The Inconceivable Life of Quinn

by Marianna Baer

  Standing there, staring up at Quinn’s room, Lydia had a feeling that she was going to want to take one of those things her sister had just put along the windowsill.

  Pieces of the puzzle. Because something was wrong, and if she could figure it out, maybe she could help.

  Maybe she could save her.

  QUINN

  “You’ll be okay, sweetie?” Katherine asked Quinn as they pulled up in front of New Prospect’s high school, an old brick building that looked like a mansion on one of Park Slope’s historic district side streets.

  Quinn and her parents had agreed she shouldn’t miss another day. “This will all be over soon,” her father had said. “No reason to fall far behind in your classes.” Quinn couldn’t imagine it ever being over, but she did want to at least pretend to get back to real life. Back to normal. She’d texted Jesse to pick her up so they could walk together, like usual. But she got sick after forcing herself to eat breakfast, and was still in the bathroom when he stopped by, so her mother ended up taking her on her way to a gardening job.

  “I’ll be fine,” Quinn said, stepping out of the car. Her head ached; she’d barely slept at all.

  Aside from the front-desk security guard, there was no one still lingering in the main lobby when she went inside—just the welcome-back fumes of fresh paint and cleaning products that made Quinn’s skin itch. The polished dark wood floor gleamed and creaked under her feet as she headed up a flight of stairs. Other first-day-of-school memories crowded into her brain, like fifth grade, when she and the cute new boy (Jesse) were both wearing Coney Island T-shirts—hers from the Mermaid Parade, his from the Sideshow.

  Room 203. Mr. Dellatoro’s advisor group room. Quinn hesitated for a moment, stood up straighter, and opened the door.

  Everyone sitting in the circle of chairs turned at the sound. In a moment of panic, she thought they were all looking at her because they knew. But no, of course not. They couldn’t know.

  “Quinn, hello!” Mr. D said. “So great to have you with us, finally.” She was momentarily confused by his appearance, then realized he’d grown a beard over the summer.

  “Hi,” she said. “Sorry I’m late.”

  Jesse was sitting across the room, his posture uncharacteristically rigid. She gave him a small smile. His expression was worried, not happy or relieved.

  Sadie jumped up and hurried over. “You’re not contagious, are you?” she asked as they hugged.

  “Only if someone touches me,” Quinn said, face buried in her friend’s enormous mass of dark blond curls. Sadie was obsessed with coding, and they all joked that she kept a couple extra laptops hidden in her hair.

  “Let’s save reunions for later, okay?” Mr. D said in a friendly voice as they broke apart. “Take a seat, Quinn.”

  Quinn scanned the circle again and slid into the one free chair, between Adrian Fama and Noë Becker. Adrian gave her a brief chin raise. “Hola, Cutler,” he said, smiling his handsome, sleepy smile. “Hola, Fama,” Quinn replied with a nod. Adrian had tutored her in Spanish last year. He was fluent in Spanish, French, and Italian. The romance languages, as he loved to point out.

  Noë Becker—the school’s unofficial PC police, currently wearing about eight rubber bracelets supporting different causes—offered her usual fist bump. Quinn returned it.

  Mr. D was checking in with people about their plans for fall extracurriculars, since sign-ups were today. Quinn didn’t hear much of what was said. She and Jesse talked with their eyes across the circle. Quinn told him how sorry she was. He asked if she was okay. She gave an almost imperceptible shrug.

  “Quinn?” Mr. D said.

  “Yeah?” she said, turning her attention.

  “I asked if you were going to be heading up Adventurers again. I didn’t see it on the list.”

  “Oh.” She struggled to focus on real life. “Yeah, I . . . I forgot to send in the form.” Last year, she’d started a club that went on weekend outdoor trips, hiking and canoeing and stuff. An excuse to escape the city as often as possible. Mr. D was the faculty advisor. “But yes. Definitely.”

  “Great. So you and I should meet about it. And Earth First?”

  The environmental awareness committee. “Um . . . yeah. Everything I usually do.” She rubbed her pendant. “Of course.”

