Stranger Things

by Gwenda Bond

  “He must. He said something that’s part of how I figured it out.” Terry ran through Kali’s demonstration and what had happened afterward. And she added, “He’s untouchable now. You should have seen how those men about-faced. He can get whatever he wants from them.”

  Alice had stopped walking back and forth. “He knew you’d refuse to take their drugs anymore if you knew. That’s why he didn’t tell you.”

  “He said this baby is the next generation of their exceptional people.” Terry shook her head. “I will burn that place to the ground before it happens.”

  “Kali’s still in there.” Alice sighed. “She came to see me today. I think I scared her.”

  “How?”

  “I might have described a monster to her.”

  Oh no. “Alice!”

  “On the plus side, she hasn’t seen any.” Alice looked at her feet, then back up. “What do you want us to do?”

  “Nothing, just think,” Terry said. “As hard as you can. All of you. There’s got to be something we can do to get free of that place. He can’t have my child.”

  Gloria reached over and touched Terry’s hand. “Hey, be gentle with yourself. You just found this out—while you were high—and you need to think. The next step is finding out how far along you are. Whether there are any signs the baby isn’t healthy…”

  “I’m sure they’ve been looking at that,” Terry said bitterly.

  “But you haven’t. It’ll make you feel better.” Gloria reached up and smoothed Terry’s hair from her cheek, and Terry thought of her own mother and how she used to do that. “You’re going to get through this.”

  Terry reached up and put her hand on Gloria’s and gave it a light squeeze. “Thank you. Thank all of you.”

  She should go see Stacey. The next step to the next step. Then she’d take the step after that. Ken climbed to his feet too and, without even asking, put his hand onto her stomach with his fingers splayed.

  Terry protested. “What are you—”

  “It’s a girl,” he said. “I can’t see you or her together clearly, but it’s a girl.”

  A girl. A girl. She was having a girl.

  At least this time Ken had a fifty-fifty shot of being right. Assuming she was pregnant and not having a paranoid fit.

  6.

  When Terry let herself in the room, Stacey sat in the center of her unmade bed painting her toenails a rosy hue.

  “Thank god you’re here,” Terry said.

  The Fellowship—her new friends—could understand what she was going through in one way no one else could. But Stacey was Terry’s oldest friend here. She would understand it in another way, and that was what Terry needed right now.

  “What’s up, babe?” Stacey asked, unconcerned by Terry’s obvious panic.

  Terry stopped at the edge of the mattress and reached out to pluck the bottle from Stacey’s hands over her protest of “Hey!”

  She put it on the desk nearby and then grabbed Stacey’s hand and placed it on her stomach. “I think I figured out why I’ve been the crankiest, hungriest human.”

  Stacey looked at her hand and then up at Terry. Her eyes reflected all the shock Terry expected.

  “Terry,” she breathed, “what will you do?”

  Terry almost laughed. There was something comforting about her friends all reacting with the same level of I don’t know as she had. “I was hoping you’d help me figure that out. I need to confirm that I’m right…But I don’t want to use my doctor. I’m afraid the lab will be watching him.”

  “Terry, babe, you can’t worry about that lab. You’ll have to stop going!”

  Terry plopped onto the edge of her own bed. “Look…Can you just make an appointment with your doctor? I’d just rather go there than to mine.”

  Stacey nodded. “I’ll call first thing tomorrow.”

  “Will you make it under your name?” Back to impersonating Stacey, briefly.

  “Sure, now that I know why you’re so paranoid. Pregnancy hormones.” Stacey paused. “You should know that my doctor’s an old creep. I’m pretty sure he felt me up once.”

  Given the creeps she’d been around in the lab…“I’ll live.”

  Stacey came over and pulled Terry back up and into a hug. “Andrew is going to be thrilled. He’d have asked you to marry him before he left if he knew!”

  “I know.” He’d be the only thrilled person.

