27
I LOOKED AT IT, CRADLED in the plastic bag telling me to HAVE A NICE DAY!, but I couldn’t even seem to take it out to read the instructions. I saw the scene unfold in my mind: me in the bathroom, fumbling to open the package and dropping the instructions on the sodden tile floor. Picking them up and trying to read the blurred letters. Sitting on the toilet, practically forcing myself to pee on the stick. And then, after, waiting for fate to hand down my sentence. I just couldn’t do it.
Stella and Jamie knew I hadn’t taken the test, and the atmosphere in the thousandth stolen/borrowed car was dark and uncomfortable. Every time I gagged, Stella and Jamie exchanged a knowing glance, which made me want to kill them, which made me feel even sicker. I caught my reflection in the mirrored entry to the Georgetown hotel Jamie checked us into. I looked undead. I was mildly surprised no one had tried to behead me.
“Just wait,” the girl in the mirror said back.
“Shut up.”
Jamie and Stella both turned to look at me. Guess I’d said that out loud.
As soon as I’d dropped my things in my room, Jamie knocked on my door. He brushed past me and then flung himself onto my bed. “Mara, dear, hand me that menu?”
“Make yourself comfortable,” I said, tossing it to him.
“I’m ordering room service,” Jamie said.
I dropped into an armchair. “It’s not even six.”
“I’m a growing boy. Leave me alone.” Jamie changed the TV channel. “Oh, a Tarantino marathon!”
I eyed the television. “Pulp Fiction? Not my favorite.”
“Blasphemy.”
“I prefer Kill Bill.”
“Hmm. Acceptable,” Jamie said with a nod. “Ugh, I can’t order what I want until seven. Bastards.” He punted the remote, and it bounced off the mattress.
“Temper, temper.”
“Pot, meet kettle. Where’s the minibar?”
I pointed to the other side of the room.
“Fetch me something?”
“Fetch yourself.”
Samuel L. Jackson was reciting the last bit of his Ezekiel 25:17 monologue on the flatscreen TV: “And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger, those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers.”
Jamie blocked my view. “You didn’t take it, I’m guessing?”
“Take what?” I asked, watching John Travolta and Sammy empty their clips into that sad guy.
“The, uh, test.”
“The—oh.” The pregnancy test. Before I could even answer, Jamie’s focus was diverted.
“Oh, hello there.” Jamie tossed a little black cardboard box at me just as Samuel was saying, “And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.”
I caught it even though I wasn’t looking, and turned the box over. “What is this?”
“It’s, like, a sex kit.” Jamie ripped open a bag of Skittles and tossed a handful into his mouth.
I threw the box back at him. “You’re more likely to need this than me.”
“Since you’re incubating an alien fetus, you mean?”
“There. Is. No. Fetus. And I’m a virgin. Still. Which I believe I’ve told you already. Several times.”
“I don’t think Stella believes you,” Jamie said. “And I can’t entirely blame her. It strains credulity to imagine Noah could avoid such temptation.”
“You’re not funny.”
“Yes I am. You just have a crappy sense of humor. God, only you could manage to get pregnant without even getting to have sex first.”
“My life does seem to be uniquely shitty lately.”
“I’ll give you that,” Jamie said. “But really, though—why haven’t you done it yet?”
The best defense is a good offense. “Why haven’t you done it yet?”
“I’m saving myself for marriage,” Jamie said, chewing openmouthed.
“Really?”
“Yes. Probably. Maybe. I don’t know. We’re not talking about me. Did you— I mean, do you want to? Have sex with Noah? Current predicament aside?”
I noticed Jamie’s switch from past tense to present, but ignored it. “Of course,” I said quietly.
“So what stopped you? Current predicament aside.”
I wondered how to explain what had kept me and Noah apart even before Horizons. What I was afraid I might have done to him. What the fortune-teller had told me and what part of me still believed.
“I was afraid . . . I’d hurt him.”
Jamie quirked an eyebrow. “I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works.”
“Ha-ha, hilarious.”
“Seriously, though. You can tell me.”
I was embarrassed, putting the kissing conundrum into words, worrying Jamie might think I was crazier than I actually was, which, given the circumstances. But he listened intently, and didn’t mock me when I was finished.
“You think it’s just kissing?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I’ve kissed Noah before, obviously—”
“Obviously. He could never be that much of a saint.”
I ignored him. “And we did notice that something—happened. I think maybe it’s connected to my emotional state or whatever—like, I don’t know if it would happen with just a peck on the cheek, because—”
“Because there’s no intensity.”
“Right.”
“So you could probably kiss me or Stella and nothing would happen.”
“Stella would think I was trying to bite her. She’d mace me.”
Jamie cracked a grin. “God, that’s so accurate. It makes sense, though, the kissing thing? Like, if you stray out of your stable emotional range, something changes with your ability. Excess energy or something.”
“So a peck on the cheek wouldn’t do anything,” I said.
“Probably not.”
I planted a kamikaze kiss on Jamie’s cheek.
“FUCK,” he shouted, wiping it off. “What if you killed me!” He threw a Skittle at my face. It hit my forehead.
“Ow!”
“Taste the rainbow, bitch.”
“Don’t be a baby.”
“I am going to be a baby. I am going to lock myself in the bathroom and cry now, in fact.” Jamie did go into the bathroom, and he did lock the door. Whether he cried, who knows.
I heard the toilet flush and the water run, and when he opened the door, he said, “I left something on the counter for you.”
“I’m . . . afraid to ask.”
“You really should take it.”
“Are we talking about the pregnancy test again? Because, no.”
“Whatever the result is, you have to know. We’ll figure it out, but we can’t pretend this isn’t happening.”
“I will admit to deriving a positive psychological benefit from your using the word ‘we.’?”
“Positive psychological benefit intended.”
I wanted to argue with him, but I couldn’t really. Jamie was right. If it was negative, I was like this for some other reason, and nothing changed. But if it was positive . . .
If it was positive, everything changed.
“Don’t even think about it,” Jamie said, popping another Skittle into his mouth. “If you think about it, you’ll change your mind. Like you said, you’re probably not . . . you know. But won’t it be a relief to know?”
Yes. It would be.
He turned around and not so gently pushed me into the bathroom. “Like ripping off a Band-Aid,” he said, closing the door behind me. “Just pee.”
I looked at the box. Jamie had already opened it, and the instructions were lying next to it, by the sink. I read them. Plus sign for positive, minus for negative. Easy enough. I ripped open the package and sat on the toilet. I could practically hear him outside the door, breathing.
I felt like a defendant, waiting for the jury to hand down its verdict. Seconds passed, or maybe minutes, before someone knocked on the bathroom door.
“I don’t hear peeing,” Jamie said mockingly.
“Eat me,” I muttered.
“What’s that?”
“Leave me,” I said louder. My voice was hoarse, and my bladder was shy. Or something. I couldn’t do it, not with him listening. I said so and told Jamie to leave. To my surprise, he did.
And then I did. I quickly put the test on the edge of the vanity. I felt sick just looking at it, felt the urge to run. I could run. I could run out of the room, run out of the hotel, lie to Stella and Jamie and myself, never mention it again.
But my mother always said that the truth will catch up with you eventually. It always does.
So I forced my eyes shut and reached for it. On the count of three, I swore to myself that I would look.
One.
Two.
I opened my eyes.
It was negative.