about it. I walked into my room. It was clean and looked comfortable. Collapsing face first into my giant bed, I tried not to think.
It had been a long day.
* * *
Seventeen days later, on July 28th, I opened the door to Lucy’s house and was greeted by people jumping from behind couches and leaping from behind walls, yelling “Happy Birthday!” at me. I had, of course, known that they were throwing me a birthday party because I was asked to bring the ice. Everyone started clapping and laughing when they saw that they had surprised me anyways.
Johnny, Isaiah, Jennika, and Sean come over and hugged me. The guys trapped me in between a good three-man hug, with poor Jennika trying to get out from the middle of it. I caught her around the waist and hugged her tightly, not letting her escape. She kissed my check and held my face, looking at me with great affection. She had thanked me a week earlier for standing by Lucy during this time. I had told her that I wish I had known sooner but when I thought about that later I realized it was kind of a lie.
I had changed a lot in the last year. If Lucy’s pregnancy had been presented to be when she was only a few weeks along, I would most likely have done something that would have completely sealed my fate with that girl. As the most giant jerk of all time.
“Where is she?” I asked, looking around for her among my friends. Jennika pointed to a spot on the couch that Lucy was buried in. Her stomach was so gigantic, but she was so overwhelmed by it that it ended up being cute. Her ankles were another story. Or should I say cankles? The Cankle Queen was sitting on her fluffy couch-throne, looking miserable with her feet up on the coffee table. She looked like she would scream if I got too close, or maybe just explode. I handed the ice to Sean and walked over to Lucy, sitting gently on the couch. She didn’t even look at me, just growled and closed her eyes.
“How are you feeling?” I spoke in a super-sweet voice. She looked up at me and pointed to her legs, which I was working very hard not to look at.
“You have such beautiful legs, sweetness.” She grunted and elbowed me, not even bothering to go for a full punch. Her feet were at least two sizes bigger than normal and her ankles completely disappeared into legs that resembled oak tree trunks. They looked like they would wiggle back and forth like a waterbed if I touched them.
I briefly considered trying it, then thought better of it. I was really liking being alive.
“You’re a jerk. My maternity pants won’t even fit. I’m wearing my Dad’s shorts.” She straightened her arms and tried to escape the couch, but gave up and just went back to looking miserable. I snorted and kissed the top of her head before running away so she couldn’t yell at me.
She looked pitiful. In the last week she had gained a ton of water weight. Her face was red and she was always grumpy. Actually, that was wrong. Old men were grumpy. Lucy was mean. I remembered the first time she had taken me to church and she happily played with all the children there, making funny animal noise so that they would laugh. Today she looked like she would have liked to eat one of those small children for a snack. I couldn’t look at her without getting a snarl and an angry correction. Then she would apologize for being mean before she turned around to snap at someone else.
I walked to the kitchen, where Mr. Peterson was mixing some punch. I felt a sudden moment of panic, remembering the last time I had seen him. I had been running past him as his daughter screamed at me to get away from her. I figured he was sitting there making me punch so I might as well say “hi.”
“Hello sir.” I walked into the kitchen holding my hand out for him to take. I knew my Grandma would h
ave smacked me if I hadn’t done it. Mr. Peterson turned around to greet me with a smile and arms open wide, dismissing my polite handshake in favor of a hug.
“How have you been? You look great, David.” He patted my back. Lucy’s dad smiled generously at me, but I noticed he looked older, a little less trusting. I could only imagine what the last year had been like for him. For the first time, it occurred to me that Lucy and I weren’t the only ones who had changed.
“I’ve been good. How about you?” I cringed the second I said it but he laughed.
“Oh, well. It’s been a hard year, but we get through things, we depend on God’s grace and we keep moving.” He smiled at me, a hint of amusement on his lips. He reached for some 7Up to pour into the punch bowl. I felt comfortable there, standing in front of him, like I could trust him. The ring around my neck suddenly got heavy. I rubbed at it and her father looked up at me. He probably thought I was having a heart attack.