  “That would’ve made everything easier. This isn’t good,” Stacey said, pointing out the obvious. “It’s going to screw up everything.”

  Terry should’ve agreed. She’d thought the same thing, after all. Instead, everything within her rejected the suggestion. Maybe it was Ken’s saying the baby was a girl. Maybe it was knowing she had to be stronger now.

  “No, she’s not going to screw up anything. She’s going to be perfect.”

  “Like I said, pregnancy hormones.”

  1.

  Stacey’s doctor’s exam room might have struck Terry as cold and clinical if she didn’t have the rooms at the lab to compare it to. Since she did, the fact that there were paintings of old-fashioned doctor’s bags and Norman Rockwell prints on the walls made it feel practically homey. The gown fabric was thicker. A box of tissues sat on a counter with jars of tongue depressors and cotton balls and Dum-Dums lollipops. A poster with the words THE HUMAN BODY on the wall depicted a man’s body with the organs and skeletal system diagrammed.

  Guess he won’t be showing me where the baby is on that, Terry thought.

  A petite nurse had weighed her and given her a disapproving scowl when she said why she was there, then told her to change into the gown. She’d had Terry pee into a plastic cup and taken it away. “We use Wampole’s test here,” she said. “It’s faster than the others. I’ll be back in two hours with the results.”

  And so for two hours Terry had waited on a crinkling paper sheet for the official verdict to come. She wished she’d asked for a newspaper, so she could read the latest developments around the Kent State shootings. A protest had gone badly wrong; four students had ended up dead, nine injured, after guardsmen fired sixty-seven rounds into the crowd in thirteen seconds. There was no real indication of what had provoked the troops to shoot.

  Life could end so quickly.

  The door finally opened and the doctor came in, followed by the nurse.

  “I understand you’re a friend of Stacey Sullivan’s.” The doctor frowned at her. His mushroom cloud of gray hair frizzed around his head, Einstein-like. He raised his hands to pull a pair of gloves on, and Terry noted that his hands were huge with hairy knuckles. She really hoped he didn’t attempt to grope her.

  “That’s right.”

  “The Sullivans are good people.” He paused to make a teeth-sucking noise. “Stacey’s a smart girl—too smart to get into trouble.”

  So Stacey’s doctor was, in fact, a total creep of all different sorts. Good to know. “Does that mean I am—in trouble?”

  “Yes.” He gazed at her balefully. “And I really shouldn’t be seeing you without an adult or the father present. But then I guess if the father was present you wouldn’t be here.”

  “He was deployed to Vietnam before I suspected. We’re in a serious relationship.”

  “Unless you’re in a married relationship, you shouldn’t be in the state you’re in now.” He nodded for her to lie back. “Let’s see how bad this situation is.”

  Charming.

  She regretted coming here for a second, imagining their family doctor and how sympathetic he’d always been. Even just a fever was treated as cause for ice cream as soon as the girls felt strong enough for it. He’d even come to her parents’ funeral.

  Nervously, Terry scooted back and reclined on the table. She should be used to being po
ked and prodded at the mercy of doctors but…this was different. She’d done the math from various dates, and she could be very far along or not far at all. She and Andrew usually used protection, but a couple of times she’d been fairly certain of her cycle and they’d been careless.

  The nurse lifted her ankles and popped her feet into two cold metal stirrups at the end of the exam table. A sheet was placed over her lap. And then Terry closed her eyes and tried to be somewhere else while the doctor did the extremely unpleasant exam.

  “Why are all the tools so cold?” she asked.

  “Mm-hmm,” the doctor said in answer and sucked his teeth again. “You can sit up, miss.”

  God, what a bedside manner.

  “Well?” Terry prompted.

  “You’re well into your third trimester.”

  The nurse gave her a disappointed look, as if Terry had engineered all this.

  But Terry was in shock. She hadn’t expected this. She did the math in her head—November. All the way back in November. When Andrew had come to the dining hall in his mask…That had been one of the careless nights, after she’d bailed him out.

