Belly Up Read online

  “That explains it. He got quiet after you two talked.” Devi pulled the car out onto the road to take me home. “But hey, he seems like a great friend to have, yeah?”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said, trying to sound positive, but I was hurting and she knew it. She dropped me off, let me sleep and the next day, as soon as I texted her in the morning to say hello, she informed me she was coming over to my house. So I should brush my teeth because morning breath was anti-friendship. Fortunately, neither Mom nor Mormor objected to the impromptu visit.

  It didn’t hurt that Devi primed that pump by bringing them coffee from Dunks and me a bag of Burger King.

  Mmm. Burger.

  The sandwich that would have normally taken me twelve bites to get through was devoured in five.

  “He may just need a little time,” Devi said, jumping right into it. She popped a chicken nugget into her mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “Maybe he just needs to think about it and figure out what he wants to do?”

  I collapsed onto my pile of pillows. “I doubt it. He barely knows me. I’m just bummed out because everything’s changing and there’s not a lot I can do about it. Like, dude, check this out.” I leaned back and rolled down the top of my pajama pants, pointing at my midsection where a gentle swell had had the audacity to ripen. Not a lot, just a touch, but I knew it was there—had noticed it for the first time that morning.

  I’d blame it on cheeseburgers, but fat was soft. The Stomach was not soft.

  Devi reached out to touch it, poking at my belly button.

  “Yep, that’s a kid,” she announced.

  “Yep.” I rolled up my pants. “I tried to change before you got here but jeans fit weird. Too tight. So I said screw it and went back to my PJs. Fat pants forever, I guess.”

  “Hey, fat pants are the best. I own at least five pairs.”

  “Says the girl with no fat to speak of,” I said.

  “Don’t hate.” Devi crawled up beside me, her head fwumping down into the pillow beside mine.

  I snuggled into her side. “I don’t hate. I just wish I felt better.”

  “You will.”

  “You promise?”

  “Yeah.”

  Except Devi was wrong. Not forever wrong, but wrong for a while, and most particularly wrong that next Monday. I was at my locker in the morning, trading my book bag for my folders just like I would any other school day, when it started. Six lockers down from me, a girl, who’d never even introduced herself to me, started talking about me. I think her name was Shelby, but for the purposes of this retelling, let’s just call her Doucheface McAssBurger.

  “She’s pregnant,” Doucheface said to her shorter thinner friend—henceforth called Armpit McButtSandwich—in a stage whisper. “Can you believe it?”

  I’d never talked to either of these girls, but there they were, making my business their business and the business of anyone in earshot, which was everyone, because Doucheface’s voice carried. I froze, staring straight ahead at my stack of books and papers, realizing that the soft din of chatter around me was probably all about me.

  Oh.

  The cat, it seemed, was out of the bag.

  It was going to get out sooner or later, particularly with my starting to show, but knowing that the gossip rag had started with Leaf sucked. It sucked a lot. I’d been at the school a couple weeks, made three friends total and already one of them had thrown me under the bus.

  My new-friend roulette hadn’t paid off.

  I glowered at Doucheface and Armpit hard enough that they stepped back, and I slammed closed my locker door. My eyes stung. Stupid hormones made stupid crying more stupidly possible and I hated it. I managed to hold it together, swearing to myself that my hag classmates wouldn’t get the satisfaction of seeing the preggo freak out. I was two steps down the hall when Danielle Hopkington, with her short brown curls, hoop earrings and barrage of freckles, called my name and fell into step beside me.

  “Hey, Sara. Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Yep.”

  That’s not what you really want to ask, Danielle, and we both know it.

  I kept walking. Danielle kept pace.

  “I just heard you were in trouble, and like, I wanted to help.”

  “Don’t.”

  It sounded bitchy. It was bitchy, but I didn’t know this person well, didn’t trust her as far as I could throw her and didn’t give much of a crap what she thought of me. My upset at being outed was making way for anger, and anger meant...

