Catch Twenty-Two

by James, Marie

  I don’t say a word. I just bring the beer to my lips and take a sip.

  “I bet it must suck having to stay with her. It wouldn’t surprise me if she didn’t try to sneak in your room at night.”

  Man, do I wish she would.

  “She’s just gross and—”

  “Shut up, Bronwyn.” Her mouth snaps closed as I take a step away from her and glare down into her eyes. “Don’t say another word about that girl to me.”

  Her eyes dart back and forth between mine, and I don’t know what she’s looking for but a slow grin spreads across her over-painted face as she lifts her hand to my cheek. “Yeah. I guess you’re right. You must not want to talk about her since you’re forced to be around her all the time.”

  I don’t offer up an argument. I have hardly seen Frankie at home. I mostly stare at her in homeroom, Algebra, and during lunch. Those three times, five days a week are about all I see of her. She stays to herself when she’s home to the point that I have to wonder if she ever eats.

  Less than an hour passes before Frankie gets up and walks back toward the area everyone is parked in. The guy I’ve been told is named Dalton and Frankie’s best friend Piper follow behind her. Frankie doesn’t look back in my direction before she climbs inside of the truck, but I imagine her eyes on me as she hides behind the dark-tinted windows.

  She wasn’t supposed to be here tonight. I heard her and her friends talking upstairs, and she repeatedly told them she wasn’t going. I’d like to think she was jealous of watching me walk out of the house with Bronwyn, and that’s why she showed up, but I only caught her eyes on me once tonight. It seems she doesn’t care who I hang out with, and that makes being around this group of people that much harder.

  “I’m going to head out,” I tell the guys when there’s a break in the conversation.

  “Oh, yay,” Bronwyn says with a wide smile. “I’ll go with you.”

  “No,” I snap. “You stay and have fun with your friends.”

  I walk away before she can argue. Not wanting to be alone with her was why I insisted she drive herself when we got outside of the house earlier. I may be around her for show, but I’m not honestly going to spend a second alone with the girl. She’s fast, faster than any of the girls back home, and I’m not getting myself caught up in any sort of situation with her.

  My truck rumbles to life, a dinosaur amongst the brand-new Chevys and decked out Jeeps, but no one seems to mind, surprising considering just how mean some of these people are to others. I guess if you can throw and catch a ball then you’re okay by their standards even if your vehicle is a junker.

  I hit a fast food place before going back to the Young’s house. Even though Mrs. Young told me I have free run of the place, it’s always weird raiding a fridge that doesn’t belong to me. Plus, it’s filled with healthy stuff, not the casseroles and meatloaves I’m used to bringing home from Mrs. Jacobson’s house. I eat my burger and fries in the parking lot rather than heading straight back to the house.

  With any luck, Frankie’s door will be closed and her light will be off when I get home, making it easier to slip by and go to my own room. We’re due for a conversation, but I’ve been avoiding it because I don’t know how to open my stupid mouth and apologize. There’s just something about that girl that makes me want to kiss her and shake her at the same time, and so long as I don’t understand what I’m feeling, I can’t talk to her about it.

  The food is gone too fast, but driving around and wasting gas isn’t economical, so I head back to the house, sighing when I pull up and see the porch light is off. I know the door is locked before I even reach for the knob, but that doesn’t stop me.

  I’m standing there contemplating sleeping in my truck, but I know Frankie isn’t asleep. Dalton’s truck is still in the driveway which means they’re all inside.

  I ring the doorbell, knocking on it when that goes unanswered. I’m ready to pound again when it swings open. Dalton is standing in the foyer glaring at me like I stole his lunch money.

  Before I can even open my mouth to greet him, he rears his fist back before punching me in the face. When my hands reach up to my eye, he throws another blow to my stomach. The fast food I just ate threatens to come back up as I bend in the middle.

  “What the fuck, man!” I manage.