  “That far along?” She wanted to be sure she understood right.

  “I’d estimate about seven months along, and it’s remarkable how little you’re showing.” He gave her a disapproving stare that mirrored the nurse’s. “So I believe that you truly might not have known. However, you’ve been too careless for a more palatable solution to your problem. There are places you can go to finish the pregnancy and no one will ever know. You should do that.”

  The use of the word “careless” so soon after she’d been thinking it herself stung.

  “No,” Terry said. “I’m not giving her up.”

  “We don’t know the sex of the baby. You’re just developing an irrational attachment. Hormones will do that.”

  God, was this where Stacey got the “pregnancy hormones” refrain?

  He went on, as if to impress his wisdom upon her. “You’ve made an error in judgment, and it’s better for everyone if you let this baby go to a home where two loving parents can care for it.”

  Terry wasn’t entertaining suggestions on what she should do with her baby from this guy, but she could see she’d get nowhere if she argued. She needed actual information. “Tell me what I should know, about the rest of the pregnancy. Can you tell if sh—the baby—is healthy?”

  “Everything seems normal.” The doctor steepled his fingers and peered down his nose at her. His eyebrows were like untidy bushes. “I can recommend someone for you to see, but talk to your family. They’ll tell you the same thing as me.”

  When Terry glared at him, he continued. “You’ll need to increase your caloric intake—the baby should start to take on more weight and so should you. You may need to urinate more frequently. And you’ll want to leave school…”

  “The semester’s over next week.” Thank god. She might get out of this without the school discovering and kicking her out for a morality infraction.

  Decent girls didn’t get pregnant while they were unmarried. But it was almost comical how far shame was from Terry’s concerns. She didn’t care about that at all. She was too fixated on the monster who’d pumped her full of chemicals, and what his goal had been. If he thought her baby was the next generation of anything to do with him, he was beyond mistaken.

  She almost asked the doctor for confidentiality, unable to trust that Brenner wouldn’t find out about this appointment. Except…

  Seven months. Seven. Months. Brenner must have known…for how long? And he’d continued to bring her there. He hadn’t told her on purpose, just like Alice said. So he could keep dosing her.

  No, shame could wait, maybe forever. Her current main concern boiled down to one word: escape.

  There had to be a way to get out of this situation without anyone getting hurt. But first? She needed to get word to Andrew that they were having a baby.

  “I’ll see myself out,” she said.

  2.

  The dorm lobby must rival Grand Central—Terry couldn’t be sure, since she’d never been there. But this was how she pictured it from movies she’d seen, everyone speeding along double-time because they had places to go. Finals were only a week away. This was a frenetic season of trying to cram in all the facts to make it through tests and papers and enough fun to cover a summer spent back home.

  She had to wait for the phone, of course. Four people were in line ahead of her. She pulled out her book, but skimmed the lines without taking in much of it. The orcs still had Sam and Frodo. Eventually she gave up trying.

  Calling Andrew’s mom was the best she could do for now. The hope was that Mrs. Rich could arrange for him to phone the dorm at a certain time. Terry had already rehearsed her line to him: So, how would you feel about forgetting this officially-not-together thing and getting engaged instead? Because we’re having a baby this summer…

  When it was her turn, she dialed the number from memory and shifted from foot to foot while the phone rang. She almost gave up before Mrs. Rich answered. Another sniffle into the phone, like the other day.

  Terry barreled ahead. “Mrs. Rich? It’s Terry. Ives. I really need to talk to Andrew as soon as I can. Could you ask him to tell you a time he can call the dorm, and I’ll make sure I’m standing by?”

  “I’m afraid…I’m afraid…” The phone dropped to the floor. Seconds later, a male voice came on. Andrew’s dad. “Who is this?”

  “It’s Terry, Andrew’s girlfriend. I was hoping to get a message to him.”

