The Center of Everything - By Laura Moriarty Page 0,125

shade of aqua green, bright with tears. The cats notice Jackie O, shivering from the rain in Mrs. Rowley’s skinny arms, and they form a circle, hissing, their hackles raised. Samuel makes a quick shrieking sound.

“Did he tell you?” she asks, looking at my mother. “About Deena?”

My mother nods, and new tears come to Mrs. Rowley’s eyes. She turns to Travis. “I’m sorry I yelled, honey,” she says. “I’m sorry. I’m just so damn sad for you.”

Travis looks down at his muddy feet, at the tracks he made on our carpet when he walked inside. My mother tells Mrs. Rowley to sit down and asks her if she wants some coffee. Mrs. Rowley strokes Jackie O’s head and keeps crying. “She tricked you, didn’t she? Tricked and trapped. That’s what it looks like to me.”

My mother’s face changes slightly, a weariness in her eyes as she pours the coffee, but Travis says nothing. If he would just look up at me, just once, I would nod. I agree with Mrs. Rowley. Tricked and trapped. She’s right. I shouldn’t have told Deena anything. Now it’s too late.

“Are you sure it’s yours?” she asks. “Can you even be sure of that?”

He winces and turns his whole body away from her. “I’m sure it’s mine, Mom. Don’t start that.”

My mother hands Mrs. Rowley the mug I gave her for Mother’s Day the year before. #1 MOM it says. “Cream?” she asks. “Sugar?”

Mrs. Rowley shakes her head no and takes a sip. She does not say thank you.

“Look,” my mother says, pouring herself a cup. “Does Deena even know what she wants to do?”

There is a pause before anyone understands what she means.

“Oh, she’ll have it,” Mrs. Rowley says quickly, her hand shaking when she brings the coffee up to her mouth. “They’ve made up their little minds, her and that old German bitch. We’ve no say in the matter. No say at all.”

Samuel wheels himself over to where Mrs. Rowley is sitting, trying to touch Jackie O. She growls, her eyes hazy and unseeing. My mother pulls Samuel’s chair away.

“You don’t have to marry her, honey,” Mrs. Rowley says. “I know I said you did, but I was just mad. You don’t have to. I don’t care what she says about lawyers. We’ll move. You can go live with your dad for a while.”

My mother taps her fingers against her coffee cup. I know what she’s thinking. Still, I’m with Mrs. Rowley on this one. Deena did this on purpose, because she cares only about what she wants. She didn’t think about anyone else, what they might have wanted.

Travis does not even answer his mother when she says this. His face is still wet from the rain, so it is difficult to tell whether or not he is crying.

Again, Travis sits on the bumper of Mr. Goldman’s little gray car. I suspect Mr. Goldman has come out here to try to convince Travis that it would be better for everyone, in the long run, if he stayed in school just one more year.

But it won’t work, I know. Travis is going to marry Deena, and he has already told me what he would say to Mr. Goldman, to anyone, if they tried to talk him out of it. The baby is a sign, he said, his destiny, making him do what he’s supposed to do.

“It’s called Deena,” I told him. “Not Destiny. She’s making you do what she wants you to do. There’s a difference.”

He got mad when I said this, acted like I was being dumb. “You’re not paying attention to the big picture, Evelyn,” he said, looking at his hands and not at me.

I don’t see this big picture. And if there really is a big picture, I guess I’m not in it. I don’t see what any of this has to do with destiny. If Travis could have been sitting in my room the night I told Deena he might leave her, he would know that destiny really was the moment she looked out my window and started making up her mind.

I think of Travis now as a silver ball in a pinball machine, rolling in whatever direction he’s pushed.

I have not seen Deena since we found out. She has not been to school. I am certain she is hiding from me, but I am watching for her, waiting for her to come outside. For days, I have been planning what I will say when I see her. I have