Bumped (24 page)

I’VE MEMORIZED PLENTY OF VERSES, BUT PRAYING ON THEM
hasn’t brought me any closer to understanding what they really mean. Knowing the words doesn’t equal knowing the
Word
. When it comes to the Scripture, I’m as superficial as my little housesisters. Maybe I should go back to the basics, the first prayer I ever memorized.

“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” I say to myself, hoping it’s not an insult to skip ahead to the part I really need right now. “Lead us not into temptation and deliver us from evil. . . .”

I’m standing in the spot where Jondoe once stood. My finger touches the buzzer Jondoe’s finger once pressed. The same finger that traced the curve of my hips . . .

The door opens.

“HARMONY!”

And in an instant I am swept up in an all-encompassing crush of grass and manure, sweat and oatmeal soap.

“Oh, Harmony.”

Oh, Ram.

The only person in Goodside who is more lost than I am.

ZEN IS STRUGGLING. I HAVE NEVER, EVER SEEN HIM AT SUCH A
loss for words.

“You have to understand, Mel. You’re the only girl I’ve ever wanted to be with.”

“In that way?” I ask.

“In
every
way.”

I do understand. More than he can possibly know.

But I can’t . . .

Can I?

After sitting in silence for more than a minute, waiting for me to respond to his confession, Zen finally opens his mouth.

“Well.” Pause. “I guess I better get.” Pause. “Going.”

He gets out of the car swiftly, but hesitates before taking the front steps leading up to the school. I watch him through the window, and something—a biological drive, a human instinct, an evolutionary pull that I’m powerless to resist—takes over. Head to toe. Limb to limb. Top to bottom. Inside and out.

“Wait!”

He runs back over to the car and crouches down in front of the window so my mouth is just inches from his. “What?” he asks.

“Nez.”

He slowly breaks into a smile.

“Lem.”

And before I can stop myself, I cradle his cheeks in my hands, pull him close, part my lips, and . . .

My first kiss.

Ours.

All of us.

All of our ancestors, and all of our descendants, are coming together to celebrate this kiss, to clap and fist-pump and foot-stomp and shout out loud to the universe YES! YES! A million billion years of YESSSS!

We break apart, stunned and breathless.

And for a moment, I’m afraid that Zen will launch into a quikiwiki spiel about how kissing is a sort of evolutionary taste test, that healthier offspring are produced by partners with different immune proteins, and those differences can be detected in the sloppy swap of genetic information encoded in our spit.

But he doesn’t say any such thing. Instead, I find out what he started to say in the tree house.

“I love you.”

And then he breaks into the most deranged grin I’ve ever seen on anyone, anywhere, except maybe my own crazyface in the rearview mirror.

WHEN I LAY DOWN WITH JONDOE, HE PROMISED TO SHOW ME
the Truth.

I just wish it hadn’t taken me until right now to see it clearly.

“Ram . . .” I begin. “I’m . . .”

“I forgive you,” Ram says automatically.

I need to be punished. How can I expect to be punished by a sweet soul whose transgressions are far worse than my own?

“When Melody found out I was with—” My throat closes on his name.

“With
him
?” Ram asks.

I nod. “How did she react?”

Like a little kid avoiding trouble, Ram looks everywhere—his feet, the ceiling, out the window, down the hall—but at me.

“What did she say, Ram? I have to know.”

He speaks quickly, hoping to get this unpleasantness over with. I brace myself for the worst.

“She said she wished you had never come into her life.” He gulps down more air. “She wished you had never been born.”

It’s a relief, really, to hear what I have most feared.

I don’t deserve Melody’s forgiveness.

I don’t deserve Zen’s help.

I don’t deserve Jondoe’s love.

This is my punishment.

I take a breath and force a smile to my face. “I have blessed news, Ram.”

“What?” His eyes are shiny with tears.

I swallow hard and pat my belly.

“We’re having a baby.”

He blinks.

“But . . . I didn’t . . .”

There had always been rumors about Ram being of an unmentionable kind. That despite his brawn, he was soft. More interested in watching the boys than the girls.

“We didn’t . . .”

That’s why the Church Council chose him for me. Better to put the two unteachable spirits together than admit defeat and cast us off entirely.

“Did we?”

I hold my hand up to stop his stammering. Ram needs me far more than I need him. He can’t go back to Goodside without me. And I can’t stay in Otherside with him. It wouldn’t be fair, not when I know that Jondoe is out here too. The temptation to be unfaithful—in my heart if not in action—would be too great.

“Do you want to start over?”

As the first tear falls down his face and splashes into his steepled hands, I know his answer.

“Yes.”

“Me too.”

It’s finally time for
me
to assert
my
spiritual leadership. One of us has to.

“Let’s go back home and have this baby,” I say. “Together.”

WITH ZEN’S KISS STILL FRESH ON MY LIPS, I’M READY TO FACE
anything.

“Hello?” I call out as I open the front door.

