The text came while Hollis was sitting on a beanbag chair in Milo’s room, watching him log on to the Donor Progeny Project.
Your an ugly ho bag slut who dosnt no how to dress. U’l nevr hav a real boyfriend. Hes just using u. He’ll use u & then on trash day he’ll thro u out w/ the other trash.
Well, someone needed a grammar lesson. Or at least enough sense to turn on autocorrect.
“Who’s texting you?” JJ whipped his big golden-retriever head around as soon as he heard the ping. “Boyfriend?”
“Hardly.”
Hollis didn’t have a boyfriend. What Hollis had was Malory Keener and her size-zero wrecking crew, sending out their daily dose of love.
“No boyfriend?”
“No boyfriend.”
Gunnar did not qualify as a boyfriend. Hollis didn’t know what he qualified as, but it wasn’t that. Given the clearly delineated social strata of high school, it should have been statistically impossible for a girl like Hollis Darby-Barnes to hook up with a guy like Gunnar Mott. It was also quite a feat to steal the limelight away from a girl like Malory Keener. Superslut that Hollis was, she’d managed to accomplish both in a single night. This happened way back on December 4, but the ripple effect was lasting.
Hollis didn’t know why Gunnar kept coming back for more. Well, yes she did. Hollis’s body was on the Kardashian growth plan and Gunnar was a guy. The real question was why she kept going back for more. Sure, Malory deserved it. And sure, Gunnar was gorgeous, in a generic, pass-me-the-football kind of way. But Hollis didn’t love him or anything. They barely even talked. It was … hard to explain. But when Hollis was in the moment—when the two of them were under the bleachers, pressed up against the wrestling mats and it was just lips and tongues and hands and bellies and the smell of Big Red and boy sweat—she forgot about everything else. She forgot about Malory, she forgot about her mother, she forgot how angry and alone she felt. For a moment, she could disappear.
Maybe Gunnar wasn’t using her. Maybe she was using him.
“Hey,” Milo said. “I’m on.”
Hollis deleted the text with her thumb. She stood up and walked over to Milo’s desk.
“You want my seat?” JJ said, half rising.
“That’s okay.”
“Take it,” he said. “I insist.”
Hollis shook her head. “I like standing.”
She didn’t, actually. She liked sitting. And she was feeling lightheaded. Part of her wanted to run out of the room, but she wasn’t sure why. It’s not like her sperm donor was going to pop out of the computer and introduce himself. It wasn’t even about him. This was the Donor Progeny Project, after all. This was about the progeny.
Progeny. It was a weird word now that Hollis thought about it. Was it weirder or less weird than offspring?
“So here,” Milo said, pointing to a form on the screen, “is where I registered. I plugged in my name, my birthday, the city where I was born, the name of the cryobank, the donor number … and here…” He paused, opening a new tab. “is what I got back. Check it out.”
Hollis leaned in.
Welcome to the Donor Progeny Project!
She closed her eyes for a second. Her heart was thumping so hard. She put her hand on the back of Milo’s chair to steady herself.
“You okay?” JJ said.
“Why wouldn’t I be okay?”
Hollis kept reading.
Our aim at the DPP is to assist you in making mutually desired contact with your genetic half siblings and to facilitate donor family connections. According to our records, sperm donations from Donor #9677 of the Twin Cities Cryolab have resulted in five births to date. What does this mean? This means that you should take a breath.
“Holy crap,” Hollis breathed.
“I know, right?” Milo turned to look at her. He was half smiling. There was a muffin crumb stuck to the corner of his mouth.
“‘Whatever you are feeling in this moment is completely normal,’” JJ read aloud. “‘Whatever you decide to do with this information, if anything, is up to you. There is no ‘right’”—he paused, scratching quote marks in the air—“‘course of action.’”
Hollis looked at JJ, nodding stupidly. Even though she’d been thinking about it for thirty-six hours now, the magnitude of this moment—of actually being on the Donor Progeny Project website, of possibly finding her other half siblings—was still hard to comprehend.