  Piss off, Danielle, was what it meant.

  “Right, okay fine. If that’s how it is,” she said, sounding injured.

  “It’s how it is.” I ducked into my class, leaving her standing there, stupefied, in the hall. I sat through the next hour of class growing more and more rage-faced. Leaf, this great guy, I’d thought, who’d shared lunches with me and talked about hospitality, and invited me out with his friends, had run his mouth with a story that wasn’t his to tell. Who did he think he was? Did he think that was his news to share? Was he adding the “lol Hispanic chick” angle to it, or would the other kids do that, ’cause it was bound to come up. “Hahaha, it’s funny, the Latina—” which I wasn’t, but nuanced discussions of Hispanic versus Latina weren’t quite talking points for a lot of white people “—got knocked up.” The jokes that’d follow would be about dudes not looking at me too long or I’d get pregnant. Or that I can’t share Cokes or use a dude’s toothbrush without getting a twin inside of me. The meaner comments would be about me being easy. Or ignorant. Or... Really, pick your trope, but they’d happen because no one knew me or cared about me in a new school. I was the weird outsider who’d just gotten a whole heck of a lot weirder and more outsider-y, which wasn’t a word, but I didn’t care.

  I’d worked myself up into a full-blown snit by the time I got to Weller’s class. I sat in my usual seat because I wasn’t giving Leaf the satisfaction of seeing me squirm in front of him.

  He promptly sat next to me and, without hesitation, pulled a Saran-wrapped pastry from his bag, sliding it onto the corner of my desk.

  “Fresh batch,” he said.

  “Screw you,” I said.

  His surprise seemed real enough, but then I’d thought everything about him was earnest from the get-go. Maybe I’d misread him. If he was going to out me to the whole school as “that pregnant chick” maybe he’d played good guy at my expense from the very beginning. That red-haired girl on the first day had given me a half-hearted warning.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “Like you don’t know?”

  Before he could answer, Weller stomped into the room and barked at us to clear our desks, which meant in-class essay time. Leaf kept desperately trying to catch my eye. I could feel the weight of his stare, but I didn’t indulge it or him, instead keeping 100 percent of my focus on my paper all the way up to the bell ringing. I turned in my essay, grabbed my stuff, never looking back at Leaf, but he trotted up behind me and touched my shoulder.

  “Sara, what happened?” He sounded sincerely baffled, and I stopped mid-hall to death glare at him.

  “How many people did you tell?” I demanded.

  The question took him off guard. “I...”

  “How many?”

  He grimaced. “One. Morgan.”

  “Okay, sure. Let’s say I believe that. How many people do you think Morgan told?”

  He looked away and cursed under his breath—a word I didn’t understand, but the meaning was clear enough by his tone and the rigidness of his posture. “She cornered me after you left Friday night. Asked me why I didn’t ask you out or kiss you or... She was telling me how much she liked you, and I said I liked you, too. I think she was trying to be encouraging, but she wouldn’t let up on it, and so I told her about your situation. I asked her not to say anything. I wanted her to understand why I w
as giving you space...”

  “Okay, that’s great, and I even believe that your intentions were good, but now the whole school knows, so I’m going to guess that Morgan told Erin, and Erin might have told ‘one other person’ who then promised not to tell, but they went ahead and told one other person... You get me now? You see? ’Cause they know.” I stopped talking to him to point at a cluster of girls standing near the lockers who were gawking at me. “You can’t look at them and tell me they don’t know. And sure, they’d have found out sooner or later, but I wanted that to be my choice. My reveal. I wanted to be ready, but today I walked into school and got a whole face full of suck and that’s your fault.”

  Leaf spread his hands and looked down. He was ashamed. I could tell by the flush on his cheeks. Any other day, I’d have been sympathetic to it. Not that day. “It is my fault. I’m sorry,” he said.

  A whole lot of good that does me.

