Screwed (14 page)

School had become a walking, talking bad dream. Based on how Grace felt every day since she’d come out of the closet, or the bathroom stall, she would gladly stick pins in her eyes if it meant she could stay home. But what was the alternative? Dropping out like those girls on TV, taking classes online so she could get her GED. After all that had happened, Grace still wasn’t ready to give up on the dream of going to a first-rate college, and dropping out of high school in the middle of her senior year because she couldn’t take the whispers and smirks was beyond chickenshit. At some point they had to get bored with her, had to get tired of smiling hypocritically, asking where the father was, suggesting names for the baby — “Loser” worked for a boy or a girl.

Within a week, everyone from the night janitor to the Chinese transfer student who only spoke three words of English knew about the Girl Scout who’d gotten storked at church camp. Rumors spread faster than the flu at Silver Lake High School, and the moral demise of a member of the National Honor Society and an AP Scholar was far more interesting than someone in the vocational training program getting knocked up. That would be business as usual; this was news. Grace used to feel like she was the only one who hadn’t done it, but now she felt like she was the only one who had. Her slowly expanding stomach advertised her moral depravity and was reflected in the condescending stares and snickers of those either smarter or luckier than she had been. Even girls she thought were her friends were blowing her off.

“Hi, Kim,” Grace said to the girl standing at the locker next to hers. They had been lab partners in biology, teammates on the mathletes, and had known each other since elementary school.

Kim didn’t answer, just put her books away and zipped up her backpack.

“Kim, what’s the matter?” Grace pleaded. Without a word, Kim, who wasn’t even part of the cool crowd, who Grace had always thought was a sweet, compassionate person, turned and walked away. Even her fellow geeks were abandoning ship.

Every night Jennifer spent an hour on the phone with Grace, trying to convince her to give up Nick. “Why are you protecting him? He’s a first-class douchebag. He’d stab you in the back without a second thought. You get that, don’t you?”

“I do, but ….”

“But what? You’re not still into him, are you? Dick can’t be that powerful. Besides, you said it wasn’t even any good.” Sex was still a mystery to Jennifer, but she couldn’t imagine anything on earth could command that kind of authority over a brain with an IQ of 145.

Grace cringed. Tact, subtlety, and sensitivity were not part of Jennifer’s makeup. “It has nothing to do with that. I hate him. I hate every part of him, including
that
part of him.” As Jennifer had so succinctly pointed out, if she could allow his junk inside her, she should be able to say the word for it out loud, but it still stuck in her throat.

“Well, that’s good news. So what’s the problem? If you tag him as your sperm donor, I guarantee you there will be significant heat transfer to his sorry ass. Can you imagine? No one has any idea that the biggest man on campus is the one who stole your v-card and planted his seed. People will be talking about it for years, like where you were when you found out Michael Jackson died.”

“But that’s exactly my point. If I tell the world that Nick is the father, that’ll just add fuel to the fire. Instead of jokes about Bible study and virgin births, they’ll be laughing about how Nick had to fuck me for community service or how he was trying to win a bet about whether or not my encyclopedia was stapled shut. The possibilities are endless, and horrible.”

“It would be so worth it, though, to see Nick get dragged through the mud. He deserves to suffer.” Jennifer rubbed her hands together gleefully at the thought of Nick being burned in effigy at the homecoming game.

“You just don’t get it. No matter what, I’m going to be the villain in this story, and Nick’s always going to be the hero — it’s simple genetics. The only thing that’ll bring an end to this nightmare is getting away from here, but I’ve got no place to go. So I’ll just have to suffer through it.” At the thought of at least twenty more weeks of taunts and whispers, Grace’s stomach dropped. It was going to feel like twenty years.

“You’re giving up too easily. You can’t be sure that’s how it would play out.”

“This from the person who didn’t think that we, co-captains of the math team with matching 4.9 averages, were geeks. Shows you how in touch with reality you are.”

Shouting into the phone, Jennifer was determined to straighten Grace out. “I love you, Grace, like a sister, but you need to pull your head out of your ass and realize that high school isn’t the fucking Academy Awards, and those small-minded assholes you’re so afraid of aren’t the Oscar winners you think they are. They’re not even extras in the movie that is our life. They’re losers who just haven’t gotten the memo yet. But they will, and when they do, you and I will be collecting our diplomas from Princeton and deciding which six-figure job we should take. So, Grace, you’re the one who needs to get in touch with reality.”

