52
Before
I graduated, at least.
I sleepwalked through the ceremony, sat in my big black robe in the air-conditioned auditorium listening to the valedictorian quote Dr. Seuss and trying not to barf. Shelby sat three rows in front of me, kept glancing over her shoulder and giving me the thumbs-up. My biggest accomplishment for the day was managing to cross the stage and pick up my useless diploma without bursting into tears.
Ms. Bowen came up to me afterward, threw her arms around me in congratulations and asked to meet my family. “You made a winner here, with Reena,” she told them happily; if she was at all baffled by the fact that their collective disposition on this most auspicious of days was somewhere in the neighborhood of the Addams Family at Disneyland, she didn’t let on. “I can’t wait to hear all about how she does at Northwestern.”
There was a moment of silence then—probably only a second or two, although to me it felt like it lasted sometime between nine months and an entire lifetime. Soledad hmmed noncommitally. My father cleared his throat. I could feel them both watching me, baffled, but in the end I just smiled my widest and most artificial, told her she wasn’t the only one.
*
I tried to keep working my normal shifts at the restaurant, but in the end I called in so often that finally they went ahead and replaced me with someone new, a dishwater blonde with a pale, zitty complexion. She was nice enough and a decent worker, Shelby reported, but Lydia picked on her to no end. “Mama LeGrande is on the warpath,” Shelby warned me, having dropped by with a movie and a magazine and a generous side of gossip that, thankfully, wasn’t about me. “I’m thinking now is probably an awesome time to tell her that I’m gay.”
I grinned. “Lydia wouldn’t care that you’re gay,” I told her as I flipped through the glossy tabloid. The TV jabbered cheerfully in the background. “You could tell my parents if you wanted, though. Maybe take some of the heat off yours truly.”
Shelby didn’t smile. “You don’t have to do this, you know,” she said suddenly. She was painting her toenails dark blue, window opened to the sticky heat outside because the fumes made me sick to my stomach. Her ripped-up jeans were rolled halfway up her calves. “Reena.”
I sighed a bit, rolling over on the bed so I was staring up at the ceiling. There were faint tape marks up there, left over from a poster of the Brooklyn Bridge Allie had helped me hang when we were in middle school. I’d pulled it down along with all the rest. “Yeah, I do.”
“No, I mean. Not to like, hit you over the head with a Planned Parenthood brochure or anything, but”—Shelby looked at me pointedly—“you really don’t.”
I laughed in spite of myself, a dark, hollow sound. “You think I haven’t thought about that?” I asked her, propping myself up on one elbow. “You think it just, like, hasn’t occurred to me? Of course I’ve thought about it, Shelby.”
Shelby put the cap back on the nail polish, feet resting on the windowsill. “So?” she asked.
“So, nothing.” I shrugged into the pillows, resigned. “My father would hate me, for starters.”
“I hear that,” Shelby said slowly, “but not wanting your dad to be mad at you is not a good enough reason to have a baby when you’re sixteen.”
“Thank you, Captain Obvious.” I made a face. “I didn’t say he’d be mad at me. I said he’d hate me. I mean, he already hates me, but it’s the kind of hate I can maybe see mellowing out after a while. If I had an abortion, I might as well just pack my bags and forget I ever had a family.” I picked at a loose thread on the quilt, watching it unravel. “Anyway, that’s not even really it.”
“Okay,” Shelby told me. She pressed a thumb against her big toe to make sure the polish was dry, then came over and flopped belly-down onto the bed beside me. Her hazel eyes were sharp and curious. “Then what is it really?”
I shrugged a little, trying to think how to explain it—how to tell her that in some weird way I’d already made a break between my old life and my new one. How to tell her that I just sort of felt it in my bones. In spite of myself I’d already started thinking of the person growing inside me as a person, a half-formed heart beating steady underneath my own. Late one night I’d found a chart on Google that talked about the size of the baby in relationship to different kinds of fruit: Your baby is a grape, your baby is a mango. It was me and this mango-size baby now, is what it felt like. We were all that we had in the world.
“I don’t know,” I said finally, turning to face her. I curled my knees up alongside my chest. “I get that this is going to change my entire life, Shelby. It’s just, like …” I trailed off and shrugged again, determined and afraid. “My life is already changed.”
Shelby looked at me like only a real friend can, like what I’d said made one sliver of sense. Then she sighed. “Well, all right then, baby,” she said softly. “Let’s rock and roll.”