  But I didn’t say it. Instead, I went to class, and when lunchtime came, I went to the guidance counselor’s office to eat by myself in peace, waiting for Mrs. Wong to see me.

  Chapter Twenty

  Mrs. Wong listened. She was sympathetic, even. Or maybe that wasn’t sympathy, but resignation that I had her held hostage in her office while I talked copiously, quickly and angrily. She nodded as I spewed venom and pushed her bowl of candies my way, probably in hopes that I’d cram one in my mouth and shut up.

  It didn’t work. I ranted for ten minutes straight before collapsing into her uncomfortable leather chair. My heart pounded. My pulse was up. The desire to cry was there, but I held it back because I was not going to let any guy milk me for tears.

  “I’m so sorry this happened to you,” she opened with.

  “Thank you.” I looked down at my legs, the left crossed over the right, studying the tip of my sneaker. I was embarrassed that I’d been so heated, but I felt better getting it all out there, even though my mom called emotional outbursts of this caliber “showing your butt.”

  I had, indeed, showed my butt. All of it. Full moon a-shining.

  “I have a few thoughts,” Mrs. Wong continued. “If you’d like to hear them? I can wait, too. I know you’re upset and your well-being is my first concern.”

  Am I up for advice?

  It’s gotta be better than going back to class and getting stared at.

  “Sure. I guess.”

  “We have a few options. The first is we could do sensitivity education regarding health—”

  “No,” I interrupted. “I don’t want to make everyone sit through sensitivity training. They’d hate me.”

  Mrs. Wong nodded. “I was getting to that. On one hand, it’d improve some things, but it’d also leave you vulnerable in other ways. I understand how high school works, I like to think.” She paused. “You aren’t required to tell anyone your situation. You can tell them to mind their own business.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about that. I will be doing that a lot. Often. And if they get too obnoxious, I’ll...” I didn’t finish the sentence, which was in actuality the worst thing I could have done in the situation—I just didn’t realize it at the time. Mrs. Wong was already concerned about me, but hearing that, she went into hyperdrive. A straight-A student with monstrous SAT scores, one of the few diverse students at her curdled-cream high school, sounded like she might, maybe, drop out of school.

  There was only one thing she could do.

  Reach into her drawer and produce a pamphlet.

  I don’t get the thing with guidance counselors and pamphlets but they must have a club.

  “I’d still like you to consider this program. It meets on Saturdays, there’s a meeting one town over, from nine to two. It’s for teen mothers trying to finish their educations while having a baby.”

  I stared at the sea of faces on the front of the pamphlet. It was pale to dark, left to right, diversity accounted for with white, Latina, Asian and black girls. All smiled. All were transposed over a black silhouette of a girl’s body with a baby bump. Words like “friendship” and “support” and “resources” were in big pink block letters. It was inspiration porn, preggo-style.

  “Thanks, but no thanks.” I pushed the pamphlet back her way.

  She frowned. “It’s worth considering, Sara. The reality is, you’re in a high-risk demographic, and I know your classmates finding out will challenge you for at least the foreseeable future. The teens in this program will know what you’re going through. The counselors talk to girls like you every day—”

  Bitterness flooded my mouth. It was like she’d grabbed my jaw, unhinged it and poured lemon juice straight into my face hole. “Oh, really? Girls like me? I have an almost perfect GPA. Are my SAT scores the best in the school, or top two or three? I had five Ivy League schools on my wish list and a good chance of getting into a couple of them. So are they really like me? Really? Because I’m betting there are some distinct differences that matter.”

  Mrs. Wong hesitated a moment before speaking. “Sara.”

  “Yes?”

  “I mean no disrespect, of course, but—” she sighed and shook her head “—this class isn’t about GPAs or Ivy League or anything to do with your privileges. You’re all young people who are very likely not prepared—emotionally or financially—to bring a child into the world. You need to make a plan. Maybe focus less on what makes you different from the other pregnant students and look at what makes you similar.”

