Текст книги "Immaculate"
Автор книги: Katelyn Detweiler
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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 21 страниц)
the first trimester
“Mina, wake up,” Nate called out, splashing me from the edge of his round, stone-lined pool. “You look like you’re burning, and I have to head out soon for DC, anyway. I’m meeting the rest of the debate team at the high school in an hour.”
The cool water dripped down my hot, sticky arms, pulling me out of the hazy almost sleep I’d been slipping into. I peered up at him from behind my dark sunglasses. My eyelids felt so heavy, though, too heavy to hold up as the blazing August sun beat down on me.
“Can’t I just lie here a little longer?” I asked, my eyes already closed again as I let my tube drift farther away from him. “You can go finish getting ready and come to get me when you have to leave.”
“Are you okay, Mina? Seriously, it seems like you’re tired all the time lately. Maybe you should see a doctor or something.”
The massive, cloying knot that had been building in my stomach for the past few weeks tightened. “I’m fine,” I said quickly, turning to hide my face.
“Are you still upset that I’m going to be away tomorrow for our anniversary?” Nate asked, and my whole body tensed at the edge of frustration in his tone. “I’ve told you already, Meen, I’m sorry that the schedule worked out this way. I really am. We’ll celebrate as soon as I’m back on Monday. Trust me, I’d rather be with you than stuck in a conference room with a bunch of strangers in suits, but I promised the team. I can’t let them down. You have to understand that.”
But you can let me down, I thought, instantly glad that I hadn’t said the words out loud. Nate was right. I had been pouting, and it wasn’t fair to him. He’d be back in a few days, and we’d celebrate then. It was just a date on the calendar, and we had plenty of more monumental anniversaries ahead of us. Two years was nothing, really, not when we had the rest of our lives to celebrate milestones.
“I’m not mad. I promise, Nate. Just tired from the sun. Give me five minutes, okay? I’ll meet you inside and help you with the rest of your packing.”
“Okay,” he said, “five more minutes. But then I want to hang out for a little before I have to leave.” I could tell from his voice that he wasn’t convinced everything was fine. I kept my eyes closed, but I felt him watching me, lingering by the edge for a few more seconds before he started off for the house.
I had been tired lately—every day, really, for the last month or two. More than tired, I was completely exhausted, drained of all life, no matter how many hours of sleep I got each night or how many cups of coffee I chugged each day. At first I hadn’t tried to hide it from anyone, but the longer it went on, and the more that other . . . symptoms started cropping up, the more I’d been keeping most of my observations to myself. My lower back ached for no reason, I’d suddenly been peeing more than I ever had in my entire life, and my boobs were weirdly sore and sensitive. At first I’d been happy about that last one—I was convinced that I was finally going through a much-hoped-for growth spurt. But then I realized that my hormones must have been seriously out of whack because I hadn’t gotten my period in two months either, and I was usually always regular to the day.
And now, most recently, the nausea. Every morning, like clockwork. I kept the water running, either the shower or the sink, so that my parents or Gracie wouldn’t overhear and ask any questions, but the charade was just as exhausting as the actual puking. I’d tried doing some online research, but that only made everything infinitely scarier: diabetes; chronic fatigue syndrome; multiple forms of highly rare, highly untreatable cancers; depression. Nothing fit, not really, but I was still terrified. I wasn’t ready to talk about any of it yet, not with Nate, not even with Hannah or Izzy, my two best, closest friends in the universe. To put everything into words out loud for anybody else to hear made it feel too serious, too significant. Too real.
But if Nate was starting to pick up on something, maybe I wasn’t as good at hiding everything as I’d hoped. Or maybe Nate just knew me too well.
I was heading to Hannah’s house after Nate’s for a much-needed sleepover with her and Iz. Maybe it was time to talk about some of this with them. Or . . . no, maybe later would be better. I’d know when the time came, if it came. If it didn’t all blow over first.