  Minutes later, the bell rang for first class block.

  “I’m so sorry I haven’t been in touch.” Quinn held on to Jesse’s wrist as they walked out into the crush of the hall. “Please don’t be mad.”

  “I’m not mad,” he said. “I just want to know what’s going on.”

  “Nothing,” she said stupidly. “I mean—”

  “Quinn, wait up!” Sadie grabbed her arm from behind. “You must have been so sick, poor baby!”

  Before Quinn could respond, another voice called her name from across the hall. Isa was pushing through people to get to them, using her violin case as a battering ram, with the determination, big eyes, and small stature of a Chihuahua. “You look exhausted, Q,” she said. “And we have so much to tell you! It feels like you’ve been gone for years.” Quinn was still holding Jesse’s wrist. She knew he wanted an explanation, but her next class was with Sadie and Isa, so she had no choice other than to let him go and say “See you later” as he got sucked down the hallway by the tide of bodies.

  When she brought her books to her locker at lunchtime, a note in Jesse’s handwriting was taped to the front: Lounging. Come now. No food required. There was a small cafeteria at New Prospect; the student lounge was where they ate if they brought their lunches or got take-out. This morning, packing a lunch had been the last thing on Quinn’s mind, so she didn’t have food anyway. Not that she was hungry.

  The room was its usual lunchtime chaos—bags and books littered across the floor, chairs pulled up to tables unevenly as people crowded to sit with friends, laughter and voices filling the air. She found Jesse at a table by a window with the Dubs, Adrian, Oliver Chu, and Matt Rivera, a group originally brought together when they all started playing ultimate in seventh grade. (Except for Matt, who was Adrian’s longtime friend, and Caroline, who Sadie and Quinn became friends with in an eighth-grade ceramics class.) By now, people had hooked up, broken up, crushed on one another, and everything in between. Quinn hadn’t messed around with any of them except Jesse. The only other guys she’d kissed at all (aside from Marco) were an exchange student named Kai, who’d gone back to Holland, and some random friend of Caroline’s at a party a year ago.

  “Hey, everyone.” She gave a brief wave. An enthusiastic chorus of “Hey, Quinn” echoed from the group.

  “Thank god you’re back, bunny,” Caroline said, standing up to hug her. “We’re all sick to death of each other already.” Her blackish-brown hair was in two high side poufs, like Mickey Mouse ears, and she was wearing a vintage lace blouse and bright red lipstick. She was the only one in the group who aspired beyond jeans and T-shirts.

  “I’ll try to be entertaining,” Quinn said, forcing a smile. A bunch of take-out containers were arranged between Jesse and the empty seat across from him, holding Quinn’s favorite foods from a nearby Middle Eastern restaurant: stuffed grape leaves, hummus, spinach and cheese pie . . .

  She sat down. “This is really nice, Jess. But I don’t know how much I can eat.”

  “Because of the flu?” Jesse said. Their eyes met. He knew she didn’t have the flu.

  “You don’t look sick,” Matt said, waving a fry at Quinn, his white Real Madrid shirt in danger of being speckled with ketchup. “You look awesome, if you don’t mind me saying.”

  “Of course he thinks so,” Isa said to her, not so quietly. Isa and Matt had dated pretty seriously and now had a love/hate relationship. “Your boobs grew over the summer. A girl could be dying of consumption, and if her boobs were bigger, the guys would think she looked awesome.”

  Shit. Quinn’s face heated in a flash. She forced herself not to glance down or adjust her shirt. “No, they haven’t,” she said.
Shit, shit, shit.

  “That’s not what I meant,” Matt said to Isa. “I’m not going to go around talking about her boobs in front of my man Jesse.”

  They don’t know. No one knows. Everything is okay.

  “If a girl was dying of consumption, I don’t think her boobs would be very big, anyway,” Oliver said, reaching over Jesse to snag a piece of falafel.

  “What is consumption?” Matt asked. “Does your flesh consume itself or something?”

  “It’s TB, loser,” Adrian said.

