Cherry Money Baby (7 page)

“Don’t freak out.”

Pop lowered the paper. “You’re pregnant.”

“No!”

“Thank Christ. All right, out with it.”

“Lucas asked me to marry him. I’m getting married!” She opened her arms for a hug. Pop didn’t budge. Cherry waited.

Pop continued not budging.

“Nope.”

“What do you mean,
nope
?”

“That’s not happening.”

Her smile tightened. “Yes, it
is.
”

“Oh, yeah? And where’s the reception? Mel’s Diner?”

“This is
good news.
I’m
in love,
” she said, hating how childish that sounded.

Pop puffed his mustache. “I’m waiting for the ‘good-news’ part.”

Cherry pushed back from the table. “You’re an asshole.”

“You’re a moron.”

“Why are you being this way?”

Pop folded his hands over the table just as she had done, except minus the hopeful grin.

“So what, you’ll just be a housewife?”

Something inside her turned to poison. “Yeah. Cook, clean, shop. You know, all the shit I do now. Really, not much’ll change.”

“Like hell it won’t.” He stuck a fat finger in her face. “You are going to
college.
You are going to
do
something with your life.”

“Having a family
is
doing something.”

“No, it
ain’t.
”

“Is that what you told Mom? Maybe she would have stuck around if you didn’t think her life was bullshit.”

The Red Sox mug exploded against the wall, chunks pinging and skittering over the counter and tile. A sliver of glazed ceramic executed a pirouette on the sink’s edge and tumbled in with a deafening
clink.

Cherry was frozen, her bluster vaporized. The mug hadn’t been aimed at her, but she felt its shatter in her spine, the shards under her skin.

His voice was still. “That was clever, the way you turned that around on me.” She met his eyes, and they were exhausted. He seemed so
old.
“
You’re
clever. And you’re wasting it. You think I
want
you to work until you die? If I could give you a
mansion,
I would. I can’t. But I’ll tell ya something else.” He pointed to the backyard, to Lucas’s trailer. “Neither can that guy.”

He took his paper and made for the back door. The screen door slammed, bounced once, and slammed again.

Stew rushed in, pulling on his shorts. He took in the coffee running down the wall. He gaped at her.

“Holy shit, are you
pregnant
?”

She took the Spider to school.

At 7:55, Cherry pulled into the Aubrey Public parking lot with “Superb Ass,” the new single from Cynthia Sundae, buzzing through the Spider’s modified speaker system. Nothing vented aggression like hip-hop played at eardrum-splitting volume. Swarms of kids slowed, stopped, and turned to watch her pass. She found an empty spot in the section reserved for seniors. Mr. Butkey, the assistant principal, was in conference with a sophomore on the front steps. He whistled as she got out of the car.

“Win the lottery, Ms. Kerrigan?”

“Something like that, Mr. Butkey.”

She pulled her bag from the rear and locked the Spider. The vintage locks clicked with a satisfying
ker-CHUNK.

“Cherry!” Vi Ravir waved from their usual meeting place by the spruce tree and ran over, as much as she could run in heels and a skirt. “Oh, my God, where have you been? Whose car is that? What happened yesterday?” She squeezed her knees together. “I’m so excited I have to pee!”

Cherry leaned against the Spider, hooking a thumb in her cargo pants like a trucker. “Yep, yep,” she drawled. “She’s
all
mine.”

“Where did you get it?”

“Ardelia Deen gave it to me.” Shrug. “Came by my place last night to say thank you for saving her life. This was her way of showing her gratitude, I guess.”

“You
hung out
with her?”

“She’s actually pretty cool,” Cherry said. “Not like you’d think. I taught her how to change a tire.”

“Cherry,
I’m dying.
” Vi put a hand over her heart. “I’m dying! I’m dead. I’m dead now. You killed me.”

Cherry straightened, getting into the swing of it. This was
really
going to blow Vi’s mind.

“Listen, though. I’ve got even
bigger
news!”

Vi folded her hands, literally quivering in anticipation. Times like these she reminded Cherry of a Chihuahua.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God,
tell me.
”

“Lucas asked me to marry him!” She inflected these words with Vi levels of hysteria. Their effect was to freeze Vi in her place, jaw petrified into the same demented grin of a girl in a McDonald’s poster.

“He . . . did?” Different parts of Vi’s face seemed to be registering different emotions.

“Yeah! Last night! Before the whole Ardelia thing.”

Vi’s brow furrowed as she desperately tried to square this with the other, unrelated, news. “Cherry, that’s . . . amazing!”

The girls embraced, Cherry testing the hug for weaknesses, signs of hesitancy. When they separated, Vi had composed herself.

“Honey, I’m so happy for you.”

“Thanks,” Cherry gushed. “I mean, we didn’t set a date or anything. It won’t change much. Just, like, we’ll be together like we’re together now. But forever.”

“That’s . . . wow.” Blink, blink.

“Yeah.”

“Yay . . . marriage!”

Vi squealed and squeezed Cherry’s hands. They hugged again, but the hug deflated too quickly. They started toward the doors. They strolled arm in arm, quiet a moment, before Vi spoke up.

“So.”

“So?”

“You were telling me . . . about changing a tire with Ardelia Deen?”

“Oh.”

Oh.

Vi was more interested in the three hours Cherry had spent with Ardelia than the lifetime she would spend with Lucas.

“Yeah. The car got a flat. So we pushed it to Pop’s and changed the tire.”

“You
pushed it
? That must have been hilarious!”

“I guess.”

“Then what happened?”

“Then we went home.”

“I mean, was she mad? Did she meet your father? Had she already given you the car? Or what?”

