“Me and you? Friends?” I faked a laugh. “That would have never worked.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re you. You’re beauty-pageant, mansion-by-the-pond material, and I’m the one who quietly mocks your kind from across town. It’s a delicate balance. It would have been detrimental to our health to upset it.”
She looked at me with amusement and curiosity, but also a hint of grief. Grief for herself, or me, or her baby. It was hard to tell. It was oddly not Carla. Truthfully, it was a familiar despondency. Like looking in a mirror.
“I don’t think that’s me anymore,” she whispered, her voice floating through the crisp air. “Something changed when I got pregnant. I can’t explain it. It’s like, all the things I cared about before seem so ridiculous now.”
“Like what?”
“Like prom. Before I got pregnant, I would have gone dress shopping with my friends and taken pictures and danced with my boyfriend, and it would have been the most exciting thing to happen to me all year. But it wasn’t like that. I wore a maternity dress I had to buy online, and my friends didn’t even talk to me, and I didn’t want to take pictures because I looked bloated. And Snake, well . . . let’s just say the evening was a far cry from ‘Ohmigod, this is so romantic.’ I mean, we danced and everything, but none of it felt the way it was supposed to.” She sighed, staring down at her stomach.
New Carla was having quite the uncomfortable effect on me. It was similar to compassion. Sympathy, maybe? Whatever it was, I didn’t like it. Carla and I couldn’t . . . get along. A bearable Carla who was potentially half friend material defied the laws of sanity. But I was understanding her in ways I hadn’t before. And her life was almost as twisted and senseless as mine. And I just . . .
I couldn’t hate her the way I wanted to.
“What did it feel like?” I asked.
She glanced at me, chewing on her bottom lip. A guilty expression took over and she drew nervous circles on her belly. “That’s actually why I wanted to meet you here. I wanted to talk to you about that night.” She took a breath, readying herself for what I anticipated was something I really didn’t want to hear. If it dealt with Snake, it would be too much for me. I would care, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t let myself. She spoke anyway. “I kissed Snake after prom.”
She looked away instantly, watching the catfish fight over a piece of food. A sensation of jealousy rushed over me, but I forced myself to repress it. Dr. Rachelle wouldn’t have advised the burial of emotion, but it seemed like the right thing to do. And though I was hardly in the business of doing the right thing, Carla’s guilt made me want to try. It made me want to try, because she shouldn’t have felt guilt for wanting to be happy. Hurting others to survive was a Flashburn epidemic. God knew we were all infected.
“Did it change the way you feel about him?” I asked. The second I said it, I realized that I had been so caught up in Snake, so caught up in me, that I had never stopped to ask Carla how she felt about any of it. My depression-centered selfishness had struck again.
“Yes.” She said it boldly, as if discovering her voice for the first time. “He didn’t kiss me back the way he used to. He just kind of looked at me like I was an obligation, or something. And it hurt my feelings at the time, but looking back, I get it. We’ve been forcing something that’s just . . . not there. I’ve been trying to love him for Little Man, but I don’t. And he doesn’t. It’s not that consuming, passionate, can’t-breathe-without-each-other intensity that love is supposed to be. I’d rather us be apart and okay than together and not. Except that, right now, he’s not okay. And I think you might have something to do with that.”
“Me?” I asked, wondering how much Snake had told her. There was an air of freedom to being known, but it was a staggering freedom. Being known made me vulnerable, and I didn’t want the shame that came with it. But if anyone besides Snake were to know me, I was starting to be glad it was Carla.
“He’s depressed,” she whispered, as if it were a scandalous revelation.
“Really?”
I played it cool, but deep down was in sidesplitting laughter at the notion of Snake’s depression being news.
“He won’t leave his room for anything other than school. He even called out of work this week. When he came over to my house to pick up his paycheck, he said all of two words the entire time he was there.” She shook her head. “I went to his house and demanded that he tell me what was going on, and he said you guys aren’t talking anymore. That he doesn’t feel like himself. I thought it was pathetic at first, but now I think it’s sad. He’s so blatantly in love with you, Reggie. He’s miserable.”