I sucked in air and slid down through the tube into the icy, tingling water, letting my whole body feel numb and weightless for a few seconds before paddling toward the stairs. I wrapped my towel around me and started slowly up the cobbled walk, trying to make my face look relaxed, carefree.
I was suddenly glad that Nate would be away for the weekend, off to DC with the school debate team for some prestigious national competition, even if it was our anniversary. I had no doubt he’d come home in a few days with a heaping pile of awards. Because that was Nate, always off achieving and succeeding and making his mark on the world. I mostly loved him for it, though a tiny part of me had always resented it, too, even if I had to keep that part to myself. My boyfriend’s just too ambitious and dedicated didn’t seem valid, not when other girls were complaining that their boyfriends smoked too much pot or only cared about video games and beer and baseball. But I still couldn’t help wondering sometimes if he cared about his ten—or was it eleven? I’d lost count—extracurricular activities more than he cared about me.
I’d miss him, of course, but I could probably use the time to focus on me. I needed some space to sort out everything happening to my body, everything I was feeling for no clear reason.
I slipped in through his back door and made my way along the familiar path up to his bedroom. Nate’s back was to me as he leaned over his keyboard, typing, and I paused in the doorway, admiring him—his perfectly tousled chestnut brown hair, the summer freckles that sprinkled over his warm golden skin, the way the sleeves of his old soccer jersey stretched over his strong, athletic arms.
No matter how long we’d been dating, I still couldn’t always believe that Nate Landis was actually my boyfriend—probably because I’d had a crush on him since the very first day of kindergarten, a crush that I certainly never thought would come to anything at all. I was the nerdy, chronic overachiever—though nerdy in an endearing way, I hoped—the highest ranked in our grade and likely valedictorian next year. But Nate was the wonder boy of both academics and athletics: straight As, captain of the basketball and soccer teams, president of our graduating class, head of a community service group that he had started up during our freshmen year.
Somehow, regardless of any social imbalances, we had become the power couple who everyone assumed would last long past high school and college. I had visions of us going off to some Ivy League school together, maybe Princeton or Brown, and of the late nights studying and having sleepovers in each other’s dorm rooms, traveling for our semester abroad in the same city, making new friends who we’d have for the rest of our lives. After graduation, Nate would go to law school, and I’d follow him there. I wanted to be a writer—or an English teacher to start maybe, with novels later down the road—and teachers and writers could live anywhere. Nate and I didn’t talk about the plan much, but that was because we didn’t have to. That was just how it would be.
I stepped lightly across the room and slid my arms around his waist. “Hey,” I whispered, hugging him closer as he jumped, startled. “Sorry for being so spacey lately. It’s just thinking about our last year, college, all the applications . . . But I’m fine. Really.”
It felt like a lie as soon as it was out of my mouth. But at least Nate seemed satisfied, squeezing me closer to him and pressing us together, hip to hip. And I was fine. Probably. Or at least I felt fine then, with his arms around me, and that was what mattered.
He bent down to kiss me, easing me backward until I was on his bed, my legs wrapping around him. His hair tickled my forehead as he dangled over me, and I closed my eyes, letting the total happiness of the moment fill me.
No, I definitely had nothing to worry about.
Nate pulled back, a lazy grin on his face. “Your nose is bright red, Meen. I warned you.” He leaned down and kissed the tip of my nose, a soft brush of his lips that then traced up to my forehead, my hairline. “But luckily, it’s adorable on you.”
The front door slammed, and his mom called from below. Nate sighed, pushing himself up. Our kisses usually ended with him sighing these days—sighing because that was all there ever really was. We’d fooled around a little, of course, but we’d still never even rounded third base. I had been scared to take it any further, scared that if we did, we’d both let it go all the way. Nate didn’t pressure me, but I wasn’t naive. I knew that he’d be more than okay with it if I decided I was ready. But I’d always wanted to wait until at least college to lose my virginity, until I was living on my own and old enough to make the right decision. Now that we had been together for almost two years, though, I was starting to reconsider. I was starting to think that maybe, just maybe, it could happen soon. That I actually wanted it to happen soon, and waiting for college was a pointless and outdated notion. An arbitrary moral rule created by a much younger, more innocent Mina. But I wasn’t ready to tell Nate, not yet, just in case I changed my mind again.