  “Maybe it’s what Oliver had over the weekend,” Isa said, ignoring him.

  “Gross! We’re eating!” Sadie threw a cheese puff at her.

  “And that was the opposite of consumption,” Oliver said, which made all of them laugh.

  The conversation redirected to private jokes about the camping trip, and Quinn’s face returned to its normal temperature. Everything is fine. You are still Quinn Cutler—a solid part of this group, Jesse’s girlfriend, good student destined to go to a decent college . . . She made a plate of food and tried to look like she was eating it. Jesse didn’t seem to be eating much either. In the car this morning, her mother had reminded her about the paternity test. What was she supposed to do, casually pluck a hair off his head? Or off his shirt? Not even tell him?

  And how incredibly disturbing that the baby’s DNA was mingled with her own blood. Were they two people right now or one? Since all this began, she had tried not to think too much about the baby itself. But it was inside her. Right now as she sat here with her friends. It was either a boy or a girl, and it had fingers and toes and had been inside her for over three months. Three months. If she hadn’t happened to go to the doctor, would she have been one of those girls who went all nine months without knowing? Because, clearly, there was something really wrong with her. She was really, really screwed up. And it was her fault somehow, she was sure of it. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be happening to her. There wouldn’t be a baby with fingers and toes growing inside of her—Right. Now.

  “Quinn?” Jesse said. “Are you choking?”

  Her hand was at her throat. She wasn’t choking, but she couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe at all, and she pushed back her chair and bolted up to go get some air. “Quinn? Are you okay?” Dizziness crashed into her skull. She put a hand out to steady . . . Everything tipped . . . The floor rose . . . fast.

  Quinn was lying on the bed in the nurse’s office. Her head was still spinning and she was full of nausea—dehydrated from the flu, she’d explained. The nurse forced juice and saltines on her.

  “Can I see Jesse?” Quinn asked.

  The nurse’s lips tightened disapprovingly. “For a minute,” she said.

  When she ushered him in, he looked like he was the one who had fainted. His skin was the color of ash. Even his hair seemed to have paled.

  “God, Quinn.” He held her cold hand in his warm one. His fingers were so long, it looked as if they could wrap around hers more than once. She loved his hands. He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. “You scared me.”

  “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “Q. Are you . . . are you dying? Like, from cancer?”

  She smiled weakly. “No. Definitely not dying.”

  The nurse was talking on the phone in the outer room and the door was open just a crack. Jesse eased it shut, quietly, then sat on a metal folding chair next to the low bed. A sunstream from the window caught the light fuzz on his sharp jawline and brought out the flecks of warm gold in his eyes.

  “So, seriously, can you tell me what’s going on?” he said. “I’m going crazy here.”

  Her heart was jackhammering. She needed to tell him. This was too much to manage alone and there was no one she trusted completely other than Jesse. Also, they spent so much time together, she needed him to help fill in gaps in the calendar, help her figure out when and where something could have happened. He must have noticed her acting weird at some point. Her parents wouldn’t have noticed because they’d been too busy with the election. But Jesse . . . how could he not have noticed something?

  She’d say it when she reached three.

  One . . . two . . . two and a half . . . Her lips were numb. She fiddled with her pendant.

  “Quinn?”

  Telling him the truth might make her more alone than ever if he thought she was lying about not having slept with anyone, or if he believed her and got too freaked out to deal with it. That could happen. People get freaked out when you tell them something they don’t want to hear. People don’t always believe your explanations. And if she had to live without Jesse . . . she wouldn’t be able to breathe.

  Still, the words were pressing up out of her chest, trying to get out, like her madly thumping heart. But she couldn’t move her lips.

  Two and three quarters . . .

  “Quinn?”

  She squeezed his hand again. “If I tell you, will you promise not to freak out?”

  “Uh, I guess that depends.”

  “Will you promise not to leave me?

  “Jesus, Quinn. You’re scaring me again. Can you just say it?”

  Three.

  JESSE KALBITZER

  Jesse’s next class was pre-calc. He handed Mr. Evans his homework sheet. He sat down. Then, his brain exploded. It was a bit of a mess.

