Far From the Tree

by Robin Benway

  Joaquin laughed. He couldn’t help it. He envied Grace’s belief that someone would wonder about her. “Sorry,” he said when both girls looked at him. “It’s just . . . I don’t want to look for her. You two can do it if you want, but I’m out.”

  “Ditto,” Maya said.

  Grace looked like she was about to cry, and Joaquin felt a small well of panic rise up in his chest. Then she blinked and her face smoothed out into a steely veneer. “Fine,” she said. “You don’t have to. But I’m going to look for her myself.”

  “You do you,” Maya said.

  “That’s fine,” Joaquin replied.

  “Fine,” Grace said.

  The whole day ended on a strange note after that. They weren’t sure whether to hug or shake hands or just wave good-bye, so it ended up as an awkward combination of all three.

  Joaquin wasn’t that great at hugging, but he tried.

  GRACE

  It took a while for Grace to figure out what to wear back to school on Monday morning.

  Mostly because everything she had was either super baggy, super maternity, or way too tight. Her stomach was still a little . . . well, floppy was the only real way to describe it. She wanted to wear pajama pants, but she was pretty sure that it didn’t matter how many babies she had, her mom wasn’t going to let her go to school in plaid flannel PJs.

  In the end, she put on a pair of boyfriend jeans and then a maroon shirt that she found in the back of her closet. The maroon matched the stress hives that were starting to appear on her chest and neck.

  Her mom, of course, noticed.

  “Are you sure you want to go back?” she said, holding a travel mug of coffee and her car keys. “I know it’s been a busy week, what with meeting Maya and Joaquin and all.”

  “I’m going back,” Grace said, picking up her backpack, which felt way too light. “I can’t stay home anymore, and Maya and Joaquin don’t have anything to do with it.” Grace could barely say their names without wincing. She had lied to them both. She had barely known Joaquin for an hour and she had lied to them. The worst part was that they had believed she’d had mono. They were sympathetic.

  Grace wondered if she could give up her sister duties or if someone would just come take them from her, like when beauty pageant winners got caught in a sexting scandal.

  Her mom played the radio the whole way to school, laughing at some joke the DJ made, then glancing at Grace to see if she thought it was funny, too. It wasn’t (the DJ was a misogynistic jerk, and Grace had never thought he was funny), but she smiled back at her mom, her carefully practiced “I am a normal person and this is my normal smile” smile. Definitely not the smile of someone who’d had a baby four weeks earlier.

  “Honey,” her mom said, when they pulled up to the school, “do you want me to come in with you?”

  “Are you serious?” Grace asked. “No. Oh my God, no.”

  “But—”

  “Mom.” Grace cut her off. “I have to go at some point. You just have to let me.”

  Grace had meant it literally, but it was pretty clear from her mom’s face that she took it metaphorically, and Grace could see her eyes fill with tears behind the sunglasses, even as she leaned in to kiss her good-bye. “Okay.” Her mom sniffled, then cleared her throat. “Okay, you’re right. Your dad told me not to cry this morning and here I am, crying.” She laughed to herself. “Call me if you need me, okay?”

  “Okay,” Grace said, even though she knew she wouldn’t. Her mom didn’t really know the extent of the things kids at school had said to her when she was pregnant. Slut, baby mama, Shamu—the list went on. Grace didn’t tell her because she knew she would tell the principal and then the teasing would get even more brutal, but Grace also didn’t tell her because she knew her mom would feel bad for her.

  Pity wasn’t strength, and Grace had had a hard enough time holding it together. She didn’t want both her parents and her to crumble, not at the same time.

  Grace carefully got out of the car, heaved her empty backpack to her shoulder, and headed toward English, her first class of the day. It felt a bit like she was heading toward a firing squad, except worse, because she knew that instead of dying, she was going to have to stay alive through the whole day. And then the next one after that.

  And she couldn’t help but think as she saw the first set of staring eyes fix upon her that a firing squad might have been preferable.

