Action Figures - Issue Four: Cruel Summer

by Michael C Bailey

  “I bet you’ll be able to do it,” Matt says. “Just remember what the great Lee always said: ‘Be water, my friend.’”

  “I’ll remember you said that the day I one-inch punch your ass to the floor,” Natalie says.

  “Bring it.”

  “You two are so adorable with all your tough talk,” I say.

  Natalie kindly drops Sara and me off at home instead of back at the compound, and it looks like Mom’s back earlier than I expected.

  “Hope she didn’t go through the hassle of making dinner,” I say, “because I don’t think I’ll be ready to eat again until August.”

  “Ugh, I know. How my pants still fit me...”

  “Well, you worked off a lot of calories during Meg Quentin’s Non-Stop Dance Party-o-rama.”

  And spent a lot of the dance party in close proximity to our lovely hostess, but I don’t point that out. Sara doesn’t need me pushing her into a love connection again — especially if it turns out Meg isn’t into girls, which might well be the case. My gaydar is about as keen as my matchmaking abilities.

  We step inside to find Mom sitting on the couch, cradling a cup of tea and — uh-oh. She has her Ten-Megaton Crapstorm face on, which tells me her relaxing weekend getaway was not as relaxing as it should have been. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I hope to God she didn’t have a fight with Ben.

  “You’re home early,” I say.

  Mom doesn’t look at me when she speaks. “We hit the road early to beat the traffic. Sara, could you please go up to Carrie’s room? I need to speak to my daughter in private.”

  Yeek. Whatever’s pissing her off, it’s not about Ben — it’s about me. Hooray?

  “Uh, yeah, sure,” Sara says, passing me a worried look before heading upstairs. I wait until I hear the bedroom door close.

  “I got home a few hours ago and decided to tidy up a little,” Mom says, setting her teacup on the coffee table. She stands and walks up to me. “I took the laundry downstairs, and as I was loading the washer, this fell out.”

  Mom reaches into her pocket and produces —

  Oh, crap. Ohhhhh, crap.

  “What is this?” Mom says.

  I clear my throat. “That appears to be an empty condom wrapper,” I say casually.

  “Do not smart off to me, young lady, not about this,” Mom growls through clenched teeth. She waves the condom wrapper at me. “Explain this. Now.”

  Mom has me dead to rights. There’s no way to weasel out of this one.

  Not that I should have to weasel out of it. What did we do wrong? Nothing, that’s what. Malcolm and I are a legit couple, and couples do...that. You know what? Screw this.

  “I slept with Malcolm,” I say, making it a bold declaration.

  “Dammit, Carrie!”

  “What? Come on, Mom, we’ve been together for four months, it was bound to happen sooner or later.”

  “Exactly, Carrie, you’ve been together four months,” Mom shoots back. “That’s barely any time at all.”

  “Oh? It’s four months longer than you and Ben were together when you had sex for the first time.”

  That one lands hard. Mom sputters, grimaces, crushes the condom wrapper in her fist.

  “You’re sixteen, Carrie! Barely! You’re too young to be having sex!”

  “Oh, that is so hypocritical. It’s okay for you to sleep with a co-worker you barely know because you’re a grown-up,” I say, putting an extra dollop of dripping sarcasm on grown-up, “but if I do it with someone I’m in a relationship with...”

  “I am aware of the possible repercussions of my actions and am capable of taking responsibility for them!” Mom says, her voice rising to a shout. “You’re still a child! You aren’t equipped to deal with an STD or God forbid, getting pregnant!”

  “But I don’t have to worry about any of that stuff because I wasn’t stupid about it,” I say, my volume matching Mom’s, “and you have the proof right there in your hand!”

  “Condoms break, Carrie, you’re proof of that!”

  ...What?

  EIGHTEEN

  Mom turns away from me, cursing under her breath. She deflates, sagging onto the couch.

  “Mom?” She doesn’t answer. She buries her face in her hands and curses again but doesn’t say anything else. “Mom?”