“I want you to be right,” Grace whispered. “I need you to be right.”

“Don’t worry, I am,” Jennifer said with her unshakable confidence. “Now that we’ve got that misconception cleared up, let’s talk about what you need to do
today
.”

“I’m still not outing Nick, no matter what you say. I don’t want to have anything to do with him ever again. It’s too upsetting.”

“Fine, whatever. But you still need to deal with him at least one more time. If he doesn’t sign off on that document, you’re going to have to find a new adoption agency or practice your diapering skills.”

“I know. I will.”

While Jennifer had generously, and a little too enthusiastically, offered to track down Nick and explain to him about giving up his parental rights, Grace decided it was a task that she needed to do herself. Every time she saw him at school, her heart jumped into her throat, even as Nick quickly turned away, not even acknowledging her presence, as difficult as she was to miss as the bean grew into a melon. After several attempts to catch him in the hallway at school, in which he fled like a pickpocket through a crowd in Times Square, Grace decided to catch him when he wasn’t expecting it. One morning she stationed herself behind a tree, a hunter tracking her prey, and waited until he pulled into the parking lot, still driving the scene of the crime. After he shut off the engine — less danger of him driving away or running her over — she dashed, more like plodded, over to the car. His deer-in-the-headlights look told her that she’d succeeded in surprising him.

Looking around to make sure no one was watching, he rolled down the window and said, “What do you want now?”

There was no point in pretending anymore: she was way past the point of no return. This baby was already a baby. But then his brain caught up with his emotions, and he realized that now, more than ever, he needed to keep his cool. As promised, Grace hadn’t revealed his role in her problem, and except for Jennifer, who even though she had a big mouth had proved she knew how to keep a secret, nobody knew he was the father. He had no idea why Grace had chosen to take the high road. Even
he
could see that he was being a total dick, from start to finish, if you were looking at it solely from her point of view.

“I need to talk to you about something,” Grace replied, trying to slow her pulse, which was banging so loudly in her ears that she could hardly hear her own voice.

“Then get in the car, in the back,” he hissed, worried that if anyone saw them talking, they would easily put the pieces together, and the entire school would be calling him Daddy before first lunch block.

When Grace slid into the back seat, the smell brought everything back, crashing down on her like a tsunami, and she stifled a scream. Turning around, Nick asked, “What the fuck’s the matter with you?”

“The smell of your car, it’s making me sick.” Gagging, hardly able to talk through her panic attack, Grace breathed through her mouth so she wouldn’t have to smell it.

“Nice.” If she threw up on the leather, he’d kill her.

Not that she owed him an explanation, but she wanted so much for him to understand how she felt, to exhibit even the slightest bit of interest in her. “Your car smells the same as it did the night we ….”

“You still need money?” he interrupted, eager to get this conversation over with. “You didn’t listen to me before, so what do you want now?” Nick wished she would just handle this on her own and leave him out of it.

“No, I don’t need your money.” Although she didn’t care about him as a person anymore, he still had the power to disappoint her. Grace was still hoping to hear some compassion, regret even, for what had happened between them. Not expecting actual empathy, or even an apology, she just wanted him to prove that he was at least human, if not for her sake, then for the sake of the baby, who would be inheriting not only his cheekbones, but possibly his cold, dead heart. She trembled involuntarily.

“So what do you want from me? Jennifer says you’re giving it away. You should have just gotten rid of it, but I guess this is better than keeping it.” Sometimes Nick had nightmares that Grace decided to keep the baby and he was working at a gas station to make money to buy diapers, because his parents had kicked him out and he’d had to turn down the college scholarships so he could support his accidental family. He would wake up in a sweat to the sound of a baby screaming, but it was his own cries that had woken him.

“That’s kind of what this is about. In order to give the baby up for adoption, we both have to sign away our parental rights,” Grace said, trying to maintain a neutral tone.

She couldn’t shame him into being a good person, and she needed to stay calm if she was going to get through this conversation without losing it. Trying to assure herself that his stony indifference to the baby, to her, was a product of some failure on his part, not her own inadequacy, she waited for the next selfish, childish rant to spill from his perfect lips.