I could picture Snake buried beneath his covers, countless packages of Twizzlers emptied on his floor. I bet he drew the blinds. I bet he lay in darkness and listened to the disturbing lameness of the Renegade Dystopia until his body got too heavy to bother keeping him awake. If Carla was right, he was in full Disconnect mode. He was frozen. Unreachable. He was broken because I was scared. I thought I had mastered the art of hating, but knowing that I was the reason for Snake’s Disconnect was an entirely new kind.
“He’ll get over it,” I muttered, brushing away the image.
“I don’t think he will. I’ve never seen him this upset.”
“I can’t be with him, Carla,” I snapped. “We would never work. He’s having a hard time seeing it, but the sooner he realizes it, the better. If you want, I’ll text him and tell him to stop acting like a wimp and start paying more attention to you.”
“I don’t want him paying more attention to me. That’s not the point I’m trying to make. What I’m trying to say is, he’s better when you’re around. He’s happy. Believe it or not, as mean as you are, you can change someone for the better. That’s no small feat, especially when that someone is Snake.” She rubbed her stomach, a calmness in her hands. In her eyes. She was at peace about the way things had turned out. The girl with the most to fear, and she wasn’t scared. Unfortunately for me, it was an admirable bravery. “I don’t know what’s holding you back. I don’t know if it’s me, or Little Man, or your dad, or yourself. What I do know is, our lives are messy and weird and won’t work out perfectly for any of us. We’re all entirely screwed no matter what, so we might as well do what makes us happy. Snake loves you. It’s as simple as that. And if you love him, then love him. You two are miserable enough together. Without each other, you’re nightmares.”
I laughed, and she laughed, and amid the madness of being us, it didn’t feel so out of place. The catfish bumped the dock underneath our feet, water splashing onto our skin as we soaked in the insanity of being young. And terrified. And depressed and pregnant and erratic and alive.
“Is this your official blessing?” I joked, tossing a pebble into the water.
“No. You still stole my boyfriend, whore,” she quipped, smiling while she attempted to fake a glare. “This is my ‘I won’t write dirty things about you on bathroom mirrors’ speech.”
“If that courtesy is expected to go both ways, I’m going to need a washcloth and some cleaning solution.”
She smiled, her golden eyes fixated on me like she was glad I was there. Like she was glad our messes collided. “Are we friends now?”
“No.”
“How about now?”
“No. We can be friendly acquaintances, but that’s all you get.”
“I’ll take it.”
We sat side by side, and no one said a word. It was frustratingly pleasant.
“By the way,” she said, the sun striking gold in her eyes, “if you do end up dating Snake, don’t have sex. You’ll get pregnant and die.”
“Mean Girls?”
“That movie is remarkably educational.”
I didn’t know if I would open up to Snake again. I wasn’t sure if I would take the hurt and the love and wait for the impact to kill me. But it didn’t matter. What mattered was that the sun was still the sun. What mattered was that I was breathing swamp
y, humid air that smelled like nature and piss, and I hated Carla in the good way, and I wasn’t alone.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“REGGIE?” CARLA SHOUTED INTO THE PHONE, her voice nervous and panicked. I could hear low rumblings in the background. “I need to ask you a huge favor!”
It was Saturday morning. I was resting in the window seat in my dad’s hospital room, my journal perched in my lap. He was still comatose, his machines beeping and clicking like they had been for two weeks. His heart hadn’t given up on him yet.
The moment Carla’s name had flashed across my screen, I’d considered not answering. One afternoon at the pond and a few semikind sentiments, and suddenly I was her go-to person. She’d texted me on Wednesday to “make sure I was doing okay” and left me a message on Thursday to “see how I was holding up.” She needed to get a life. Then again, I needed to be meaner.
I answered the phone anyway, because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings or be roped into another waterside heart-to-heart. I rued the day I became a good person (see: worst kinds of people).
