Call It What You Want

by Brigid Kemmerer

  She said she wanted to go to the party because she wanted to forget everything that’s going on. Maybe I should have paid more attention. She’s so confident and determined that I forget she might be hurting underneath it.

  A soft tap sounds on my door, and Mom pokes her head in. “I saw your light was still on.”

  “I was just about to go to sleep.”

  “Can I come in?”

  “Sure.”

  I scoot over in bed and sit up against the headboard so she can climb in with me. She used to do this when I was a little girl and she’d read me stories. Then, in middle school, she’d listen to all my angsty grievances about first crushes and mean girls.

  Now that I’m in high school, her nighttime visits haven’t been as frequent, but she has an uncanny way of knowing when I’m troubled.

  She puts an arm around my shoulders, and I lean into her. I sigh, already drowsy.

  Then she says, “Is Samantha talking to you, Maegan?”

  I go still.

  “I’m not trying to get information out of you,” Mom says. “I’m so worried about her. I would feel better if I knew she was talking to you.”

  I swallow, unsure if even this is safe.

  Mom’s breath hitches. “She always used to tell me everything, but now she won’t talk to me.”

  Mom reaches up to brush at her face, and I realize she’s crying.

  I draw back and stare at her. “Mom.”

  “Can you tell me something?” More tears fall, and her voice hitches again.

  I hold my breath. Indecision is surely written all over my face.

  Mom breaks down crying in earnest. Her hands are pressed to her face.

  “Mom,” I whisper. I touch her shoulder. “Mom. It’s okay.”

  “Is she getting an abortion?” she asks. One hand is clutched over her abdomen, and she’s almost curled over. “Is she doing it tonight? Is that where you were?”

  “What? No! Mom. No.” I can’t take her tears. I’m crying now, just because Mom is. Does Samantha know how this is affecting our mother? She needs to. “Mom. She’s not. She’s at Taco Taco with a boy who graduated with her. You could drive over there right now.”

  “Are you sure?” She’s still crying.

  “I mean, pretty sure. I saw her an hour ago.” I pause and wipe at my own face. I can’t lie like this. Not to my mother. Not when she’s sobbing in my lap. “We weren’t at the movies, though. We went to a party.”

  “A party?” Mom almost laughs through the tears. “You were at a party?”

  “Please don’t be mad.” I hesitate. “I would’ve told you, but—”

  “I’m not mad.” She dabs tears away from her cheeks, then pulls me into her arms. “Oh, Maegan. I’m so relieved.”

  She’s holding me so tight. She must still be crying. Her body is still shaking.

  “I wasn’t worried earlier, but then you came home alone, and I started thinking.” Her voice breaks. “I thought she might be in a hospital or something. My imagination got the best of me.”

  “No. She’s still pregnant.” I swallow. “If that’s a relief.”

  That makes her give a choked laugh. “It is. I can’t believe I’m saying that, but it is.”

  When she finally pulls back, I look into her tear-streaked face. “You really don’t want her to have an abortion.”

  “No.” Her face contorts and she looks at her hands, now wringing in her lap. “Does that make me selfish? She worked so hard for this scholarship. This will complicate her life in ways she doesn’t understand yet.”

  “It doesn’t make you selfish,” I whisper.

  “I wish she would tell us about this boy. We could meet with his parents. We could work something out. We could help them.”

  Right. This boy. I can’t say anything.

  Mom zeroes in on my face. “Wait. Who is she meeting with at Taco Taco?”

  “Oh! Just a boy she went to school with.”

  Mom’s eyebrows go up. The emotion from the imagined abortion is gone, leaving suspicion in its place. “Do you know him?”

  “Mom, it’s not him. Trust me. It’s not him.”

  “Then why is Sam meeting with him?”

  “Because he’s a nice guy.” I wish I hadn’t mentioned alcohol, because I’d show her the text messages.

  Mom’s face falls again. “So, she’s avoiding me.”

  I hesitate.

  “Please,” Mom says. “Please tell me, Maegan. Whatever it is.”

  My thoughts are so tangled up. Rob said he wished Connor’s dad had given them a heads-up—would it be better for Mom and Dad to know what’s going on, before it’s too late? Or is this different?

  Mom frowns. “Now you won’t talk to me, either.”

  “Mom …” I take a breath. I’m not sure how to finish that statement.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” she says. “Is Samantha talking to you, at least?”

  “Yes,” I breathe, hoping I’m not about to face a firing line over this.

  Mom puts her hands on my face, then pulls me forward to kiss my forehead. “Okay. Then I’ll let you keep her secrets. I’m glad she’s talking to you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re a good girl, Maegan. I know you’ll help her figure out the right thing to do.”

  You’re a good girl, Maegan. My mother hasn’t said something like that to me in so long. I didn’t realize how desperate I was to hear those words.

  Mom leans back. Her hands are still on my face. “She doesn’t have to handle this by herself, though, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Mom kisses me again, then moves away from my bed. She leans down to click my light off. “I’ll let you get some sleep.”

  “Thanks, Mom. I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  She stops by the door, leaning in before she pulls it closed. “Maegan?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You don’t have to handle it by yourself, either.”

