My Stupid Girl (49 page)

“What have you decided?” I asked. I started
to rub little circles around her belly button, wanting to comfort that little
life inside of her. 

“I don’t know yet, to be honest.”

I nodded and sucked my lips in, not knowing
exactly where my new place was in this situation. This didn’t seem like the
time to voice my opinions. I busied myself with rolling down my sleeve so I
didn’t have to look at her and give myself away.

“You okay?” She reached out for me and put
her hand on top of my head, then pulled my hair behind my ear. 

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.” The weight of the
entire day and the emotional rollercoaster I had ridden suddenly dropped on me.
I reached in and kissed her lips, taking extra time to put my hand against her
cheek and feel her clean hair slide easily thru my fingers. But then I backed
up, remembering something she had said earlier that day. When I had apologized
for saying I wish I had never saved her, she had told me she knew I hadn’t
meant that part.

“Lucy?” 

“A-huh?” She looked at me with raised
eyebrows. 

“Earlier, when I apologized for my bit, you
made it sound like there was something I said that you did believe. What was
it?” 

She bit her lip and closed her eyes and
took a deep breath.

“When you called me a stupid girl.” She
didn’t look up at me and I think I actually heard my heart rip. 

“Oh Luce, you know I didn’t mean that--”
But she interrupted me.

“I’ve spent my whole life seeing words and
numbers backwards and feeling like an idiot all the time. Other people have to
tell me I’ve been moving for the last ten minutes; I don’t even realize it. I
read my own way and move my own way because it’s what works best for me, but
I’ve spent my whole life either explaining myself or defending myself from
people who think I’m being dumb.”

“I don’t think--”

“David, you’re not the first person who has
called me stupid.” She looked so hurt I wanted to crawl into a freaking hole
and die.

“Lucy, I’m sorry. I am so sorry. I think
you are perfect.” I wished I could convince her of the amazingness that was
Lucy Peterson.

“Thank you.” She said, simply looking at me
and giving me a half smile. 

“Can I make it up to you, for like, ever?” 

“Ha, yeah. Sure.” She laughed at me while I
stole another kiss before I opened the car door.

“So, I’ll see you tomorrow then?” Lucy asked
me.

“And every day after that.” I winked at
her, shut the door, and walked into the hotel feeling like I was going to be
sick. I had just been served two bombshells. One was that I had made Lucy think
she was stupid, even with me just saying it in my head, I felt awful for being
such a jerk. And the other was her admission that she still wasn’t sure about
keeping the baby.

Why would it affect me so much that Lucy
was going to do something like give her baby up for adoption? I mean, aside
from the obvious fact that it hadn’t really done me much good. I couldn’t spend
too much time thinking about it. Lucy had to make that choice.

It nagged me, though. I had known for
exactly five and a half hours that Lucy was pregnant and that the father wanted
nothing to do with the baby, but I already had strong feelings about it. I
walked into my room. It was clean and looked comfortable. Collapsing face first
into my giant bed, I tried not to think.

It had been a long day.

* * *

Seventeen days later, on July 28th, I
opened the door to Lucy’s house and was greeted by people jumping from behind
couches and leaping from behind walls, yelling “Happy Birthday!” at me. I had,
of course, known that they were throwing me a birthday party because I was
asked to bring the ice. Everyone started clapping and laughing when they saw
that they had surprised me anyways. 

Johnny, Isaiah, Jennika, and Sean come over
and hugged me. The guys trapped me in between a good three-man hug, with poor
Jennika trying to get out from the middle of it. I caught her around the waist
and hugged her tightly, not letting her escape. She kissed my check and held my
face, looking at me with great affection. She had thanked me a week earlier for
standing by Lucy during this time. I had told her that I wish I had known
sooner but when I thought about that later I realized it was kind of a lie.

I had changed a lot in the last year. If
Lucy’s pregnancy had been presented to be when she was only a few weeks along,
I would most likely have done something that would have completely sealed my
fate with that girl. As the most giant jerk of all time.