“I’m a little busy,” I replied, adding a sentence to my entry. “Call one of your friends. Olivia, or someone.”
“You know we aren’t talking anymore.” Her voice quivered like she had been crying all morning. “I want it to be you.”
“Want what to be me?”
“I’m at the hospital,” she said, as a man’s voice demanded a glass of water in the background. “I started having contractions during the night. I need you to come be my coach like you did in birthing class.”
“You can’t be serious.” My disbelieving laugh echoed into the speaker. I paused and waited for her to say that she was kidding. She didn’t. “You’re serious?”
“My stepmom can’t get off work in time, my dad is no help, and pigs would have to fly over a frozen hell before I would let Snake watch me give birth.” She yelled something to her dad away from the phone before bringing it back to her lips. “I just need someone to hold my hand and give encouragements. You did it once before.”
“That was pretend, Carla,” I said. My mom raised a brow at me as she walked into the room with a bag of McDonald’s. She handed me a hot chocolate and mouthed something indecipherable when she noticed my journal.
“Please,” Carla pleaded. I didn’t have to see her to know that she was crying. “I can’t do this by myself.”
She blubbered into the phone, a nurse spewing information behind her. I heard the words dilated and pushing. The reality of giving birth was already making me queasy, and I wasn’t even the one who had to do it.
“Is Snake there?”
“He’s on his way. Please, come.”
Good deeds were the absolute worst. Worse than depression. Worse than waiting rooms. Worse than the worst kinds of people. They were the worst because they were compulsive. And as much as I’d never intended to yell push while a girl I barely tolerated gave birth to the spawn of the guy who made me care, good deeds and pesky compassion trumped my aversions.
“Are you at Central?” I asked.
It was like I could hear her smile. “Yeah. Second floor.”
“I’m on the third floor with my dad. I’ll come down.”
“Thank you!” she yelled. “Thank you so much! You don’t even know.”
“Don’t thank me yet. I haven’t decided how encouraging my encouragements will be.”
“I’m sure you’ll say the right thing. You’re not as bad as you think you are.”
The call clicked out.
My mom was digging into a bacon and cheese bagel, highlighting passages in her devotional book. “Who was that?” she asked.
“Carla.” I closed my journal and slid it under the cushion. “She’s having her baby.”
She glanced at me, and where there should have been self-righteous judgment, there was an unbelievable lack of disapproval. Her hand glided along a verse as she painted it neon yellow. “She wants you to be there? I didn’t realize the two of you were friends.”
“We’re not,” I said, though I was starting to lose my footing. If I kept up with these Carla-inspired good deeds, I was going to have to ditch my friendless image. That might not have been such a bad thing. “She doesn’t have anyone else. It’s not right that she should have to go through that alone.”
“Will Snake be there?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Good.”
I wondered if I’d heard her correctly.
“Good?”
“Yes. He’s taking responsibility for himself.” She looked at me, the glare from the window making it difficult to see her eyes behind her glasses. “I still don’t like him. But I’ve been doing a lot of praying, and I’ve discussed the situation with Frankie, and you know what they say—God is the giver of second chances. Who knows? Maybe there’s a good boy underneath all that rebellion.”
“There is,” I whispered.
She smiled. “There better be.”
If it weren’t for the shrill beep of the machines and the sunlight casting heat against my back and my palms sweaty with shock and nerves, I wouldn’t have believed that the woman speaking was my mother. My mother who always kept her distance. My mother who never tried to understand anyone. And she was giving Snake, possibly the hardest heart to learn, a second chance. Maybe I wasn’t the only one getting better.
“He’s not a bad guy,” I said as I moved to the door. She was watching me leave and not trying to stop me. And I think she understood, or at least was trying to. It was all I could ask for. “He’s no more flawed than the rest of us.”
“Maybe not,” she said quietly, glancing at the clock across the room.