  I see his boots first, shiny, expensive things that would never cut it on a ranch, and I nearly laugh at the stupid thought, but then I hear his ragged breathing close to my ear.

  “When Frankie is hurting, Piper is hurting, and no one hurts my girl.”

  I stand to my full height, noticing I’m a couple of inches taller than Dalton, and I’m easily thirty pounds heavier—all muscle from working so hard all my life—but from the sneer on Dalton’s face, it’s clear that he doesn’t give a damn about our size difference. He’ll fight me just on principle alone, and I can respect that about him. His hands clench and open like he’s just waiting for me to make my move, but the girls are coming down the stairs.

  “What’s going on?” Piper screeches as she clears the bottom step.

  Frankie hangs back a little further, and it kills me that she’s afraid to approach, but deep down I know I did that to her. I made her not trust me. I put that anxiety in her eyes, and I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to make it go away.

  “Just a little misunderstanding,” I mutter, finally letting my arms fall from my midsection.

  “Hopefully, everything is clear now,” Dalton says through clenched teeth.

  “Crystal,” I mutter, not pulling my eyes from his.

  The slight nod he gives me is all I wait for before leaving the room.

  I don’t walk toward the stairs because that’s where Frankie is standing and I couldn’t bear to see her flinch away from me, but then I hear them talking.

  “Frankie, go pack an overnight bag. I want you to stay with me tonight. I don’t want you to be alone with him.”

  That wasn’t so bad, but hearing Frankie say, “Yeah, that’s a good idea,” nearly kills me.

  Less than five minutes later, the front door opens and closes, and I’m left alone in a house that isn’t mine, worrying about a girl I’ll never get close enough to touch again.

  Chapter 36

  Frankie

  The stress of being in the same house with Zeke is killing me. I go to bed exhausted, yet I still wake up just as tired. This morning I woke up with a queasy stomach, all from the stress of him just being here.

  I haven’t really spoken to my parents, so I have no idea if or when his mother will come to town and he’ll move in with her, but his presence is ruining me.

  I worry about running into him at home even though after joining the football team his time is filled with practices, games, and of course Bronwyn. She’s constantly plastered to his side, looking like his better half, the tall, beautiful perfect yin to his yang. If her soul wasn’t as black as night, she’d be the epitome of perfection, but she uses every chance she can get to sneer at me, sometimes hissing like a feral cat. She doesn’t do it while she’s hanging on Zeke anymore, but that doesn’t stop her from being confrontational to me in the restroom or during our gym class.

  “What’s wrong?” Piper asks when I meet her at our lockers before first period.

  It’s been three weeks since the bonfire, since Dalton put his fist in Zeke’s face and I’ve only seen my nemesis a handful of times alone. Of course I see him in class, which is why my stomach is turning over and over right now. The dread of walking into class once again to see him living the best life with his football guys and his mean girlfriend is literally making me sick to my stomach.

  “I just don’t feel well this morning,” I complain.

  Like a mother hen, Piper presses the back of her hand to my forehead.

  “No fever,” she muses as her eyes dart between mine. “I don’t think there’s anything going around, but what do I know?”

  I get her meaning perfectly. She’s so wrapped up in Dalton that
unless she or he were sick themselves, she’s oblivious to everything else that’s going on around them.

  “Hey, gorgeous.” Dalton doesn’t waste a second walking up to us before he’s wrapping his arms around my best friend and pressing his lips to hers. Her cheeks flush in embarrassment at the PDA, but she doesn’t push him away any longer. When the school year started, she wanted to keep their affections private, but Dalton wasn’t having any of that. Clearly, he wants everyone to know that Piper one hundred percent owns him, and vice versa.

  “Hey, Frankie,” he says with a smile once he manages to pull his lips away from Piper’s.

  “Hey,” I mutter.

  “Are you okay? You don’t look like you feel well.”

  I sigh, turning back to my locker. “I’m fine.”

  I must look like a hot mess if even Dalton notices.

  “Are you coming to class?” Piper asks when I close my locker and turn away from them.

