by Deena Lipomi
“Calm down?” Doesn’t he know how important it is, what I just told him? “Calm down?”
“Mel –”
“Calm down?”
The bell rings, stopping me from screaming. I wrap my arms tightly around my books and turn for homeroom, edging past groups huddled around their lockers. If I try to explain anything else to Devon, I’ll end up in worse shape, sobbing in the hall where more people can judge and stare.
But Devon apparently isn’t done with our conversation. “So your sister is pregnant. So what? Thousands of women in the world are pregnant right now. That’s life. Why does talking about it drive you away from me?” His voice cracks.
I turn on the squeaky wet floor so fast I almost slip. I don’t care that he’s right; he shouldn’t be yelling about Annie in front of all these people. What is he thinking? That embarrassing me will convince me that he’s right?
“If you can’t talk to me now, we probably shouldn’t worry about what we’re going to do when we’re at different colleges.” Devon slams a locker door shut (my locker that I left open) and storms off in the opposite direction.
Tears spring to life and fall down my face. I don’t blame him for running after how crazy I acted. How crazy I am.
It takes all my concentration to make it through homeroom and to first period without completely breaking down. Just as class starts there’s a knock on the classroom door. Mrs. Chuck, my math teacher, beckons the girl in.
“I have a message from the office for Melanie Mainer,” the girl says.
Mrs. Chuck absently points in my direction, but it’s clear from the way she marches down the row of desks that she knows who I am: the pregnant junior’s older, virginal sister. She hands me a pink slip of paper and I hold my breath. Messages from the office are never good news.
I read the office secretary’s scrawl. The gist is that Mom called and said Annie has a fever of 104 so they went to the emergency room. Don’t worry and she’ll call again with an update the message says. I wonder why she didn’t text me until I realize I must’ve left my phone at home in all the drama and rushing.
The eyes of the whole class are on me, even Mrs. Chuck’s. I bet they wonder if Annie had her baby.
“May I be excused for a minute?” I ask the teacher. “To use the bathroom?” The tears I recently suppressed well up in my eyes. I have to get out of here.
“Just let me write you a pass.” Mrs. Chuck scribbles something on another slip of paper, this one white, and I leave the classroom carrying both. I bang the bathroom door open but it stops halfway, slamming into something on the other side.
“Owww!” Chloe freezes when she sees me, but only long enough to formulate a nasty reply. “Sisters of sluts are not allowed in here. Sorry.”
Justine is behind her. I hear her laugh.
I should turn around and leave. Instead I say, “Why? There’s already the maximum occupancy of them inside?”
“Ooooh!” Justine says. “Good one. Too bad it can’t change the fact that your sister had sex with an old man.” She moves and I see Samara at the mirror, spraying perfume. She avoids my eyes.
Chloe tosses her lipstick into her purse. “He was fat, too. I always thought she had better taste than that. Then again she chose him over us.”
“You dumped her,” I spit with anger I’ve never felt before.
“She got herself dumped by taking Phil Langos for herself when she knew I liked him,” Justine says, “and then goes off with some college baby daddy!”
I shake my head. They can’t know. If they did, Harris would already be public knowledge, right?
Chloe ignores me. “Annie didn’t even tell us about the guy. Sam had to tell us.”
Samara bites her lip and I catch a flicker of her green eyes on me.
“Annie never did and never will owe you anything,” I say.
“Whoa, moody.” Chloe laughs. “Maybe Mel’s preggers, too.”
They all laugh now, including Samara, the one who somehow found out about Annie and Harris. The one who spread the word to the last people in the world that Annie wanted to know. My next words slip out before I can stop them.
“Don’t worry, Samara. I’ll make sure to tell Belle that her sister’s a spineless bitch the next time I see her.”