Before the vowel bounces its echo off the walls, I know my house is empty. I know that Ram has gone. And with a sudden spine-tingling chill, I know something else.

Harmony is gone too.

I walk, zombielike, to the common room, where there’s a note lying on top of the ergomatic couch cushions still dented by Ram’s bulk. It’s written on a page torn out of a Bible. Just the title page, nothing more, no verses offering clues to her state of mind when she wrote two words in a handwriting that I could easily mistake for my own:

Forgive me.

But I
have
forgiven her! Why didn’t she believe me?

It’s true that Harmony shouldn’t have gone off with Jondoe like that. But she’s still my sister, maybe the only blood relation I will ever know. She must still think I hate her as deeply as I thought I did, that is, before I realized that spermjacking Jondoe was the best thing that ever could have happened to me.

To us.

Harmony and Ram couldn’t have gotten very far on foot, so I immediately take off after her. I fling open the front door, and facesmash right into a perfect set of pectorals.

“It’s me!” Jondoe announces unnecessarily.

I must say that crashing into the hottest RePro on the MiNet is not nearly as exciting as I thought it would be. Not now, after everything that has happened. He looks for seriously amped for a second before leaning in to get a good look at my freckleless nose. His whole body sags when he realizes that I’m not the twin he was hoping for.

“You’re Melody,” he says flatly. “The one who’s trying to ruin me.”

“I am,” I reply. “But I’m not.” I try to push past him, but he slings his arm across the door to stop me.

“CONDOMS?!” His eyes bug out. It’s quite comical, really. I could make a lot of money selling a foto of him looking goofy like that.

“I was only trying to get you two out of hiding,” I reply. “And it worked, didn’t it? You’re here.”

He cranes his neck to stalk over my shoulder. “Where’s Harmony?”

“She’s not here,” I say. “She just took off, and I was on my way after her.”

“She ran off on you too?” he says. “She climbed out my window! My
window
!”

He’s almost too impressed by her escape act to be upset by it. Almost. I realize I have no idea what really happened between these two. As queasy as I am to hear the details, I have to ask.

“Why did she go out the window?”

“She must have overheard me bullshitting your agent.”

Lib found her before I did, as I knew he would. But I can’t worry about Lib right now.

“About what?”

“About tricking her into believing that I have God,” he says, visibly agitated. “The thing is, I was telling her the truth! Well, at first I was scamming. But then, I don’t know, something came over me and I wasn’t faking it anymore. It’s like I really felt God laying love for her in my heart, but I couldn’t let Lib know that!”

As much as I don’t want to know, I have to know.

“So you two . . .”

I search for the most tactful way to say what I want to say, and abandoning that, find myself mimicking Zen’s finger-in-the-hole gesture.

Jondoe flashes his famous trillion-dollar smile. “Did we
ever
.”

Gaaaah.

When I’ve recovered from gagging, I ask, “Do you think you bumped?”

The smile disappears. A vein pops out of his forehead.

“What’s it with everyone questioning my spermhood? I don’t turn eighteen for another six months!”

I burst out laughing. I can’t believe this icon of maleness is acting so wanky. Shoko would never believe it.

“Lib wants to cut you out of the deal, you know,” Jondoe warns. “He thinks he can make a side deal with the Jaydens for Harmony’s delivery.”

“Yeah, I know,” I say. “And I don’t care.”

“You don’t
care
?” Jondoe double-takes.

“There’s not enough money in the world for me to bump with you.”

I can’t believe I’ve just said this to the world-famous cock jockey. I expect him to be offended. But instead he says, “I know exactly what you mean.”

He closes his eyes and rests his head on the doorframe. I seize this opportunity to lean in and take a quick whiff. You know. For Shoko. I can now confirm that Jondoe smells like every other teenage boy who hopes to jack his swagger by dousing themselves in bottle after bottle of Jondoe: the Fragrance.

“When I first got into the business, my agent warned me against falling for a girl who would make me want to give it all up,” he says. “A girl who could see the real me, not just what’s in my file.”

He looks up in agony. An
alluring
agony.

“Your sister is that girl,” he says. “And you’ve got to help me find her.”

Is Jondoe really smitten with Harmony? Or is he plotting with Lib? I don’t know what to believe.

“Everything changed when I met your sister,” Jondoe says. “It’s like I didn’t even know myself until she came into my life.”

I smile, thinking that Harmony did the same thing for me.

“Please help me find her,” he says quietly. “Please.”

I want to believe that Jondoe’s being sincere. But I’m hesitant to buy into his sad-eyed, pouty-lipped sexy act. Did Harmony find him irresistible because she didn’t know any better? Or because he really showed her part of himself that he’d never revealed before? I guess there’s only one way of finding out.

“Maybe,” I suggest, “we can all help each other.”

And that’s when the hottest RePro on the MiNet pulls me into those perfect pecs of his and squeezes me in gratitude.

I’m sixteen. I’m not pregnant.

But at this very moment, I feel like the most important person on the planet.