  “I’m going to go splash some water on my face. I’ll meet you in class.”

  “Want me to come with you?”

  She would if I asked, but I know they don’t get to spend much time together, so I forfeit the company and walk away.

  My stomach only worsens the closer I get to the restroom. Ignoring Drea, one of the Westover Prep cheerleaders who’s standing at the sink with red, puffy eyes, I barely make it to the toilet before breakfast makes a reintroduction. I hate getting sick like this, especially at school. It’s long minutes before I feel as if it’s safe enough to step away and rinse my mouth.

  Looking at my sallowed cheeks and red-rimmed eyes, it hits me like a brick. It’s as if someone just punched me in the gut the way Dalton did Zeke in the foyer right after the bonfire.

  The tiredness.

  The upset stomach.

  I pull my cell phone from my backpack and do a quick search.

  My eyes widen as I read the list of symptoms.

  Exhaustion. Check.

  Tender breasts. Check.

  Missed period. I open my period tracking app and holy crap. With all the stress I’ve been under, I knew I was a little late, but I’ve never been weeks late before.

  Tears fill my eyes when I look back up at myself in the mirror. I’ve definitely caught something, and the symptoms aren’t going to go away for another eight months.

  Even as I walk out of the restroom and head to the front office to check myself out, I know what I’m going to discover, but I leave school and head to the store and grab a couple of tests, anyway.

  I ignore the texts from Piper wondering where I went and head home. My hands shake so much it’s nearly impossible to get my key in the front door, but I’m grateful that my parents are gone. I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to tell them about this.

  The urge to postpone the inevitable hits me hard when I walk inside, so instead of heading straight upstairs to the bathroom, I drop the pharmacy bag on the kitchen counter and grab a cold bottle of water from the fridge, leaning against the counter and taking small, slow sips.

  Pregnant before I even turn eighteen. What a mess.

  Unable to take my eyes from the plastic bag and the three tests hidden inside, I scoop it off the counter and head to my room where I spend another five minutes avoiding taking them.

  If only I could wish it away. Do I want to wish it away?

  Of course I do. Not only is having a baby so young a recipe for disaster, I have to consider the father, and the last thing I want is to be tied somehow to Zeke for the rest of my life.

  With one last sigh, I grab the bag and pee on all three sticks, but like a coward, I leave them on the vanity and walk out of the room. I can’t bear to face the truth right now.

  Pacing doesn’t help at all, so when Piper sends another text message, I check the time, realizing that she’s in between classes. I decide to call her, needing her voice and guidance.

  “What the heck, Frankie. Where are you?” are her opening words once the call connects.

  “Piper.” Her name comes out on a sob.

  “Oh, Frankie. Are you that sick? Do I need to leave? I can take you to the clinic.”

  “The clinic can’t fix this,” I tell her through my tears. “I think I’m pregnant.”

  Silence fills the line, and I have to pull my phone from my ear to check if she’s still there.

  “Pregnant?” she whisper-hisses in my ear.

  “Please tell me you didn’t just say that in front of everyone in the hall.” I press my hand against my forehead, shielding my eyes like it’ll help with the embarrassment of my confession.

  It doesn’t.

  “I stepped away,” she assures me. “Did you take a test? Maybe your period is just late.”

  “I took a few tests,” I tell her. “They’re in the bathroom, but I can’t find the courage to look at them.”

  “Give me fifteen minutes. I’ll check myself out and come to your house. We’ll look at them together.”

  I shake my head like she can see me. “I’ll go look at them in a minute. What will I do? I can’t have a baby this young. My parents will kill me.”

  Piper sighs because she knows as well as I do that this would only be a small blip on my parents’ radar. They don’t care enough to worry about their only child becoming a mother. Sure there would be disappointment, but they’d just dole out more money for groceries and supplies and be gone the next day for work. I’ve lived practically independent of them for the last two years.

  “You don’t want me to come?”

