Zooey and Charlie snapped together, linking hands and sharing a goofy grin. She rubbed her still-flat belly and said, “Ten weeks. I wasn’t sure at first, even after I took a dozen home tests, but I went to my gyno and she confirmed it and . . . we’re pregnant!”
“I told Mom to have you neutered,” I said, and Charlie boxed my ear.
“Show some respect, kid.”
“Kid?” My brother is a kid. Sure, he can drink, smoke, and kill during wartimes, but he’s still a dumb kid. He pees on the toilet seat and doesn’t know how to operate the washing machine, and it was only a couple of months ago that he shoved a peanut M&M so far up his nose that we had to take him to the emergency room to have it extracted. Charlie has no business having a baby when he’s just a baby himself.
But Charlie and Zooey stood in the middle of the kitchen, smiling and smiling, waiting for someone to congratulate them or tell them they were ruining their lives. The longer they waited, the more strained their smiles became, cracking around the edges. They might have waited forever if Nana hadn’t broken the silence.
“Young man, do your parents know you’re having a colored girl’s baby?”
“Nana!” I said, mortified by what she’d said but laughing at her the way you’d laugh at a toddler screaming “fuck!” in the middle of a crowded department store.
Charlie and Zooey latched on to Nana’s anachronistic racism and wrung out a chuckle that turned into a torrent of laughter. We were so busy being mortified by what Nana had said and uncomfortable at our own response that we didn’t notice Mom crying until she said, “Oh, Charlie.”
? ? ?
The pasta carbonara smelled delicious, but I didn’t expect I’d get to eat any because of the yelling and fighting and Charlie’s occasional hysterical outbursts. Once the shock wore off, Mom got around to listing the various ways Zooey and Charlie were ruining their lives, and Charlie’s only defense consisted of shouting loud enough to drown her out.
I could have settled the argument by informing them that I wasn’t going to press the button. If the world needed someone as pathetic as me to save it, we were better off dead. Nana wouldn’t be shipped off to a home, and Charlie and Zooey wouldn’t be saddled with a little parasite neither of them was ready to care for. I’d be doing them a favor. Only, I’m still not sure what I’m going to do.
I found a bag of stale potato chips under my bed and munched on the crumbs. I was too worked up to sleep, but not bored enough to do homework, so I killed an hour on the Internet, which is how I ended up stalking Marcus’s SnowFlake page. It was flooded with comments about the party, and it looked like he was going to be hosting more than just a few friends. Based on what I read, I guessed he’d invited every kid at CHS. Well, almost every kid.
Marcus probably hadn’t even waited an hour after I’d turned him down before organizing the party.
Fuck it.
I shut off my computer and flopped across my bed, letting my head fall backward so that the blood rushed to my brain. The pressure increased, and I counted the quickening thud-thud-thud of my heartbeat. I wondered how long I’d have to stay upside down before I passed out. How long after that before I’d die. I wondered what Jesse had thought about after he’d stepped off the edge of his desk and dangled on the end of the rope. Charlie has a buddy who works for Calypso Fire Rescue, and he said Jesse’s knots were the best he’d ever seen. A perfect noose on one end, and a textbook clove hitch on the other. Once Jesse took the plunge, he couldn’t have changed his mind even if he’d wanted to.
I wonder if he thought of me in his final seconds. Or about his mom and dad, or his dog, Captain Jack, that he had put to sleep only a few months earlier. Maybe random thoughts invaded his brain the way they often do right before you fall asleep. Thoughts like how he’d never taste chocolate again or about the homework he’d neglected to finish. I doubt he thought of me at all.
If I die before deciding whether to press the button, will the sluggers abduct someone else and force them to choose, or will they let the world end? I should ask.
No . . . fuck it.
I’m being stupid. If Marcus doesn’t want to be seen with me, why kiss me at all? I remember the first time it happened. I’d hung around after Faraci’s class to ask her a question about our lab. I went to the restroom after, and knocked into Marcus on his way out. I thought he was going to rearrange my face, but he kissed me. It was the first time since Jesse had died that I’d felt anything. I knew, even then, Marcus was never going to be my boyfriend or write me sappy love letters. I’ll never have with him what I had with Jesse—I doubt I’ll have that again with anyone—but I want to be more than Marcus’s standin. To him, I am the cheap pair of sunglasses you buy on vacation because you know you won’t care if you break or lose them.
Fuck it.