Girls on the Verge

by Sharon Biggs Waller

  Léo stops kissing me, but he doesn’t move back. He keeps his forehead against mine, his fingers light against my cheek. My heart melts into a puddle. “Kiss me again,” I say. He does, and I never want it to stop. I want to stay on the bank forever, Léo holding me, hearing nothing but his breathing and the rush of the creek and the sound of the wind in the trees.

  And then nausea hits me. My stomach starts to feel like a piece of paper being crumpled up into a ball, and I pull away from him.

  “Camille?” Léo tries to take my hand, but I shake him loose. I sprint to the tree and throw up in the grass, puking my brains out to the point of tears. Léo is there at my side, patting my back.

  “I’m okay,” I say. “I’m sorry.” I’m beyond embarrassed. I never puke, ever. Even when I’m sick.

  “I think we should go to the … the clinic … what’s the word? Hospital?”

  “No, no, I’m okay,” I say. I literally almost just threw up in this French boy’s mouth. “I must have eaten something bad at the party. I have a really sensitive stomach.”

  Léo doesn’t look convinced. “Still, I think I should take you, Camille.”

  “If it happens again, I promise I’ll see a doctor.” I’m trying my damnedest to sound casual.

  He takes hold of my hands and rubs them between his own. “What can I do?”

  “Gosh, I don’t know? What’s a guy to do after a girl pukes right after he kisses her?” I try to joke, but it falls flat and Léo doesn’t laugh. “Um, you can walk me back?”

  I try to act like it’s no big deal. Like hey, this happens all the time, it’s an American thing. But if it’s possible to die of embarrassment, then I don’t have much longer to live.

  THREE

  When we return to the party, Bea and Mateo are ready to leave. Léo and I sit in the back of Mateo’s car, and Léo holds my hand the entire way. When Mateo pulls up to Léo’s host parents’ house, he gives me a quick hug. “I’ll see you at Willow,” he says. He gets out of the car and shuts the door, giving a little wave through the window. He stands on the drive with his hands in his pockets as we pull away. I watch until we turn the corner and I can’t see him anymore.

  Bea twists around in her seat. “Someone’s got a boyfriend,” she says in a singsong voice.

  “Actually, I’m not so sure about that,” I say. “I kind of threw up after he kissed me.”

  “What?” Mateo says. He starts laughing. “Only you, Camille.”

  “Yeah, thanks, Mateo,” I say. “You’re such a good friend.”

  “What happened?” Bea asks, alarmed. “Are you okay? Should I tell my mom? She’ll know what to do.”

  “No, don’t,” I say. “I feel fine now. Your mom will make a big deal about it, and I’m embarrassed enough as it is.”

  “No kidding,” Mateo says.

  Bea punches him in the arm. “Stop it. Camille doesn’t feel well. Have some compassion.”

  “So what happened?” Mateo asks. “I mean, after you puked on him.”

  “She didn’t puke on him!” Bea says.

  “I was too mortified to do anything but joke about it. I guess I’ll see him at Willow? Maybe we’ll go out or something. At least I hope that will happen.”

  “It will,” Bea says. “Don’t mention it. Pretend it never happened and it will all be okay.”

  I hope she’s right, but I’d like to know how a girl could come back from puking in front of a guy she’s crushing on.

  * * *

  It’s late. When we get to Bea’s house, we fall into bed right away, Bea on her twin bed under the window, and me on the matching bed that Bea has called mine since we first started having sleepovers in the fourth grade.

  “So I noticed your parents didn’t come,” Bea says.

  “Nope,” I say, like I don’t give a flying fuck. “Apparently, Mom had to take Chris to some science thing, and my dad fell asleep.”

  “Gosh, Camille, I’m sorry.” Bea knows what my parents are like, and it upsets her that they don’t take me as seriously as they do Chris.

  I shrug. “Whatever.”

  “Well, I’m excited that you get to spend a whole week with Léo at Willow!” Bea says.

  “He’s so cute, right? I wish you were going, too,” I say.

