Mom and Dad have been infuriatingly respectful about Abbi’s wishes not to talk about the father of her baby. Just once, when we were watching TV, my mom paused a commercial to say, “I know you said you don’t want to talk about it. But the baby’s father … is he going to be involved? Financially, I mean? It’s important to have those things sorted out.”
Abbi just pursed her lips and stared at the paused Swiffer commercial. “No. No, he is not.”
Mom nodded and pressed play. But that’s just how she is—all “Abbi can talk about things in her own time,” and “We need to create a loving and supportive environment,” and “Jolie, don’t pressure your sister to talk about her experience before she’s ready.”
Frankly, I don’t understand how you could not be curious about something like that. It’s just weird to let Abbi walk around with a growing belly and not know where it came from. I mean, if she was wearing a new shirt, I would ask her where she got it and she would be like, “I ordered it from J.Crew” and then we would all go on with our lives. But I’m not allowed to ask her where the HUMAN GROWING INSIDE HER BODY came from?
It’s all seriously screwed up.
It’s not like I haven’t tried to weasel some information out of her. I’ve tried subtle questions and little hints, but Abbi is impervious to all my detective attempts. It doesn’t help that our sister bond means she usually knows what I’m thinking before I do.
But I’ve seen a lot of British detective shows on Netflix, and I’ve learned that people often give themselves away with small details. Abbi may not be a murder suspect, but I know that eventually she’ll let something slip.
On Saturday Mom, Abbi, and I go out shopping for a crib to put in the nursery, which is just our old guest room. This isn’t really an outing that demanded my presence, but any trip with Abbi typically involves at least two stops at fast-food drive-throughs, and I could really use a Frosty.
First we hit up Buy Buy Baby, where Mom mutters something about capitalism before she totally fawns over the baby-animal mobiles. That’s basically my mom in a nutshell: Yes, she has a Le Tigre T-shirt, but damn if she isn’t excited about a Bath & Body Works candle sale.
I stick close to Mom as she checks out a bunch of cribs that all look pretty much the same to me. Abbi is off somewhere doing who knows what—maybe falling asleep in a rocking chair. Every time a salesclerk approaches us, I suck in my stomach, afraid they’ll think I’m the pregnant one.
“I’m just not sure which of these will look better with our dresser,” Mom says, looking back and forth between two cribs that seem to be exactly the same other than a $100 price difference.
“This one,” I say, pointing to the cheaper one. “Understated, yet classic. Sophisticated, yet playful. Elegant, yet—”
“Okay, okay.” Mom waves her hands. “I get that you don’t care about this. But this is your sister’s baby, and it needs somewhere to sleep.”
“You mean we can’t just pull out a dresser drawer?” I ask.
Abbi appears from behind a rack of diaper bags and dumps an armful of onesies into the cart.
“How is it so expensive to dress such a tiny person?” she asks.
“These prices are highway robbery,” Mom says, “and … oh! This giraffe print is adorable!”
“Oh geez,” Abbi says. “I have to pee.”
“Again?” I ask.
“In case you didn’t notice, there’s a baby pressing into my bladder.” She thrusts her purse at me. “Hold this. I’ll be right back.”
I pull her purse over my shoulder and wander away from Mom so she can’t ask me any more questions about cribs. But as it turns out, there isn’t a whole lot to interest me in Buy Buy Baby since they don’t exactly have a juniors’ section.
I’m walking aimlessly through a labyrinth of crib mobiles when Abbi’s phone buzzes. I ignore it. It’s probably one of the endless notifications she gets from whatever baby app she uses. Alert! Your baby is the size of a grapefruit. Alert! Your baby is the size of a butternut squash. Alert! Why do we compare babies to food? That’s, like, super weird, right?
I’m fending off an offer of help from yet another Buy Buy Baby employee who surely wonders what a nonpregnant teenage girl is doing in the store when Abbi’s phone buzzes again. And again. And again.
I dig through her purse. It must be Mom trying to find out where I am, since she knows I have Abbi’s bag.
But when I look at the screen, I don’t see texts from Mom. I see several texts from someone named John.
Please just answer me.
I want to know you and the baby are okay.
I’m sorry.
I toss the phone back into Abbi’s purse like I’m playing a particularly revealing and not-fun game of Hot Potato.
I’ve never met John. I’ve never even heard her mention anyone named John. But clearly he knows Abbi pretty well—enough to know about her and the baby. And, if he’s asking about the baby, I can probably assume he had a hand in creating the baby, as well.
I didn’t even have to go full detective and I already found out something pretty big about the father of Abbi’s baby. But I don’t feel triumphant—I just feel freaked out.
“Hey.”
I spin around. “I didn’t see anything!”
I come face-to-face with yet another Buy Buy Baby employee. (Seriously, how many people work here? How is our country in a perpetual employment crisis when this one location of Buy Buy Baby is employing upwards of six hundred people?) She widens her eyes.
