Girls in Trouble (11 page)

He leaned over to her, brushing her hair from her face, taking her hand from the sheet. He threw one end of the sheet over the stain so you couldn’t see it. “Sara?” he said, and it was as if he had a sheen about him, like a kind of suntan oil, glossy and inviting. She sat up. She smoothed the sheet, she tried to fix the pillows. Her mind raced, thinking about the paper she had to do, the way her grades were slipping, and then Danny pulled her back down beside him. “You don’t have to do anything. Just be here,” he said. “I’ll never be with anyone else but you. I’ll never want to.” She lifted up one hand and put it against Danny’s face. “Mine,” she said.

They began spending more and more time in Danny’s room. He opened his drawer. “Look,” he said shyly, and she looked down and saw the five kinds of condoms he had bought: red and blue and ribbed, all with names so ridiculous she sputtered with laughter. Bareback Rider. Intense. Wild Thing. In the supermarket, all he had to do was trace a line down her back, and her whole body felt a flutter and she would turn and kiss him. She wouldn’t be able to stop. “Kids, get a room,” someone muttered,
walking past them, and all Sara could think was,
I wish we could. I wish we could get a whole country
.

He took her places she didn’t even know existed. A Japanese mall at the far end of town, a supermarket where every item was either in Japanese or translated incorrectly. Sara plucked up a sponge, delighted, because it was called Clean Life Please. She bought Danny a tea towel that said “From the Kitchen of Buxom Beauties.”

He showed her how to tune an engine, sneaking her into the vocational school, patient when she flubbed it. “Soon as I get a car, I’ll teach you to drive,” he said. He showed her the maps he saved. California, Alaska, the paper soft because he had opened and closed them back up so many times.

“You don’t need much money to live a good life in Alaska,” Danny said.

“Is that where you’re going when school’s over?” Sara asked. She didn’t want to look at the maps anymore.

“I’m going where you’re going,” he said and folded the maps shut.

They talked quietly about the future, planning it out. The house they’d live in, by the water, with a backyard. His auto body shop nearby, and her psychologist office on the top floor. The dog they would have, a big rangy mutt that would sleep at the foot of their bed. “You’re the first thing I haven’t somehow fucked up in my life,” he told her. “The first thing I’ve ever gotten right.”

That night, when she was alone in bed, she imagined Danny there beside her, and she got so restless, she bolted up from bed and went to the kitchen for ice, rolling it across her arms and legs, trying to cool some of the heat down. She came back upstairs and sat at the window, willing him to come get her. If he showed, she vowed she’d climb out her window to be with him. She swore she’d let him into her room. She reached for her phone and told herself if he didn’t answer on the first ring, she’d hang up.

“Hello?” His voice was soft, heavy with sleep.

“Come and get me,” she whispered.

She felt him before she saw him. Then she heard pebbles rattling at the window. Stealthily, she opened the window and slid outside, grabbing on to the maple tree she had grown up climbing, shimmying down in her nightgown, her toes curling on the dewy grass. The neighborhood was dark. A cat yowled in the distance. And then the two of them lowered to the damp grass. Wordlessly, she slid off her nightgown, she unbuttoned his shirt and lifted up her mouth to his.

Later, when she finally came back in, she fell into a sleep so deep she felt drugged. When Abby came in the morning to wake Sara for school, there were bits of grass on the sheet, and the hem of her nightgown was muddy, and Abby, racing to leave for work herself, didn’t notice. “There’s my beautiful daughter,” Jack said, walking past her room.

Sara ran off for school, stopping at the patch of grass where she and Danny had been the night before. In the hazy morning light, it seemed almost magical, and she crouched, raising one hand over the grass, and she still felt its heat.

She didn’t think anything of it when she missed one period, but when she missed the next one, she told Danny. “It’s just nerves. You can’t be pregnant,” he said. “We used condoms.”

“Condoms don’t always work. What if I am? What are we going to do?”

He shook his head. “It’s an impossibility. Please, please don’t look like that! Would I let something like that happen?”

She couldn’t help it though. Every time she saw him, she wrapped herself under his arm, trying to convince herself that everything was the same, everything was fine. But his touch felt different on her skin, as if there were a whole extra layer between them. His eyes, when he looked at her, seemed as though they were seeing her through a screen.
It’s nothing
, she told herself.

