Call It What You Want

by Brigid Kemmerer

  I stare at the cash. I wonder if this is a trap. A trick. I don’t want to pick it up. If I pick it up, I’m going to have to give it back to him, because I don’t want someone to see me snatch it from the ground and shove it in my pocket.

  Did you see Rob Lachlan steal ten bucks in the cafeteria? So typical.

  Yeah, that’s all I need. I’ve already got Maegan Day on my case because I didn’t throw confetti about our assigned partnership.

  I grab the money from the ground and twist it between my fingers, then pay for my bottle of water with my own money. Once I have change, I go after Connor.

  “Hey,” I call. “Connor.”

  He’s made it to the table with our old crowd, but I don’t look at any of them. He sets his tray down and turns to look at me, his expression slightly wary, as if he’s worried he pushed too far, and I might throw a punch.

  A small, dark part of me likes that.

  “What?” he says.

  “You dropped this.” I hold out the money.

  He glances at it, then back at my face. The table behind him is quiet. Watching this interaction.

  The symbolism isn’t lost on me, either.

  The moment breaks. His eyes darken. “Keep it,” he says flippantly. “Use it to pay your legal bills.”

  Then he turns away and drops onto the bench at his table. I’m dismissed. None of them are looking at me now.

  My fist closes around the money. Hell if I’m going to stand here and demand the chance to return it to him. I wish I hadn’t bought the water. I wish I hadn’t gotten in line. I wish I didn’t have three dollars and seventy-five cents left to get through the week.

  I wish I didn’t want so desperately to keep this money.

  I wish for a lot of things.

  None of them come true.

  My face burns as I turn away. I head for the far side of the cafeteria. Maegan and her friends are gone. The double doors over here don’t lead anywhere I need to be, but I’m not likely to run into anyone I know.

  Owen Goettler is still sitting at a table by himself. His mother is one of the dozens of people suing my family. He’s pulling his cheese sandwich into minuscule pieces. Trying to make it last, I guess. He’s never said a word to me. I’ve never said a word to him.

  I drop the ten dollars in front of him. “Here,” I say. “Buy some real food.”

  Then, before I can hear his response, and before I can change my mind, I blow through the doors of the cafeteria into the empty corridor beyond.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Maegan

  When I get home from school, Samantha is in the backyard, a blue lacrosse stick in her hands, flinging balls against the rebounder in the back corner. Her motion is effortlessly fluid, the ball making a clean arc as it sails into the elastic, then springing back to land in the net of her stick. She comes at it from all angles, but no matter where she shoots from, the ball finds its way back to her.

  I stand at the sliding back door and watch for a while. She’s got a knit cap over her blond hair, the ends pooling in the neck of her royal blue Duke sweatshirt. She’s a year older than me, and I remember standing just like this, years ago, watching her practice late into the night, trying to make varsity in her freshman year of high school.

  She made varsity. She made it all the way. She was the family star. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t keep up.

  I wonder if she’ll lose her scholarship. Keeping that college money is contingent on her playing. It’s not like they’ll give her a pass for the spring tournaments. Might look kind of awkward to have a fully pregnant athlete sprinting across the field.

  Watching my sister with a lacrosse stick reminds me of Rob Lachlan. Dad always says that kids aren’t responsible for the crimes of their parents—but if he picks up a teenager for committing a crime, he also says it’s not hard to see where they learned it. Rob’s father stole millions from other families in town. Even if Rob didn’t know about it, his father had to have some kind of entitled disregard for everyone else, to be able to steal from people—some people who truly had nothing to lose. That kind of attitude would have to bleed down to his son, right?

  I think of his voice when he said, I don’t want to be partners with anyone.

  Disregard? Or something else? I can’t tell.

  I sigh and unlatch the back door. Samantha doesn’t turn. The ball keeps flying to the rebounder and back.

  “You look like you’re feeling better,” I offer.

  She says nothing. The ball continues arcing back and forth.