He tugged me up and gave me another quick peck on the nose. “I guess I should finish packing anyway. You shouldn’t distract me like that, Meen. I have important things to do.”
I laughed. No one could distract Nate. Not really. He was too determined for anything to throw him off track. Ever.
But that didn’t mean I would stop trying.
• • •
I woke up at Hannah’s house the next morning to the smell of bacon and eggs wafting up from the kitchen—and the immediate urge to retch out my insides all over the side of her bed. I was, very unfortunately for all of us, squeezed between Hannah and Izzy, and therefore prevented from any easy access to the floor, let alone a trash can or a toilet. And so I was forced to take the only possible option available—I threw up on myself. All down the front of Hannah’s old YMCA T-shirt that I’d borrowed the night before, and all over her bright pastel paisley comforter.
“Jesus, what the hell, Meen?” Izzy said, throwing the covers back and launching herself off the bed. Her already very large, very pronounced brown eyes were wide open and staring at me with horror. “That’s so completely nasty. Why in God’s name didn’t you go to the bathroom?”
“She’s obviously sick and couldn’t help it, Iz. Don’t yell at her,” Hannah chimed in from my other side.
I ignored them both and proceeded to puke, once again, right onto my lap.
“Izzy! Get the trash can! Don’t just stand there staring at her,” Hannah said, her instinctive need to nurture kicking in. She grabbed a wad of tissues from her nightstand and started dabbing at my chin and lips.
Izzy sighed dramatically as she pushed back the hood of her Green Hill High basketball sweatshirt and pulled her stick-straight black hair up into a ponytail. She picked up the trash can as commanded and held it out to me, arms stretched, refusing to get any closer.
Hannah leaned over me and grabbed the trash can with one hand, keeping the other on my shoulders as she rubbed gentle, calming little circles.
“What’s wrong, sweetie?” Hannah asked. “Did you just wake up feeling sick?”
I wanted to lie. I’d planned on lying, actually, the words all set to pop from my lips, when suddenly tears burst out and made my decision for me. Not just tears, but the type of heavy, racking sobs that make any sort of intelligible speech impossible.
“Mina? What is it?” Izzy asked, her voice softening, the tough girl from a minute before immediately gone and replaced with the best friend I’d known since second grade. She balled the infected comforter into a heap at the bottom of the bed and sat down next to me.
It was a few minutes before I could slow down, take some deep breaths, and pull myself together, and in the meantime Hannah and Izzy patted my back, pushed my knot of hair behind my ears, and covered me in a fresh, untainted blanket.
“What’s going on, Meen? Talk to us,” Izzy said, staring straight into my eyes with her trademark blend of concern and impatience.
“I don’t know,” I whispered, shifting my gaze down to my pale hands, still clasped and shaking around my knees. I focused on the dull, rhythmic hum of the air conditioner, whirring from Hannah’s window as it blasted frigid puffs of air into the room. I pulled the blanket tighter around my shoulders, though it wasn’t just the cold that was making my body tremble.
“Well, you obviously know something to be crying like that. Right?”
“Isabelle, stop pushing her,” Hannah said with an unusual edge to her voice that caught me by surprise. “She’ll tell us when she wants to tell us, okay?” I turned to look at Hannah, her soft blue eyes so full of love and worry. She had a stray blonde curl tucked in between her small pink lips, a nervous habit she’d had since the first day I’d met her in preschool.
