Immaculate (21 page)

“You can be very wise sometimes, daughter,” my dad said, and I didn't have to turn my head to see the tiny smile on his face. “One more thing. I want you to know that your mom and I have talked about some of the . . . arrangements. And I want you know that you're welcome to stay here after. After the baby is born.” He paused, probably as surprised as I was to hear those words out loud—those words out of
his
mouth. He was acknowledging my decision. He was acknowledging my
baby
. “We of course want you to continue with your studies and to continue with a job on the side that will help you to contribute. But we don't want you to worry about living on your own and funding everything by yourself. Not right now. This can still be your home. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said, reaching over to squeeze his hand in mine. We were both quiet then, and I closed my eyes, lulled by our synchronized rocking, the creaking of the old porch planks with each sway and tap of our chairs.

“Well, you may be wise, but you're not wise enough to make all your own rules yet. You're not even eighteen,” he said, pushing off the chair to stand. “So it's time to get inside and get to bed. Father's orders. You need to stay healthy, got it?”

I nodded, swiping at a tear on my cheek with my sweatshirt sleeve as I stood to follow him in. “Got it, Dad.”

In all of my almost eighteen years, being sent to bed had never felt so amazing.

chapter twelve

In my dream
I was perfectly skinny again, straight up and down from shoulders to toes, no round belly or swollen chest. I was flat and hard and entirely naked, standing with Nate in the middle of the tree house. A cool, early spring breeze ruffled the curtains, and goose bumps raced along my arms and legs. Nate saw me shiver and stepped closer to me, pulling me against his bare chest, warming me with his body heat. This was the night we had planned, the night all those months ago when I'd had my real chance.
This could be so different
, I thought, looking up into his eyes. There was no hate there, no disgust or bitterness. Just pure, raw love and desire.
We could be so different
.

I wound my fingers through the hair at the base of his neck and tilted his face down, pressing my lips hard against his. They were so sweet, so familiar. He moaned into me, and I started pulling him with me lower, to the ground, our bodies becoming tangled on the bed of old sleeping bags.

I can do this. I will do this
.

But suddenly, just as I started to crawl on top of Nate, everything felt wrong. His skin became rough and coarse, like sandpaper scraping bits of me off with even the slightest brush of our bodies. His breathing and groaning was loud, too loud, so piercing and terrible that I wanted to put my hands against my ears and scream at the top of my lungs to hide the noise. When I opened my eyes, his face was entirely blurred and unrecognizable in the moonlight that spilled through the tree house window. Shapes, lines, colors that had just been Nate's features, all shifting and transforming right in front of me.

I tried to push away, but Nate—or the boy who had been Nate at least, had looked like him on the surface—whispered that he loved me, wrapped his rough arms around me even tighter.

But did I really love him? Did I even know him at all?

My phone rattled against the nightstand and I jerked up from my pillow, my heart still thudding fast and heavy against my rib cage. A wave of chills swept up my spine, tingling along the back of my neck. The dream had been too real and three-dimensional, the senses all so magnified and heightened, swirling around me still as I lay shaking under my covers. The sounds, the smells, the heat. Suddenly the idea of touching Nate, of being with him like that, felt abhorrent. I was never more glad that whatever had happened—whatever was happening now, this little human kicking inside of me—hadn't been confused with other potential explanations. If Nate had been the father, if he even just
believed
he was the father, I would have been tied to him forever, our lives sewn up for good. It scared me now, that I'd come so close. It scared me to think that just one night together could have changed everything. Nate could have been my first, and my last.

I pushed back the strands of sweaty hair that clung to my forehead and reached for the phone. Hannah was calling. It was just barely past six, way too early for any normal morning check-ins.

“Han?” My throat croaked, and I realized how dry my entire mouth felt. The dream flashed in my memory, the horrible sounds, the screaming.

“Meen. Listen to me. Start getting ready, and I'm going to be at your house in ten minutes, okay? And I need you to promise me something really important.”

“What's going on? What am I promising?”

“Seriously, please just trust me on this.”

“Okay. I'm playing along. I promise.”

“Thank you. Don't touch your computer until I get there. Nothing, okay? I'll be there soon.”

