Belly Up Read online

  There’s a first time for everything.

  First time playing quarters.

  First time spinning the bottle.

  First totally hot consensual truck hookup with a superhot boy whose digits I forgot to get.

  First time getting pregnant.

  Surprised you with that one, didn’t I?

  Surprised me, too. I’d planned to spend senior year with my bestie-slash-wifey, Devi Abrams, graduating at the top of my class and getting into an Ivy League college. Instead, Mom and I are moving in with my battle-ax of a grandmother and I’m about to start a new school and a whole new life.

  Know what’s more fun than being the new girl for your senior year? Being the pregnant new girl. It isn’t awesome. There is one upside, though—a boy named Leaf Leon. He’s cute, an amazing cook and he’s flirting me up, hard-core. Too bad I’m knocked up with a stranger’s baby. I should probably mention that to him at some point.

  But how?

  It seems I’ve got a lot more firsts to go.

  Praise for Belly Up

  “An incandescent novel of humor and heart. Darrows’ writing—and her main character—sparkle with witty authenticity. You won’t want to put it down!”

  —Tess Sharpe, author of Far From You

  “Darrows’ deft hand at creating healthy, positive friendships and family, as well as snarky, delightful dialogue, really shine in Belly Up.... I loved this book so much.... Do yourself a favor and read it now!”

  —LisH McBride, author of Hold Me Closer, Necromancer

  Praise for Dead Little Mean Girl

  “The macabre black humor is spot-on, while the subverted tropes rework edgy nihilism into a sniffle-inducing recognition of humanity. Another smart, savage winner from the author of The Awesome.”

  —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  “With precise language that rings with sincerity and wit...Darrows’ new YA novel is a seriously smart, funny, and empathetic look at how someone’s manufactured exterior might be hiding inner turmoil, and ultimately advocates for looking past labels and categories.”

  —Booklist

  EVA DARROWS is the pseudonym for Hillary Monahan, the New York Times bestselling author of Mary: The Summoning and, under the Darrows name, of the critically acclaimed The Awesome and Dead Little Mean Girl. A multigenre author, Hillary writes everything from horror and comedy to SFF and romance, for young adult and adult audiences alike. 2019 sees her twelfth novel in print.

  Also available from Eva Darrows:

  The Awesome

  Dead Little Mean Girl

  Belly Up

  Eva Darrows

  For Greg. A sweet book for a sweet dude.

  Contents

  PART ONE:

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  PART TWO:

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  PART THREE:

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Acknowledgments

  Excerpt from Dead Little Mean Girl by Eva Darrows

  PART ONE:

  The snippa,

  the speculum

  and the womb goblin.

  Chapter One

  When my English teacher, Mrs. Thomson, went on that half-hour lecture-slash-tirade about “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” she by no means had Michelle Levitz’s end-of-year junior graduation party in mind, but I sure did. ’Cause that party, with its Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill wine that tasted like liquid Jolly Ranchers, its tent farm in the woods and high school kids from not one but two different high schools was one of the most memorable nights of my seventeen years of existence.

  I played quarters for the first time.

  I played spin the bottle for the first time.

  I got pregnant for the first time.

  ...surprised you with that one, didn’t I?

  I didn’t plan on it happening. In fact, it was the furthest thing from my mind that night as I stood in front of my open closet wearing a black bra and a pair of yoga pants, my toenails freshly painted, my face contorted in a full freak-out because I had (and have) no idea how to dress myself.

  Basic life skill or not, clothes are hard. I’m not sure how you other humans manage it.

  “What do I wear?” I motioned at the thirty-seven logoed T-shirts laid out on the bed behind me. My best friend, Devi, looked up from her magazine to rifle through them, her lip curled in distaste as she plucked three from the pile.

  “Does it matter? They all look the same.” She shook them at me. “Here’s the hipster douchebag spring collection. Here’s dumpster-diving chic. Oh, and my favorite, the secondhand store golden grab!”

  Devi wore the pretty clothes—a floral blouse belted tight beneath her boobs, a crinkly teal skirt. Her long legs were tipped off by designer sandals that cost as much as my mom’s ancient car. Her brown hair with the natural waves was tucked beneath a coordinating scarf with a flower barrette at the temple. She looked fresh from the festival scene, and perfect for a summer night out with her big Bambi eyes, hoop earrings and pink lip gloss.

  I couldn’t pull it off. I was short and roundish with a big ol’ butt and thighs that could crush a walnut if I flexed hard enough. A deep-V collar like Devi wore? No go, not with my enormous boobs. I once lamented to my mother—who was blonde and blue-eyed and weighed a hundred and twenty-five pounds soaking wet—that I was shaped like a lawn gnome. Mom responded with, “You have curves for days, sweetheart. Curves for days.”