  Grace had already been excused from all her homework—she just had to make it up before the end of the year, which okay, fine—but as she walked past students, she could see highlighters, flash cards, all of the things that she normally used during crazy study sessions. Her best friend, Janie, used to even make fun of her for all of her mnemonic devices.

  “Now,” Janie would say, imitating Grace studying for their European History final. “Napoleon was short, which reminds me of an octopus. An octopus is purple, which is the color of my family’s couch, and we got that couch from a store that was next to a pretzel store. And pretzels are German, which . . .” Grace would laugh and laugh, clutching her then-flat stomach.

  “Grace.”

  She stopped short, her reverie broken. “Janie,” she said. “Hi.”

  She hadn’t seen Janie since she’d come over to visit two days after Milly was born. Grace didn’t remember much of that visit, other than that they had watched Friends on Netflix. But Grace had been pretty whacked out and the all-encompassing grief of loss. Details were fuzzy, to be honest.

  “Hi,” Janie said now, her head cocked to one side. Grace had the distinct feeling she had done something wrong, something that violated friend code, but she didn’t know what it was. Or, probably more accurately, how many violations there were.

  “You didn’t tell me you were coming back to school.”

  Ah. There it was.

  “Um, yeah,” Grace said. She tried to smile, but it felt more like she was baring her teeth at her friend, a warning signal to stay away. “I just decided last night. I got tired of staying home, you know?” Grace shrugged, like it was a totally casual thing to have a baby and forget to tell your best friend that you were returning to school.

  “Oh,” Janie said. “Well, it’s good to see you! You look good.”

  Janie never used the word good, and definitely not twice in a row. This was, well, not good.

  “Thanks,” Grace said, then looked at the girl standing next to Janie. They both had purses slung over their shoulders, holding their books and binders on their left hips, while Grace’s backpack hung limp from her shoulder. When had Janie gotten rid of her backpack?

  The girl next to her was Rachel. “Hi,” Grace said to her. “I’m Grace.”

  “I know.” She replied in a way that made Grace feel like she had introduced herself as Rasputin or Voldemort, a name that must not be said.

  “It’s really good to see you, Grace,” Janie said again.

  The third good. Grace couldn’t help thinking, Three strikes and you’re out. “If you’re around at lunch, eat with us, okay?” She smiled at Grace; then she and Rachel walked away.

  Grace hadn’t thought as far as lunch. Now she was wishing she had. She had been friends with Janie since the third grade, so she had never worried about who to eat with, or where she would sit. But now that she was thinking about it, the school campus suddenly felt bigger, way too big, like it had no end. She had had dreams like that before, wandering around in a strange place and not being able to find her way out.

  Janie and Rachel walked away, and Grace hitched her thumbs under her backpack straps, which suddenly felt like they had betrayed her. She unhooked them, then continued walking up the hill to English class. For some reason, it was even harder now that she wasn’t pregnant. She had spent her last month at school huffing and puffing everywhere (and also making approximately 982,304,239 trips to the bathroom, since Peach had enjoyed using her bladder as a cozy pillow), but now her legs felt heavy, like they didn’t want to go into English class and were t
rying to warn her brain to stay away.

  Grace realized, too late, that she should have listened.

  Everyone stared at her when she walked into the room right before the bell rang, but Grace was prepared for that. As much as anyone could be prepared for thirty sets of eyeballs suddenly locked on them. She smiled at the wall behind Zach Anderson’s head, just so they would think she was smiling at someone, and then Mrs. Mendoza came over and put her hand on Grace’s shoulder and said, “It’s so nice to see you, Grace,” and Grace silently told herself, Do not cry, do not cry until it worked and the tears slipped from the edge of her throat and back down into the pit of her stomach.

  “Thanks” was all Grace said out loud, though, then went and took her seat. Someone had carved SLUT into the fake wood desk, but she wasn’t sure if that was for her, some other girl, or just the product of some bored junior who had a limited vocabulary and too much time on his hands. I mean, Grace thought, it’s English class. You think he’d have a stronger grasp on synonyms. Harlot, maybe, or floozy or strumpet?