  “Come over after school. I’m just going to confirm what I already know and lie down. I’m so tired.”

  “I think you should—”

  I don’t hear another word my best friend says because my bathroom door swings open with a bang and there stands Zeke with one of the tests clenched in his hands. He looks murderous, but he has to know I’m just as angry. There’s no way I’ll let this guy blame me for this.

  “Piper, I have to go.” I hang up the phone before she can argue and glare up at Zeke.

  “What the fuck is this?”

  I want to laugh. I want to mock him and his no one gets pregnant the first time crap that he told me that night.

  “I told you this would happen!” I yell instead.

  It must be positive or he wouldn’t be staring down at me like I just ruined his entire future.

  “What are you doing home, anyway?”

  His eyes narrow as he walks closer. I feel so tiny sitting on my bed when he looms over me.

  “I skipped, but that’s the least of my worries right now.”

  I must’ve been too consumed in what was going on with me to notice his truck parked on the street.

  Instead of shaking me like I can tell he wants to, Zeke takes a step back and begins to pace, walking the length of my room, back and forth, back and forth. He doesn’t say a word, and the silence is killing me. I don’t know what I expected from him, but this isn’t it.

  Tears streak my cheeks when he finally turns back around to face me.

  “Is it mine?”

  Anger simmers in my blood and it only takes seconds for it to bubble over.

  “Are you kidding me?”

  His throat works on a swallow, and I don’t miss the way his eyes dart from mine to my still flat stomach. I barely resist placing a protective hand over my lower belly while under his scrutiny.

  “We need—” I hold my hand up to make him stop talking.

  I don’t want to even hear the word we in his vocabulary. Even with his child growing inside of me there’s no we. There never will be.

  “Get out,” I demand.

  “What?” His hand, still clutching the test drops to his side. “Frankie.”

  I snap my eyes up to him, hating the emotion in his voice. He doesn’t get to treat me like crap one second and turn around and expect me to just bend to his will the next. I’m over this back-and-forth with him. I have more to worry about now than just myself.

  “Get. Ou
t. Of. My. Room.” I enunciate each and every word, glaring at him so he can see that I’m just done with this entire conversation.

  His eyes soften as his jaw ticks, but eventually he walks away. The door to my bathroom snapping shut is just another hint at the anger he’s always carrying around with him.

  Tears wet my pillow when I flop down and pull my comforter over my shoulders. Sobs wrack my body, but I don’t try to stop them. Eventually the exhaustion wins and I fall into a restless sleep. I have too much to face when I wake up, and it makes me wish I could close my eyes forever.

  Chapter 37

  Zeke

  Pregnant.

  A baby.

  A fucking baby.

  She’s having a baby.

  My baby.

  We’re having a baby.

  I can’t even wrap my head around this new information enough to know what to do.

  Unable to handle being mere feet from her and not being able to go to her is killing me.

  I played this entire thing wrong. The urgency to take her in my arms that filled my blood the entire drive to Westover all those weeks ago has never waned. I handled the entire thing wrong. Fear kept me from reaching out to her that very first day, and it’s eaten me alive from the inside every second since.

  Telling her how I feel makes me vulnerable, and that’s the last thing I need right now, but she’s pregnant. She’s vulnerable. Our baby is vulnerable.

  I hit the stairs, taking them two at a time as I rush out of the house. I can’t be so close to her right now, and I have no idea how to play this. I’m no fool. I know telling her everything right after finding out she’s pregnant would only look like I’m doing it because of this news. She’d reject me in a heartbeat, just like she did mere moments ago.

  I’m so freaking lost right now, feeling the need to do something stupid just so I gain a little control back over my spiraling life.

  A drive sounds like the perfect idea, but when I climb into my truck and crank it, I have no idea where to go. School is out of the question. I’m too raw right now to face those preppy idiots with nothing of substance to say. There’s a pull to visit my dad’s grave but Utah is so far away, that’s not reasonable either.