  “Carrie...dammit, I didn’t want to tell you like that,” she says. “Not like that.”

  “Tell me what? Mom? Tell me what?” I say, but she doesn’t need to tell me anything because my brain kicks back into gear, does the math, and reveals a truth that has been staring me in the face my whole life.

  I’m sixteen years old. My birthday is March 16. My mother will be thirty-two on her birthday on June 16 — nine months before mine, to the day.

  Nine months.

  Oh God.

  “Sit down,” Mom says. “Please.”

  I can’t. I can’t move. My body won’t respond.

  Mom stands back up and comes to me. “Your father and I had been dating for, I don’t know, a year or so,” she begins, “and I told him that, for my sixteenth birthday, I wanted to be with him. I wanted him to be my first.”

  “Mom, no,” I say, a feeble plea for her to stop. She keeps going.

  “We spent the night together. My birthday night. It was the first time for both of us. The condom broke. We thought we...” Mom gestures aimlessly. “We thought we handled it. We didn’t.”

  “You...you didn’t want me?” I say, and putting that horrible thought into words causes the reality of the situation to crash down on me like an avalanche. My heartbeat races, my throat dries up, sweat erupts along my hairline and the house feels a thousand degrees too hot and the room is spinning. Oh God, I think I’m going to puke.

  “Carrie, listen to me.” Mom grabs me by the arms to keep me from collapsing. “Carrie, I love you. I love you so, so much. You’re the most important thing in my life and I have never regretted having you.” She takes a long, slow breath, like she’s bracing herself. “But you did not make our lives easy.”

  Mom tells me that when she realized she was pregnant, she considered...you know. That.

  ...

  She considered getting an abortion.

  She seriously considered it but ultimately couldn’t go through with it. She told Dad she planned to keep me, and she was fully prepared to lose him over her decision. Fortunately for all involved, Dad is a good man. He told Mom he wasn’t going anywhere.

  Together, they then informed their respective parents. Mom tells me that “things got ugly” and leaves it there.

  Not wanting his child born out of wedlock, Dad asked Mom to marry him. She said yes. Instead of the traditional church wedding she always dreamed of, Mom married Dad in the office of a justice of the peace and, along with all four of my grandparents, celebrated what should have been the happiest night of their lives with a reasonably priced dinner at a Longhorn Steakhouse. They often talked about one day making up for the lack of a proper wedding and honeymoon, but they could never make it work financially. That dream faded over time and was eventually forgotten.

  Dad dropped out of high school to get a job, so he could start saving up in anticipation of my arrival. Mom stayed in school as long as she could before dropping out to have me. Neither of them returned to school and had to settle for GEDs, and only Mom ever got a chance to attend college — community college, part-time, mostly night classes. She says this, and it stirs up vague childhood memories of Dad coming home from working twelve hours on some construction site, covered in grime and smelling of sweat and sawdust. We’d have a rushed dinner together, and then Mom would head out for the evening. Dad and I would both be asleep when she got home. I’d wake up and Dad would be gone again. For years we were a family of ships passing in the night, the three of us rarely spending more than a few hours at a time together.

  No wonder we fell apart.

  When I finally speak again, it’s to ask my mother, “Was I the only reason you two stayed
together?”

  Mom shakes her head. “I can’t possibly answer that, honey. I can’t say what might have happened if you hadn’t come along. Maybe we’d still be together, maybe we’d have broken up after high school...I can’t say. It doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters to me,” I say, slumping into her arms.

  “I know that was tough to hear, sweetie, but you needed to hear it.” She steps back and takes my face in my hands. Somehow, she musters a smile. “You have so much potential, Carrie, and you deserve a fair shot at realizing it. I didn’t get to live my life on my terms. You still can, and I don’t want you to lose that opportunity.”

  “Mom, I’m sorry.”

  “I know.”

  “I swear I won’t do it again.”

  Mom laughs ruefully. “You can’t keep that promise. As long as you’re with Malcolm, the temptation’s going to be there, and cold showers and self-gratification aren’t always going to do the trick.”