These are your best friends, I reminded myself. Two people who I knew inside and outside as well as I knew myself. Maybe even better than I knew myself, at least lately. All of a sudden the need to keep it all a secret felt ridiculous. Unnecessary. A waste of precious time, as well as anxiety, that would have been much more manageable divided three ways. We faced everything together. Always.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I started, still looking down to avoid seeing their distressed faces. “I’ve been throwing up every morning for the past week—week and half, I guess—but it’s more than that. There have been lots of little things, things that I’ve tried to just ignore, but they keep piling up and I don’t know what to do . . .” My voice caught, and I pinched my eyes shut, fighting off more tears. I had to keep going—I needed them to know everything, and I needed them to worry with me. “My back’s been weirdly sore and achy. I have terrible headaches, and I can’t stop peeing. I get dizzy out of nowhere, my boobs hurt, and I’m just so tired—so tired no matter how much I sleep.”
“You have looked a little rough around the edges this week,” Izzy said. “I figured it was just all the manic college stressing, though, so I didn’t want to say anything that would upset you. You’ve had some seriously intense black circles.”
“Thanks, Iz,” I said, almost smiling. “Blunt as always. Very helpful.”
“You know you love me and my gloriously unfiltered mouth.” She squeezed my leg and leaned into me, her chin propped against my shoulder. I could feel her eyes on me, processing, evaluating, trying to come up with a rational explanation. Izzy always had answers. Her entire world was built on them.
“So do you have any ideas, Meen?” Hannah asked quietly.
“Not really, no. I’ve spent unhealthy amounts of time researching online and freaking myself out, but nothing seems to cover all the symptoms. Nothing I could find explains everything. Nothing makes sense.”
“What about your parents? Have you told them?”
“No. I mean, I’ve complained about being tired and my back hurting, but they’ve just written both off as the stress of senior year coming up and college applications and all the shifts I’ve had at Frankie’s lately. I didn’t want to tell them about everything else and get them all worked up, not yet . . . I keep hoping it’ll all just go away on its own. And it’s probably nothing, just a phase, so why scare them unnecessarily? Right?” I suddenly felt very hopeful. Ridiculous, actually, for ever feeling so worried.
“I don’t know, Meen,” Hannah said, grabbing my hand, her voice still unnervingly soft and whispery. “I’m no doctor, but it kind of doesn’t sound like nothing.”
The balloon of hope popped before it had moved even an inch off the ground. I shuddered as I felt another wave of sickness rise in my throat, yelling for Hannah and Izzy to move away. I grabbed the trash can and heaved out every last possible drop until I was convinced that there could be nothing left inside me but blood and veins and organs.
When I finally finished, the girls were still and quiet next to me. I wanted Hannah to wrap her arms around me and say something cheery and optimistic. I wanted Izzy to jump off the bed in disgust, to joke about how completely gross and appalling I looked.
“Mina . . .” Izzy started, and then stopped herself. She seemed nervous and hesitant, which was unsettling. Izzy was rarely nervous or hesitant about anything.
She took a deep breath and looked right at me, her eyes sharper, harder than I would have expected. I tensed, waiting for whatever terrible words were about to come out of her mouth.
“Mina, did you have sex with Nate and not tell us? Because I hate to say it, but everything you’re going through sounds pretty damn similar to what you’d be feeling if you were pregnant.”
I laughed. Shrieked, more accurately. Hannah flinched from the sound, but Izzy looked unfazed, cold and stiff.
Pregnant?
Ridiculous. Absurd! Entirely and insanely absurd. I kept laughing. I was shaking, crying from laughing so hard, while they both just watched, stunned by my reaction.
And then, with a pang so unexpected and so harsh that I gasped, choking on the last, frozen laugh, I thought of Iris. I thought of that night. And all her words, her strange and terrible words, flooded through my mind, bursting from that little back corner where I’d hidden them so carefully and neatly for the past two months.
“Meen?” Hannah asked slowly, cautious about pushing the question. “Is that a possibility? Because Izzy’s right: all the symptoms add up. You know my sister’s over eight months in, and this is all the stuff she complained about at the beginning.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Izzy broke in, loud and accusing. She jumped off the bed and stood, glaring, hands on her hips, as if she couldn’t bear to be any closer to me. “Seriously, Meen, I thought we told each other everything. Why would you hide having sex with your boyfriend you’ve been dating for two years? Do you really think we’d judge you? I don’t get it. I just really don’t get it.”
