Four-Letter Word

by Christa Desir

  Mrs. Jacobson pursed her lips even more. “I’m aware.”

  I placed the container on the secretary’s desk in the office and turned to say good-bye, but Mrs. Jacobson was looking at me strangely. “Eve told me you had a falling-out. Was it over a boy?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  She stacked her container on top of mine. “She’s been very upset all week. I don’t want to interfere, but I think you need to make amends. You girls need to be looking out for each other, not fighting.”

  My mouth dropped open. I needed to make amends? God, if only she knew everything that Eve had pulled in the past few weeks. But there was no way I was getting into it with Mrs. Jacobson, of all people. “We’ll work through it, I’m sure,” I gritted out.

  “She needs to be focusing on her studies, Chloe. All this girl drama is keeping her from buckling down.”

  No, what was keeping her from buckling down was Eve didn’t really like doing work. The volleyball season was over and she didn’t have anything else going on after school right now, but the idea of homework always bored Eve, who would rather be doing almost anything else. Not that I could explain that to Mrs. Jacobson.

  “Okay. Thanks for the feedback. Good-bye, Mrs. Jacobson.”

  “There’s no need to get snarky, Chloe. It’s an unfortunate trait you inherited from your mother and one that won’t serve you well.”

  I stopped myself from rolling my eyes and turned to leave. The school secretary, Ms. McVoy, had returned to her desk, and Mrs. Jacobson was all smiles again, calling out to me as I exited, “Come see us anytime, Chloe. You know our door is always open.”

  * * *

  Thursday in Spanish class—after three days of Chloe Donnelly completely monopolizing Mateo so that it was impossible to even say hi, and me finally getting a midnight text from him saying he got a new phone and he missed me too, but also reiterating the need to be patient—we had to present our oral reports on Latin America. Oral reports were a much-needed reprieve to me being persona non grata in class.

  Mateo went first, dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt with the word NOT in white lettering. He explained to Señor Williams that he’d decided to change his topic at the last minute. Señor Williams grumbled about responsibility and commitment and entitlement and a bunch of other things that made no sense, but finally he nodded.

  Mateo gave a presentation on the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, the mothers of Argentina’s “disappeared.” The way Mateo explained it was sad as hell, a reminder of all the pain that comes from losing someone you care about. Though I’d heard about it before from my dad—U2 had written a song about it on their Joshua Tree album—hearing it in Mateo’s low voice, full of emotion and sorrow over the thirty thousand children lost to Argentina’s “Dirty War,” made me choke up.

  When he was done, he looked right at me, and I felt the connection between us draw even tighter. Mothers who had lost their children. Like my mom did. Like his mom might. It was as if Mateo was sending me a direct message about why he had to sit next to Chloe Donnelly in class and ignore me completely. It could be his mother, his family, if anyone found out about his undocumented status.

  I did my report on Perito Moreno and then left without saying a word to Mateo or Chloe Donnelly, but my shoulders were pressed back and my steps felt lighter than they had all week. I could be patient. Mateo wasn’t going anywhere. I would help protect him.

  That night Mateo didn’t text, but I got a middle-of-the-night internet call from my parents. I almost sobbed when I saw their faces filling my computer screen.

  “I miss you guys so much,” I said the moment our connection went through.

  Mom laughed through tears. “Well, that is an excellent greeting. We miss you too. So much. I hated not talking to you. Don’t ever do that to us again.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t reach out earlier.”

  “Water under the bridge,” Dad said with a wave of his hand, his way of telling me that the extension discussion was tabled for now. “How are things, sweetie?” he asked, peering at me through his glasses as if he needed a new prescription—which he likely did.

  “Good,” I choked out. I wanted to blurt everything, lay down all that happened in the past few weeks and all that I was afraid of. But I couldn’t tell them about the game or Chloe Donnelly or even Mateo. It all seemed dumb compared to their life and would take up too much time. Plus, I knew my parents would use it as a reason for me to move with them to Burkina Faso, where I could find my way back to the values they’d instilled in me or some other ethical guilt trip they’d spout. And then I’d have to tell them I didn’t want to go. I couldn’t take the idea of them being disappointed in me. Not when I was already feeling so alone. “How are you?”