“So?” Milo said.
“So,” Hollis said.
“Do we want to post something?”
“Post something?”
“Everything’s anonymous. If we post under Twin Cities Cryolab, our message gets relayed to whatever email accounts they have on record for our match families, but it uses a ghost email address for the sender, like Craigslist.”
“Oh.” Hollis nodded like she understood. “Uh-huh.”
“That way it’s up to us whether or not to share our contact information, depending on our comfort level. Assuming we get any response at all. Which we may not.”
“Right.” Hollis nodded.
“It would be so flipping cool if you did, though,” JJ said.
“It would,” Milo said. He looked at Hollis. “What do you think?”
Hollis hesitated. Her heart was beating hard. The blood that was rushing through her ears was so loud. “Okay.”
“‘Okay,’ you want to post something?”
“Okay.”
“Are you sure?” Milo said.
“Yeah.”
“Because … no pressure. I don’t want to force you into anything.”
“You’re not,” Hollis said. “Let’s do it.”
* * *
Dear Donor Siblings
(and/or Donor Siblings’ Parents),
We’re not sure exactly what to say so we’re just going to throw this out there and see what happens. Our names are Milo (age 15) and Hollis (age 14). We met for the first time 7 years ago when our mothers discovered we were half siblings both conceived using donor sperm from the Twin Cities Cryolab in Minneapolis. Our donor was # 9677. We are hoping to make contact with our other half siblings. We welcome anything you would like to share with us. Ummm … not sure what else to write … Post back if you get this. Thanks!
—Milo and Hollis
With his right hand wrapped in frozen peas, it took Milo a long time to type. When he finally finished, he looked at Hollis. “Your turn.”
“What?”
“Click Submit.”
So Hollis reached over Milo’s shoulder and clicked the mouse.
“‘Congratulations!’” JJ read aloud. “‘Your message has been added to the DPP database!’”
The three of them stared at the screen in silence. Who knows how long they sat there? Two minutes? Ten? At some point JJ started crunching on a piece of bacon, and Hollis felt her stomach clench. Was it hunger? Nerves? Regret? She didn’t know what she was feeling. There was some quote from The Great Gatsby, but she couldn’t remember the exact words. It was Nick Carraway feeling excited and disgusted at the same time.
“Hey.” JJ turned to them, his expression earnest. “We should go bowling.”
“Bowling?” Hollis looked at him blankly.
“It’ll take your mind off things while you wait.”
“There’s that place on Thirty-Seventh,” Milo offered. “Or there’s Strike 10, on Strickland…”
“I’m thinking of a different place,” JJ said.
“Where?”
“My basement.”
* * *
“You have a bowling alley in your house?” Frankie gaped at JJ.
He shrugged. “My dad likes to bowl.”
Hollis, Milo, and JJ were standing in the living room while Hollis’s mother and Suzanne lounged on the couch with their coffee mugs and Frankie launched her interrogation.
“Will your father be home?” she asked JJ.
“He’s in Budapest.”
“What about your mother?”
“She’s also in Budapest.”
Frankie turned to Milo, shaking her head. “No. No way.”
“Ma. Come on.”
“Maxime will be there,” JJ said.
“And who is Maxime?”
“My au pair. He lives with us.”
Hollis nearly choked. “You have a manny?”
“What’s a manny?” Leigh asked from the couch.
“A male nanny.”
“He’s not a manny,” JJ said. “He’s an au pair.”
And Suzanne piped in, “I believe the preferred term is child care provider.”
Milo grinned at JJ. “I prefer manny.”
“You’re just jealous. Maxime teaches me French. He’s trente-trois ans and très responsable.”
Hollis was impressed by JJ’s French, but Frankie, apparently, was not. Her mouth was set in a grim line. “What is Maxime’s phone number?”