  QUINN

  Mostly to escape the deafening silence of her phone that evening, Quinn joined her family for dinner. They all acted as if they were happy to see her, but something was off, like when a movie soundtrack doesn’t quite match the actors’ lips. Except for Lydia, who was still oblivious.

  Quinn moved her stir-fry from one side of the plate to the other. It had been hours since she told Jesse, and she still hadn’t heard from him. She’d left school straight from the nurse’s office, and during the afternoon the Dubs had all messaged to check on her. Even Mr. Dellatoro had emailed. But not Jesse. In the short time they’d had together before the nurse made him go to class, she’d only been able to give him the briefest outline of what was going on. He’d been too shocked to say much of anything except for, “That’s not possible. How is that possible? What are you saying, Quinn?”

  She’d sent him message after message:

  Please believe me.

  Know its crazy.

  Theres a way to explain it.

  Will find out what happened. Soon.

  Don’t be too weirded.

  That was stupid. Of course youre weirded.

  Please.

  Believe me.

  I love you.

  She tried to shove down the anxiety, stabbed a piece of broccoli, and listened to Lydia talking about her new teacher, a Ms. McEvoy she wasn’t sure she liked.

  “I told her there was going to be a picture of me in the newspaper tomorrow, and she looked at me like this.” Lydia tilted her head down, drew her brows, and scrunched up her mouth.

  “What picture?” Quinn asked.

  “In the article about Daddy. Duh.”

  “I didn’t know you were in the photo,” Quinn said. She’d forgotten the article came out the next day. Had forgotten about the article entirely, actually.

  “Me and Daddy and Mommy,” Lydia said. “It better be good. I’m going to bring it to school on Monday to show that disbeliever.” She raised her glass of milk in the air. “She’ll see I’m newspaper worthy!”

  Ben snorted.

  “What?” Lydia said.

  “Not you. I just think it’s funny . . .” He speared a forkful of stir-fry and looked at Quinn. “Oh, never mind.”

  Quinn knew perfectly well what he thought was funny: which of the Cutler children weren’t newspaper worthy.

  “You always laugh at me,” Lydia said. “You’ll see. Someday I’m going to be a famous scientist and live in Europe.”

  “No one is laughing at you,” Gabe said as he pushed back his chair. “Sorry to desert you all. I’ve got to make an appearance at a function. Mom and I are going to a few bl
ock parties tomorrow, before a couple of more formal gatherings. Lydia, Quinn—you guys will join us. Ben, we’d be happy to have you for any of it.”

  “Gee, tempting,” Ben said. “But I’m hitting Rockaway.”

  “You’re going to the beach?” Quinn said, giving him a quick reprieve for being a jerk. “Can I come?” The last thing she wanted to do was spend the day at campaign events, with her parents worrying about her and having to make small talk. The beach was her favorite place in the world, especially when she needed to think: the rhythm and sound of the waves, the slow movement of the tide, the vast expanse of space. Watching the ocean even had a bit of a hypnotizing effect. She’d bring her notes about those weeks and keep trying to bring her mind back in time.

  “I’m heading out early,” Ben said. “Six.”

  “Early’s fine.”

  “I want you with us, Quinn,” her father said.

  “I thought the Simons’ party was my last obligation for a while.”

  “Ben’s surfing. I don’t want you there alone. You fainted today.”

  “Only because I hadn’t eaten. And I’ll invite Jesse to come, too. So I won’t ever be alone. Please?”

  She didn’t let herself consider the possibility that Jesse wouldn’t want to go.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea.” Gabe rinsed his plate and put it in the dishwasher. “I’ve got too much going on to be worrying about it.”

  “Gabe,” Katherine said. “I think it’s fine if Quinn goes. As long as Jesse’s with her. And she’s careful if she swims.”

  “What’s the big deal?” Lydia said to her father. “When we went to the beach this summer, Quinn was fine swimming, now that she’s over being a chicken.” She paused. “Do you really think she’d have died that time if Ben hadn’t pulled her out, Daddy?”