“Where is she?” I asked, looking around for
her among my friends. Jennika pointed to a spot on the couch that Lucy was
buried in. Her stomach was so gigantic, but she was so overwhelmed by it that
it ended up being cute. Her ankles were another story. Or should I say cankles?
The Cankle Queen was sitting on her fluffy couch-throne, looking miserable with
her feet up on the coffee table. She looked like she would scream if I got too
close, or maybe just explode. I handed the ice to Sean and walked over to Lucy,
sitting gently on the couch. She didn’t even look at me, just growled and
closed her eyes. 

“How are you feeling?” I spoke in a
super-sweet voice. She looked up at me and pointed to her legs, which I was
working very hard not to look at. 

“You have such beautiful legs, sweetness.”
She grunted and elbowed me, not even bothering to go for a full punch. Her feet
were at least two sizes bigger than normal and her ankles completely
disappeared into legs that resembled oak tree trunks. They looked like they
would wiggle back and forth like a waterbed if I touched them.

I briefly considered trying it, then
thought better of it. I was really liking being alive.

“You’re a jerk. My maternity pants won’t
even fit. I’m wearing my Dad’s shorts.” She straightened her arms and tried to
escape the couch, but gave up and just went back to looking miserable. I
snorted and kissed the top of her head before running away so she couldn’t yell
at me.

She looked pitiful. In the last week she
had gained a ton of water weight. Her face was red and she was always grumpy.
Actually, that was wrong. Old men were grumpy. Lucy was mean. I remembered the
first time she had taken me to church and she happily played with all the
children there, making funny animal noise so that they would laugh. Today she
looked like she would have liked to eat one of those small children for a
snack. I couldn’t look at her without getting a snarl and an angry correction.
Then she would apologize for being mean before she turned around to snap at
someone else.

I walked to the kitchen, where Mr. Peterson
was mixing some punch. I felt a sudden moment of panic, remembering the last
time I had seen him. I had been running past him as his daughter screamed at me
to get away from her. I figured he was sitting there making me punch so I might
as well say “hi.”

“Hello sir.” I walked into the kitchen
holding my hand out for him to take. I knew my Grandma would have smacked me if
I hadn’t done it. Mr. Peterson turned around to greet me with a smile and arms
open wide, dismissing my polite handshake in favor of a hug. 

“How have you been? You look great, David.”
He patted my back. Lucy’s dad smiled generously at me, but I noticed he looked
older, a little less trusting. I could only imagine what the last year had been
like for him. For the first time, it occurred to me that Lucy and I weren’t the
only ones who had changed.

“I’ve been good. How about you?” I cringed
the second I said it but he laughed. 

“Oh, well. It’s been a hard year, but we
get through things, we depend on God’s grace and we keep moving.” He smiled at
me, a hint of amusement on his lips. He reached for some 7Up to pour into the
punch bowl. I felt comfortable there, standing in front of him, like I could
trust him. The ring around my neck suddenly got heavy. I rubbed at it and her
father looked up at me. He probably thought I was having a heart attack. 

“You okay David?” 

“Yeah. I mean, yes sir. I actually have
something I want to give you.” I reached behind my neck and pulled at the black
leather string I had worn as a necklace for the last year. I untied it, slid
the little purity ring off, and handed it to Lucy’s father. My fingers shook,
waiting for him to drop kick me out of his house. But I braved it and tried to
explain. 

“She gave this to me. The night of the
prom. Before I left.” I felt embarrassed for confessing this to him, but I also
figured I owed him an explanation. 

“She did?” He gave me a strange look that
looked like a cross between confusion and rage. I couldn’t be sure which.

“Yeah, I didn’t take it well. It freaked me
out, honestly.” I put my hand up to the top of my head and patted down the
back, making sure it wasn’t puffy. “That’s what our fight was about.”

“Wow.” Mr. Peterson looked down at the
little ring he had given his daughter. He shook his head slightly, looking
irritated. “That girl!” He closed his hand around the ring, closed his eyes,
and took a deep breath.

“After you left, Lucy became a different
person. She was suddenly hell-bent on doing everything she could to shock us.
She would stay out all night and come home drunk. Once, she didn’t even come
home. We had to go find her; she was asleep in a park.”

