Pearl took her arm. “You okay?”
Lexie nodded and the parking lot spun around and landed on its side. Pearl caught her as she began to tip. “Okay. Come on. Almost there.”
The original plan had been to drive Lexie home. Her mother wasn’t due back until tomorrow afternoon, and by then, Lexie had assumed, she would be back to normal, ready to pretend nothing had happened. But it was clear to Pearl, as she guided Lexie into the front seat of the Explorer, that Lexie was in no condition to go home. She was woozy from the anesthesia, and in the end, Pearl had to buckle the seat belt around her.
“Okay,” she said. “We’ll go to my house.”
“What about your mom?” Lexie asked, and when Pearl said, “She can keep a secret,” this seemed like the saddest thing Lexie had ever heard, and she burst into tears.
It was just past noon when they entered the house on Winslow, and Mia—cutting a maple tree out of a magazine ad with an X-Acto knife—looked up in alarm as they entered the kitchen. At the sight of the scalpel in Mia’s hands, Lexie—who had calmed down by the end of the drive—began to cry again. To everyone’s surprise, even her own, Mia pulled Lexie into her arms.
“You’re all right,” she said. “It’s all going to be okay.”
Lexie was never entirely sure, afterward, whether she had told Mia what had happened, or if Pearl had, or if Mia had simply intuited it on her own. All she would remember was Mia holding her tight, so tight that the world stopped spinning at last, Mia tucking her into a low soft bed that, it turned out later, was Mia’s own.
Mia, in fact, had already had suspicions about Lexie’s situation. Though Brian had cautiously flushed their condoms down the toilet, a few times when Mia emptied the garbage in Lexie’s room she had found the condom wrappers balled into a wad of tissues. One afternoon, when she’d come back to the Richardson house to retrieve her purse, which she’d left behind that morning by mistake, she’d tripped over Brian’s size 12 tennis shoes in the entryway right beside Lexie’s platform sandals. There had been no sign of the two of them, but Mia had grabbed her bag from the kitchen island and hurried out, half afraid of what she might hear from upstairs, shutting the door quietly and hoping the noise wouldn’t carry. Lexie, every time Mia saw her, struck her as terrifyingly young, and Mia did not want to think about what Lexie was certainly up to, nor what—by extension—Pearl might be up to as well.
So when Lexie had appeared in the doorway, half leaning on Pearl’s arm, Mia took in her wan and grayish face, the pink discharge form from the clinic still clutched in her hand, the plastic bag full of pads dangling from Pearl’s wrist, and understood immediately what had happened. If someone had asked her, a month or even a week before, to guess what she might have felt, she might have anticipated a sliver of gloating, or at least a moment of holier-than-thou. In the actual moment, however, she felt nothing but a flood of deep sympathy for Lexie, for the bind she had found herself in, for the pain—both physical and emotional—she would have to fight through to get out of that bind.
Lexie woke up nestled under a crisp white comforter. It was midafternoon, and the curtains were drawn, but a lamp in the corner had been left on, a towel draped over the shade to mute it, and the thoughtfulness of this pierced her. For the third time that day she found herself sobbing. And then Mia was there, sitting at her bedside, stroking her back.
“It’s okay,” she said to Lexie, and though she said nothing else, just this—it’s okay, it’s okay—Lexie found herself breathing easier. Mia settled herself cross-legged on the floor and handed Lexie a tissue, and Lexie realized that the bed wasn’t simply low: it was a mattress set on the carpet. She blew her nose. There was no garbage can in sight, but Mia held out her hand, and after a moment of embarrassment Lexie handed over the damp wad of tissue.
“You slept a long time. That’s good. Do you think you can eat something?” In the kitchen, Mia set a bowl of soup in front of her, and Lexie brought a spoonful to her lips: chicken noodle, salty, searingly hot. There was no sign of Pearl, but the clock on the stove read 3:15. School had let out a little while ago. She must have told her mother everything, Lexie thought.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” she blurted out. She felt an intense need to explain herself, to make sure Mia did not think ill of her. At that moment, Pearl came up into the apartment. She was flushed in the face and panting a little.
“I borrowed Moody’s bike,” she said. “Had to get home and see if you were doing okay.”
“You didn’t—” Lexie began, and Pearl shook her head.
“Of course I didn’t tell him,” she said. “I said I forgot I promised I’d get home early to help my mom with something.” It unnerved her, how easy it had been to lie to Moody again, but she shook the feeling aside, as if she were brushing off cobwebs. “How are you doing?”
“She’s going to be fine,” Mia said, and patted Lexie’s hand. “I’m sure of it.”
Ten minutes later, as Mia was setting the soup bowl into the sink to soak, another set of footsteps came thumping up the stairs and Izzy arrived. Afternoons were her time with Mia, and she spent the last few periods of the day anticipating what Mia might be working on, thinking of things to share. At the sight of Lexie, she froze in the doorway.
“What are you doing here?”
Lexie scowled. “I came over to hang out with Pearl, obviously,” she snapped. “You have a problem with that?”
Izzy glanced from Lexie to Pearl with deep suspicion. Her sister never came to the house on Winslow; she much preferred to spend her time in the comfort of the Richardsons’ rec room, where there were comfortable chairs and a big TV and snacks and diet Cokes were plentiful. Here there was no TV, not even a couch. It was most unlike Lexie. Why would she and Pearl meet here rather than there? Yet there Lexie was, looking pale and uncertain and perhaps even a little red-eyed—all of which was most unlike Lexie, too.
“I’m helping Lexie with her English paper,” Pearl said. “We thought we’d work better over here.”
“It’s okay, Izzy,” Mia said. “But you know, since the girls are here, I’m not working today. Tomorrow, okay?” Then, when Izzy hesitated, she said, “Tomorrow, I promise. After school. Just like always.” She gave Izzy’s elbow a little squeeze as she turned her around in the doorway, and Izzy, with a glare at Lexie, clumped back down the stairs. In a moment they heard the door slam shut behind her.
“She is so pissed at me,” Lexie murmured. “Well, what else is new.” Now that Izzy was gone, she felt herself drained, and she slumped backward in her chair, letting her ponytail drape over the back.