Wow, Hollis thought as Frankie proceeded to get on the horn with JJ’s Belgian manny to check out his story. Holy helicopter mom. Frankie seemed satisfied with whatever answer she got, but as soon as she hung up the phone, she went right back to firing questions. How would they get to JJ’s? How long were they planning to stay there? What would they do for lunch? Did Milo have his EpiPen? Did Hollis and JJ know how to use an EpiPen? Frankie opened a drawer in the kitchen, took out an EpiPen, and started giving them a tutorial. “First, you pop the cap. Then you slide it out. And—see this orange tip? It needs to be pointing down…” She went through the whole spiel, even grabbing Milo’s thigh to show Hollis and JJ how to massage the injection site.
“Ma,” Milo groaned. “Come on.”
And Suzanne said, “Give the kid a break, Frank. Let him go have some fun.”
Frankie turned to Suzanne, her expression inscrutable. Hollis was no relationship expert, so she wasn’t exactly qualified to interpret the looks Milo’s moms were exchanging, but there was definitely tension.
“Leigh?” Frankie shifted her gaze to Hollis’s mother. “Are you comfortable with this?”
“Sure. Hollis has a cell phone.”
“Thanks, Mom,” Hollis said, although she had no idea why she was thanking her mother. Leigh ran a loose ship. She treated Hollis like an adult. Last night, when the two of them were lying on the pullout couch in the living room, it struck Hollis that she couldn’t remember a time when she and her mother had slept side by side. Not even when she was little. Not even when she had a bad dream. It was Pam whose name Hollis had called out in the middle of the night—Pam who had crawled into Hollis’s bed and sung to her until she fell asleep. Not that Hollis mentioned this to her mother. No way. Leigh was in too good a mood last night—relaxed, probably from the wine she’d drunk at dinner. The last thing Hollis wanted was to turn on the waterworks.
Come to think of it, her mother looked pretty relaxed this morning, too, chilling on the couch with Suzanne, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, hair loose, sipping from her coffee mug. Which begged the question, what was she really drinking from that coffee mug?
“Grab some money from my purse,” Leigh said to Hollis. “I think it’s on one of the stools in the kitchen.”
“Thanks.”
“Well then,” Frankie said. “I guess you’re going bowling.” She forced a smile. “Have fun.”
“Love you, Ma,” Milo said, giving her a quick hug. “I’ll call you when we get there.”
“I love you, too.”
Milo hugged Suzanne.
Hollis, feeling like a bad daughter, hugged her mother.
JJ, inexplicably and somewhat comically, walked around the room, hugging all three moms.
Finally, Milo, JJ, and Hollis stepped out the front door of the apartment building and into the world, where the sky was clear and the air was crisp and the tiny blue ice-melting pellets crunched beneath their feet. From behind them, Hollis could hear Frankie’s disembodied voice calling, “Put on your hat! It’s cold out there!”
* * *
JJ’s basement was all shiny floors and vintage bowling signs suspended from the ceiling. Bowl-a-Rama. Lucky Strikes. Hi Roller. The wood-paneled walls were covered in bowling memorabilia: framed satin jackets with names embroidered on the lapels, championship patches, black-and-white photographs of old-time bowlers. Even the air smelled authentic, like popcorn and cigar smoke and feet.
“Wow,” Hollis breathed.
JJ flicked a switch and the room filled with disco lights. “Cool, huh?”
“This is more than cool,” Milo said, looking around. “This is a nostalgia piece. This is Americana. This”—Milo lowered himself onto a cracked leather bench, shaking his head in amazement—“is a movie set.”
“Didn’t you see it on New Year’s Eve?”
“I was upstairs the whole time. On your computer, remember?”
“Right,” JJ said.
Which brought them full circle, back to the Donor Progeny Project, which was the one thing they were trying to distract themselves from by going bowling.
“Hé là, JJ.”
Maxime, JJ’s skinny, scruffy-chinned Belgian manny who had greeted them at the door when they first arrived, suddenly materialized with a tray of food.
“Oh, hey, Max,” JJ said.
“Vous voulez manger ou quoi?”
Hollis, who had five years of French under her belt, recognized the expression. You want to eat or what?