  “Well,” Mom said, inching Dad to the side. “Today we did a workshop for some female torture survivors, and I will tell you that these women are absolutely astonishing. You’d think they’d be completely broken, but really they’re the kindest, most optimistic people. So grateful to us for giving them time to tell their stories. So happy to be alive.”

  So happy to be alive. It was like the death knell on my trivial problems. My parents were working with torture survivors. Why would they care a thing about a mean girl who was making everyone play a gross game that none of us should have agreed to in the first place?

  When my mom finished describing all the horrifying things these women and girls had endured, my dad cleared his throat and said, “That might have been TMI, Charley.” Charley, Dad’s nickname for my mom since she’d insisted on playing rugby with the men’s team in college after realizing they got more fans to come to their games. To everyone else, she was Charlotte.

  My mom laughed. “Sorry, Chloe. Sometimes I forget you’re not here with us, seeing everything in the day to day.”

  “It’s okay. It’s good I know about what’s going on in the world.”

  “Are you okay, honey?” Dad asked. “Is it just too late or is something else going on?”

  I swallowed and shoved a finger in my mouth, attacking a nail that had grown a millimeter after I had endeavored for the past two days to stop biting.

  “Chloe,” Mom said. “Your nails.”

  Even living in Burkina Faso, my mom had prettier hands than me. The nail biting was a habit I picked up from Dad, though he gave it up as soon as he went through his first bout of a germ-borne illness in BF. Not a lot of antibacterial soap in their village.

  “Sorry,” I muttered after I dropped my hands into my lap. “I’m fine, Dad. Tired. Things at school have been a little weird with my friends, but I’ll work it out.”

  Dad nodded. “I’m sure you will. You’re a great girl.”

  I laughed. My dad could bust out the sitcom dad when he wanted to, though both of us knew he had no clue how to navigate social situations very well. I inherited the awkward blurting thing from Dad too.

  “Chloe,” Mom said, “all you need to do is be a person of integrity and the rest will sort itself out. If your friends don’t respect that, then they aren’t very good friends in the first place. I know we said we weren’t going to talk about you coming here, but—”

  “Charley,” Dad said.

  “I know. I’m sorry. I just miss you, and I think you would get so much out of being here. All that school drama will disappear. You’ve got a helper spirit, and there’s so much work we could all do together.”

  Sometimes it was like she’d watched the Mister Rogers highlight reel from when I was a kid and PBS decided to rerun all the episodes. Mom wouldn’t and couldn’t understand all my anxiety about Chloe Donnelly and Gestapo.

  I nodded and mumbled, “I’m still thinking about it, Mom.”

  “We know. We’re not trying to pressure you. We love you, Chloe,” Dad said. “Chin up. Things could always be worse.”

  And there it was. The reason none of my problems would ever be worthy of a late-night call. People had it worse, people my parents saw every single day. That’s why we’
d gone to Burkina Faso in the first place. “Yep, Dad. You’re right. Could be worse. Love you too. I’ll talk to you soon.”

  “We might be able to connect again on Saturday?” Mom said.

  Saturday, after my former friends had all played the game without me. “Sure,” I said in a tight voice.

  Mom blew me a kiss and then they clicked off, and I fell back into bed, unable to sleep because I felt so bad about all my silly high school worries when real people had suffered torture in Africa.

  When I finally fell asleep, I dreamed of the Mothers of the Disappeared, wandering the streets of Argentina alongside female torture survivors from Africa, calling my and Mateo’s names over and over again.

  21

  I felt all buzzy and out of sorts on Friday, knowing I wasn’t playing Gestapo and everyone else would be. I was still being frozen out by the girls, though Josh and Aiden both waved at me on my way into school. Aiden had even looked at me like he thought I had a backbone. Of course they both glanced around before acknowledging me—no doubt checking for Chloe Donnelly—but it still gave me a little lift, almost as much as Mateo’s Argentina presentation had.