“You didn’t see … what? Are you looking for anything specific?” she asks, gesturing toward the mobiles.
I let out a breath. “I’m just browsing. I know I look really sketchy right now but I promise I’m not stealing anything.”
She looks even more confused as her eyes dart back and forth between my face and Abbi’s purse, which thankfully is too small to hold even a single mobile. “That’s … good?”
“Okay, bye!” I shout, and power walk back to find my mom. Abbi’s back from the restroom and inspecting a crib like it contains the secrets of the universe. I hand her the purse without saying anything, and she doesn’t even look at me when she says, “Thanks.”
I’m glad, because one look at me and I know she’d see every question in my mind written across my face. Questions like: Who the hell is John?
* * *
“Explain why you want to do this again?”
I look up at Derek from my perch on our front porch stairs, where I’m tying the pair of sneakers I only bust out for gym class. “Because I want to prove that I can.”
“Okay,” Derek says slowly. “But you have a pretty serious history of inactivity. Legendary, in fact. Remember that time we tried to go hiking and you just sat down in that cave and said you were making a new life there?”
“In my defense,” I say, standing up and lifting my chin, “it was a very nice cave. Spacious.”
“Right. Well, running is a lot harder than a leisurely half-mile walk through the woods.”
I shrug. “Tomato, to-mah-to.”
Derek winces. “Okay, I’ll try one more time to talk you out of this … Are you sure you don’t want to start more slowly? Like, walk for a few minutes, then run for a minute?”
I shake my head vigorously. “Derek! I don’t have time to build up endurance! I could be—”
I’m about to mention my possibly impending death when I remember that I’m not supposed to talk about this around Derek. But of course he knows what I was about to say.
He stretches his legs and says firmly, “Yeah, okay, but you’re not going to die. You’re just going to get surgery, eat smoothies for six weeks, and then be able to chew better.”
And turn into a completely different person, I add silently.
“Whatever. Let’s go. I’m ready to run!”
Derek bounces on the balls of his feet. “Just try to keep up with me, all right? I’ll take it slowly.”
“Don’t patronize me,” I say. “You’re not Usain Bolt. I’m pretty sure I can handle this.”
“It’s not really about speed,” Derek says. “It’s more about endurance—”
“Ugh, stop explaining! Let’s just go!”
And we’re off, running side by side down the sidewalk. It’s hard to explain to Derek why, exactly, I want to do this, because I don’t entirely know myself. I guess part of it is that I always thought I would become a runner. Like there was this ideal athletic version of myself inside, just waiting to lace up her sneakers and show herself. Never mind that I almost passed out when we ran the mile in gym class. Never mind that I wrinkled my nose in disgust every time pre-pregnancy Abbi attempted to get me to go to spinning class with her. Never mind that my favorite form of exercise up until now has been channel surfing.
I just know that there’s a perfect me out there, the one that wakes up with the sun and hits the pavement, coming home sweaty but refreshed, saying something like, Wow, it’s a hot one out there. And perfect me is also a make-out master, is brave enough to jump off cliffs, has read all the classics in the English canon, and feels comfortable when people look at her.
I don’t necessarily have all the time in the world to complete my goals. I think about when Derek’s dad died and his mom had to get rid of his stuff. Derek didn’t talk about it much, but I was over a lot so I saw how it went down. They wanted to keep everything, but it’s not like they could keep a closet full of his clothes or his bottle of contact solution. But the most heartbreaking part for me was all the reminders that he wasn’t finished. He had left a half-finished crossword puzzle sitting on the coffee table. There was an open container of yogurt in the fridge. When he went to work that day, he thought he’d be coming back to figure out twelve across and eat some Chobani. He didn’t think that hospital’s hallway would be the last thing he’d ever see.
I blink back tears as I pump my arms and feel the sidewalk under my feet. I just don’t want to have unfinished business before I go into surgery. You never know, do you? Maybe I’ll become beautiful and be able to achieve my perfect final form … but either way, I want to make sure I don’t leave behind any half-finished crossword puzzles. And I wish I could explain all of this to Derek, but I know he would just change the subject and start talking about climate change or whatever his latest podcast episode is on.
“Doing okay?”
I give Derek a probably not-all-that-convincing thumbs-up. My depressing reverie distracted me from running for a few blocks, but now that I realize what we’re doing … well, it kind of sucks. Actually, it really sucks. My lungs are burning, and I’m convinced my insides might be trying to make a break for it. My stomach is cramping, and I’m really regretting having eaten an entire plate full of Dad’s Sunday-morning blueberry pancakes. And my knees are on fire … are your knees supposed to hurt when you’re sixteen?
“Great!” I wheeze.
“Because we can slow down, walk, take a break…”
“No breaks!” I try to shout, but it comes out a little less persuasive. I pick up the pace. The faster I can do this, the faster we’ll be done, and the faster I can check this bad idea off my list.