  “I’m sorry, Terry. I’m sorry to have to tell you…”

  Terry barely heard the rest.

  3.

  Ken was in his room studying for a physics exam when the feeling came to him. A cold, dark certainty. A light dimming, then extinguishing. An overwhelming sense of loss in his world.

  He had asked for this answer, time and again, and now that it was here he didn’t want it.

  But in every fiber of his being he knew it as truth: Andrew was gone.

  4.

  Alice knocked on Terry’s dorm room door. She never felt entirely comfortable on the campus. At first she’d wanted to poke in every corner—and elevator—and determine how it was all put together, this world that had always felt so close and yet so secret. Now she knew people from this world, and it seemed both more and less like her own.

  On her way in, she’d taken the glances from curious snobs who didn’t understand why someone dressed like her was on campus. She was here for her friend.

  The door swung open. “Hey, Alice,” Stacey said, “thanks. You’re relieving Gloria here.”

  “Hi, Al,” Gloria said. She sat beside Terry at a desk, where they’d obviously been working hard. Books and papers were scattered around them. “She just needs to go to her Lit test, and then afterward she has to drop this paper for a seminar. I wrote down the buildings.”

  “How are you doing?” Alice asked.

  “Don’t ask me that,” Terry said, obviously struggling to put on a brave face. “They’re writing the buildings where I’m supposed to go.”

  Alice nodded. “You got it. Zero questions about your emotional state. Ready to go ace some finals?”

  Stacey had contacted Gloria and Alice after Terry got the news about Andrew, so the three of them could full-court press to get Terry through finals. With her own to take, Stacey figured it’d work better if they took shifts. “My girl is not getting kicked out of this school over some prehistoric nonsense. She’s taking her tests,” she’d said.

  Neither of them argued. They agreed. They would drag Terry to the end of this school year if it killed them.

  Gloria gathered her coat and purse. She paused beside Alice. “How are you?” she asked, keeping her voice down. “Ready for tomorrow?”
<
br />   Tomorrow was Thursday.

  “I’m not going,” Terry said, overhearing. “To the lab tomorrow. I haven’t figured out what to do yet. To stop it.”

  Gloria and Alice exchanged a look.

  Stacey scoffed, “Damn right you’re not going back to that place. Why would you? You have enough to worry about.”

  “We probably should go,” Gloria said. “See how he takes it.”

  “You guys should really just all stop going,” Stacey said. “Let that guy Ken go…”

  Alice looked at Gloria. Stacey could hardly understand that it was so much worse than her own experience. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” Alice said to Gloria, who nodded and left.

  Terry would figure out what to do, or wake up and feel more like herself and less like the star of a tragedy, and when that happened she’d want to know that Kali was okay, too. Alice could find out. She could also keep looking in the future for anything that might help them now.

  “Let’s get her shoes on,” Stacey said.

  “I’m right here,” Terry said. “I’m Terry, not ‘her.’ ”

  “Good.” Stacey pointed to the wardrobe. “Then pick out your own shoes and put them on.”

  Alice let her struggle with the laces of her sneakers for sixty seconds, then took over. “We don’t stop to appreciate what a technological marvel these things must’ve been, the first time someone laced fabric together,” she said.

  Terry looked down at Alice and then threw her head back in laughter. “My tennis shoes are marvels and— No, that’s you.” She kept laughing, and Alice was just glad to see that spark there. Terry would come back from this. They’d make sure of it.

  “Wonders and marvels,” Terry said, rubbing a hand across her belly. Her top was long and loose, no doubt chosen purposely for that reason by Stacey or Gloria. “What a farce this is.”

  Alice didn’t know what Terry meant. “Saying things like that, I bet you’re going to knock this test out of the park. That’s how I always figured college professors talked.” Terry smiled at her, and Alice finished tying the shoes with a gentle tug. “It’s only been a few days. You’ll get past this.”