Translation: I’d rather get hit by a semi.
It was nearing four o’clock when we left the cafeteria. When I finally saw his guardian’s red Jeep pull to the front of the awning, I turned into Karen 2.0 and thanked the Lord for His impeccable timing. I made my way across the parking lot, which was empty for the most part, considering it was Friday and the only people still at school were nerds, teachers, and those with no life. The minivan was parked in what everyone called the last-minute section at the farthest end of the lot. Splattered chocolate milkshake was smeared along the driver’s side where some moron had been too lazy to move three steps closer to the garbage can. I vowed to take my chances with handicap towing next time.
It had been another dragging day. Go figure. As uneventful as it was, I’d had more than sufficient time to dwell on all the things I hated. My depression. My friendlessness. My pending date with doom and worst people manifestations (see: family reunion). And Snake. Snake the cheater. Snake the survivor. Snake the Twizzlers addict. Snake the poser filmmaker extraordinaire. Snake the douchelord.
Carla’s Snake.
I dwelled extra long on the last one.
It wasn’t easy having two classes with her, especially that day, when she kept looking at me like I had stabbed her in the back with a pencil and asked for the lead back. Something had happened after I left last night. Something had happened with Snake. Well, things had happened with me, too. In my mind. A change. And I didn’t want that change to leave me in a state of Carla, with puffy eyes and desperation and loneliness. But Snake had a way of making crazy people crazier. And although I was almost embarrassed for thinking it, I kind of felt like Carla and I were weathering Hurricane Snake together.
I fumbled for the van keys at the bottom of my messenger bag. As I struggled to get ahold of them, I heard a familiar voice a few feet away.
I went through the checklist of the kinds of people who stayed at school until four o’clock on a Friday. Nerds. Teachers. Those with no life.
Carla definitely fell into the third category.
“Hey, Snake.” She paced by the trees, twirling a strand of red hair around her finger as she spoke into her bedazzled phone. “I’ve left at least five messages. It’s four o’clock—?you’re twenty minutes late. I thought we agreed you would still come today. Maybe I heard wrong. Call me back if you’re coming. Oh, and bring—” She paused and drew the phone from her ear. “Dammit.” She pounded the screen and grabbed her forehead with her hand.
Ugh. I was going to have to do a good deed. I resented people like Snake who made other people like Snake (see: me) pick up the pieces of Snake-like victims (see: Carla) and do good deeds (see: torture). I gave up on my keys because, frankly, they were too tangled for me to care, and I had to talk to Carla fast or I would burst with glitter and fairy dust and go-team positivity.
She didn’t see me until I was nearly a foot from her, but she bore the weirdest expression when she did. Her mouth opened and she let out a breath, blinking her eyes at twice the rate. Was she relieved to see me?
“Hey,” she whispered, wiping her mascara like I didn’t already know she was a blubbering mess. “I didn’t see you there.”
“Really? I could hear you wailing from the library.”
“What?” she gasped.
“Kidding. Relax. You’re pregnant, you can get away with the constant hormonal tears.”
She glanced down the street. “He didn’t come.”
“Who didn’t come?”
“Snake. He was supposed to take me to birthing class, and he won’t answer his phone.”
“Oh, maybe he’ll show—”
“I know something’s going on with you two,” she blurted. I tried to keep a poker face, but I was terrible at lying. And poker. “You can stop pretending like you barely know him.”
Her voice quivered a bit too loudly to be ignored. Then the lip biting started. And after that, the grand finale. The bursting of the emotional floodgates. At least she had the decency to cry into her hands and not subject me to one of those horrible, nostrils-flared, mouth-agape cry faces. Because I would have laughed, and the whole “do good” thing would have been shot.
“Why are you crying?” I asked.
I waited for her to pick either A) because I’m pregnant, that’s why!, B) because my boyfriend’s a cheating asshole, or C) I just realized how bloated I am. (I knew she wouldn’t pick option C—?I tossed that one in there for shits and giggles.) “Snake hates me,” she cried against her snotty hand.
“Did he say that?”
“No, but he does.” She reached into her pocket for a Kleenex. She would fare well in therapy. “Can we talk in your car?”
“Well . . .”
“Please.”
Etched into stone since the universe’s creation is this basic law of humanity that you have to give pregnant women what they ask for, or else you’ll be haunted by the gods of fertility and die a virgin. Not quite ready to take my vow of celibacy and invite the ghosts of pregnant women past upon myself, I gestured to the van. When she clumsily climbed into the passenger seat, she was still crying. I was still hating my life.
“Can you not? You’re getting your emotions all over my mom’s seat covers.”
“I’m hormonal, okay?”
“You’re also covered in snot.” I handed her a fresh tissue from the console. “Get yourself together.”
“He hates me.”
“He doesn’t hate you.”
“We broke up last night. And I dumped him, in case he tries to spin the story.”
“Why?”
“I had my doubts about us before, but seeing my aunt die made me realize that life’s too short to waste it with people who don’t care about you.” She blew her nose. She even snorted like royalty. “And my dad highly encouraged it.”
I didn’t want to slip and make it look like I cared. I didn’t do the caring thing. They broke up—?big deal. They broke up, and it meant nothing to me. It didn’t change anything. They could break up or get married or have seven kids or be madly in stupid love, and none of it would matter.
Except that it did matter. I hated that it mattered.
She held her stomach. “And he doesn’t love Little Man. Not the way I do, anyway.”
“Little Man?”
“I haven’t picked out his name yet.” She looked at me like the new Carla. Puffy-eyed. Lonely. Resentful. When she wasn’t crying, new Carla was becoming, dare I say it, mildly tolerable. “He doesn’t love him, does he?”
I didn’t say anything, because I honestly didn’t know. Somehow, it never came up.
“I can accept that he doesn’t love me. I think I always knew that he didn’t. Even when he said he did, he didn’t.”
“He said he did?”
“Yeah, sometimes.”