  Melissa and I sat together again at lunch. After her catching me twice peeking at Mateo’s table, she finally said, “Is there something going on with you and Mateo?”

  My cheeks warmed, of course, and I immediately let my hair curtain drop. “Umm . . .”

  “You don’t have to tell me.”

  I looked outside to the warm April sunshine. It felt like our Iowa weather system had finally committed to spring. “It’s complicated.”

  She laughed once bitterly. “Yeah, I hear that.”

  “Yeah? You have complications?” I leaned forward and waited for her to explain.

  She took a deep breath and said, “My boyfriend is at Camp Dodge in Johnston, part of the Iowa National Guard. I don’t see him as much as I’d like.”

  “Oh.” So the guy I’d once seen her with was her boyfriend.

  “Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. I didn’t expect I’d get involved with someone like him either. After my dad . . .”

  After her dad was an absentee parent for so much of her life. She didn’t need to say it; the subtext was clear, and we’d had conversations when we were younger about how she wished he’d quit the army and move home for good.

  “But you fell in love?” I asked, pushing my hair back behind my ear. “With your boyfriend, I mean.”

  “Yeah,” she said, and smiled. A real smile that was motivated by her own happiness. The first one I’d seen from her in a long time. “But I wasn’t looking to . . . you know.” She waved her hand in the general area of her stomach.

  “Get pregnant?” I whispered.

  “Yeah. I mean, I always thought that antibiotics screwing up your birth control pill thing was a lie. I thought your mom was trying to scare us when she told us about it when we were in fourth grade. But it happened to me.”

  Holy crap. “You’re on birth control? Does your mom know?”

  My own mom would be pleased as hell if I came to her wanting to go on the pill. It’s great you’re taking responsibility for your own body and choice, Chloe. But there was no way I’d ever give her the satisfaction of that conversation, even if I wanted to go on the pill. Too complicated, too much baggage from her miscarriage still swirling around inside me, and maybe her too.

  “Yeah, she knows,” Melissa said. “The conversation when I asked her if I could go on it was a hundred kinds of awkward, but she didn’t want me ‘getting in trouble.’ Not that I didn’t end up there anyway.”

  “Probably your mom didn’t think of that antibiotic thing either.” Not everyone was as up on these things as my own mom.

  Melissa shrugged but didn’t say anything else. I had a bunch more questions, but it didn’t really seem fair of me to ask them when I wasn’t telling her anything about Mateo. I bit my nail and glanced at his table again. He was sitting with Josh and Aiden. Cam was most likely out in the parking lot waiting for Holly. I had no idea if Josh and Aiden had resolved their argument or not, but they seemed friendly enough. Not that that meant anything. Hard to have a big public breakup when no one knew you were dating in the first place.

  Josh caught my eye but didn’t wave. Instead, he glanced to where Chloe Donnelly sat. She was looking at him, then her gaze flicked to me and she smirked. I could almost hear her sarcastic poor Other Chloe in my mind.

  I focused back on Melissa. “I kissed Mateo,” I said in a low voice. “But it’s complicated because I can’t be with him publicly right now.”

  She placed the apple she was eating on top of her lunch bag. “Does he have a girlfriend already?”

  “No.” God, did he? No. No, he couldn’t. I’d know. “Nothing like that. I can’t really get into it, but let’s just say there are external forces keeping us apart.”

  She nodded. “I can understand that.”

  It was enough of an opening and I was super curious so I blurted, “Did you want the baby? Were you going to keep it?”

  Melissa looked at her apple, her brown curls dipping to cover her face in her own version of a hair curtain. Her expression seemed so sad. I reached out and put my hand over hers and squeezed. She looked back up at me. “It wouldn’t have been ideal, but Seth—my boyfriend—said he’d take care of us. I could finish high school and we’d get married.”