  “Grace?”

  She looked up. Mrs. Mendoza was smiling down at her, the way priests do when they’re visiting sick people at the hospital. Benevolent, but also silently wishing for hand sanitizer.

  “I was just saying that if you’d like to spend the next few days in the library doing makeup work just so you can catch up a little, that’s fine.”

  “Oh,” she said. “No, that’s okay.”

  There were snickers behind her. It sounded like Zach. And Miriam Whose-Last-Name-Grace-Could-Never-Remember. You know people have been laughing behind your back for a while when you can identify each giggle’s source. “Too bad I couldn’t have a baby,” the voice said. Grace was right—it was Zach. “Get out of homework. Score, man.”

  “Ugh, you are the worst.” That was Miriam. At first Grace thought she was defending her. She was about to turn around and smile when she really heard what Miriam said. She said “You’re the worst” in the way girls say things when they want boys to think that they’re teasing, like, “You’re the worst, but I still like you enough to hook up with you, even though you’re the emotional equivalent of dirt.”

  Then again, who was Grace to judge? The last boy she’d liked got her pregnant, left her alone, and took another girl to homecoming on the same night she gave birth.

  She couldn’t exactly blame Miriam for poor life choices.

  She couldn’t help but wonder what Maya would say to Zach if she were in this situation. Grace hadn’t known Maya that long, but she was pretty sure that Maya would have thrown herself back into school the way lions ran into the Colosseum during Roman times: teeth sharp and claws out.

  Grace channeled that energy. “Wow,” she said, turning around to look at Zach. “Nothing gets past you, does it? You’re very observant.”

  Grace was pretty sure that instead of a lion, she was the equivalent of a mewling kitten.

  Zach just smirked and took his baseball cap off, smoothing down his hair before putting it back on. “Whatever, Baby Mama,” he said.

  “Zach, seriously,” Miriam joked. Grace would have given her kingdom to grab Miriam by the shoulders and shake her until her head wobbled on her neck.

  But then Mrs. Mendoza started talking (“Zach, take off your hat, you know the rules in my classroom”), and Grace found her pen and opened her notebook. Just act normal, she told herself.

  She acted normal through English and second period (AP Chem), but third period was where it all fell apart. If, by fell apart, you meant crumbled into oblivion.

  Third period was U.S. history.

  Third period was with Max.

  Janie wasn’t the only person who hadn’t realized Grace was coming back to school, judging by the look on Max’s face. He was laughing with Adam, one of his friends, and when Grace walked into the room, his eyes got so big that he looked like a cartoon. If Grace hadn’t hated him so much, it would have been funny, but the only thing she felt was a sick thrill for surprising him. She liked the idea of keeping him on his toes, popping up where he least expected her, a flesh-and-blood ghost to haunt him for the rest of his life.

  Grace knew it wasn’t possible, but it felt like everyone in the room stopped talking when she walked in, their heads swiveling between her and Max. As if this period was suddenly the new episode of a soap opera, and the long-thought-dead evil twin had just sauntered back into town.

  She sat down in her normal assigned seat, which, unfortunately, was right across from Max. She had chosen that seat back at the beginning of the year because it was easier to talk to him that way. Now she cursed Past Grace for making such a terrible decision. Past Grace, it turned out, was a real idiot.

  Adam was giggling and saying, “Dude, dude,” quietly, the way you do when you have a secret.

  “Shut up,” Max hissed at him. Adam had been (and, Grace assumed, still was) as dumb as concrete, one of those guys who thought he was a football star when he really just watched from the sidelines and high-fived other people when they made the winning touchdowns. Grace had never liked him, and Max knew that.

  Unlike her first two teachers, Mr. Hill ignored Grace and got down to business, which she appreciated. Sympathy was sometimes worse than being ignored. “Okay, bodies,” he said loudly. (Mr. Hill always referred to his students as “bodies.” It was a little distressing at times. Grace couldn’t help but picture a roomful of corpses.) “Let’s focus!”