The bell rang, clattering in the tiled foyer. Cherry disentangled herself and re-shouldered her backpack. “I gotta get to homeroom.”

“See you at lunch!” Vi shouted. Cherry waved without turning, a gesture that looked like
Sure!
or
Go away!,
depending on what angle you saw it from.

The morning passed without incident. Cherry wasn’t sure she felt relieved or disappointed that no one remarked on her brief Internet celebrity. Something distracted her from the usual, homey boredom of class. The reading seemed pointless, the teachers shabby and hopeless. Her future with Lucas secured, school was irrelevant, and she couldn’t wait for it to be over. And there was something else, too. An excitement hangover. She was disappointed to discover that after her outrageous day, life was dragging on just as she’d left it, one bell after another.

Nothing had changed.
She
hadn’t changed.

At last a long, stuttered ring announced lunch period, and Cherry headed for the cafeteria, walking a little slower than the hustling students around her.

As she neared the cafeteria’s double doors, Olivia Dunrey (who spelled her name
Olyvya,
which gave Cherry a migraine) rounded the corner with her entourage. Olyvya dressed and acted like the Queen Bee of Aubrey Public, a self-appointed and largely ceremonial title, since apparently no one but Olyvya and her friends realized she was the most important girl in school.

During freshman-year orientation, Olyvya had attempted to distinguish herself as Seriously Superior by joking that Cherry dressed like Gwen Stefani circa 1994 (a good burn, Cherry had to admit). The three chicklets who would become her entourage giggled. Cherry turned in her assembly chair and punched Olyvya in the jaw, knocking her flat on her back and liberating her right front incisor. In a sense this moment divided their class. From that point on, some regarded Cherry Kerrigan as a freak show, a maniac, a dangerous lunatic. A near majority thought it was the most awesome thing they’d ever seen. Either way, from then on, Cherry Kerrigan was legend. But nobody saw the aftermath, when Pop explained with uncharacteristic calm that
he’d
be the one to pay for Olyvya Dunrey’s expensive oral surgery. On that score, Cherry still felt horrible about the whole thing.

Now, to Cherry’s utter shock, Olyvya was waving at her.

“Hey,” she said, flashing a two-toned smile. “I saw you on the news. That was pretty amazing. You saved her life.”

Of course, Olyvya was the
one
person to mention it. “I was just . . .”

Before Cherry could finish, the other girl swooped in for a hug. Her eyes moistened. She let out a shuddering breath. “I just don’t know what I’d do if I
lost
her.”

Cherry recalled Olyvya had come as Jane Austen, Vampire Huntress, to last year’s Halloween dance.

“You don’t even know her,” Cherry said, dumbfounded.

“She’s so brave, you know?” Olyvya sniffled. “I heard she went right back to work today. Isn’t that courageous?”

“I went to school the day after my appendix burst,” said one of Olyvya’s friends.

“If you see her again, will you give her this?”

Cherry watched in horror as Olyvya took an envelope from her purse. Ardelia’s name curled across the front in pink pen, sprouting flowers and butterflies.

“Jesus,” Cherry said, recoiling. “Listen, I’m not gonna see her again —”

Olyvya pressed the letter into Cherry’s hand. “Thank you.”

“I’m not giving her this.” She looked to the toadies for help, but they all wore Olyvya’s expression of eager concern.

“Thank you,”
Olyvya repeated with a little more force, and departed, head high, a saint with her disciples.

Cherry tossed the letter in the trash.

“Were you just talking to Snaggletooth?” Vi asked, coming out of the girls’ restroom. They started for the cafeteria.

“She wanted me to give Ardelia a love note. Can you believe that? We’re not like
buds
or anything.”

“You’re not?”

“No!” Cherry shifted her bag. “I mean, is that what people think?”

“I did hear someone say you were ‘summering’ at her mansion in England.”

“Oh,
man.
”

“And some dude was spreading this rumor that you guys are secretly lesbian lovers. But I’m pretty sure he was just fantasizing.”

“(A) Gross. And (B) We’re not friends. We’re certainly not
lovers.
She came by to say thank you. That’s
it.
”

“Okay! Don’t shoot the messenger.
Jeez.
”

“Sorry,” said Cherry. “It’s been a weird twenty-four hours.”

They took their usual seats near the vending machines. “Well, cheer up,” Vi said. “Soon we’ll be out of here, you and Lucas will get hitched, and then me and Neil, and we’ll live across the street from each other, and our daughters will be besties.”

Vi offered Cherry an orange slice.

“Danke,”
said Cherry, demonstrating half her German vocabulary.

“Bitte,”
said Vi, using the other half. “On that note, I’ve got to study for the quiz. Herr Bergmann will kill me if I fail another one.”

Final period was study hall, and as a senior, Cherry was practically obligated to skip. She wanted to see Lucas and so descended the scary west staircase to the boiler room, where Mr. DuBois had his office. She found Lucas’s dad tipping back in his ancient wooden chair like a private eye, reading the
Aubrey Times
and drinking a ginger ale.

Cherry knocked, raising her eyebrows.

Leroy smirked. He was a founding member of the Cherry Kerrigan Fan Club.

“Someone puked in the faculty bathroom,” he said, explaining Lucas’s absence. Cherry gave a thumbs-up and was turning to go when Mr. DuBois called her name. “Hear we’re gonna have a celebration soon.”

“Assuming Pop doesn’t throw me in the trash compactor first.”

“Hermann’ll come around,” said Leroy. Mr. DuBois and Cherry’s father were old poker buddies. “After all, as father of the bride, he’s the schmo who’s gotta pay for everything.”