Samara’s mouth is opening to reply, her face white, but I’m determined to have the last word even if it’s one of the cruelest things I’ve ever said. I charge into the hall, stop for my jacket at my locker, and run to the parking lot. I forget how icy it is and slip halfway to my car, twisting my ankle inside my boot. I swear but don’t slow down so no one will catch me ditching school. I wish I had my cell to leave a message with Kasey, but all I have are my two crumpled passes and coat with my keys in the pocket.
A new layer of ice has formed on my car. My teeth chatter as I scrape away a spot on the windshield just large enough to see the street in front of me. I plot a route to the hospital and my car rolls along unsteadily as the windshield wipers squeal against the glass.
It takes me forty-five minutes to drive the usual ten minutes to the hospital. By the time I reach the entryway, my eyes and nose are running from the icy wind. I don’t stop moving until I’ve followed the red arrows to the emergency room information window, an area of the hospital that I’ve always avoided like canned lima beans and spray cheese product.
“Can I help you?” asks the woman at the window.
“Yes, I’m looking for my sister? Can you tell me where she is? Annie Mainer. M-A-I-N-E-R.” I take off my gloves and hat and stuff them into my jacket pockets, leaving my hair a mix of staticky dry patches and sweaty wet strands.
The woman’s long lavender nails clack across the keyboard. “Ummmm…she’s already been moved to another room. Room 2154.”
“Can I see her?”
“Sure.” She writes down the number and another slip of paper is handed to me, this one yellow. “Go down this hall, take a right, then take the blue elevator up to the second floor. You’ll find it from there.”
I attempt to calm myself as I press the button for the blue elevator, repeating that she wouldn’t have been moved to a non-ICU room if she were in danger. The elevator dings open and the smell of antiseptic stings my nose until I’m released again on the second floor. Room 2154 is right around the corner. One bed is empty and the far one is concealed with a curtain.
“Mom? Dad?” I call quietly as I walk in, still sniffling. I should’ve stopped for a tissue.
“Melanie?” Mom says. She squeaks over to me and wraps me in a big hug. It’s the first time in ages that I’ve seen her in public without make-up on, without her hair done, even without earrings. The wrinkles around her eyes are more noticeable. So are the strands of silver hair that she usually hides behind her ears.
“How’s Annie?” I ask, following Mom to the other side of the curtain where my sister sleeps. Dad sits by her head, holding one of her hands in both of his.
“She’s all right now,” Mom says. “They just finished settling her in here. She must have picked up a virus. She’s dehydrated – that I.V.’s to hydrate her – and the doctor gave her some temperature lowering drugs that shouldn’t affect the baby.”
Annie looks small and weak, even with her bulging stomach.
“What are you doing here, anyway?” Mom asks, checking her watch.
“I couldn’t sit through classes waiting for an update,” I say, wishing I could take back everything that happened with Devon this morning.
“I told you, Jo, you shouldn’t have left that message at the school,” Dad says.
“Well, she didn’t answer her cell,” Mom says about me.
“It’s at home,” I say.
“I should call the school again to tell them you’re with us.” Mom, always the doer, squeezes my arm and goes out to the hall to make the call.
Annie’s belly rises and falls with each breath. A nurse pops in to check her vitals and I take that moment to nab Dad’s phone and call Kasey. I leav
e a voicemail telling her that I won’t be able to go to the mall after school, asking her to grab my math book from Mrs. Chuck’s room, and saying I’ll call her later tonight.
Then I call Devon’s cell, not sure what to say. I go with, “It’s Mel. I’m sorry.”
That’s a sure way to win him back.
***
I drive home around 5:30, tired and starving. The wintery mix of weather has stopped, but the trip is slow going. Mom and Dad will be home after eight, when visiting hours end.
After I’m safely parked in the driveway, I grab the mail and let myself into the house. I have a vision of that day back in June when a magazine gave me the idea that Annie might be pregnant. It feels so long ago and not long at all.
Today I don’t expect to find anything important between the bills and ads until I come across an envelope from Pennsylvania College of Technology.