  “No way. I’ll never be in the elite level,” Bea says. “I’m not sure I ever want to be. It’s, like, too much work, and I doubt I’ll have the time, especially now that I’m a teen youth minister and all.”

  “Not everybody can do everything,” I say.

  “True dat,” she says.

  Silence.

  “Um. Did you just say true dat?”

  “Yeah,” she says, and then bursts into laughter.

  There’s a knock on our door. “Girls, go to sleep,” Bea’s dad says.

  “Good night, Camille,” Bea whispers. Her bedsprings squeak as she turns over.

  “Night, Bea,” I whisper back.

  * * *

  Another stomachache wakes me up, and I have to run to the bathroom. I kneel in front of the toilet and hang my head over it, but I don’t throw up this time. After a minute, the nausea stops and I go back to bed. I lie in a ball and hold my stomach. Bea’s breathing and the little mumbles she makes when she sleeps seem louder than usual and I can’t fall asleep. I don’t know what this could be. Stomach flus don’t last this long, and I don’t think I ate anything to make me throw up this much. I reach under the pillow and take out my phone and tap reasons for vomiting into the search bar. A bunch of answers come up on Doctors.com: high blood pressure, food poisoning, flu, appendicitis, something called syncope … pregnancy.

  My heart pounds, and my hands start to sweat. I start counting back on my phone’s calendar. I missed my period in May, and I should have started a couple of days ago. I start turning cold. Really, really cold.

  No. No, no, no, no, no.

  I sit up. This can’t be. No one gets pregnant on their first time. Or do they? I google it.

  Yes, they do.

  It only takes one eager sperm to hit an egg.

  There’s a movie they make everyone watch in health class that shows a cartoon of a bunch of sperm wiggling their way toward the cervix, through the uterus, and up the fallopian tubes, racing in a fertility marathon to be the first to get to that egg. Over and over in my head, I keep rolling that film. Is that what’s going on in my body? If so, I’m at least two months pregnant.

  I get up and tiptoe to Bea’s bathroom. I pull my pajama shorts down and sit on the toilet. I hear Bea’s dad cough, which makes me jump. The air conditioner clicks on, and cold air rushes out of the floor register and blows over my bare feet. I cross my arms and hug myself hard. The last time I felt this afraid of my body was when I started my period two years ago.

  Maybe my period will start tomorrow, now that the stress of the play is over. I don’t think I can stand to wait that long. Hesitantly, I press my fists against my stomach, and then I push, increasing the pressure. I really don’t know why I’m doing it, like I’m somehow going to “activate” my period by kneading my abs? Then, I push my forefinger in my vagina a little bit, to check if anything is coming out. My eye catches a framed photograph of Bea from fourth grade hanging just next to the door. Above it is a piece Bea cross-stitched back in seventh grade—it says HE IS RISEN. I am suddenly keenly aware that I am in my best friend’s bathroom with my finger in my vagina. My best friend who never, ever, under any circumstances talks about her period. I take my finger out, but there isn’t any blood.

  Suddenly, there’s a knock at the door. The yelp that escapes my mouth most certainly woke up the whole house.

  “Camille, you okay in there?” Bea says through the door.

  “Um, yeah! I’ll be right out!” I flush the toilet and quickly wash my hands. I make a point of not looking at myself in the mirror.

  When I open the door, Bea is standing there with a look of concern on her face. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Oh, yea
h. I thought I started my period, and I didn’t want to get blood on your sheets.” These are not words I ever say to Bea.

  Bea’s face pulls back in a grimace. “Camille, ew.”

  We crawl back into bed, and minutes later, I can tell Bea has fallen asleep.

  I lie awake for the rest of the night.

  FOUR

  JUNE 30

  An hour outside of our hometown, we see a billboard: WAFFLE FACTORY AHEAD! Annabelle shakes her go-cup. “I need coffee. You mind if we stop at ye old Waffle Factory?”

  “I could eat,” I say. I look over my shoulder, and Bea is nodding.

  Annabelle takes the exit to Waffle Factory; we park and go in. The restaurant echoes with the clatter of plates and conversation and smells like maple syrup and bacon. I find the bathroom, and when I come out, Annabelle’s standing by the door, clutching a foam coffee cup. Bea is in the souvenir side of the store.