  I wonder if I should be feeling badly for Samantha, too. But like Rob, she doesn’t make it easy. She’s been so snappish since she got home.

  Then again, so have I.

  “Want me to practice with you?” I’m not as good as she is, but I can play well enough to give her more variety than a stretch of elastic on a frame.

  “I don’t really want company right now.”

  Her voice is sharp, with an edge of something I can’t figure out. Despite everything that happened between us, she’s still my sister. “Are you okay?”

  She doesn’t answer.

  I edge off the steps of the porch and into the crunching leaves of the backyard. “Sam?”

  Still nothing. When I reach her side, I see that tears have dried in streaks through her makeup.

  My sister rarely cries. She dislocated her shoulder once, and she was barking orders at the paramedics from where she lay on the lacrosse field.

  A sudden chill sweeps over me. Mom’s voice from this morning, when she said my sister was still trying to decide what to do about the baby.

  Did she go get an abortion? Without waiting for anyone to go with her? Mom and Dad are still at work, for god’s sake. I’ve only been gone for six hours.

  But that would be so much like Samantha. She would make a decision and execute the plan without any input from anyone else.

  “What happened?” I say softly.

  “I told you I don’t want company,” she says. “But I guess no one cares what I want.”

  “Sam. Do you—do you want me to call Mom?”

  “No. God, no.” She swipes at her face. But then she says, “David blocked me.”

  David. So it’s got nothing to do with the baby at all. “Who’s David?” But as I’m saying the words, I realize I’m being stupid. “Oh. Oh.”

  Sam glances at me. “Yeah.” Another swipe of her cheeks. “He’s the father.”

  I swallow. “He blocked you?”

  “Everywhere.” The ball flies at the net with a sudden viciousness. “I can’t call him. I can’t text him. I’m completely blocked on social media. Blocked.”

  I have so many questions. “Does he—does he know?”

  The ball sails into her net and she stops throwing to look at me with absolute disdain. “Yeah, Maegan. He knows. Come on.”

  I take a step back. Swallow. “So—did you break up?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what’s happening.” Her voice cracks. “I didn’t—I don’t know what to do.”

  “With David?” I hesitate. I know so little of my sister’s life lately. She doesn’t tell me anything anymore. “Or with the baby?”

  “I don’t know what to do about any of it.” She drops the stick and presses her fingers into her eyes.

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to get Mom?”

  “No.” She reacts with surprising venom. “I can’t talk to her right now. And Dad—Dad is so disappointed …”

  I don’t know what to do. We used to do everything together. When Samantha first got her driver’s license, she’d take me places all the time. The movies. For ice cream. To dinner, where we’d pretend to be adults, having a nice evening out, scraping together stray dollars from our wallets to pay.

  We haven’t done anything like that in ages. Even Sam distanced herself from me, as if my misdeeds could somehow rub off on her.

  My sister is crying full out now, her face in her hands.


  I take a breath. “Do you want to go to dinner?”

  She slides her hands down. “Really?”

  For the first time since she got home on Friday, she sounds vulnerable. Samantha, a girl who’s so fierce on the lacrosse field that she earned the nickname “the Jackal.”

  Rachel and I used to call her “the Dog,” but Samantha doesn’t need to know that.

  “Yeah,” I say to her blotchy, tear-streaked face. I reach out and give her arm a squeeze. “Really.”

  Taco Taco used to be our favorite place when we were kids, but I haven’t been here in years. In my memories, the restaurant is large and loud and full of laughter. A place of warmth and love. Walking in the door today, it seems small and cramped, with broken painted tiles on the wall and torn vinyl seats. The warm sense of family is gone, and I wonder if it wasn’t part of the restaurant at all, but something we brought with us.

  Then again, it’s barely five o’clock. The place is nearly empty.

  Our server is a boy named Craig. He’s cute in the way baby chicks are cute: fluffy and bouncy. He even has orange-blond hair that sticks up from his head in tufts. I’d think it was a dye job, but a tracing of reddish-orange stubble along his jaw tells me it’s probably real.

