Cherry Money Baby (12 page)

She barely slept. She had coffee again for the second time in a year. How fast could you develop an addiction? By 7:35 she was so wired, the other cars on Hope Ave. seemed to pass in slow motion. She felt like an angry god at the wheel of her Spider, the front grille prowling over the streets of Aubrey. Faster. Stronger. That’s right,
look at it.
God, caffeine was good. She tapped her fingers on the wheel, humming with the radio, and made it to school eighteen minutes earlier than usual.

Sitting still was not an option, so she locked up her bag and paced the empty halls. Cherry cruised around the school like a tube in a centrifuge, her feelings separating out, the euphoria of the caffeine, the need to see Lucas, her anger at herself, and at the very bottom, the heaviest feeling of all, her fear she’d done something wrong.

All at once she had to pee like crazy. She altered course and was in sight of the girls’ room when Lucas, a ring of keys jangling from his belt, exited the boys’ room, whistling tunelessly.

When he saw her, he smiled. The sight of his teeth filled her with a different kind of urgency.

“Hey, girl! What’s —?”

She yanked him into the girls’ room.

“Cherry! I can’t be in here.”

“That mouth’s too pretty for talking.” She pressed her lips to his. They stumbled backward into a stall. “How long has it been?”

He let her kiss his neck. “Seventy-two hours? About?”

“Too long.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

They bumped against the stall walls, reorienting. Cherry nibbled his ear.

“So, what happened?”

“I went to an all-night party.” She fumbled with his fly. “With Ardelia.”

“Ha-ha,” said Lucas. “April Fools.”

“No, for realsies. Crazy, right? Vi and I just ran into her.”

“Did you — whoa — have fun?”

“I got really drunk,” she said. “Hey, since when do you go commando?”

“Since it’s laundry day. You could have called me.”

She grinned, working for a better angle. “Maybe I didn’t want you falling for Ardelia.”

“Well, I
do
have a thing for accents.”

“Oh,
Lucas.
” Cherry did her best Ardelia impression. “Why must we fornicate in such undesirable surroundings. Wow!” she said, noticing his reaction. “You really
do
like accents.”

Lucas blushed. “Told you.”

Relief coursed through her. She’d told him everything, and everything was fine.
He was here, he was here, he was here!
His hands were on her, and wasn’t she just the most rock-star girlfriend in the universe? “Oh,
dahling,
” she whispered. “I’m all sunshine and rainbows.”

Grimy-kneed, breath freshened with a Life Saver, Cherry headed to the library, feeling like she had helium in her joints. There were still a few minutes before homeroom, and she was aching to find Vi, who would be so impressed that Cherry’d done what she just did on school grounds. Was there a more awesome girlfriend in the world? And it wasn’t as weird as she’d expected it to be. She’d made his knees buckle. That was a good thing, right? Maybe she was really good at blow jobs. Maybe that was her hidden talent.

“Saw you on TMZ again,” said Kaya Melton as they passed in the hall. Cherry swiveled, blushing, as if what she’d been thinking about were visible on her face. After a beat, Kaya’s words actually connected.

“April Fools?” Cherry tried.

“Naw, really,” said Kaya. “It was you going into a hotel with Ardelia Deen.”

Cherry stalled. Had there been cameras? She hadn’t noticed any.

“Come on,” she heard herself say. “You think
I
go to hotels with Ardelia Deen?”

Kaya crinkled her nose. “I
thought
it was kind of weird. But you met her, so I just figured it was you. It
looks
like you.”

“Can’t believe everything you see on TMZ,” Cherry said, and went inside.

Maybe it was residual thrill from what had just happened in the bathroom, but Cherry wasn’t at all upset about the alleged photo. In fact, it was kind of exciting, and she could always deny it was her. She found an empty computer terminal and tried to log on to TMZ, but the school’s site blockers said no. With her home Internet privileges revoked, she’d have to wait two weeks to see the photo, and by then it’d probably be buried or taken down. She’d have to ask Vi.

Cherry checked her e-mail. There were a few messages from university mailing lists she’d signed up for months ago, just to appease Pop. Otherwise it was all spam. One subject line jumped out:

Running into Ardelia at Mel’s had been a coincidence, but this was an actual premeditated invite. Cherry tried to read it as friendly, but the “talk to you about something” freaked her out a little, like maybe she was in trouble. Like she was about to get dumped. But that was ridiculous. Ardelia wanted to show her the set. She wanted Lucas there. These were good signs. After rereading the e-mail five times and analyzing every word, Cherry wrote a reply:

Remembering she never signed her e-mails and definitely never wrote
XO,
she deleted the sign-off and hit Send.

Vi was waiting for Cherry in the hall after homeroom. She was in full crisis mode, clutching her book bag to her chest like a life preserver. Her concealer barely masked the purple bags under her eyes, and when she spoke, Cherry detected a lipstick smudge on her front tooth.

“Where were you? I’ve been calling all weekend!”

“Pop took away my cell,” Cherry said. “What’s up?”

She glanced up and down the hallway, then pulled Cherry into the same girls’ room where an hour before Cherry had pounced on Lucas.

“Vi, what’s going on?”

Vi checked under the stall doors, making sure they were alone. The bell rang. They were officially late for first period.

“Okay, so. Last weekend, you know? I was with Neil, and we were fooling around and stuff, and I guess we sorta . . . did it.”

Cherry waited for the bomb. “That’s . . . nothing new, though, right?”

“Without a condom,” said Vi. “And I didn’t get my period on Sunday.”

Cherry’s smile fell. She’d expected the typical crisis
du jour.
Another fight with her mother or some new too-pricey lip gloss she
had
to have. Not . . .
this.
This news was panic-worthy. Cherry’s periods were maddeningly unpredictable, but Vi’s were like clockwork.