  It wasn’t totally unusual for Grinnell. Abortions might be a big thing in Chicago, but our town had at least twenty churches for a population of nine thousand people. Finding anyone outside “the college” who wouldn’t have pushed Melissa to keep the baby would have been a near miracle.

  “You could have come to me. I mean, I’m not an expert on sex or anything, but my mom . . .”

  Melissa reached across the table and squeezed my wrist. “Yeah. I remember. You were so excited about that baby. So excited to have a sibling finally. I couldn’t tell who was more devastated about the whole thing, you or your parents.”

  I blinked. “I don’t remember that part. I just remember my mom being so sad, and me promising myself never to get into that situation because I hated losing something I wanted so badly. I think I even announced I was going to marry a woman and get my tubes tied.”

  “I remember that too. It’s what led to our last fight.”

  “Me deciding to marry a woman?”

  She laughed, but it was a little stark and bitter. “No. You getting worked up over losing something you wanted.”

  The moment she said it, it came flooding back to me. Thirteen-year-old me screaming at Melissa that she’d never understand caring about something so much and what it was like to lose it. And her screaming back that she wanted her dad home and every day she was certain she’d lose him. I didn’t think it was the same; her dad was still alive. But now, with her across from me, I understood what was really going on. We were both lonely, and I’d torn us apart to protect myself. I didn’t want to be left behind like my own mom had seemed to leave me for a while, so I left Melissa.

  “I forgot about that fight. I thought we’d just sort of drifted.”

  “We did, but that started it. We were both really hurt and angry.”

  “Sorry,” I mumbled. “I’m sorry I was so mean.”

  “Not mean. Just hurt. And I’m sorry too.”

  “Do you still want to marry Seth?” I asked, retreating behind my own hair so I could study her face better.

  She tilted her chin up, hair falling back to reveal her for-sure-certain face, and said, “Yes. That’s our plan after I graduate, even without the baby.”

  Which explained why Melissa wasn’t cowering in the corner or dropping out of school or anything else that indicated she’d wilted beneath the town shame spiral. Gossip was still flying around about her, but she seemed oddly resolved about it and now I understood why. She had someone who wanted her. She had a certainty in front of her and it was enough.

  I peeked at Mateo once more, and this time he caught
me and did that little half-smile thing. I pushed my hair back behind my ear again and smiled back, all warm cheeks and no-doubt-obvious crush. It was a risk. Chloe Donnelly was probably still watching me.

  Melissa shoved her half-eaten apple inside her bag and stood. “I hope whatever external forces are screwing with you go away soon. It’s nice to see you happy.”

  I stood and gathered my things too. I didn’t know what was more surprising—that I managed to look happy in spite of being ignored and hated by most of my friends or that Melissa cared that I was happy.

  God, I sucked as a friend to her. And I wanted so, so much to make it right.

  “I’m sorry for . . . everything, I guess. Not just the fight, but all of it. I’m glad we’re becoming friends again.” It was awkward and too honest, but I felt like I didn’t have to worry so much with Melissa. That she wasn’t judging my awkwardness. That she might appreciate my honesty.

  She nodded and tossed her bag into the trash bin at the end of the aisle. “Me too. Seth’s coming over to watch a movie tonight. You can come too, if you want.”

  Friday night watching a movie instead of playing a twisted game? Yeah. I could get behind that. “Sure. Let me double-check with Nan and Pops. Text me later and we can figure out timing.”

  Then I walked side by side with her out of the cafeteria and didn’t bother to peek back to see just who was watching.

  * * *

  I stopped at the media center and loaded up on books before going home for the long, lonely weekend. I was glad I had plans with Melissa and Seth, because three nights and two days with no one but Nan, Pops, and Fox News was about the most depressing thing I could imagine. I knew I needed to have a conversation with my parents about the extension, but every time I thought about it, I felt paralyzed. I hated admitting that Mateo would factor into my decision, and there was no way I’d ever tell my mom that, but it was the truth. Which meant that I couldn’t have the conversation with my parents, couldn’t tell them I wanted to stay in Grinnell, until I knew how things would play out with Mateo.