  “It’s like fifteen minutes for a table,” Annabelle says. “I’m going to wait outside, okay?”

  I nod and head into the souvenir store where Bea is looking at a rack of jewelry charms, all hallmarks of Texas’s pride: a tiny western boot, a Texas star, a cactus, a horse, a posy of bluebonnets.

  “You would not believe the awesome junk in here, Camille,” she says. She picks up a plastic western boot. The handle of a toilet brush pokes out of the top. “The spur even twirls.” She spins the spur with the tip of her finger and grins.

  Bea and I have always loved looking at kitschy knickknacks. We love going into dollar stores, thrift stores, and souvenir shops to look at the random stuff whose ridiculousness is undeniably adorable.

  Today, at least for me, not so much. The fact that Bea can pretend nothing happened, that we’ll go on being friends and doing goofy stuff we’ve always done, makes me angry. I look at that toilet brush. It’s not cute. It’s ugly and stupid and it’s supposed to clean a toilet and that’s all. I want to grab it out of her hands and hide it so no one can ever buy it to stick in some hunting cabin or whatever.

  She pulls the brush out and waves it like a wand.

  “That’s the dumbest thing I ever saw,” I say.

  Her face falls. The spur wobbles to a stop.

  “I know it’s stupid, obvi,” she says. “I was just trying to cheer you up.”

  “This sudden change of heart doesn’t have anything to do with Annabelle helping me?”

  She drops her arm, and the brush clatters to the floor.

  “So that’s a yes, then?”

  She shakes her head, but she doesn’t look at me.

  “You weren’t there for me, Bea. Do you know how excruciating it was to ask Annabelle Ponsonby, the person I admire more than anyone in the Globe community, including Mr. Knight, to help me? Do you know how that felt?”

  She shrugs and flicks the spur again.

  “There’s no cheering me up, at least not for now,” I say. “Laughing over a western boot with a toilet brush isn’t going to make me forget that I’m pregnant and need to drive hours out of the way to get rid of it.” I bend down, pick up the toilet brush, and shove it back into the boot.

  FIVE

  JUNE 24

  I get dressed for acting class, put my hair into a ponytail. I pick up the Willow pin, which I’ll have to give back to the Knights. I’ll tell them that they made a mistake and that they should pick someone else to go to Willow. I’ll have to text Léo and tell him I’m not coming and that we probably won’t get a chance to see each other again, because he’s leaving for France straight after Willow. He’ll want to know why, and I won’t have an answer. I’ll never get a chance to take the little train into that cave with him. I’ll never climb the stairs to the cathedral and look at the valley stretching out below, holding his hand, palm to palm in that old-fashioned way of his. Kids at the Globe will look at me like I’m the world’s biggest idiot; that I gave up an opportunity they would kill to have. I’ll be known as the girl who was too scared to go to Willow.

  I pretend that it doesn’t matter. That Willow isn’t that great, that it’s probably a drag having to do those embarrassing acting exercises like pretending to be a potato and making dumb faces. That the scouts and agents and college recruiters won’t be interested in me. That the Knights make Willow sound cooler than it actually is. That Léo only wants a vacation girlfriend.

  The Willow pin blurs in my vision, and then from nowhere I start crying hard. I put my hands over my mouth, but I can’t stop the sobs from finding their way out. My face is wet with tears, my nose is running; the sadness and shame are washing out of me in water and snot.

  I want so bad for someone to be here, to put their arms around me, to tell me I’m not alone, that I’m not a horrible person. The only person who has ever been able to do that for me is Bea.

  * * *

  I don’t even realize that class has ended until Bea asks, “You need a ride home?”

  “Actually, that’d be great. But can you give me a minute?”

  “Sure!” she replies. “I’ll be out front.”

  I watch her leave, dreading the conversation I have to have next. I go up to Mr. Knight and his wife, Tracy. “Hey, Tracy. Hi, Mr. Knight. Can I talk to you?”