I wish someone were here to hold me steady while I open the envelope. It’s thick, not the kind that would have a so sorry letter, but it could tell me that I’m on the waiting list. Or be addressed to the wrong Melanie.
“Just open it,” I say to myself, and before I can overthink things any more, I tear a jagged rip through the flap. Out falls a packet of papers and a course catalog featuring color photos of happy students. A note is stuck over a girl who looks a lot like me: We look forward to seeing you this fall!
I scream, I jump, I flail. Finally I fall back on the couch and search the packet for the acceptance letter. I grip it like it could disappear into another dimension if I’m not careful. I have to call Kasey and swear when I can’t find my cell. I give up and grab the home phone from the kitchen.
“Kasey,” I say when she answers, “guess who’s going to Pennsylvania next year?”
She screams in my ear loud enough to challenge my own celebration. “I’m not surprised. Dude, I can’t believe how fast graduation is coming up. Isn’t it crazy? I mean, in a few months, we’ll be shopping for dorm-sized sheets and refrigerators.”
“Right,” I say, “I’ll be lucky if my parents spring for a hot plate.” I fill Kasey in on the rest of my day, starting with Annie’s illness, then my fight with Devon minus any details about Harris, and lastly my run-in with Justine.
“Justine needs to get a life,” Kasey says.
“I know,” I say. “But what about Devon? What do I do?”
Kasey shushes her barking dogs in the background before answering. “Devon’s a good guy. He won’t give up on you over a misunderstanding.”
I wish I could tell her about how Harris came by this summer, how lying about why he was there started the whole suspicious mess between me and Devon all those months ago. If Kasey knew that, she might not be so quick to think Devon will be crawling back to me within twenty-four hours.
“If it’s meant to work out with Devon, it will work out,” Kasey says. “If not, it won’t.”
“Oh, right, it’s that simple.”
“That’s the way the world works. It’s why Carlos and I didn’t work out. Someone better for me – and for him – is out there.”
“So I shouldn’t do anything to get him to talk to me tonight?” I ask. “If it’s meant to be, he’ll let me know?”
“You have to do what you feel is right,” she says. “If you think you should call him, call him. If not, then don’t.”
I laugh, surprising myself. “Aren’t you so full of advice tonight.”
“As always,” Kasey says. “I’ve gotta help my mom with the birds. Call me later and let me know if he called? And how Annie’s doing?”
“I will,” I say. “Thanks.”
“Anytime.”
When Kasey hangs up I know that if she learned the truth about Harris, she wouldn’t be mad. She understands that things happen for certain reasons. Maybe that means she’s right about Devon and me, too.
Still, I will the phone to ring, for it to be Devon on the line. I worry that he already called and texted my cell and thinks I’m ignoring him since I can’t find it, but he has my house phone number too and shouldn’t be afraid to use it. Not if he wants to talk.
I need to cook to distract myself. I put water on the stove for spaghetti, pour tomato paste and crushed tomatoes into another pot, and alternately re-read my acceptance letter, add herbs and spices to the sauce, and map out what I want to say to Devon when he calls.
If he calls.
By the time Mom and Dad get home, I’m on the couch under a blanket, watching TV.
“The Discovery Channel?” Mom says. “No cooking shows?”
I don’t tell her Discovery is Devon’s channel and I’m hoping to reach his subconscious by watching programs that remind me of him. Rolling my beaded bracelet up and down my arm is my only consolation that he hasn’t called.
“How’s Annie?” I ask.
“She’ll be fine,” Mom says with a long exhale of relief.
“Our Angel’s a trooper,” Dad says, tossing his hat onto the heap of winter clothes on the entryway chair.
“I made you guys spaghetti. And I got this.” I hold up the letter over my head.
“What’s this?” Mom snatches it from me, initially concerned, but her expression changes as she reads it.
“Oh, congratulations, honey! That’s wonderful!” It’s the first time in a long time she’s seemed truly happy, especially with me.