  His sky blue eyes keep drifting to Samantha. Shocking.

  She’s deliberately oblivious. “I’ll have the skinny enchiladas,” she says, then yawns and hands him the menu. “And a Diet Coke.” She never makes eye contact.

  “I’ll have the chicken flautas.” I make sure to look at him, and I appreciate that he’s not too busy macking on my sister to meet my gaze. “And a Sprite.” I hand over my own menu.

  “I’ll have those right out,” he says.

  Samantha rubs her face, then places her hands on the table. “It’s so nice to get out of the house and go somewhere no one knows me.”

  “I’m pretty sure Craig wants to know you.”

  Her nose wrinkles. “Who’s Craig?”

  Typical. “Our waiter.”

  “Oh. Yeah. I think we graduated together. Whatever.” She pulls the elastic out of her hair, and a spill of gold cascades down over her shoulder. She shakes it out.

  Craig is standing by the soda machine, and he stares so long that Diet Coke pours over his hand. He swears and moves to wipe it up.

  I snort. “Sure looks like whatever.”

  That wrinkle on her nose turns into a full-on frown. “What are you even talking about?”

  Maybe she really is oblivious. “Never mind.”

  Craig arrives with our drinks and silently unloads them.

  My sister barely glances at him.

  “Thank you,” I say pointedly.

  She sips her soda. He walks away.

  “You’re being kind of rude,” I whisper to her.

  “I’m pregnant. I’m allowed.”

  I wonder how often she’s going to trot that out over the next nine months.

  I sip at my Sprite and consider the way I found her crying. I keep my voice low. “So, was David your boyfriend?”

  Her expression goes still, and any attitude melts out of her eyes, leaving only sorrow. “I thought he was.” A pause. “I thought …”

  She breaks off and swallows. Her eyes grow misty again.

  I want to put my hand over hers, but I’m worried she’d snatch it away. “You thought what?”

  “I thought he might one day be more.” She sniffs and uses her drink napkin to dab at her eyes. “I fell hard, I guess. I’m so stupid.”

  “You’re not stupid, Sam—”

  “I am. I should have stayed focused. I told myself no boys. And then I met him and that all went out the window. I can’t play like this. Even if I can finish the year in school, they’ll never renew my scholarship.” She wipes at her eyes again. “I signed a code of conduct. It specifically references impropriety.”

  I flick my eyes toward the swinging doors that lead to the restaurant kitchen, but Craig is nowhere to be seen now. Regardless, I keep my voice low. “You’re allowed to have sex, Samantha.”

  Her face twists like she’s going to burst into tears again, but she catches it and takes a long breath. I’ve never seen my sister like this, broken and vulnerable. The quiet stretches until I’m not sure whether I’m supposed to say something or she is.

  “Were you dating him a long time?” I ask quietly, though I know it couldn’t have been too long, because she left for college in mid-August.

  “Almost three months.” Another dab with the napkin.

  “Why do you think he blocked you?”

  “Why do you think?” she snaps. “Because he doesn’t want anything to do with this baby.” A long breath. “He says it isn’t his. But it is. It has to be.”

  “He’s the only one?”

  She wipes at her eyes again. “He’s the only one. Ever.”

  I stop my eyes from growing wide. We used to talk boys, back when we were close, when we’d hide in her room after Mom called for us to turn our lights out. Sam is so fierce and outgoing that I always thought she had half a dozen guys strung around her little finger.

  “I worked so hard, you know?” she says. “In high school? I could have had any guy I wanted. I turned them all down. I wanted to be the best. And I was.” She presses her fingertips into her eyes and sighs. “And here I threw it all away anyway.”

  She takes a breath and looks at me over her fingertips. “What would you do?”

  I go still. I don’t think my sister has ever asked for my opinion. On anything. Even before. Samantha knows what she wants and she goes after it.

  Her hands lower from her face. “You don’t know either, do you?”

  “No,” I whisper.

  Craig reappears with our food, and Samantha goes silent. He must pick up on the tension, because he unloads the plates silently and slips away. The food is steaming hot, the air full of cilantro.