  The words fill me with emotion. I want to tell her everything. I have to wrap my arms around my body to keep tears from spilling out of my eyes. It takes me a breath before I can speak normally. “Okay, Mom.”

  She hesitates. She’s going to pry, and I’m going to spill everything.

  But she doesn’t. She backs out of the room and closes the door.

  Leaving me in the darkness.

  Samantha doesn’t open her bedroom door until after noon. She does it softly, almost as if she’s sneaking out, and then tiptoes across to the bathroom, where she shuts the door with an equally quiet click. She must be hiding from Mom and Dad.

  I’m in my bedroom, working on a paper for American lit, and I wait for her to come back out.

  She doesn’t. The shower turns on.

  My phone buzzes beside my laptop.

  ROB: Hey

  Three letters, and my heart explodes with butterflies. I haven’t heard from him since he dropped me off last night, and I’ve been sitting on my hands all morning to keep from writing to him first.

  The insecure part of me was worried he wouldn’t text me at all until we saw each other Monday morning—or worse, that he’d wake up and realize he wasn’t interested at all.

  But he didn’t. And he didn’t make me wait at all.

  I’m so ridiculous. I’m blushing before I start writing back.

  MAEGAN: Hey

  ROB: How are you?

  How am I? Hmm.

  Still thinking about his quiet voice as he confided in me.

  Still thinking about making out at Connor Tunstall’s house.

  Still thinking about the feel of his hands and the warm corded muscles of his arms and the way my fingers stroked up his back.

  I’m blushing harder.

  MAEGAN: Good. You?

  I’m horrible at this. My head is full of PG-13 fantasies, while my phone is full of texts that are no more illicit than what I’d send my father.

  ROB: Same. I was just thin
king about you.

  MAEGAN: Oh yeah? What were you thinking?

  ROB: I wanted to make sure everything was OK after last night.

  Oh. Well, that’s less exciting than I was hoping.

  MAEGAN: All good. Sam got home late.

  Oh … Is he checking to make sure everything is okay so he’s not going to get involved in some family drama?

  I wish Rachel wasn’t being so distant. Any other boy, and we’d be crouched over my phone together, analyzing every word.

  I click over to our last messages, when she was asking me about Rob. I never replied. She never spoke to me on Friday. But I’m not going to apologize about Rob. They were mean. They should be apologizing to him.

  My brain refuses to forget that I was sharing in their ire on the day I was assigned to be his partner.

  I click back to Rob’s texts. A new message appears.

  ROB: Any chance you want to meet up later to work on our project?

  I bite my lip and slide my fingers over the face of the phone.

  MAEGAN: Just our project?

  ROB: Like I said last night, anything you want.

  Then he adds the emoji with the sunglasses.

  Here I thought I was blushing before. Another message appears.

  ROB: That looks worse on a screen than it did in my head. I’m not a creep, I swear.

  I burst out laughing.

  MAEGAN: A creep would send the eggplant. What time?

  ROB: Owen wants to go running this afternoon. After dinner?

  MAEGAN: Owen runs?

  ROB: That’s what he says.

  MAEGAN: 7?

  ROB: 7

  It takes everything I have to keep from pressing the phone against my chest and spinning in the chair.

  Then I hear Sam come out of the bathroom.

  “Hey, Sam?” I call. “You want to come in and talk?”

  Silence answers me, but she’s in the hallway. I can tell.

  “I don’t think anyone remembers,” I say. “What I said.” I pause. “Or they don’t care. Rachel would have heard. She would have called me.”

  I hold my breath as I wait for a response.

  “I don’t want to talk,” says Sam.

  Then her door slides closed, and she turns the lock.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Rob

  I didn’t drift off to sleep until six a.m., when my body gave up, I guess. So when Owen called at eight, my nerves were so jangled that I almost threw the phone through the wall.

  I almost did it again when he asked if I wanted to go for a run.

  The alternative was sitting in my bedroom, letting guilt jab at me from all angles, so I agreed to pick him up. We’re running on the B&A Trail, a long paved path that runs from Baltimore to Annapolis. I thought maybe we’d go for half an hour or something, but we pass thirty minutes and he keeps on going. I’ve been keeping up with him, but secretly, I’m dying. I’ve been running almost every day since I made the promise to Mom, but I’m nowhere near as fit as I was when I played lacrosse.

  By the time we loop around to run back, my lungs start to scream, and I have less time for brooding. My brain becomes solely focused on breathing.

  Owen is barely winded. He plows on like he runs a marathon every weekend.

  There’s a good chance I’m going to stumble and land in a pile on the trail.

  “Want to race the last mile?” he says.

  “No.” It takes effort to speak a syllable.

  He laughs. “Come on. Loser has to do a hundred sit-ups.”

  Without waiting for an answer, he takes off.

  I sprint after him. My feet shove off the ground harder with every stride. I was fast once. I can catch him.

  I’m wrong—though not by much. He beats me by a hundred meters. He stops and waits at the fence post by the parking lot, offering a slow clap.

  I give him the finger.

  He laughs. “Toss me your keys. I’ll get the water.”