There were lots of reasons for missing a period, Sara knew. The stress
of sneaking around. The dizziness of love. When her belly started to get rounder, her bra too tight, when she began to feel queasy, she blamed it on all the nervous eating she was doing. And then when she missed her third period in a row, she started to get scared. She shucked off all her clothes and stood in front of her mirror, staring at her changed silhouette, her hands on her belly. Swallowing she put her clothes back on, she kept her eyes shut. You could give yourself sore throats and headaches and asthma just by the power of your thought. Hadn’t she read about hysterical pregnancies? Women whose bellies and breasts grew tender and swollen with nothing but air? Hadn’t she read how the mind could create all sorts of false symptoms for the body? She breathed deep. Danny hadn’t seemed to notice anything different; he hadn’t commented.
I’m fine
, she told herself,
I’m fine
.

Still, the next day, before Abby got home, she called Planned Parenthood, but as soon as a woman answered, she hung up. Fool, she berated herself. Idiot. She dialed again, determined. Knowledge was power. Better to know now what she might be facing than to bury it away. This time a different woman answered, but as soon as Sara mentioned she hadn’t had her period in three months, the woman wanted her to come in for an appointment right away, and panicked, Sara hung up again.

What was she going to do? She couldn’t call back, not now, not after she had made a fool of herself. She couldn’t tell her parents, and if she called Danny, he’d just tell her not to worry again. She sat down and then stood up and sat down again. Pregnancy kits. She’d go and buy one.

She walked a mile to the Thrift-T-Mart on the side of town where she knew no one, and looked at the pregnancy kits. Every one of them had a picture of a smiling woman, or a couple, locking eyes as if they shared a great and wonderful secret. Where were the girls who were all alone and so scared they could barely breathe? Where were the terrified expressions? The panic? Sara squinted at the price. Ten dollars. That was expensive. She’d have to cut back on things she wanted this week. She peered at the directions on the back and chose the one that seemed easiest—just a quick pee and a blue cross would appear. She didn’t look at the girl who rang it up, who put it into a brown paper bag. She told herself she’d tell
Danny after she found out; it would be something they could joke about.
Can you imagine my face when I saw the line wasn’t there
, she could say.
I whooped so loudly, the girl in the next stall must have thought I was crazy
.

She carried it around in her purse for two days before she could work up the courage.

Last period. Honors history. She could be late, no one would notice. She waited until the halls were empty and then she slipped into the girls’ bathroom. Two girls she didn’t know were standing by the mirrors, leaning over the sinks, layering on mascara, peering at their reflections. “More?” one girl said, handing a mascara to her friend, and Sara went into a stall. She carefully opened the book, she peed on the long white tube. Three minutes. She’d have to wait three minutes.

“Fuck him,” said one of the girls. “He thinks with his dick.”

Sara flushed the toilet so the girls wouldn’t wonder what she was doing in there, and glanced at the tube. She stood there, terrified, her back against the stall. Three minutes, the package said, but already the line was turning into a brilliant blue cross.

She didn’t know what to do, but she had all these thoughts in her head. She had to find Danny. He’d help her. She counted back the months. One and one make two, he said, but now one and one made three and all there was to do about it was to either have it or not have it, and either solution sounded like the worst thing in the world to her.

The girls’ voices faded and then were gone.

She couldn’t leave the tube here. It seemed too personal, too damning, so she tucked it into her pocket. She couldn’t bear the thought of going to her history class, so instead, she ran to find Danny, standing outside his class until he came out, pulling him outside. And then she told him, and the moment she did, his joy at seeing her faded. He took two steps back from her. “How do you know?” he asked.

“I know.” She felt the tube, still in her pocket.

“You can take care of it, can’t you?” he said. He pushed back his hair with his hand, over and over, as if he were sweating.

She blinked at him. “Maybe it’s too late,” she said.

“No,” he said, stunned. “Don’t say that. That can’t be right. I’ve heard of girls further along. You can fix it.”

“Shouldn’t we talk about this?” she said. His mouth seesawed. If she didn’t know him so well, she’d say he was about to cry.