“Mom?” I looked into her eyes, and for once I felt like they were really seeing me. “You quit your job for me, didn’t you? To take care of me?”
She didn’t look surprised. I think she knew I’d figure it out eventually, even if it took longer than we both would have liked. “Everything I do is for you, sweetheart.”
Against myself, against reason, I felt the urge to hug her. She didn’t know how to take it when I dove and wrapped my arms around her body, burying my head in her wiry hair. I felt her tremble, but I knew she wouldn’t cry. Like me, she was sick of crying.
“You should go,” she whispered against my neck. “I think Little Carla could use a friend right about now.”
I nodded before running out the door. And for once, I didn’t feel shame in what I was leaving behind.
When I made it to Carla’s room on the second floor, her dad was seated in a chair against the wall. He was clad in a flashy three-piece suit that made him look like a secret service man avowed to protect Carla’s royal baby. His graying hair was combed over with so much force I didn’t question that he was balding and insecure (see: pond people).
Carla perked up when she noticed me in the doorway, her hair plastered to her face with sweat. There was a lump of needles jabbing into her arms. She waved me over. “You don’t know how happy I am to see you,” she said, her makeup-less eyes puffy and bulging. In the past two months, I had come to know many versions of Carla I didn’t know before. Angry Carla. Strong Carla. Independent Woman Carla. But none was as pitiable as Crybaby Carla. Even that version wasn’t too intolerable, though. “They said I’m going to start pushing soon.”
“Can’t wait,” I muttered.
Her phone buzzed on the table. “Will you get that for me?” I handed it to her, and she read the screen, relief washing over her. “Snake’s here. He’s in the lobby down the hall.”
Her dad got to his feet, towering over me—my head was at his stomach. No wonder Carla blindly obeyed everything he said. He was a real-life giant. “He’s not going to be in here for the birth,” he reiterated, as if to remind Carla he was in charge of her child and her life and her ex-boyfriend and anything related to her at all.
“I know, Dad,” she groaned, making a shoot-me motion where only I could see. “Neither are you, so you can go w
ait with him now.”
“But I—”
“Go, Dad. Seriously.”
He scowled, eyeing Carla as if he were about to pitch a rebuttal like he was at one of his business meetings. Then he huffed and stormed out of the room toward the waiting area.
Carla sighed exaggeratedly. “I can’t believe he listened. I thought I was going to have to call my stepmom and have her threaten him.”
“He doesn’t seem easily intimidated.”
“He’s not. When it comes to my stepmom, however, he’s as easily manipulated as a five-year-old boy.”
She rested her head against the pillow and closed her eyes, both arms wrapped around her stomach as her forehead crinkled into a bunch of little lines. “This hurts so bad,” she moaned. “Finals are next week. He couldn’t have waited to come until after then? He’s been in there nine months; what’s another week?”
“I don’t think it works like that,” I said, leaning against the armrest. “And you might as well get used to having him around at finals, because he’ll be here for all your finals to come.”
“I asked you here to be encouraging, not to scare me to death.”
“I told you not to trust me.”
“Well, I do trust you.” She opened her eyes and looked at me, completely unguarded. “In spite of the whole Snake fiasco, you’re one of the few people I trust. Don’t go acting like we’re not sort of friends.”
I opened my mouth to counter with some sarcastic remark that would delay the inevitable truth that maybe she was right. But I never got the chance.
Two nurses appeared with the doctor, informing us that it was time to start the miracle process that was hardly a miracle when you considered the fact that an entire floor of the hospital was dedicated to women all doing the exact same thing and rearing the exact same result. But, whatever, we would go with miracle.
I sat beside her head and stared at nothing but the wall. I was sure that if I even thought about rotating at any sort of angle that would land me a glimpse of the unspeakable, I would turn into a pillar of salt like that lady from the Bible. Stuff started happening, and I mental-blocked every last bit of it. The only thing I didn’t forget was the way Carla looked at me and said, “I can’t do this. I’m scared to be alone.”
Definitions of Indefinable Things Page 20