  Self-gratification?

  Oh. Yeah. Right.

  Mom sets her jaw as though making a momentous decision — which she has. “I’m going to call my gynecologist tomorrow, make you an appointment. We’re putting you on birth control.”

  I start to protest, but it’s purely symbolic, like I’m trying to assure Mom birth control isn’t necessary because from this day forward I’m a nun. Scared celibate, that’s me — but in this one rare instance, Mom knows me better than I know myself.

  “No arguments. I kept you off birth control because I thought it would deter you from...from becoming sexually active,” Mom says. “That was naïve of me. Denial isn’t going to help either of us, so we’re doing this.”

  “...Okay.”

  “Okay.” Mom brushes the hair out of my face. “You hungry?”

  I shake my head. “There was a lot of food at the party,” I say, but after what I just heard, I doubt I’d have an appetite anyway.

  I trudge upstairs to my room, where Sara sits on the edge of my bed, listening to music on her phone. “It got loud,” she explains. I sit on the bed next to her. “Carrie?”

  “Mom found out Malcolm and I slept together,” I say. “She found our condom wrapper.”

  “Ohh.”

  “And that’s the good news.” I give Sara the short version of the story.

  “Carrie. Oh my God.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I mean...oh my God.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you okay? Jeez, that’s a stupid question, of course you’re not okay.”

  “No.” We sit in silence for a while. “You know what sucked the worst? Finding out I was an accident. I always assumed my parents wanted to have me, you know? Finding out they didn’t, it’s...do you have any idea what that feels like?”

  Sara goes blank. “No, Carrie, I have absolutely no idea what that feels like.”

  Oh, good move, Carrie, real good.

  “I know, you’re sorry, I know,” Sara says, predicting my apology. “It’s okay.”

  I flop back on the bed. Sara mirrors my flop, and we lay there staring at the ceiling, lost in our respective thoughts.

  Things will get better. They have to. Eventually.

  Not tomorrow, though, that’s for sure.

  Tomorrow I have to tell Malcolm.

  The morning breakfast ritual is a somber and sullen one. Mom and Sara and I don’t talk much beyond the traditional pleasantries, and the silence continues throughout the walk to school.

  As we reach the school grounds, Sara says, “What are you going to tell Malcolm?”

  “I have to tell him everything,” I say.

  “No secrets, huh?”

  “It’s a good philosophy,” I say, although it reminds me I haven’t said anything to Sara about the King of Pain’s suicide attempt. Edison shared that information with me in confidence, but Sara has a right to know.

  Not that it would do her any good to hear it. It might only stir up all the anger simmering inside of her. Maybe I shouldn’t tell her...

  One awkward conversation at a time, Carrie — and here comes the first customer on my list.

  “Good morning,” Malcolm says brightly. “How are you two ladies today?”

  “I’ll see you later,” Sara says to me before dashing off.

  “Is she okay?”

  “She’s fine,” I say.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah, but I need to talk to you.”

  “All right.”

  Malcolm lets me pull him aside to a wooden bench outside the school entrance — not the ideal location for a heart-to-heart, but we aren’t going to get any more private than this, not until after school, and I don’t want to let this fester. I take his hands and hold them tight, trying to be reassuring, but anxiety is all over his face. He can tell this isn’t a happy talk.

  So can everyone else, apparently. Amber Sullivan passes us and says with a smirk, “Uh-oh, is this trouble in paradise I see?”

  “Is this pissing off and minding your own business I see?” I snap back. Her smug expression falls away as she skitters past us.

  “Carrie, what’s wrong?” Malcolm says.

  Deep breath. Ease into this. Nice and gentle, that’s the way.

  “My mom knows we slept together,” I say. Oh, yeah, real smooth, Carrie. As subtle as a brick to the face.

  “Ohhhh, no,” Malcolm groans. “Crap. Crap crap crap! How much trouble are we in?”