I look at Derek through my labored breathing. He’s doing this easily—duh, he does cross-country, so a mile is like crossing the street for him. He’s staring straight ahead, his brows knitted in concentration, and I wonder what he’s thinking about. Derek and I are more about jokes than we are about having deep heart-to-hearts, so I’ve never spent all that much time thinking about what actually goes on inside his head while he runs.
So I ask him.
“What do you think about when you run?” I try to ask it casually, but it comes out as more of a gasp.
I expect him to think about it a little, but instead he immediately says, “SAT flash cards.”
I huff. “What?”
“I go over SAT vocab words in my head,” he says easily. “Aberration: a state that differs from the norm!”
“Are you serious?” I wheeze. “You’re even studying when you run?”
“Demagogue: a leader who seeks support by appealing to passions rather than logic! Expunge: remove! Munificent: generous!”
“Oh my God! You’re the world’s biggest nerd!”
“Fractious: easily annoyed!”
“I feel particularly fractious right now,” I say.
He turns his head slightly and smiles at me. My heart, acting of its own accord, skips. And not even because I have almost certainly overexerted myself and I’m going to be paying for it later. No, this was the sort of skip my heart does when it sees a hot guy, I realize with shock.
Which is understandable, I remind myself. Derek is hot now. It’s fine to admit that, to admit that his eyes are a very comforting shade of brown, that the firmness of his chest is not terrible, that his facial features aren’t unattractive. It doesn’t mean anything if I objectively deduce that my best friend is a good-looking guy. In fact, it would be weirder if I didn’t admit it.
“Your face is alarmingly red,” he says, not even struggling to catch his breath.
I don’t say anything back. Mostly because I physically can’t, but also because I’m afraid of what will come out of my mouth. I mean, what am I going to say? When did you get so cute?
But I don’t get the chance to wonder about it anymore because, while I’m distracted, the toe of my shoe catches on a crack on the sidewalk. My body launches itself into the air and hits the sidewalk, hard.
“Urrrrgggh,” I groan, slowly rolling over and sitting up.
“Jolie!” Derek skids to a stop and kneels beside me. “Are you okay?”
“Never better.” I wince. “What, does this look like it hurts?”
My knee is all bloody and I’m pretty sure there’s gravel stuck in it. Derek gently touches my leg, checking out the wound, and I feel an electric shock go through my body. Which is ridiculous … Derek and I have touched a million times before. Punches on the arm, hugs for pictures, my feet on his lap during movie night. A million little touches that add up to nothing but one lifelong friendship.
But there’s something about this. I watch his face as he looks at my knee. We’re so close I can feel his breath on my leg.
Stop it, Jolie, I tell myself. Derek would never like you anyway, even if this was some sort of alternate universe where it made sense for you to have a crush on your best friend. He wouldn’t ever like you and then you’d ruin your friendship right before your death and he’d have to give a really awkward eulogy, knowing you went to the grave having unrequited feelings for him. Is that what you want?
No, I decide.
Derek’s phone buzzes, and he pulls it out of his pocket. In the second before he picks up, I see Melody’s face pop up on-screen. I’ve seen the picture before and I’ve never really paid attention, but now it hits me: She’s pretty. Beautiful. Curly hair that cascades to her shoulders, flawless skin, a perfect smile. There’s nothing wrong with her. She’s certainly not having surgery to fix her face.
Derek answers, taking his hand off my knee and stepping away from me. “Hey,” he says with a softness in his voice. And, I hate to admit it, but I’m annoyed. Annoyed that phone calls from Melody, who I’ve never even met, are always interrupting us. And, okay, I’m also a little annoyed that he’s over there leaning against a tree talking to her all quietly about who knows what, and that there’s a whole side of Derek that I don’t get to see.
I push myself up off the sidewalk and try to hold in my groan. I certainly don’t want perfect Melody to hear the tortured screams of the girl who couldn’t run a mile without injuring herself.
But it doesn’t matter. Derek’s walked a few steps away from me and is talking in a low voice, so I can’t even hear what he’s saying. He hangs up and walks back toward me.
“So, I hate to say I told you so…,” he starts.
“This has nothing to do with my athleticism,” I say. “This was a freak accident. It could’ve happened to anyone.”
“That sidewalk had it out for you,” he says with a smirk.
“Exactly.” I brush some dirt off myself. “So I feel fine, but I thought you might need a break, so let’s walk back home.”
“Yeah,” Derek says, “I am exhausted from taking a leisurely stroll for not even a mile. I’d better walk back. Wouldn’t want to hurt myself.”
“Glad we agree.”
“Maybe we could even call Evelyn to pick us up,” he says. “I’m not sure I can make it.”
“Shut up.” I push him off the sidewalk, and it feels totally normal to touch him again. The electric shock was just a momentary lapse, I tell myself. A temporary delusion caused by physical exertion. It won’t happen again.