  “Camille! Just the young woman I was hoping to catch up with.” Mr. Knight moves a stack of scripts over and sits on the corner of his desk. “Have you chosen your monologue for Leave?” Every actor going to Willow does a special monologue for an event called To Take a Tedious Leave, which is a quote from The Merchant of Venice. I had planned on Helena’s monologue from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but that’s shot now.

  “Actually, I’ve decided not to go to Willow.” I take out the pin and set it on his desk.

  Tracy looks at Mr. Knight and then at me. “This is a joke, right?” she says. “The camp is next week. Kiddo, you have to go. Willow is a huge honor and you deserve it.”

  Mr. Knight shakes his head. “Camille—”

  “Please don’t make me explain why,” I say quickly. “I’ve made my mind up, and I’m not going.”

  “Nothing I can say will make you change your mind?” Mr. Knight says.

  I stare at the ground and shake my head. Tracy takes the pin off the desk and then puts it back down. “I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t want to act anymore; I want to do other things. Do I always have to be the same?”

  “No, you don’t,” Mr. Knight says. “But we wouldn’t be doing our jobs if we didn’t try to convince you to go. Are you coming back to the Globe?”

  “I don’t think there’s any point,” I whisper.

  Mr. Knight reaches for the pin, turns it over in his fingers.

  “I have to disagree,” Tracy says. “Students with talent like yours are the reasons why we do this job. You are an excellent actor, Camille.”

  “I agree with Tracy,” Mr. Knight says. “You’re the best we have at the Globe right now. I think it bears saying that you have that extra something that other great actors have.”

  I wish they would take the pin and stop talking. “Thank you for the opportunity.”

  “I wish you the best, Camille.” Mr. Knight holds out his hand.

  I take his hand and we shake. Tracy doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t even look at me. I pick up my bag and head for the door.

  I leave the theater, and I don’t look back. All I want to do is go home, but I don’t know what I’ll do there. I spot Bea, and I really wish I hadn’t accepted a ride.

  She clomps over in the sky-high cork wedges she loves so much. Her dark ponytail swings back and forth, and the beaded purse that I bought for her birthday last month hangs over her shoulder. My best friend of more than ten years, and she has no idea what I’m going through.

  “You ready?” She sits down and eases her feet out of her wedges. She examines a blister on her foot. “Why do the cutest shoes always cause the ugliest blisters?” Bea eases her shoe back on and then pulls out a bag of Oreos from her purse. Bea has carried a bag of Oreos w
ith her since we were in elementary school. We always share those cookies, but now the chocolate smell wafting from the baggie makes me nauseous. “Want one?”

  “No, thanks,” I say. “Trying to lose some weight.”

  Bea takes one out and bites into it. “Are you okay? You never say no to an Oreo,” she mumbles around the cookie.

  It’s because the idea of eating one makes me want to barf. Because I’m pregnant. I nearly say it. I want to say it. Bea is looking at me in that kind and trusting way, like she always does. And something inside me collapses.

  “I need to tell you something,” I blurt out before I can stop myself. “I had sex.” Saying the word sex out loud startles me. It sounds so foreign and odd, as if I made the word up on the spot like Shakespeare always did. Canker blossom, bodikins, flirt-gill.

  “Very funny.” She bites into another cookie and starts crunching away.

  “I’m not joking.” I can feel my thighs starting to burn. I should have put sunscreen on. I don’t know why I think this. Why should I care if my thighs get burned? I just told my best friend, who I know for a fact is a virgin and will be one until her wedding night, who is a teen youth minister at her church, who refuses to see an R-rated movie, who wears a silver purity ring, that I had sexual intercourse.

  The crunching stops. “You had sex with Léo?” she whispers.

  “No, not Léo. You don’t know him.”

  “You had sex with someone I don’t know?”

  I don’t respond, and she doesn’t say anything. Her hand rests in her lap, an Oreo clutched in her fingers, half-eaten.

  “I think the condom must have broken or something,” I say finally.

  “Condom,” Bea says, trying out the word.

  I made my best friend say condom out loud. I just did that.

  “And I’m…” I swallow. “I’m pregnant, Bea. I don’t know what to do. I—” Tears start to bubble up.