“Mais oui,” JJ said, taking the tray. “Merci, Max.”
“Pas de prob, mon homme.” Maxime gave JJ a fist bump, which didn’t seem very Belgian to Hollis.
“Merci, Max,” Milo said.
The manny cocked his chin. “Later,” he said, and sauntered out of the room in his skinny jeans.
JJ flashed a grin as he slid onto the bench beside Milo. “He’ll be playing Flames of Vengeance until dinner.” Then JJ reached into the chest pocket of his flannel shirt and pulled out a joint.
“Please tell me that’s not what I think it is,” Milo said.
“Okay, I won’t.”
“Frankie will kill me if I come home smelling like weed.”
“She won’t kill you,” JJ said mildly, rummaging through his jeans for a lighter. “She’ll kill me.”
“Whatever,” Milo said, waving a hand through the air. “Just smoke in the corner so I don’t reek.”
“Relax.” JJ got up and walked a few paces to a Formica counter. He reached over the top and came up with an aerosol can. “Spritz yourself with this before you leave.”
“Bowling shoe deodorizer?”
“Febreze.” JJ spritzed the air a few times. “Long-lasting freshness.”
Hollis had been staring in disbelief this whole time, not because she’d never seen a joint before but because JJ didn’t seem like the type. “You’re a pothead?”
JJ lit up. “I’m not a pothead.”
“A stoner then.”
He sucked hard on the joint, held his breath, then let it out slowly. “I wouldn’t paint myself with that brush.” He turned to Milo. “Would you paint me with that brush?”
“You do smoke a lot of weed, man.”
JJ shrugged. “I like it.”
“Numbing,” Hollis said.
JJ cocked an eyebrow at her. “Excuse me?”
“Numbing,” she repeated. “N-U-M-B-I-N-G.”
“I know how to spell.”
“Numbing is like armor,” Hollis explained. “It keeps you from feeling. Pot, Twinkies, alcohol—they’re all the same thing. After Pam died, my mom started drinking wine.”
Hollis wasn’t sure how much her mother used to drink or whether she was ever technically an alcoholic. All she remembered was Leigh filling a glass every night in front of the fireplace. She remembered how the wine always seemed to make her mother cry. Drink, cry, drink, cry, drink, cry. And then she remembered the morning when her mother suddenly announced at breakfast, “I’m not going to drink anymore.”
Hollis was ten. Maybe eleven. It was around the same time when Leigh started attending the Parents Without Partners grief group in the basement of the Congregational church. Every time the group met, Hollis would have to stay with their neighbor, Mrs. Brennigan, whose house smelled like cabbage.
“I’ve been numbing my feelings with alcohol,” Hollis’s mother announced that morning. “I need to walk through the pain. I need to let grief in the front door.” More feeling, less numbing: this was her mother’s new mantra. From that moment forward—until last night, anyway—Hollis hadn’t seen her touch a drop of alcohol.
“Who’s Pam?” JJ said.
Hollis shook her head. “That’s not the point. The point is—”
“Pam was her mom.”
Hollis shot Milo a look. “She wasn’t my mom. She was my mother’s partner. We weren’t even biologically related.”
“I’m not biologically related to my parents,” JJ said, “but I still refer to them as Mom and Dad.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“They adopted you.”
“So?”
“Pam couldn’t adopt me.”
“Why not?”
Hollis felt herself getting agitated. “Because she and my mother weren’t married. Because she had no legal rights. Who the hell cares? She wasn’t my mom and that wasn’t even my point.” Hollis waved her arm in JJ’s direction. “You’re numbing was my point, okay? Jesus!”
JJ held out the joint. “Want a toke?”
Hollis stared at him. “No, I do not want a toke.”
“It’ll make you feel better.”
Hollis snorted. “Now you sound like a drug dealer.”
“That’s hurtful,” JJ said. “That hurts me right here.” He patted his heart.
“No wonder you’re numbing,” Milo said, “with Hollis saying such hurtful things.”
Hollis rolled her eyes. “Shut up. Let’s bowl.”