“We just did,” he said.

“What’s wrong? Are you mad at me?”

“I’m mad at myself.” He leaned toward her and kissed her, but his kiss felt different to her, and she couldn’t pinpoint how. She needed to kiss his mouth again, but when she moved toward him, he turned from her. “Danny,” she said, and he started walking away. “Danny!” she said louder. Her hands flew to her mouth, and he pushed open the front door to the school and disappeared, and as he did, she realized that other than that last hasty kiss, he hadn’t touched her once, not the whole time they had been talking.

She couldn’t move, not even when Robin walked by, and seeing her, Sara realized that more than anything what she wanted right now was a friend to talk to. She used to talk to Robin for hours. They used to confide in each other, but now Robin’s glance skimmed right over her as if Sara weren’t even there, making Sara feel a sudden chill. Well, Robin wasn’t her friend anymore. Judy hadn’t spoken to her since the day Sara had run to her house to use the phone. The one friend she counted on more than anything was the one who moments before had just walked away from her and wasn’t looking back.

He stopped coming to school. The days got colder and darker and more wintry. She kept going over and over in her mind all the things he had said to her about how they’d always be together, she kept seeing the way he couldn’t walk down the street beside her without taking her hand, or touching her face, without some part of their bodies connecting. And no matter how she tried, she couldn’t understand what had happened, how and why he had changed and what might bring him back to her.

At night, a noise made her bolt awake.
It’s him
, she thought, but when she went to the window, there was nothing there but all the closed doors, the blank windows of the neighborhood.
“I’m not mad at you,”
he had told her. She repeated it over and over to herself like a mantra.

“Did anyone call?” she kept asking Abby. “Did anyone come by for
me?” and even after Abby assured her that no one had, Sara stared at the phone and the door, stricken.

She tried to prepare. She got as far as a clinic and then grabbed some pamphlets about abortion and fled before the nurse could ask her name. She stood out on the sidewalk reading. How could she afford this?
“We recommend someone come with you,”
the pamphlet said, but who would that be? Who could she dare to tell what was going on, let alone ask to help her?

At the end of the week, she couldn’t stand it anymore, she waited until last period and then she ran to his house, around to the side where his window was, and she bent and threw stones and no one answered. Then she rang the bell and no one answered there, either, and she stood on the stoop and tore a piece of paper from her notebook and wrote him a letter.
Danny, please. We can be happy. Please just talk to me about the baby. I love you and I know you love me. Sara
.

She folded it up. She looked around for something she could use as an envelope, finally making one out of another piece of paper. She wrote his name on the front, addressing it like a letter. She marked it “Personal” and slid it through the slot, and then she went home, and all that day, she waited for him to call her, and when he didn’t, she called his house. To her surprise a woman answered, “Yes?” The voice was tired.

“It’s Sara.”

The woman was silent.

“Please, is Danny there? It’s really important I speak with him.”

“Who is this again?”

“It’s Sara.”

“Sara who?” the woman asked, and Sara felt stung.

“Danny’s girlfriend.” It felt funny to say it.
It’s true
, she told herself.
I swear it’s true
.

“Danny’s girlfriend,” the woman said, more wearily. “Well, Danny’s gone.

“What do you mean, he’s gone?” Sara wrapped the cord tightly around her hand.

“Gone,” the woman said. “I don’t know where. He took half his things with him.”

The cord around Sara’s hand tightened. “No, that’s not possible—” she said.

“Well, he’s gone.”

“Please, if he calls, will you tell him to call Sara? Will you tell him it’s important?”

“Sure,” the woman said. “Sure, I’ll tell him,” and then she hung up.

Sara told herself his mother was wrong. Danny wouldn’t leave her, not for good. Maybe he had just run off someplace to think, and any moment, he would be back.

Every time the phone rang in her house, she jumped up, but her parents always got to it first, and it was never for her. She ran to the mailman before he even got to their house. She hadn’t heard from Danny in three weeks, even though she called his house every day, never getting anything more than a busy signal, or a line that rang and rang. How could he have changed so quickly? She felt torn in two. One jagged half. She tried to keep busy. She threw herself into her schoolwork again, trying not to think.