  It was true. I had curves for days. And days and days and days. I had years of curves and dressing them was a pain. Finding a pair of jeans that fit my tree-trunk thighs and bubble butt, yet still cinched in at the waist enough that I didn’t look ridiculous? Needle-in-a-haystack-worthy. T-shirts had to be a full size too big or my chest stretched out the screen print until it cracked and looked like painted barf.

  I would have killed for Devi’s height and proportions. It was not my lot in life.

  “Give me the Atari one,” I said. She flung it at me and I caught it midair to tug it over my head. “And I’ll have you know, Devorah, that the logo is the key to a successful T-shirt. It’s the first thing new people see. Atari says, ‘I’m fun and a little nerdy.’ Guinness says, ‘You probably like hockey or at least pretend you do.’ My Little Pony says, ‘I own at least one pair of glittery sneakers, which I do, and they’re awesome, but if I wore them tonight, you’d kill me.’”

  “You’re sevente
en, Serendipity,” she said, because my mother was the type of person that saddled a kid with a huge-ass name. At least it shortened to Sara pretty easily. “Glitter was out in second grade.” She pulled a Starbucks T-shirt from the pile and held it up to her chest. “What does this one say?”

  “That I prefer burnt coffee?”

  We shared a grin as I gathered up the T-shirts and threw them back into my dresser drawer. The moment I walked away from the bureau, Devi tsked and nudged me with her foot. “No yoga pants. White girl needs to be less cliché. Jeans.”

  “...but they’re comfortable,” I whined. “I’m embracing my mother’s culture right now.”

  “Yes, well, embrace whatever culture puts you in real pants. Those are pajamas.”

  I rifled through the stacks of pants in the second drawer. I’m half Swedish, half Spanish, and by Devi’s decree, culturally confused. My mother raised me—she’s full Swede. From her I inherited my porcelain complexion and an appreciation for ärtsoppa because it’s delicious. My Spanish father isn’t in the picture. He and my mother were married until I was two, but he fell off the map when they divorced and my grandmother’s stories tell me I was better off without him. He was too free with his hands, she said, which made me grateful that all he left me was the last name Rodriguez, a mop of black curly hair and eyes so dark you can’t see the pupils.

  That’s pretty much all I know about my Hispanic culture beyond the fact that Spanish-speaking people often aren’t interested in me once they figure out I can’t speak the language, and white people treat me like Speedy Gonzales with boobs because apparently Mexican and Spanish are the same thing.

  I’m halfway in between, too much and yet not enough at the same time.

  It’s keen.

  I swapped yoga pants for jeans, hopping to pull the damned things up over my hips. I made a beeline for two-dollar flip-flops, but a pointed Devorah groan and I went for some sandals with rhinestones on the bands instead.

  “Lipstick,” she said. “Or gloss, at the very least. Pretend you care, please.”

  “I care! Just less than you do!” I snatched a gloss from my vanity and even went so far as to mascara my lashes so Devi would leave me alone. “You’re a fashion enforcer,” I said, snagging my car keys and wallet from the table by the door. “If I don’t follow the rules, you’ll take out my kneecaps.”

  Devi unfurled from the bed, her six feet of gorgeousness making me look like I was standing in a hole by comparison. “I’m your best bitch. What best bitch lets her bestie go to a party looking like they just crawled out of bed?”

  “An awesome one. Be more awesome, Devi.”

  * * *

  Half an hour later, I stood at the end of a long driveway beholding a three-storied blue Colonial with a billion glass windows and a perfectly manicured lawn. Michelle Levitz’s father was a swanky city lawyer with a huge swanky house and an equally-as-swanky Jaguar in the three-car garage. Michelle once said that her dad’s name topped a partnership plaque on a skyscraper in the financial district of Boston. That meant he had bank, and he liked to travel to Bermuda with that bank. Thanks to his tropical wanderlust, Michelle had been left alone the last week of May to throw the biggest, most obnoxious party ever. Twenty tents were set up near the tree line beyond the shed. Another half dozen were being erected behind the pool. Nobody was in the pool on account of New England dumping snow on our heads two weeks before, but with enough alcohol, kids would be bobbing in the clear frigid blue within hours.

  We’d learned some stuff in biology about teen brains being half formed and spongy. Freezing to death in a pool when it’s subzero is a half formed, spongy brain kind of thing to do.

  We walked to the house, my ancient Subaru sandwiched between two tiny economy cars, which were sandwiched between two SUVs. There was no hope of any car in that driveway escaping anytime soon, but that was okay. Devi’s parents knew she was staying at my apartment overnight, and my mom was fine with us going out as long as I never ever drove drunk and we were home “at a reasonable hour.” Her interpretation of “reasonable hour” and mine were probably different, but we’d hash out the details later, if and when I got into trouble.