  Grace dug her pen out of her bag, willing herself to not even look at Max. She could see his feet, though, and he was wearing new shoes. That blew her mind. Somewhere in the time between when she’d had his daughter, met her half siblings, and returned to school, Max had gone shopping and bought new shoes, like his life was still normal; like it hadn’t changed at all.

  And the truth was that it hadn’t. Somewhere in the world, another couple was raising Max’s biological child. And he had new shoes.

  By the time Grace found her pen, her cheeks were bright red. The urge to use it to scribble all over Max’s shoes was strong, painfully so, but she just set it down on her desk and looked forward.

  “Hey,” Adam whispered across the aisle as Mr. Hill turned toward the whiteboard at the front of the classroom. “Hey, psst! Grace!”

  She didn’t turn around. She knew Adam wasn’t going to ask about how she was feeling, or wish her a good first day back, or see if she needed anything.

  “Grace! Hey, are your boobs all saggy now?”

  Someone—Grace didn’t know who—giggled behind her, and over the rushing sound in her ears, she heard Max say, “C’mon, dude.” Grace would have preferred if Max had, oh, gone all Game of Thrones on him and mounted his head on a stick, but Max just said, “C’mon, man,” again.

  Grace gripped her pen and wondered when Max had become such a weakling, with a spine made out of cotton candy. Maybe it had happened while they’d waited in line at Target that day, buying pregnancy tests, or maybe it was that day when his dad talked about the “good girl” Max was dating instead of Grace. Or maybe it had happened at homecoming while Grace was squeezing a baby out of her body and he danced, wearing a cheap plastic crown.

  This version of Max wasn’t the boy Grace had dated, or slept with, or loved. And it seemed crazy to her that, somewhere out there, there was a child who was half him and half her, when she suddenly couldn’t stand to be in the same room with him anymore.

  “Grace!” Adam hissed again.

  Mr. Hill was still up at the whiteboard, apparently writing out an entire soliloquy, so Grace turned to look at Max. Even his face looked weak. How could she have ever dated someone with that jawline? Thank God Peach hadn’t inherited it.

  “Would you tell your friend to shut the fuck up?” Grace hissed at Max. She could tell that he was sorry, it was written all over his (pathetic) face, and she spun back in her seat, cheeks flaming like she had a fever.

  That’s when Adam’s phone made the noise. It was a baby’s cry—a newborn baby’s cry. I
t sounded like Peach, like the first sound Grace had ever heard her make, that crazily desperate wail that announced her arrival into the world.

  Grace didn’t know what moved first, her body or her hand, but then she was flying over her desk like she was running the hurdles in gym class, her fist out so it could make clean contact with Adam’s face. He made a sound like someone had let the air out of him, and when he fell backward, his desk trapping him against the floor, Grace pinned him and punched him again. She hadn’t had this much adrenaline since Peach had been born. It felt good. She even smiled when she punched Adam for the third time.

  It eventually took Max, Mr. Hill, and this guy named José (who really was on the football team) to pull her off Adam. José sort of spun Grace away, setting her down on her feet so hard that her teeth rattled together, and then Grace was gone, leaving her backpack, Adam, Max, and U.S. history class behind.

  She stumbled toward the bathroom at the end of the quad, the one that no one ever used because it was near the biology classroom and the smell of formaldehyde sometimes leaked into the vents. It was disgusting, but she didn’t care. She just needed somewhere to contain the hurricane inside her chest when it eventually burst out of her.

  The sound of Peach roared through her ears as she cried out.

  She sank down on the floor under the sink farthest away from the door, hugging her knees to her chest. The floor was cold, which was good, because Grace was fairly sure that her skin was on fire, and also, her hand was throbbing. Punching someone in the face, it turned out, hurt like hell, and she pressed her knuckles against the tiled wall, hissing a little.

  It was hard to catch her breath. Like it had been when Peach was being born, like her body was working separately from her brain, and she closed her eyes and tried to breathe. The room was cool and quiet and there were probably twenty people now looking for her, but Grace didn’t care.

  She just wanted it to stay quiet.