“I didn’t have sex with Nate, Izzy. I swear to God. Call him up and ask him right now. I’m a virgin. I promise, I’m still a virgin. I need you guys to believe that.”
“So you’re not pregnant, then?” Izzy asked, her voice only slightly less damning than before. “You’re saying there’s absolutely zero possibility that you’re pregnant right now?”
I wanted to say no, wanted to promise them that it would be physically impossible for a baby to be growing inside me. But all I could hear was Iris, her words playing on repeat, louder and clearer each time until I was sure my head was actually and literally going to explode all over Hannah’s pretty pink and lavender bedroom. Keeping you and the child safe is all that matters now. Your child, Mina. Your child. Spinning, twirling, looping, over and over and over: your child, Mina. Your child. I need your approval.
Yes, Iris! Yes. I’d said yes. I’d said yes to Iris. What did that mean? What had she been asking?
Why had I said yes?
This was crazy. I was crazy. Genuinely, certifiably, without a doubt crazy.
“I mean, no, I don’t think so, of course I don’t. But . . .” My voice cracked, my brain still resisting saying the words out loud.
“How is there a ‘but’ in this situation? Did you fool around with Nate? Get a little too close to be completely safe?” It was Hannah this time, probing, more critical than I’d ever heard her before, at least directed toward me.
“No, it’s not that at all,” I said, frustrated that I couldn’t make them understand what I needed to say. But really, who would understand? Who could take any of this seriously? I mean, I probably wouldn’t trust me if I were them.
I barely trusted me as it was.
A pregnant virgin? Unless I was an asexually mutated freak of a human, of course—some highly advanced form of the hydra we had learned about in biology—and a baby would just grow like a bud from my body and break away when it was fully mature, then quite frankly, the explanations for my pregnancy seemed a bit limited.
The fact that I was even considering the possibility only added to the inevitable diagnosis of psychosis and a future in a locked room covered in wall-to-wall white cushions. Maybe I had hallucinated that whole night with Iris; maybe she wasn’t real and I had made up that whole conversation in my head, just me and myself. Too many hours on my feet that day, too much heat pouring out from the brick oven, too many vapors from the cleaning solution we used to bleach the rags.
“Then what is it, Mina?” Izzy yelled, cutting through my fantasy, her cheeks glowing red with hurt and anger. “Because you won’t say you’re not pregnant, but you won’t admit to having sex, so what the fuck are you trying to say? We want to help you, but you’re making that pretty impossible right now. Stop speaking in code and just tell us the goddamn truth, or I’m leaving, because I’m supposed to be one of your best friends and I don’t deserve to be lied to.”
“No, Isabelle, you’re right,” I said, meeting her gaze and forcing her to look, really look, at the sincerity in my big blue eyes that couldn’t possibly be faked. She knew me too well, too long for any serious deceit to slip past her radar. That was my one hope, at least, and I clung to it.
“I’m scared to say what I’m thinking, because you probably won’t be able to believe me. You’ll think I’m crazy, or even worse, crazy and a liar, and I don’t think I can handle that. Not right now, not with everything else going through my head.” I paused, twisting a pillow with my sweaty hands to calm myself. “But I’m going to try. I’m going to tell both of you exactly what I’m thinking, what I know, because you deserve that.”
And so, with much awkward fumbling and stopping and starting and backtracking, I told them about Iris. I told them every last detail I could remember, from what she wore to where we sat to every word and look she gave me. Strange, but even though I had rarely let myself think about her since it had happened, she was still there. Seared into my memory, as bright and vivid as the night we met, whether I wanted her there or not.
Neither of them said anything after I finished the story. Hannah and Isabelle sat in a daze, looking at the floor, the ceiling, anywhere that wasn’t me. I didn’t want to press, even though the desire to know what they were thinking about Iris, about me, was burning me alive, top to bottom.
Finally, right about when I couldn’t possibly wait another second without combusting, Hannah spoke.
