The Bookstore on the Beach - Brenda Novak Page 0,56
was pregnant as if something might change. Then she spread out the instructions on the vanity and read them again.
“Well?” Taylor said, still awaiting her reaction. “Tell me we did something wrong—that the result isn’t what it appears to be. Please.”
Sierra cast her a sympathetic glance. “We didn’t do anything wrong. And the line’s pretty clear. I’m sorry.”
Could this be real? Why did I do this to myself? Taylor hunched over. She needed to get more blood to her brain so that she wouldn’t pass out.
Sierra put a reassuring hand on her back. “Tay? You okay?”
“No. I want to kill myself,” she mumbled.
Kneeling in front of her, Sierra insisted Taylor look at her. “That isn’t funny, Tay. Don’t ever say that again.”
Considering what she’d just learned about her future, Taylor was shocked by Sierra’s reaction. It was just an expression. But Sierra was especially sensitive to suicide—wouldn’t watch any TV show or movie that dealt with it. “Okay. Forget I said it. I—I didn’t mean it literally.”
“It might be just a saying to you, but it’s not to me.” Sierra paused, as if considering whether she should say something else. Finally, she added, “My mother committed suicide, and I’m the one who found her.”
Taylor let her forehead fall against Sierra’s. “That’s terrible,” she whispered. “You know...you know I’m not really myself right now.”
Sierra stood, as stoic as always. “It’s fine,” she said brusquely. “I was eight so it’s not like it just happened. Just...don’t say that. I know you’re upset, but I can’t hear you say that.”
“I get it. Do you want to tell me what happened?”
“No. Definitely not. I don’t like to think about it.”
“Okay.” They stared at each other for several seconds. Then Taylor, her arms and legs weak and tingly, lifted the tester. “So what am I going to do about this?”
After picking it up to take one last look, Sierra tossed it in the trash.
“Wait,” Taylor said, but didn’t dare get up for fear she’d fall down. “Shouldn’t we take that outside so your father won’t see it?”
“He won’t see it,” she replied. “He rarely comes into my bathroom—unless I’m in trouble and he wants to yell at me. And I’m the one who takes out the trash.”
It seemed as though Sierra did all the housework. But Taylor couldn’t worry about that right now, either.
She was pregnant. P-R-E-G-N-A-N-T—as in, she was going to have a real, live baby in eight months or so, one that would be part of the rest of her life. “This must be a nightmare,” she said. “I’m going to wake up and everything will be fine. And then I’ll be so much more careful in the future.”
Sierra slid down the wall until she was sitting cross-legged on the floor. “It’s real, Tay. We have to face it and find some way to deal with it.”
“How?” she cried.
“Are you going to keep it? Let’s start there.”
“I think I might have to. I don’t know that I can live with any other choice.”
“Even though you might not be the best person to raise this baby? Have you thought of that?”
“Yes, I’ve thought of that,” Taylor spat. “But I’m the baby’s mother, so of course I’m the best person to raise it. I’m almost eighteen. I’ll be an adult by the time the baby’s born. It’s not like I’m fourteen or fifteen.”
Sierra looked up. “But what about college? Where will you work? How will you support a child?”
“Once my mother gets over being mad, I think she’ll help me so that I can graduate—maybe she’ll even help a little longer, until I can get a job.”
“When are you going to tell her?”
Tears began to streak down Taylor’s face at the prospect of Autumn’s disappointment. “Not until I’m starting to show.”
“Why wait that long?” Sierra asked in apparent surprise.
“Because I might as well enjoy my last summer, right? As long as no one knows, life can go on as it’s been so far.”
Sierra nodded. “What about Oliver?”
Taylor picked up her phone and scrolled down to the last text Oliver had sent her. He’d been waiting and worrying, too. He deserved an answer.
But what if he told his parents? And what if his parents contacted her mother? Oliver had been over at the house plenty of times. His mom and her mom knew each other.
“I can’t tell him,” she said, setting her phone back on the vanity.
“You told him you would,” she pointed out.
“That was when I still had some hope that the answer was no.