“You okay David?”
“Yeah. I mean, yes sir. I actually have something I want to give you.” I reached behind my neck and pulled at the black leather string I had worn as a necklace for the last year. I untied it, slid the little purity ring off, and handed it to Lucy’s father. My fingers shook, waiting for him to drop kick me out of his house. But I braved it and tried to explain.
“She gave this to me. The night of the prom. Before I left.” I felt embarrassed for confessing this to him, but I also figured I owed him an explanation.
“She did?” He gave me a strange look that looked like a cross between confusion and rage. I couldn’t be sure which.
“Yeah, I didn’t take it well. It freaked me out, honestly.” I put my hand up to the top of my head and patted down the back, making sure it wasn’t puffy. “That’s what our fight was about.”
“Wow.” Mr. Peterson looked down at the little ring he had given his daughter. He shook his head slightly, looking irritated. “That girl!” He closed his hand around the ring, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath.
“After you left, Lucy became a different person. She was suddenly hell-bent on doing everything she could to shock us. She would stay out all night and come home drunk. Once, she didn’t even come home. We had to go find her; she was asleep in a park.”
“I didn’t realize all that was going on. I would have done something.”
“David, you were a great influence. You respected her. But what happened after you were gone was her decision and her responsibility. It had nothing to do with you.”
I sighed heavily, refusing to let the blame be taken completely off of me.
“I have kept that ring around my neck this whole year, hoping that I could still be hers, that I could be with her forever. It's like I need to be around her, and the ring kind of helped.” I looked up at him from the top of my eyes, still praying to the ground, begging it to swallow me up. I didn’t know how he would respond to the confession that I was basically obsessed with his daughter. He looked at me like he was weighing me. Then he spoke like he had made some kind of decision.
“I have something for you.” He turned around and went upstairs. I stood in his kitchen, waiting uncomfortably. Was he going to get a shotgun or what?
Mr. Peterson returned after a few moments, holding my black leather makeshift necklace for me to take. But when I grabbed it I felt a different weight. A new ring hung from the string. I held the old-fashioned wedding ring between my thumb and forefinger. It was beautiful, with a little diamond nestled in a gold square. Flanking the gold square were six of the tiniest diamonds I had ever seen, three on each side. They formed two little triangles. I looked up at him, then back down at the ring, then at him again.
“What’s this?”
“That is Lucy’s grandma’s wedding ring. The woman she was named after.” He put the ring in my palm and closed my fingers over it. “Lucy has told us, from the age of three, that she wanted this as her wedding ring. So it was hers when her Grandmother died.”
“Wow, sir, I can’t—“ I was going to say I couldn’t accept, but I realized that I wanted it. I wanted that ring more than almost anything else in the world.
“Thank you, sir.” I said it quietly, waiting for him to scream, “Psyche!“ I was still waiting for the whooping I deserved. But he just nodded his head, with a smile on his face. I re-secured the necklace around my neck and tucked it back under my shirt.
“You are a good man, David. I would be honored to have you as a son.”
My throat turned into lead, instantly. I could feel my eyes get hot with tears. Totally failed on holding them back, too.
“Are you sure? I’m kind of a punk.”
“I think you have more than proved yourself to me. No one is perfect. And I would always prefer a punk to a jerk.” He spoke warmly.
“Thank you sir.” I said again, putting my hand up to my chest to feel the ring. I had done this many times over the last year, but this time the ring felt different.
Also, I was pretty sure that Lucy’s father had just proposed to me.
The tender moment was broken in the next instant.
“Dad!” A weak, strangled voice spoke from behind us. We both looked over at the doorway and saw Lucy, standing there, her shorts completely wet, dripping water on the ground.
“My water broke.” Then she grabbed her stomach and bent over in pain.
28. BIRTH IS RAD
Mass Chaos. A bomb could have gone off in the middle of the house and none of us would have noticed, or cared. Johnny, Jennika, and Evelyn started running around, getting keys, jackets, and whatever else they could get a hold of.
