19.
The tangle of Mom’s belts hung off my desk chair when I woke up the next morning. A couple of them were on the floor. Mom loves her clothes and preserves them fastidiously in her closet like museum pieces. My first thought was actually to get up, roll the belts and put them on my desk before she saw them like that. Then I remembered the previous night and wondered if I could just close my eyes again and have everything end right there. I felt like someone had run a bulldozer over my body and wondered how I was ever going to get out of bed, get clothes on, deal with Mom in the kitchen and get out the door to school. I remembered Dad’s face when I went back into the dining room and told him that Will had gotten sick and that I was going to take him home. He’d sat back and laid his dessert fork down as if he were trying not to wake someone, even though the room was ringing with the sound of silverware through the drone of voices. “Okay,” he’d said flatly, taking a sip from his sweaty water glass, and I could read his thoughts like a news feed running across his face: Here we go again, Thea’s up to her old tricks—she’s drunk and her boyfriend’s drunk and she’s let me down once again. I’ll let her go before she embarrasses me any further.
I told Mom that the party was fun and that Will loved my dress and that I was late for zero period, slathering some peanut butter on a piece of toast I knew I would throw into the junk-mail can in the lobby.
I somehow made it to school, to my spot on the floor in zero-period gym as Mr. Boone paced and talked about muscle recovery.
“When you work a muscle group to its maximum capacity, they need a period of time to reoxygenate,” Mr. Boone said, weaving around us like we were cones on a road.
The reality that I wouldn’t ever again lie in Will’s bed at Columbia and see that Nerf basketball hoop hanging off his door, that I wouldn’t get to touch his hair, flatten it out along the back of his neck, was starting to hit home. I realized I understood what the expression “hot tears” meant. There were so many of them going down my face, I gave up wiping them away. Wiping called attention to them. I didn’t feel like dying. I felt dead already. Will hadn’t abandoned just me, but also the beautiful, mysterious thing growing inside me that we had made together. I remember watching the track team come panting through the big metal doors from their run and having the feeling that the level of pain I was experiencing was way more than I bargained for. It was pain I didn’t know existed. Mr. Boone passed by my spot and looked straight at me for a moment, and it was almost like he knew why I was crying, but he did a stand-up job of pretending nothing was wrong. I wondered over and over why I’d done what I’d done and what I was going to do next.
But then later, as I went outside for lunch, there was Will. He stood in the middle of the sidewalk with his arms folded across his chest. It was freezing cold and it reminded me of the first day I met him. He was standing by himself then, too.
“I’m so hungover.” Will smiled, shaking his head. “Staying up all night didn’t help.”
“Do you want to go somewhere?” I asked. I saw Vanessa walking toward us in her maroon down jacket, but she saw my face and turned and went around the corner. I hadn’t even told her yet about the night before.
“Tell me what you were thinking, Thea,” he said.
“I-it was just … avoidance,” I stammered. “I was avoiding it. I thought I’d go back when I was ready.”
“You were scared,” he said.
“I was scared,” I repeated. “I am scared.”
“What are you scared of?”
“I’m scared of doing it, I’m scared of not doing it,” I said, looking down at my knapsack slumped at my feet on the curb. “I don’t know what to do.”
“What are you more scared of?”
“Getting an abortion,” I said. “I don’t know why.”
“Shit, Thea,” he said, setting his hands rigidly on his hips. “I wish you’d just told me. You could have told me you were screwed up about it. We could have talked about it. What did you think I’d do?”
“It’s lame, I know,” I said. “It’s like I couldn’t do anything. Except let another day pass. In a weird way, I know it’s pathetic and awful, but I liked that it was getting bigger.”
He looked at me, his good eye boring into mine. “You actually want to go through with this,” he said slowly. “You want to bring a baby into the world. A child.”
I love the sound of your voice, I thought. Your voice is my drug. All I’ll ever need. “It’s you, you know, how could I not?” I said, barely getting the words out. “It’s you.”
More staring. A gust of wind blew our hair up.
“What are you thinking?” I asked.
“I’m thinking, holy shit.” Mr. Plumb, a history teacher, walked up to us, eyeing Will in his big, black down parka.
“Well, if it isn’t …,” Mr. Plumb said, not finishing the sentence.
“Hello, Mr. Plumb.” Will mustered a quick smile.
“The girl’s reeled you back here, eh?” Mr. Plumb smiled, his crazy eyes bulging out of their sockets. “Where you at now?”
“Very nice, very nice,” Mr. Plumb said, slapping Will on the back. “Well, I’m going to get a slice. Be a good boy, now.”
“I will,” Will muttered.
“All I can think is, Why not,” I said. “Do you know what I mean?”
“No.” He sighed, running his thumb over my palm. “But I can try, I guess.”
“You can’t do it just because you love me,” I said.
“There’s no other reason, Thea, sorry.”
We both turned to stare at the big double doors at the top of the steps, watching as kids streamed into the street, chatty and enervated in the gray midday light. I wondered how close Will was to walking away.
“My parents are going to freak out,” he said quietly.
“What do you think they’ll do?” I asked, not sure what direction he was going in yet.
“Hell if I know.” We looked at each other and hugged, and I imagined us in one of those telling soap-opera hugs, with him frowning behind me without me realizing.