She hung up and I glanced over at the computer resting just a few feet away, the screen black in sleep mode. Why couldn't I touch my computer? What couldn't I see without Hannah being there first? Every last part of me wanted to frantically start scouring any recent e-mail, news, classmates' blogs—but I made myself look away. I had promised.

I threw on a loose sweater and a pair of stretchy jeans, and ran a brush through my tangled hair. Without even a glance at the computer, I grabbed a pen and crossed out another day on the pregnancy countdown hanging above my desk—Friday, November 16. Sixteen weeks until my March 7 due date. It was a morning tradition I'd started when I'd realized just how quickly the days were flying away from me. I had my midpregnancy sonogram hanging above the calendar, a constant reminder that this was real. This was happening.

I still had time before Hannah would get there, and I couldn't wait around in my room, staring at the computer I wasn't allowed to touch. I went to the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face, still trying to wash away every last trace of that dream. I didn't want to think about how good it had felt at first to have Nate's skin against my skin—or how horrible it had felt by the end. I had been getting better at keeping that part of my brain locked up, and I wanted it to stay that way. A few swipes of mascara and a little blush made me look slightly more awake, but nowhere in the mirror did I detect the glow that Pastor Lewis had claimed to see. It was funny to me that my face could still look the same as it had months ago—just a bit paler maybe, more tired-looking—when the rest of me was so entirely different.

There was a knock at the front door, and within seconds my mom was in the foyer, greeting Hannah. They started talking in hushed, hurried whispers. Cold beads of sweat prickled along the back of my neck. What could have happened since last night?

Their footsteps started up the stairs, and I walked toward them, meeting my mom and Hannah at the top. One look at both of their anxious faces, and I knew that something was most definitely wrong.

“What is it? What's happening?” I gripped the banister next to me.

“Let's go into your bedroom, sweetie,” my mom said, her eyes blinking down at the carpet. “We'll talk there, okay?”

I followed her numbly into my room and leaned against the edge of the bed. Hannah shut the door behind us and turned to face me.

“So I was up pretty late last night, working on that essay for Sweeney's class, and I was chatting with Elise, you know, the girl who sits behind me and always has a thousand questions.” She paused, twisting a spiral of hair so tightly around her finger, I could see the tip losing color. “Anyway, she asked if I'd heard about the website that everyone was talking about. The website . . . It's about you, Mina. It was two a.m. when I saw it, so I decided I'd wait until this morning to tell you about it.”

“A website about me? What kind of website?” The words sounded tinny, distant in my ears, as if I was anywhere else but in my own body.

She sat down at my desk, typing on the keyboard as the computer flicked back to life.

“Here it is. I think you should come see for yourself.”

The first thing I could clearly make out was a picture of me at the top of the page, a photo from last year's Halloween party at Peter's house. Izzy had dressed as the devil and Hannah and I were angels, and the three of us spent the entire night mock-fighting one another with cheap light-up plastic swords. The picture showed just me, though, dressed in a puffy short white dress that I'd coated in clear iridescent sparkles, big yellow wings strapped to my back, and a pipe cleaner halo hovering on the side of my head. Someone from the party—a
friend
—must have taken that picture. And now they'd posted it here, for anyone in the world to see, with the caption
THE VIRGIN MINA
in massive capital letters that screamed at me from the screen.

There was more just below it, a long paragraph. The letters were swimming in circles in my vision, and I closed my eyes.

“I'll read it out loud to you,” Hannah said, her voice shaking.

All Hail the BLESSED VIRGIN MINA, the miraculous Mother Mary of the twenty-first century! At long last, after two thousand years of waiting . . . the promised second coming of the Messiah is upon us! (Repent, repent!) With his all-knowing wisdom, God has chosen Mina Dietrich of quaint but lovely Green Hill, Pennsylvania, to be the blessed mother of this sacred child. Mina is a senior at Green Hill High, a straight-A student in line to be the class valedictorian, admired throughout the community for her many achievements and aspirations. Beauty and brains, kindness and virtue, a solid gold reputation—it's no surprise that the Father would choose Mina out of every other female on the WHOLE ENTIRE PLANET to help him in his holy plan. Though Mina was in a long-term relationship at the time of the Second Messiah's conception, she claims that she has never engaged in any form of intercourse, and thusly, there is NO OTHER EXPLANATION other than DIVINE INTERVENTION for the creation of the child that she is now carrying. (Side note: this relationship has since been terminated, as for some inconceivable reason way beyond our grasp, the partner refused to BELIEVE that such a miraculous event could ever happen in these modern times. Shocking! Outrageous! Ex-boyfriend, be damned!)