  As we crested the brick walkway leading to the front door, Devi reached into her over-the-shoulder bag to hand me a bottle of Boone’s. Her twenty-one-year-old cousin, Jakob, had offered to buy booze for us if she’d agreed to fill up his gas tank, which she had, and so we were the not-so-proud owners of terrible wine. I’d had a drink or two at parties before, but never a bottle to myself. For that matter, I’d never been drunk before but there was a first time for everything, and really, it was Boone’s. What could possibly go wrong?

  Answer: a lot, but I wouldn’t know that until a weird aversion to the smell of eggs. A hard lesson learned that night: if you’re drinking, make sure you have a sober friend on hand at all times to keep your fat out of the fire. Or to keep your butt out of F-150 trucks at two o’clock in the morning with guys named Jack.

  “Crap.” Devi pointed to the side lawn at a cluster of kids setting up plastic cups in lines on the picnic table. “Aaron.”

  I frowned. “Hey, our first Skank One sighting. Is Skank Two with him?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  Aaron Weller had been my on-again, off-again, but definitely-never-would-be-on-again boyfriend. We’d been together since eighth grade, had broken up a few times over stupid stuff, but we’d always reconnected. That all changed when Aaron left his cell phone on my coffee table over April vacation and I got an eyeful of Samantha Wuchowski’s thonged butt in a text message. I wouldn’t have cared that she was sending a dude pictures of her butt cleavage. What I cared about was that she’d sent my dude pictures of her butt cleavage and had messed around with him for three months behind my back.

  Thus Skank One, Skank Two.

  They could wallow in their skantitude together.

  * * *

  I surveyed the crowd until I found Samantha’s blond head. We locked eyes and she quickly nestled herself into Aaron’s side, like that would shield her from my contempt. She hated me as much as I hated her, mostly because after our breakup Aaron had sent me numerous messages on social media begging me to take him back, complete with videos of him ugly crying. It’d done nothing to sway me, but it sure pissed me off when I saw them together. She thought they were ready for their happily-ever-after. She only got it because I kept saying no.

  She tilted her head up and whispered in Aaron’s ear. He looped his arm around her waist and looked over his shoulder at me. Meeting his gaze was more difficult than meeting hers—I’d loved Aaron, probably still loved him a little. I’d given him most of my important firsts, had gone to formal dances with him, had visited with his family the previous summer at their lake house in Maine. We’d been the real deal, thought-we’d-be-together-forever type of couple, and though I was resolute in not wanting him back, seeing his face, his green eyes, his ash-colored hair and his chin with the butt dimple...

  I still didn’t want him back, but I did open the Boone’s and take a long swig.

  “Whoa, already?” Devi asked. “We’re not even in the house.”

  “Don’t judge me. You’re not my real mom.”

  “Whatever, girl. It’s your night.”

  And oh, what a night it was.

  Chapter Two

  Being Devi’s friend meant getting to witness the gravitational pull hot girls had on guys. Devi was the sun, the straight boys at the party were planets pulled into her orbit. Once they got a gander at her tight butt, swanlike neck and perky boobs, it was all over. I stood beside her, drinking my Boone’s from a red Solo cup, and watched as dude after dude took a stab at scoring the prettiest girl there. Other girls were almost as pretty—they had good faces or nice bodies or glossy hair, but Devi had the whole package. Even my grandmother, whom Devi once affectionately called Genghis Khan with boobs, said she
ought to model, but Devi had no interest.

  “I want to be an astronaut,” she said, and so she spent her time studying astronomy and physics.

  We’d become friends in grade school, after Tanya Brides had threatened to beat me up if I didn’t trade my pudding cup for her applesauce. Devi had defended me by telling the teacher, and for it, I’d given her half the pudding cup in thanks. Besties ever since. Behold the magical power of butterscotch.

  After boy number twelve left Devi’s side, dejected that she’d blown him off, she slumped against me, letting my much squatter self hold her upright.

  “I should lie and tell them I’m a lesbian,” she said. “They don’t know what gray ace is anyway, probably.”

  Which was true. Devi dated, enjoyed romance and hand-holding and all of the sweetness associated with being with another person, but so far, and possibly forever, sex was not on the table. She thought about it sometimes, she’d told me before, but had no intention of acting on it. The interest wasn’t there. Some boys would have probably understood that, but a lot of them were walking, talking boners, so Devi tended to date only among vetted, ace-safe spaces. Which meant a lot of online dating because New England wasn’t a bastion of love and acceptance for the asexual community.

  Or really a lot of people. It’s pretty WASPy.

  “No go on the lesbian-o,” I said. I sipped my wine and blinked, trying to focus my eyes. The buzz felt pretty good, and it helped me not see whenever Aaron drifted by, but it was a little disconcerting, too. I was looking at the world through a hazy film that dulled colors and made the layers upon layers of noise hard to sift through. “They’d just ask to watch.”

  “True, and I love you, but you know, not feeling the sex thing, so.” She grinned. “In another life, we’d make great porn together, though.”

  “Our theoretical porn is fantastic.”

  We tapped our cups together and drank.