  “Believe it or not, we aren’t. I mean, Mom’s not happy with either of us, that’s for sure, but she’s not out for blood or anything. And I don’t think she plans to say anything to your parents.”

  Malcolm breathes a huge sigh of relief. Don’t relax too much, my love. I’m just getting started.

  “There’s more, and I don’t think you’re going to be happy about it. In fact, I know you’re not going to be happy about it,” I say, and Malcolm goes sheet-white.

  “Oh my God,” he squeaks, “are you preg—?”

  “NO! No, God, no, Malcolm, that’s not it at all!” I say. Malcolm falls forward, his head dropping between his knees. He shudders as he gasps for breath. “God, Malcolm, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you like that.”

  Malcolm makes a thick croaking sound and waves a hand, the best he can do to assure me he’s all right. He’s not, but I forge ahead nevertheless. I have to get through this.

  I tell him everything Mom told me last night, sparing no details. He listens, his face betraying no emotion.

  “I don’t want to wind up like my mother. She’s right, I have my whole life ahead of me — we both do, and I don’t want us screwing that up with a stupid, pointless accident. Malcolm, I’m sorry, but I don’t want to have sex with you anymore.”

  His expression does not change, not one tiny bit.

  “I’m not saying I never want to sleep with you again, but I think we need to take a big step back and slow things down.”

  Still nothing.

  “Malcolm. Please say something. Please tell me you’re okay with this.”

  Eventually, he nods. “Yeah. I’m okay with it.”

  “Honestly?”

  “Honestly. When I thought you were going to say you were pregnant, I...jeez. I know it wasn’t a close call in the traditional sense, but it sure felt like it, and I do not want to go through that again. Ever.” He gives me a shaky smile. “So yeah, I’m honestly okay with it.”

  I seize Malcolm in a hug, which he returns with equal intensity. I hold it through the first warning bell, through the second, into the final bell that tells me we’re going to be late to homeroom, but you know what? If that’s the worst thing that happens to me today, I’ll take it. I will gladly take it.

  NINETEEN

  So there I am, walking to my math class, minding my own business, when Matt runs up to me, pulls me to the side of the hallway and says in an agitated whisper, “Why are people saying you’re pregnant?”

  “What?!”

  “Yeah. I was in science cla
ss and I heard Ellie Strode and Roma Loomis gossiping about your ‘condition,’” Matt says, complete with air quotes. “Please, please tell me they’re wrong.”

  “They’re totally, completely, one hundred percent wrong,” I say. “I am not...that. At all.”

  “Then why do they think you are? Where did that even come from?”

  “I have no idea.” The second I say that, I have an idea. “Amber.”

  “Amber? Why would she think you’re pregnant?”

  “She saw me having a rather intense talk with Malcolm this morning —”

  “And she decided that you were breaking the worst news a girlfriend could drop on her boyfriend,” Matt says, jumping to a conclusion that isn’t that far off. More likely, I figure, she eavesdropped on enough of our chat to fuel some juicy gossip and set about spreading it, because that’s the kind of spiteful, petty girl she is — but I don’t feel like sharing that with Matt, not here, not now (and maybe not ever, because I do not need Matt Steiger offering his opinions on my very brief yet eventful sex life).

  “Great. That’s just great,” I mutter as Sara pops up behind Matt.

  “Carrie,” she says, her tone urgent.

  “I know. It’s Amber Sullivan. She’s telling tales out of school, so to speak,” I say.

  “That rotten little...where the hell does she get off pulling crap like that? I swear, I’m going to kick her ass.”

  “Whoa, easy, girl, easy. I appreciate the sentiment, but don’t go kicking anyone’s ass on my account. That won’t solve anything...though if anyone has any thoughts on what will, I’d love to hear them.”

  And I mean it. The Internet has nothing on the high school rumor mill when it comes to relaying damaging yet erroneous information at lightning speeds. If I don’t figure out a way to crush this, by the end of the day I’ll be popping out triplets fathered by the guy I was cheating on Malcolm with.

  “Got you covered,” Sara says. She runs off before I can ask her what she has planned.