  I do as asked, then flop down in the grass. The ground is cold; the grass tickles my neck. Now that I’ve stopped running, my light sweatshirt feels like a parka. I jerk it over my head, then close my eyes and try to remember how to breathe.

  A bottle of water hits me in the chest, then bounces to roll into the grass beside me. “Sit-ups, loser.”

  I put my hands behind my head, but as soon as I sit up, I swear. It’s like Connor’s boot is still lodged in my belly.

  “I can’t do this.” I roll over and put my hands in the grass. “I’ll do push-ups.”

  “Whatever.”

  I’m on twenty when Owen says, “You have a bruise on your face. Did someone hit you?”

  “No.”

  “Walk into a door?”

  “You’re going to make me lose count.”

  “Why couldn’t you do sit-ups?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  He reaches out and pokes me in the jaw. I see it coming and grit my teeth and ignore him, but it still hurts.

  When I say nothing, he says nothing.

  I keep counting in my head. The push-ups are easier than the running was, but the endorphins from exercise are quickly disappearing, being replaced by irritation. It’s cold enough that we’re alone out here, and late enough in the year that there are no sounds of birds or insects. The only noise is the occasional rush of a passing car.

  I can’t read the silence at all, but I can feel Owen thinking.

  “What?” I finally say.

  “What what?”

  “Fine, I was in a fight. I lost. Is that what you want to know?”

  “Oh. No. I was just staring at your biceps.”

  That makes me laugh. “Okay, I’m done.” I drop onto my elbows and reach for the sweatshirt in the grass.

  Owen kicks it out of reach. “You only did like fifty. Finish. Talk.”

  I press my hands into the grass and do as ordered, but I’m still not ready to talk about Connor—or what I did. I haven’t quite unpacked it all in my head yet.

  “How are you in such good shape?” I ask Owen instead.

  “Running is free.”

  Huh. I guess that’s true.

  Owen draws up his legs to sit cross-legged. “I started when Javon was trying to get in shape before he left for basic training. It was something to do, so I kept it up.”

  “You should run cross-country.” I say the words without thinking, but then I realize Owen probably has reasons for not playing sports at school. Then again, like he said, running is free. Of all the sports, running would probably be cheapest. All you need are shoes.

  Owen shrugs and says, “I didn’t really start running until last year.”

  “Indoor hasn’t started yet. You could still join.”

  He says nothing.

  “Or track in the spring,” I add.

  He bites at the edge of his thumbnail.

  I stop at the top of a push-up and look at him. My arms are dying now, so really it’s an excuse to pause for a second. “Or not.”

  “Perhaps it’s escaped your notice, but I’m not school sports material,” he says.

  “You just ran me into the ground, Owen, so I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

  “I don’t know if I could run a race. Not with a bunch of other kids.” A long, heavy pause. “I have a blind spot in my right eye.” He chews at the edge of his thumbnail again and looks out at the parking lot. “I see spots in my left. I can’t even get a driver’s license, so …” His voice trails off.

  I’m not sure what to say. I’m sorry feels weird.

  “I didn’t know,” I say.

  He shrugs. Continues to stare at the parking lot.

  Then he says, “Dude, it’s cold. Finish.”

  So I finish, and he sits there staring, and when we’re done, we walk back to my car.

  On Thursday night, we had a conversation about his friend Javon going into the Army. I asked Owen if he was going to join the Army, and he kind of shrugged it off. I don
’t know anything about enlisting, but I do know you need to pass a physical. I’m pretty sure a blind spot that keeps you from driving would also keep you out of basic training.

  When I fire up the engine, the space between us feels awkward. My arms are tired and my legs are tired and I just want to take a nap right here while the car warms up, but I sense that Owen is uncomfortable. I shift into drive.

  “I was in an accident when I was three,” he says.

  I glance over at him. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, it’s just … I want to explain.”

  “I’ll shut up.”

  He runs his finger along the seam in the upholstery on the door. “My dad was driving, and apparently he was reaching back to touch me or hand me something or take something away from me—I don’t know. I was three and I don’t remember it. We can only go by witness reports. But he wasn’t looking at the road and he ran a red light. It was a major intersection. We were hit from both sides. He was killed instantly. I had a skull fracture. Traumatic brain injury. I was in the hospital for months.”

  “Holy shit.” I glance over. I think of my father and wonder if this is worse. I don’t know.

  “Yeah, I don’t tell a lot of people. And I don’t even really remember him, you know? Apparently another guy died in the accident and they sued Mom, so she lost whatever life insurance Dad had in place. And with me being in the hospital so long, insurance stopped covering it … you know how it goes.”

  Until this very minute, I had never really considered why Owen was poor. I just accepted that he was.

  Then he glances over at me and says, “Or maybe you don’t.”

  My throat is tight. I don’t know if that’s a dig or a pass or what. My father stole from Owen’s mother. I knew that. It feels doubly wrong now.

  I’m not even sure why. It was wrong. It’s still wrong.

  When we get to his house, I throw the car into park, but I don’t kill the engine. Owen makes no move to get out of the car. I can’t read the silence at all.

  “What do you want me to say?” I finally scrape out.