would just come take them from her, like when beauty pageant winners got caught in a sexting scandal.
Her mom played the radio the whole way to school, laughing at some joke the DJ made, then glancing at Grace to see if she thought it was funny, too. It wasn’t (the DJ was a misogynistic jerk, and Grace had never thought he was funny), but she smiled back at her mom, her carefully practiced “I am a normal person and this is my normal smile” smile. Definitely not the smile of someone who’d had a baby four weeks earlier.
“Honey,” her mom said, when they pulled up to the school, “do you want me to come in with you?”
“Are you serious?” Grace asked. “No. Oh my God, no.”
“But—”
“Mom.” Grace cut her off. “I have to go at some point. You just have to let me.”
Grace had meant it literally, but it was pretty clear from her mom’s face that she took it metaphorically, and Grace could see her eyes fill with tears behind the sunglasses, even as she leaned in to kiss her good-bye. “Okay.” Her mom sniffled, then cleared her throat. “Okay, you’re right. Your dad told me not to cry this morning and here I am, crying.” She laughed to herself. “Call me if you need me, okay?”
“Okay,” Grace said, even though she knew she wouldn’t. Her mom didn’t really know the extent of the things kids at school had said to her when she was pregnant. Slut, baby mama, Shamu—the list went on. Grace didn’t tell her because she knew she would tell the principal and then the teasing would get even more brutal, but Grace also didn’t tell her because she knew her mom would feel bad for her.
Pity wasn’t strength, and Grace had had a hard enough time holding it together. She didn’t want both her parents and her to crumble, not at the same time.
Grace carefully got out of the car, heaved her empty backpack to her shoulder, and headed toward English, her first class of the day. It felt a bit like she was heading toward a firing squad, except worse, because she knew that instead of dying, she was going to have to stay alive through the whole day. And then the next one after that.
And she couldn’t help but think as she saw the first set of staring eyes fix upon her that a firing squad might have been preferable.
Grace had already been excused from all her homework—she just had to make it up before the end of the year, which okay, fine—but as she walked past students, she could see highlighters, flash cards, all of the things that she normally used during crazy study sessions. Her best friend, Janie, used to even make fun of her for all of her mnemonic devices.
“Now,” Janie would say, imitating Grace studying for their European History final. “Napoleon was short, which reminds me of an octopus. An octopus is purple, which is the color of my family’s couch, and we got that couch from a store that was next to a pretzel store. And pretzels are German, which . . .” Grace would laugh and laugh, clutching her then-flat stomach.
“Grace.”
She stopped short, her reverie broken. “Janie,” she said. “Hi.”
She hadn’t seen Janie since she’d come over to visit two days after Milly was born. Grace didn’t remember much of that visit, other than that they had watched Friends on Netflix. But Grace had been pretty whacked out and the all-encompassing grief of loss. Details were fuzzy, to be honest.
“Hi,” Janie said now, her head cocked to one side. Grace had the distinct feeling she had done something wrong, something that violated friend code, but she didn’t know what it was. Or, probably more accurately, how many violations there were.
“You didn’t tell me you were coming back to school.”
Ah. There it was.
“Um, yeah,” Grace said. She tried to smile, but it felt more like she was baring her teeth at her friend, a warning signal to stay away. “I just decided last night. I got tired of staying home, you know?” Grace shrugged, like it was a totally casual thing to have a baby and forget to tell your best friend that you were returning to school.
“Oh,” Janie said. “Well, it’s good to see you! You look good.”
Janie never used the word good, and definitely not twice in a row. This was, well, not good.
“Thanks,” Grace said, then looked at the girl standing next to Janie. They