you have that won’t make us love you any less because we love you very much no matter what?”
I suddenly wished Zinnia wasn’t off enjoying her freshman year at Dartmouth. I could use a big sister right about now.
My mom, with tear-filled eyes, covered my hand with hers. “I’m happy to make you a doctor’s appointment if you want me to.”
I decided that I would die of humiliation on this spot, in my kitchen, never having lived a full life.
“Mom!” I stood up so abruptly, my chair tipped over behind me. I felt the need to stand for this proclamation. “I’m not pregnant! I swear!”
My parents sagged back into their chairs and blew out sighs of relief. “Oh, thank God. I’m too young to be a Pop-Pop,” my dad squeaked.
“I’m too young to be some poor kid’s mother,” I complained.
“Sweetie, I hate to do this,” my mom said with a wince. “But I feel like we need to have the c-o-n-d-o-m talk again. Just to put my mind at rest.”
“Mother! I understand and have practiced safe sex. I am currently single and have no plans to start having sex with random strangers.”
“Ned, do we have any bananas?”
Marley,
I decided to take Amie Jo to Homecoming instead. She’s obviously more my type. Good luck with everything.
Jake
In school the next day, I marched past my locker—today they’d covered it in cutouts of unfortunate-looking babies with unibrows and giant adult-sized noses. I yanked off the ugliest baby and steamed down the hall.
Amie Jo was going to hell. Or at least she was damning herself to have terribly unattractive children when the time came for the gates of hell to open and allow a demon spawn to be created.
She’d cost me a game and a date with the boy I really, really liked. I’d underestimated her deviousness.
I found her, blonde and perky and evil, hanging out in a circle of minions checking their mascara in compacts and probably plotting how to destroy other classmates’ lives.
“Amie Jo.” I slapped the ugly baby picture against her shoulder. “This needs to stop.”
“Well, bless your heart. You probably shouldn’t upset yourself. It’s not good for the baby,” she said in a stage whisper. She fluttered her thick, dark eyelashes. Her foundation cracked a little under her eyes.
“I’m not pregnant, and you know it.”
“But it’s what everyone else believes that counts,” she reminded me brightly. “As far as Culpepper is concerned, you’re a pregnant whore.”
I wished I had no concern about consequences. That I could just break her stupid little perfect nose and make her feel an ounce of the pain she doled out for others on a daily basis.
But I had a healthy fear of authority. And my parents couldn’t afford to buy me out of trouble.
“Why are you even doing this? What have I ever done to you?” I demanded.
She took a step into my space, her pretty face twisting into an ugly mask of hate. “You exist. You think that you deserve to date someone like Travis? You think that someone like Jake would be into you? You need to stay where you belong. At the bottom of the food chain with the rest of the losers in this town.”
Her cronies giggled nervously behind her.
“Why?” I insisted again. I told myself the answer just might set me free. That kicking her in the shins and unleashing a gallon of sardines in her cute little convertible wouldn’t solve anything.
“Because you’re nothing. You’ll never be anything. Just like the rest of these pathetic losers in this school. They at least know their place. You need to remember yours.”
“If you don’t stop torturing me, I’m going to tell someone.”
She let out a peal of laughter. “Who? That garden gnome, Mr. Fester? My dad basically owns him.”
“Your dad is a gynecologist. He doesn’t own people.” The Armburgers had money. More money than the Ciceros and most other people in town. They had ‘get whatever you want at the Gap and not just for back-to-school’ money. But not ‘own people’ money.
“Why don’t you do us all a favor and just stop existing. No one likes you. No one wants you around. You’re a waste of DNA.”
I flicked her off and, with a snarl, turned around and marched away, reminding myself of how much I didn’t want to get suspended my senior year. Dear God, I wasn’t so sure that I’d survive the rest of the school year. Not without a meltdown.
But this time, I wasn’t going down without a fight.