“I think we should go out and get you a pregnancy test. It might be nothing—it’s probably nothing—but we need to know that for sure.”
“You believe me?” I asked, so relieved and happy to have my best friend back at my side that the world almost felt right again.
Hannah bit her lip so hard that I could see a small bubble of bright red blood pool at the edge of her two front teeth. “I’m not saying that, Mina. I don’t know what I’m saying, at least not yet. I want to believe you, but I have to think there’s something to this story that you’re not saying. Maybe there’s something to this story that you don’t even know.” I could sense that a part of her wanted to stop there, go back, and rewind, but she took a breath and kept going. “I’ve heard that sometimes when something really bad and terrible happens, people block the whole thing out. Make themselves forget without even realizing. Maybe, I don’t know . . . Maybe something like that happened to you?”
“Are you . . . are you saying I might have been raped?” I stammered, my air cut off, suffocated by the massive weight of my disappointment. She didn’t understand, not at all. “You think I wouldn’t know, wouldn’t have felt something, some kind of pain that I would remember?” Of all the equally improbable theories, rape would never have occurred to me. Maybe it should have, I don’t know, but somehow I knew—I knew without a doubt, with every part of my body, every toenail, every hair, every pore—that it wasn’t the answer.
Hannah was crying now, almost as hysterical on the outside as I felt on the inside. But she couldn’t reach out to me and I couldn’t reach out to her, and so we both sat there—together but still so separate.
“Okay,” Izzy said loudly from across the room, keeping her distance from the bed. “We’re going to the pharmacy.” She sounded matter-of-fact and in control, the Izzy I knew and loved so well. “Let’s go. Now. I’ll drive.” And with that she grabbed her sneakers and her keys and walked out the bedroom door, not giving a single look back, not a hint of what was actually going through her mind.
Hannah sniffled a few times and stood up, sliding her sandals on and running a brush through her fluffy morning hair. She picked up her purse then, glancing over at me to make sure I was going to follow Izzy, too. I nodded and slowly pulled myself out from the tangled blanket, easing down onto the floor one leg at a time. The idea of doing something, anything, to finally acknowledge everything that was happening felt good. It felt right.
“Thanks,” I said to Hannah so quietly that I wasn’t quite sure I’d actually managed to say it out loud. But then she walked over to me and took my hand in hers.
“Listen. I don’t know exactly what’s going on with you, Mina. But I do know that no matter what shows up on that stick, whether it’s a pink plus sign or a blue minus or even a big green damn squiggle, I’ll be there right by your side and we’ll sort it all out together. Okay?”
“Okay.” I smiled for the first time that morning. “I should probably change out of this grotesque shirt first,” I said, catching a glimpse of myself in her full-length mirror.
“Sounds like a good idea. Clean yourself up a bit, and I’ll go down to the car and let Isabelle know that you’re on your way. I give her ten seconds before she starts laying on the horn, and I don’t want my parents asking too many questions about what we’re up to.” She squeezed my hand and let it drop, pulling the door closed behind her as she left the room.
I stepped closer to the mirror, so close that the tip of my still-red nose brushed against the cool glass, and my features became a hazy blur of blue and pink and milky white skin. I pulled back a bit, gripping the sides of the mirror so I could really see the girl standing in front of me. Frizzy nest of brown waves, swollen, red-rimmed eyes, cracked lips, stick-straight body without even the hint of any curves.
I couldn’t be a mother. I was still a girl. A sloppy, filthy mess of a girl at the moment.
I stared blankly at my reflection for another minute or so, until I realized that, without thinking about it, I had moved my right hand off of the mirror and rested it against my stomach instead, my fingers spread wide in an embrace. I jerked it back down to my side and turned away, moving toward the dresser for a change of clothes.
I’d buy the test, pee on the stick—maybe two or three or four sticks just to be sure, just to quiet those ridiculous crazy voices in my head. I’d know without a doubt that I wasn’t pregnant, and then I’d never have to think about Iris, not ever again.