“Why didn’t you use a condom?”

“I don’t know!” Vi chewed at her hair, a nervous tic Cherry hadn’t seen since grade school. “Neil likes it better without, and I don’t know . . . It just happened!”

Cherry had thought Neil was a dog ever since he and Vi slept together on their first date. She wasn’t a prude, but Vi had been sloshed (she’d downed three nervous shots of her dad’s sambuca before Neil even arrived). Neil treated her okay, but Cherry never forgave him for taking advantage of an obviously plastered girl.

And now? This.

“I’ll kill him,” said Cherry.

“Cherry, what am I gonna do?” Vi wailed. “My parents will
kill
me! I can’t be pregnant! I don’t even know if I
want
kids! I can’t go to Rutgers with a baby!”

Wait.

“Rutgers?”

“I got in.” Vi looked away. “I found out a month ago.”

Cherry’s knees buckled. All thoughts of killing Neil vanishing in cold shock as the damp sink pressed against the back of her thighs. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know. I thought maybe . . .” Vi met her look. “I know you don’t want to go to college and everything, Cherry, but
I do.
They have this amazing study-abroad program where you can go to Japan for a year.”

“Japan.”

“Yeah.” Vi shrugged. “I’d like to go to Japan.”

“Japan.” The word was a cork in her brain. As long as it was stuck there, other words, other thoughts, couldn’t come gushing out.

“Stop saying
Japan,
” Vi said. She cinched her eyes tight and shook her head. “Now none of that’s going to happen.”

When Vi’s eyes opened again, her gaze was distant. Cherry could see Vi imagining her future. Puke-stained shirts and warm formula and baby books. Books and books about babies. How could Vi raise a baby, or go to college, for that matter? They both involved so much reading, and Vi
hated
reading.

Rutgers. Japan. Baby.
Holy shit, holy shit, how did this day suddenly get so
real
? Vi was the possibly pregnant one, but Cherry felt like
she
was going to puke. She wanted to shove Vi away — and hug her so closely and so tightly, her bones would snap.

It was all so impossibly hard. So impossibly hard to keep simple. Safe.
Here.

It started to prickle and boil and bubble in Cherry’s brain. Heat surged up her solar plexus and turned her face the color of her Coca-Cola T-shirt. Vi recognized the crazy look in her friend’s eyes.

“Cherry, what are you going to do?”

She shoved the restroom door so hard, it smacked against the outer wall. Her rage was deafening, her vision tunneled, so all she saw was the tapering tiles of the second-floor hallway.

Mrs. Jordan’s room was on the first floor. Genghis Khan scowled at Cherry from the poster on the door, his bloody scimitar barring the way forward. She pushed right past him.

The students’ heads were bent, taking a quiz. Mrs. Jordan sat at her desk, doing Sudoku. She didn’t notice Cherry come in. Neil was in the front row, brow furrowed like early man trying to master this new pointed tool. Cherry slapped her palm over his quiz. The sound was like a gun going off. A girl nearby gasped.

“You selfish piece of shit.”

“Ms. Kerrigan!” Mrs. Jordan may or may not have said. Cherry only heard the blood roaring in her ears.

Neil blinked at her, trying to compute.

“You low-life buzz-cut douche bag. Do you know what you’ve done? You’ve ruined her
life.
”

Kids looked back and forth from Cherry to Neil to Mrs. Jordan.

“Wha . . . ?” Neil said intelligently.

She slammed her fist on his desk, knocking it into his fat knees. “I swear to God, if she’s pregnant,
nothing
will save you from the
Kill Bill
–style rampage I will unleash on your ass.”

“W-wha . . . ?” Neil tried again.

Mrs. Jordan was standing now, toddling over in her tiny shoes. “Cherry Kerrigan, you will report directly to —!”

Cherry balled up Neil’s half-finished quiz and threw it at him. It bounced off his stupid face and fell to the floor. Before Mrs. Jordan could reach her, Cherry turned, making sure to give Genghis an extra-hard slam on her way out.

Halfway down the hall, the reality of what she’d just done began to wheedle its way into her brain, but she’d think about that later.

I Don’t Think.

“Come on,” she said when she found Vi.

“Where are we going?” Vi asked. Cherry tugged her toward the exit.

“7-Eleven. We’re getting you a pregnancy test.”

Vi, according to the little blue dash in the window of her Sure! test, was not pregnant. As they sipped iced lattes at Starbucks (Vi’s treat), she kept pulling the little stick out of her pocket and rechecking it.

“It’s not going to change,” Cherry said.

“I know.” Vi’d been wearing a perma-grin for the last hour. “So what class are you missing right now?”

Cherry winced. “A pre-calc retake.”

“Cherry! You’ll get a zero!”

She shrugged, curling herself around the tall, frosty cup. “So? This is more important.”

It was important she be with Vi. Vi needed her. (And who would be there for her at Rutgers? In Japan?)

During the “90 Seconds or Less!” promised by the test’s blue-and-yellow box, Cherry had paced outside the 7-Eleven bathroom like an expectant father. She’d felt conflicted. Would it be so bad if Vi had a baby? Heck, they could raise it together. Cherry wanted kids. Maybe not right after high school, but life didn’t always go like you expected. She imagined herself and Vi taking little Cynthia to the playground on Center Street, buying baby clothes, attending PTA meetings at Elm Elementary. These images filled Cherry with a guilty pleasure.
Because now she’ll have to stay,
a voice whispered. Cherry told the voice to shut up.

It should have been Cherry getting her ass reamed in front of Mrs. Jordan’s history class. She wanted exactly what Neil had done: to tie Vi forever to Aubrey, to home, to Cherry.