  Privileges.

  She actually said that.

  ...and she’s not wrong. I’m no better than anyone else.

  The tears I’d promised myself I wouldn’t shed rained hot against my cool cheeks. It was too much—Leaf’s betrayal, Aaron and Jack the stranger, my own stupid choices. And now? Mrs. Wong pointing out in a very polite, roundabout way that I sounded like a spoiled, self-inflated brat. I jerked my head away so I didn’t have to look at my counselor’s pity face. She said nothing, just slid a box of Kleenex my way.

  “I’ll talk to your mother. We’ll make a plan, the three of us. I want to help in any way I can,” she finally settled on. She pulled the pamphlet away and tucked it into her desk drawer without another word.

  * * *

  “What is wrong? You look like someone punched you. They didn’t, did they? If they did, you punch back.”

  Mormor was at the sink washing dishes when I came home. She had a dishwasher, she just didn’t feel like it got the dishes clean enough, so she’d run the dishes through a dishwasher cycle and then spend an hour hand-washing them, too. I had no idea what the point of the first cycle was, and when I asked her about it, she hissed at me like a cat and kicked me out of the kitchen.

  Mormor was particular. I chalked it up to her personal flavor of weird.

  “No one punched me.”

  “Then what is it? You’re upset. It’s not good for the baby. Sit.” She turned off the sink, dried her hands and went to the bread box in the corner. I watched her, irritated and sullen and refusing to talk, but then she produced the pepparkakor—Swedish ginger cookies. They were a common Christmas cookie, but Mormor tended to make them year round. Both I and fetus perked up. I reached for the plate before she even peeled the Saran wrap back, snatching a cookie and cramming it into my maw. She left me to my feeding so she could put on the electric kettle, producing two cups of tea just a minute later.

  I doctored mine. She stirred hers. Staring.

  Ever-staring Mormor. Like one of those lizards that only blinks once every two minutes.

  “The kids found out,” I finally managed. To reward myself for conversing like a human, I grabbed another cookie.

  “Ah.” She nodded. “Yes, that would be hard.”

  “One of my new friends told them. Well, told one person, who then probably told one person. I’m thinking they’re not my friends anymore.”

  “That’s too bad, but I under
stand why. It wasn’t their business to tell. Were the kids terrible to you?”

  “Not directly? They just looked at me a lot. One girl tried to get me to talk about it.” I sipped my tea, my free hand going to my temple, which had started to pound. “I talked to Mrs. Wong at lunch. She told me I didn’t have to tell anyone and then tried again to get me to go to some weekend program with other knocked-up teens. I’m like, ‘no, thanks.’”

  Mormor peered at me over the rim of her teacup. “Oh? Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  And I didn’t, really, beyond my gut saying that it was a waste of time. I had Mom and Mormor. I had Devi. It was something I’d have to wake up for on my precious sleep-in Saturdays. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. It was a whole long list of etceteras, none of the excuses really holding much water and boiling down to a toxic case of “dunwanna.”

  Mormor knew it, too.

  “I’m going to tell you a story about my grandmother, your great-great-grandmother, Astridh, the woman I named your mother after,” she said.

  I didn’t exactly want to hear a story about great-great-grandmother Astridh at that moment but the presence of pepparkakor said I could be bought. “Okay.”

  “Your great-great-great-grandmother, Elsa, got pregnant by a local boy. This was before people had safe choices about babies. She had the illegitimate baby—Astridh—and lived at home until she met her husband at twenty. He was good to her, but not to Astridh. He didn’t want her. The only children he was interested in were the ones he fathered.”

  She reached for a cookie, probably because she could see her cookie-less future if she let the preggo keep noshing on the baked goods.

  She nibbled thoughtfully. “It was not easy for Astridh growing up in a house like that and it never got easier, so when her stepfather offered her a one-way ticket to the United States, she took it.” Mormor paused. “She was fourteen years old.”