“I didn’t realize all that was going on. I
would have done something.” 

“David, you were a great influence. You
respected her. But what happened after you were gone was her decision and her
responsibility. It had nothing to do with you.” 

I sighed heavily, refusing to let the blame
be taken completely off of me. 

“I have kept that ring around my neck this
whole year, hoping that I could still be hers, that I could be with her
forever. It's like I need to be around her, and the ring kind of helped.”  I
looked up at him from the top of my eyes, still praying to the ground, begging
it to swallow me up. I didn’t know how he would respond to the confession that
I was basically obsessed with his daughter. He looked at me like he was
weighing me. Then he spoke like he had made some kind of decision. 

“I have something for you.” He turned
around and went upstairs. I stood in his kitchen, waiting uncomfortably. Was he
going to get a shotgun or what?

Mr. Peterson returned after a few moments,
holding my black leather makeshift necklace for me to take. But when I grabbed
it I felt a different weight. A new ring hung from the string. I held the
old-fashioned wedding ring between my thumb and forefinger. It was beautiful,
with a little diamond nestled in a gold square. Flanking the gold square were
six of the tiniest diamonds I had ever seen, three on each side. They formed
two little triangles. I looked up at him, then back down at the ring, then at
him again.

“What’s this?”

“That is Lucy’s grandma’s wedding ring. The
woman she was named after.” He put the ring in my palm and closed my fingers
over it. “Lucy has told us, from the age of three, that she wanted this as her
wedding ring. So it was hers when her Grandmother died.” 

“Wow, sir, I can’t—“ I was going to say I
couldn’t accept, but I realized that I wanted it. I wanted that ring more than
almost anything else in the world.

“Thank you, sir.” I said it quietly,
waiting for him to scream, “Psyche!“ I was still waiting for the whooping I
deserved. But he just nodded his head, with a smile on his face. I re-secured
the necklace around my neck and tucked it back under my shirt.

“You are a good man, David. I would be
honored to have you as a son.”

My throat turned into lead, instantly. I
could feel my eyes get hot with tears. Totally failed on holding them back,
too.

“Are you sure? I’m kind of a punk.”  

“I think you have more than proved yourself
to me. No one is perfect. And I would always prefer a punk to a jerk.” He spoke
warmly. 

“Thank you sir.” I said again, putting my
hand up to my chest to feel the ring. I had done this many times over the last
year, but this time the ring felt different.

Also, I was pretty sure that Lucy’s father
had just proposed to me. 

The tender moment was broken in the next
instant.

“Dad!” A weak, strangled voice spoke from
behind us. We both looked over at the doorway and saw Lucy, standing there, her
shorts completely wet, dripping water on the ground. 

“My water broke.” Then she grabbed her
stomach and bent over in pain.

28. BIRTH IS RAD

Mass Chaos. A bomb could have gone off in the middle
of the house and none of us would have noticed, or cared. Johnny, Jennika, and
Evelyn started running around, getting keys, jackets, and whatever else they
could get a hold of. 

“Aw, Luce, those were my shorts,” Mr.
Peterson tried to lighten the mood but Lucy just groaned and sat on the ground.
Her face made me suspect she was in an indescribable amount of pain.

“Oh, this is just the beginning, girl.”
Lucy’s mom stepped over her and grabbed her purse off the kitchen counter. 

“What?” Lucy whimpered.

“These are the small contractions,
sweetheart.” Mrs. Peterson smiled again, looking like she might be enjoying
this a little too much. “David, why don’t you help her to the car?” She gave me
a motherly pat on the back and I realized I hadn’t breathed in over thirty
seconds. I sucked in deeply and ran over to Lucy. No clue what to say or how to
help but I practically slid over to her like I was trying to get to home
plate. 

“Wow, this is it!” It almost came out as a
squeal. A manly squeal, of course. I put my arm under Lucy’s, held on to her
back, and helped her stand up. The girl had to have weighed forty pounds more
than the last time I’d held her in my arms. Plus, she was a totally different
shape, now. I suppressed a grunt as I helped her up, and I almost lost an
eyeball. I led her to the front door that Jennika held open for us.