“Why do I need to do that if no one even knows I’m the father? I’m not signing my name anywhere. If I admit to being the father, then I could be on the hook. I could lose everything.” I, I, I … even Nick heard what a self-absorbed asshole he sounded like, but that didn’t change how he felt. There was no way he was going to throw himself under the bus now, when Michigan had pretty much promised a full scholarship, preferential athlete housing, the whole works.

“The woman at the adoption agency said no one would ever see the document you sign. It’s just legal stuff. Otherwise she won’t help me, won’t help
us
with our problem, and then we might have to keep the baby.” Nick needed to be reminded that though he had remained anonymous so far, she could throw him to the wolves at any time. It was only because Grace had mercifully spared him that his future wasn’t in ruins. A single telephone call to his parents could change everything. “Besides, even if you never sign anything, never admit to anything, a simple DNA test will accomplish the same thing.”

That did it. The blood drained from Nick’s face as he realized Grace wasn’t quite the simp he’d taken her for. She knew how to play hardball, and she wasn’t afraid of him anymore. He decided he’d better watch his tongue. “Why can’t you just go to another agency? You can just say you don’t know who the father was, that it was a one-night stand and you never knew his name.”

“All the agencies I spoke to require both parents to sign off. Maybe some less reputable ones don’t care, but I want our baby placed with the best family, and this is the agency I want to use.”

Grace hadn’t looked at any other adoption agencies, so she didn’t actually know if what she said about the rules was true, but there was no way she was going to tell anyone that she’d had anonymous sex with some stranger just to protect Nick. Up until this moment, Grace had let him have his way, given him the gift of anonymity, but now she was drawing the line. This wasn’t about him and it wasn’t about her — this was about the poor, innocent life they had so stupidly and cavalierly created together, and they both owed it to this child to redirect its life from its inauspicious beginning.

“Fine.” Smart enough to know when he was beaten, Nick turned around and stared out the windshield. “So where’s this piece of paper?”

“You have to come to the agency, because your signature has to be witnessed by a notary public.” Grace handed him one of Mrs. Olson’s business cards. “Here’s the address. You need to be there tomorrow afternoon at four.”

“Okay. That’s all I have to do?” In the back of his mind, he wondered if this was a setup, whether Grace’s dad would jump out from behind the door, flanked by her mom and the pastor of their church, ready to make Grace an honest woman and wreck his life.

As if she had read his mind, Grace said, “Don’t worry, it’s not a trap. After you sign, we’re done. I never want to speak to you again.”

If only she’d had a crystal ball back in July, had been able to see that Nick’s beauty was barely skin deep and that sex didn’t necessarily have anything to do with real love. As she got out of the car, Grace turned once more to look into those eyes that had wielded such power over her a few months earlier. Now they were just eyes.

At 4:15 the next day, Janet turned to Grace and said, “Do you think he lied to you, that he won’t show up?”

“He’ll be here. He knows I mean business. I kind of told him that if he didn’t sign it, no adoption agency would help us and we would have to keep the baby,” Grace answered.

“Brilliant. Veiled threats. Actual threats. Whatever it takes to get the job done.” When they first met, Janet had worried that Grace was so fragile she might fall apart under the stress of pregnancy and the adoption process, but she could see that under the delicate, uncertain façade, Grace was tough as nails.

As if on cue, the door to Janet’s office suite opened and Nick strolled in, his posture belying his discomfiture at being so deep in enemy territory. Glancing around quickly, even checking behind the door, he was relieved to see that Mr. Warren and Reverend Halvert were not present, wedding rings and Bible in hand. Maybe Grace wasn’t trying to ambush him after all. Janet stood and walked towards him slowly, hand out, as if approaching a wild animal.
No wonder Grace’s common sense went out the window
, she thought. Embarrassed that she could be so physically attracted to someone who could easily be her son, Janet hoped that the heat she was feeling wasn’t evident in her cheeks. Even though she knew what a lowlife he was, she couldn’t control the visceral response to his broad shoulders and sculpted features. Janet’s heart broke for poor Grace — she’d never stood a chance. But one thing was certain: it was going to be a beautiful baby.