“Aw, Luce, those were my shorts,” Mr. Peterson tried to lighten the mood but Lucy just groaned and sat on the ground. Her face made me suspect she was in an indescribable amount of pain.
“Oh, this is just the beginning, girl.” Lucy’s mom stepped over her and grabbed her purse off the kitchen counter.
“What?” Lucy whimpered.
“These are the small contractions, sweetheart.” Mrs. Peterson smiled again, looking like she might be enjoying this a little too much. “David, why don’t you help her to the car?” She gave me a motherly pat on the back and I realized I hadn’t breathed in over thirty seconds. I sucked in deeply and ran over to Lucy. No clue what to say or how to help but I practically slid over to her like I was trying to get to home plate.
“Wow, this is it!” It almost came out as a squeal. A manly squeal, of course. I put my arm under Lucy’s, held on to her back, and helped her stand up. The girl had to have weighed forty pounds more than the last time I’d held her in my arms. Plus, she was a totally different shape, now. I suppressed a grunt as I helped her up, and I almost lost an eyeball. I led her to the front door that Jennika held open for us.
Mrs. Peterson went flitting past us like a ballerina, gaily greeting her husband who just drove up with the car.
“Geeze Mom, you’re freaking me out.”
“Well it’s not every day someone gets a grandchild!” She looked like she could have done a few jumping jacks, just to shake off some of that energy before she opened the car door for her daughter to get in. I lowered Lucy in and closed the door behind her, then ran to the other side of the car. But when I got there two other people had already filled in the left side. Jennika and Evelyn were looking up at me with sad puppy dog eyes, begging me to let them ride in the car with Luce.
“Sad pretty girl look isn’t fair!” I said through gritted teeth, having a slight inkling to just chuck them out and tell Mr. Peterson to step on it. They both started jumping up and down on their butts like they had just had the final word.
“I’m going to be right behind you,” I whispered to Lucy while I pinched Jennika then ran out of arms length.
My car was already filled to the brim with excited faces. I dug in my pockets to get my keys and that was the first time I realized that I was shaking from… panic? Excitement? Maybe fear. I started the car and looked in my rear view mirror at Johnny, Michelle, a
nd Sean. In the front seat, Isaiah was looking at me like he was going to stab me if I didn’t step on the gas.
This baby was going to be loved, that was a definite.
“Has she decided yet if she’s gonna’ keep it?” Michelle asked from behind me. The question was a reminder I wanted to swat away like an irritating fly.
“I don’t know,” I answered coldly, hoping she would get the drift that I didn’t want to talk about it.
“Let's just steal the baby and run away.” Isaiah offered the idea like it was common sense. I looked over at him and saw that he was playing the piano on his legs with his fingers, a nervous twitch he had always had. I just had enough time to appreciate how much he cared for Lucy before we all heard a song suddenly coming from somewhere in the car. The tone was muffled but I made it out as one of the cheesiest church songs on the planet.
Our God is an awesome God He reigns
From heaven above
With wisdom, power and love
Our God is an awesome God
Isaiah was sneering at Sean, assuming that it was coming from his phone. But his face froze as he felt a vibration in his pocket.
“I will kill her.” He flicked it open and, in the meanest voice I had ever heard, he spoke to Evelyn.
“Woman, what did I say about changing my ring tone?”
We couldn’t keep it in any longer. The car started swerving because I was furiously wiping tears from my eyes so I could see where I was going. Johnny was laughing so hard he was clutching his side from the pain, his head was on Michelle’s lap and her hand was hitting it softly, fits of pure evil joy coming out in bursts. Sean’s shoulders went up and down silently, but he patted Isaiah’s shoulder comfortingly.
“What?” Isaiah covered his free ear and pressed his phone up to the other. We swallowed our laughter and let out little squeaks every few seconds.
My Stupid Girl Page 39