  I push my food around my plate. “Do you want to use my phone to call him?”

  Samantha snaps her head up. “What?”

  “Well. I mean. I’m not blocked.”

  She stabs at her food and eats a bite. “That’s kind of devious.”

  I’m not sure if that’s an insult. It kind of sounds like one. “That’s me,” I say flatly. “Nothing but trouble.”

  She either ignores my sarcasm or she doesn’t pick up on it. She holds out a hand to gesture. “Here. Give it to me.”

  I do. “You’re going to call now? In the restaurant?”

  “No. I’m going to check his Instagram.”

  I can’t tell if she’s serious. But when I lean over, I see she’s tapping on the app for Instagram, typing in his name. @DavidLitMan

  LitMan. Is that a marijuana reference? Or something else?

  Samantha stabs her fingers at the phone.

  Then she stops. Her face goes pale.

  She slams it down on the table and bursts into tears. She’s quiet about it, but her shoulders are shaking, her elbows pressed into her abdomen.

  I pick up my phone.

  The top photo is a man and a woman. Kissing in front of the sun. Streaks of light span the photo. Their eyes are closed. The man has dark hair and a thin beard. The caption reads, I love you more every day.

  The woman is not Samantha.

  “He has a girlfriend,” I whisper.

  “A wife,” she says.

  I almost choke on my breath. A wife.

  Holy crap. “Does Mom know?”

  “No!” My sister’s eyes turn fierce again, somehow made more threatening by the tears hanging suspended on her lashes. “And you’re not going to tell her.”

  There’s been too much in the last hour. My brain can’t process all this. “Sure. Okay.”

  Married.

  I don’t even know what to do with that. We both sit there breathing, inhaling the steam from our dinner.

  Eventually, Samantha picks up her fork and digs in, so I do the same. We eat in silence for a while, and eventually the tension gives way.r />
  “How old is he?” I ask.

  Her voice is nasally from all the crying, but she keeps her voice as low as mine. “Twenty-nine.”

  I almost choke on my food. Samantha is eighteen, so she’s legal, I guess, but that’s … that’s a man. A married man.

  Then she adds, “He’s my literature professor.”

  DavidLitMan.

  Samantha shovels food into her mouth. “Stop staring at me like that.” Her voice breaks again. “I know, okay? I was so stupid.”

  “Samantha.” My hand lifts. I want to touch her. To hug her. To help her.

  I wish she would tell Mom. But now I understand why she hasn’t.

  “Stop judging me,” she says. “You’re not the only one who can screw up, okay?” She’s crying again.

  I flinch. “I’m not judging you.”

  “Of course you are. I’m judging mys—” She stops short. Her hand slaps over her mouth.

  She jumps up. Runs for the restroom. I can hear her throwing up before the door swings closed.

  I stare after her. She’s right. I am judging her.

  I’m also pitying her.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Rob

  Dinner is breaded chicken over linguini and cream sauce. It sounds fancy, and it is, but Mom was always a good cook. It’s not like they can sue away her culinary skills. It’s not organic cream and free-range chicken anymore, but it still tastes good.

  Dad sits at the other end of the table and gets his through a tube. He used to obsess over how well his Vitamix made kale smoothies. He’d probably love that it’s doing triple duty on all his meals now.

  “Anything happen at school today?” Mom says to me.

  I think of Maegan and her judgmental eyes. I think of how badly I wanted to punch Connor in the back of the head. I think of Owen Goettler and his million-piece cheese sandwich.

  I stab a slice of chicken. “No. Anything happen at work?” My voice isn’t surly. Mom’s the only person who doesn’t treat me like a walking felony.

  “One of the senior partners asked if I know how to file alphabetically.” She makes a scoffing noise.

  My fork goes still. I glance up. She’s sitting across from me, which means Dad is at the end of the table, a zombie in my peripheral vision. I can never decide if that’s better or worse than sitting directly across from him. I always want to do a double take.