I turn off the TV and sit with my parents while they eat reheated spaghetti. We talk about the classes I’ll take and how far a drive it will be from home. Then we talk about Annie.
“Assuming her fever and sinus infection are under control, I’ll pick her up tomorrow morning. She asked me before we left if the baby was all right. I told her she was fine, and I think that made her feel a lot better.”
“The baby will be fine,” Dad repeats and slurps some more spaghetti.
Before I go to bed, I return to the living room for my acceptance letter and grab the rest of the mail off the couch where I abandoned it hours ago. Once it’s spread out on the kitchen table, a postcard catches my eye, one that had been stuck in the pages of a department store flyer.
Paris. That’s what it reads beneath pictures of the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and the Métro.
I know who it’s from without reading the signature. For a second I think I’m going to set the cardstock on fire with my glare. I’m only able to calm down when I read my PCT acceptance letter again. Then I pick up Harris’s postcard with two fingers and carry it upstairs with me. I set it on my dresser to deal with it tomorrow.
Along with everything else.
Chapter 26
The first good thing about the morning is that the roads are cleared of snow and ice. The second good thing is that I find my cell phone on the floor of Annie’s room where I must’ve kicked it under her bed yesterday after finding her sick.
The crappy thing is that Devon hasn’t left me any messages and he is avoiding me at school.
OK, I guess I’m avoiding him, too.I don’t know what to say exactly, or what I’m expecting him to say, and I don’t want either of us to say it (whatever it is) in front of an audience. Plus what I’m allowed to say to Devon is different than what I might want to say.
I’m confusing myself and sick of all of it. The secrets, the lies, everything. I have to start unloading before I explode.
I have to tell the truth.
When the final bell rings, I race home. Annie’s sitting on the recliner, practically horizontal, watching talk shows when I walk through the door.
“Feeling better?” I ask, hoping to mask my angst.
“Yeah,” Annie says. “Mom told me about PCT. That’s cool.”
“Thanks,” I say, rifling through my backpack for Annie’s assignments from the past two days. I set them on her lap.
She groans.
“Sorry,” I say, and notice the overall quiet in the house. “Are Mom and Dad both at work?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll be right back,” I say. Upstairs, the Pa
ris postcard rests innocently on my dresser. I could rip it to shreds and throw it away. Or toss it in the oven with the next lasagna. Annie wouldn’t have to know about it.
But secrets are weighing on me like a thick ball of pizza dough. I have to let this one go and stop trying to protect everybody but myself.
“This came in the mail yesterday,” I say when I’m back in the living room.
Annie takes the card and reads the smeared blue ink.
Angel Annie,
I miss you. Say hi to our child for me.
Harris
Annie turns the postcard over in her hands. She reads the front and the back again.
I sit on the couch and pick at my fingernails, waiting for her to say something.
She closes her eyes. “I’m finally over him calling me Angel and I’m finally accepting that he’s in Europe with some other girl. But god, why does he have to suddenly care about this baby?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Guilt?”
Annie sniffles. “I shouldn’t be crying over that asshole.”
I laugh.
“What?”
“That’s the first time I’ve heard you call him a name.”
“Yeah, well, he deserves it,” she says.
“Annie.” I take a deep breath. “I have something to tell you. About Harris.”
She tucks her silky hair behind her ear and doesn’t let go of the postcard. “What?”
“Last summer,” I say, sitting on the edge of the cushion with my back hunched, “after you called Harris...he came by the house. Our house. To see you.”
“What?” Annie leans toward me as best she can over her belly.
“You can be mad,” I say, cringing in defense. “Just don’t kill me.”
“When? When did he come?” she asks, eerily calm.
I wonder if every step Annie and I have taken to be closer, intentional or not, will be erased with these few words.
I say them anyway. “July. You thought he didn’t call you back, but he actually did and then came to talk. I told him to stay away from you, and if he ever came around again, I’d call the cops.”