Mina has been reportedly carrying the Lord's child since the beginning of the summer, which means, oh dear world, that we can expect the baby's grand arrival in early March. We see it as our divine duty to spread the TRUTH as far and wide as possible, and ask that you please do the same. We have created this Virgin Mina website to explore Mina's nine-month journey, and we ask you to leave your observations, questions, concerns, etc. in the comments section, as we want this to be a forum for group discussion. We also ask you to send any pictures and suggestions for the site to the e-mail address provided on the contacts page.

Please note: ONLY BELIEVERS MAY ENTER. (And for all you nonbelievers—SERIOUSLY, ARE YOU F*#@ING CRAZY?! Who doesn't believe that babies can magically appear out of thin air without sperm or penises or any kind of sexual interaction?! Didn't you read the BIBLE?!)

Our most sincere blessings to all,

TEAM VIRGIN MINA

Hannah's voice stopped reading, but I could still hear all the words, looping and weaving like bright red ribbons through my mind.

Who could have started this? Who would hate me this much?

I mean, even if everyone thought I was lying, why couldn't they just ignore me? Leave me alone? I hadn't asked for any of them to believe me. I hadn't asked for them to worship me.

I hadn't asked them for anything.

“How many . . . ?” The question froze on my lips, but I didn't have to finish. I'd seen the answer for myself as Hannah silently clicked on to the comments page. Nine hundred people had already left responses. Did I even know that many people, even if I counted every single person in my high school?

“It was at around eight hundred last night when I first found the page. It seems to be . . . spreading pretty quickly, I guess. From the posts I saw, I think it's been around for a little while now, a month maybe, but it seems like it's just starting to pick up speed. I'm so sorry,” Hannah whispered, her head in her hands. “Do you want to read any of it? What people are posting? Or is it too much right now?”

“Now. I might as well see it all now.” My mom reached out and squeezed my hand, steadying me.

Comments varied on a spectrum from incredibly shocked and entertained to incredibly cruel and hateful:
OMG, this bitch needs a TV show!
to
I can't believe she hasn't been struck by lightning yet, but I guess Hell will be burn enough.
There were plenty of pictures, too, on the dedicated photos page. Me in a tight hot pink minidress and matching heels, a Barbie costume I wore for a party last year, the caption saying
THIS
IS OUR VIRGIN?!!?
A classic painting of the Virgin Mary with my face Photoshopped in over hers,
Menius
scrawled along the bottom; another photo of me and Nate at last year's prom, a bright red line drawn in between us and the words
I'M NOT THE DADDY
written in a bubble above Nate's head. The most recent was a picture that must have been taken just yesterday, judging from the outfit—I was standing at my locker, Jesse holding my books as I was reaching out for something on the top shelf. Jesse's eyes were on me, and we were both grinning. I hadn't noticed at the time, but my shirt had ridden up, leaving the bottom of my stomach exposed for somebody's waiting camera. That was my bump, right there on the screen, for the whole online world to see as proof of my pregnancy. The caption made the post infinitely worse:
COULD THIS POSSIBLY BE THE REAL DADDY,
VIRGIN
MINA?

The idea that someone had been watching so closely, holding a camera for just the right angle, just the right pose, made my stomach erupt in hot swirling waves. I put my hands on my bump, holding my baby to ground myself. To remind myself what really mattered. But I could still taste bile in the back of my throat. There were no boundaries anymore. I was public property.

As Hannah scrolled through more of the posts, I realized that I barely recognized most of the names—it seemed as if the majority of comments came from people who were from other schools and towns, other states, even. This wasn't Green Hill's secret. Not anymore. The names that I did recognize were mostly strangers or very casual acquaintances—no sign of any of my old
friends
yet. They were probably just too scared to get publicly involved, too worried that I'd try to get them in trouble once I discovered the page's existence. No doubt they were all sitting around that very morning checking for updates, prepping for in-depth conversations about the most recent posts.