I SNUCK AROUND BACK, THROUGH the snow, to Sadie’s window. Her light was on, even though by now it was close to midnight. My feet were freezing— I was still wearing my church outfit, and my shoes were still damp from climbing out of the ditch through the snow after the accident.
Her curtain pulled back, and she motioned me to the back door, through the kitchen. She was standing on the other side by the time I got there. We crept into her room, and once the door was safely closed, I hugged her close.
“It’s over, Chaz,” Sadie said, curling up on her bed in a little ball.
I stared at her. “What’s over?”
“The baby. It’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“It fell out.”
My eyes widened. “You had a miscarriage?”
She started crying then. “Yes,” she blubbered. “I was going to keep it, Chaz. We were going to keep it.”
“Are you okay, Sade? Do you need to go to the doctor?” I wondered how many rooms my family and friends could fill at Flanders Hospital tonight. “You need to see someone.” I took a breath. “How do you know?”
“I’ve gone through half a bag of those pads with wings since dinner. The extra-long kind my mom keeps in her bathroom. It’s a lot of blood, Chaz.” She sobbed. “My baby.”
Oh, God. I racked my brain, trying to figure out what to say. “Are you okay?” I asked again. I swallowed back the relief that was flooding over me, realizing it was all over. It made me sick that I felt the way I did, but things suddenly seemed so much simpler for Sadie.
She nodded, chewing her lower lip. “We were going to keep it, Chaz. I talked to Trav last night, and”—Sadie cut off again, choked up with tears—“he thought we could do it. He was actually excited about it. We talked about how we could live with his aunt down in Minneapolis, and I could still go to Macalester, and we would get married. This summer, maybe, after my birthday.”
I thought about how crazy that all sounded. Out loud I said, “I’m glad he was supportive. Trav’s a sweet guy.”
Sadie smiled sadly. “We had it all planned out.”
“I’m sure you did.” I walked over to sit next to her. It was terrible, what was happening to Sadie, but I couldn’t help but feel some fear about what she was saying. She’d been so excited about her dorm, and her plan to go to St. Louis for the architecture program. How do you move to another state with a three-year-old?
I wondered: Am I still supporting my best friend’s choices when I’m feeling so much relief about her need to choose being taken away?
“I’m glad you and Trav talked about it,” I said, trying to make my tone comforting. “Does he know this happened?”
“No.” Sadie said. “I can’t tell him on Christmas. He’ll be so disappointed.”
I watched her face, so solid in its resolve and confidence. I knew she was crumbling inside, so I said, “You know this isn’t your fault, right?”
She chewed her lip, biting back the tears. “I guess.”
“I feel like God is punishing me for going to the clinic when I found out. Like he knew I was thinking about getting rid of it, so he just took it away.” She cried into my shoulder, my sweet Sadie. “Took my baby away, because I didn’t deserve it. Didn’t want it enough. I got to keep it long enough to realize I wanted it, that we needed it, and then—”
“Oh, honey.” I held her; then I cried too. “Please don’t blame yourself—it doesn’t work that way. And Trav will understand.” We sat like that for a long time, me holding her, Sadie holding her stomach. Finally, I said, “We do need to bring you in to the doctor.”
She nodded. “I’ll have Trav bring me after Christmas. After I’ve told him—I want him to be there.”
“Okay,” I agreed. That seemed right. After all, if they were talking about marriage and kids and moving in together, they probably should do this kind of thing as a couple. As I thought about that, I truly realized—for the first time, I guess—that after high school things would change. I’d always known this in theory, but I guess I’d never really thought about it as a collection of specifics and how it would change things with my best friend.
Sadie would have Trav to help her through her issues. My parents would have each other. And I’d be jumping into a world full of strangers, forced to figure it all out from scratch. Much as I didn’t fit in here in Milton, at least I knew how everything worked. And everyone in town had known me so long that it didn’t really matter that they didn’t really know me. They knew enough about me that I wasn’t a total stranger here.
But out in the real world, away from here, with new people, I was going to have to open myself up, or I’d be alone. A stranger in a strange land. I suddenly thought of Sebastian, and how he’d been the first person aside from Sadie that I’d shared myself with—those deep-down, private parts of myself that I wanted to keep covered up. Then, instantly, I thought about his blow-off after church.
Even while I questioned our “connection,” I knew I had to give Sebastian a chance to explain. It was so tempting to close up, clamlike, and hide. But I’d felt safe with him, and I knew I needed to open myself up to disappointment in order to find out why he’d been brought into my life, to figure out what it meant to feel this way about someone. Sex wasn’t even driving this anymore.
Sadie sighed then, and from the pace of her breathing, I knew she was asleep. I seemed to have this effect on her lately. I lay her down against her pillow, flipped off the light, and settled in next to her for the night.
Lying there in the dark, I wondered if my parents were worried about me. I decided to text my dad—I owed it to him after taking off the way I had. Secrets and lies had gotten us nowhere. And after the accident he would probably worry even if I were curled up at the foot of his bed. I sent him a text letting him know I was at Sadie’s, that we were together tonight. I told him I was safe.
He texted back almost instantly to say: ok, mery Christmas pumplin. (Dad was still getting the hang of text messaging.)
Then I let myself drift off to sleep, and I prayed in my own special way for visions of sugarplums to dance in my head.
I woke with a throbbing pain shooting down my neck. When I stood up and looked in the mirror, I had a faint—but blossoming—bruise on my collarbone from where the seat belt had dug in against my shoulder during the impact of the accident. My eyes were sunken and dark from lack of sleep. I looked a mess.
Sadie stirred a few minutes after I woke up and told me I should stay for Christmas morning. Realizing I had nowhere else to go (Mom was sure to be at the hospital with Dad), I was grateful for the togetherness that Sadie’s family oozed. Even her brother, Jeremy, was charming, I realized, when you had no home to go to yourself, and any brother was better than no one at all.
They were all very sweet to me and gasped appropriately through my story of the accident. But I still felt out of place, like an imposter, when everyone started opening their presents and I was just sitting there. I was like a loaf of Nonna’s Christmas bread—the kind of thing people feel like they have to eat but no one really wants to waste the calories on.
Right after their big pancake breakfast I excused myself to shower, and I prepared to leave. That was when I realized I had no way to get out of there. I had hoped to sneak out unobtrusively, but someone was going to have to give me a lift. Sadie was still in her pajamas, but she threw on her parka and offered me a ride home anyway. “Okay,” I reluctantly agreed.
In the car she was very quiet. “I’m going to call Trav tonight. I’ll tell him what happened, and he can take me to the doctor tomorrow. I might have him bring me back to the clinic so the bill won’t show up on my parents’ insurance. Maybe I’ll talk to the doctor about going on the pill.”
“If you need me, just let me know. I’m yours.”
“Thanks.” She drove down my driveway and pulled up at the front door. “Can you believe how much has happened over break?”
I smiled at her—a natural reflex, not a reflection of any kind of pleasure or mirth—then shook my head. “Are you sure you’re gonna be okay?”
She nodded. “I’ll be fine. We’ve really changed, haven’t we? Look at us, dealing with big stuff.”
“Big stuff,” I echoed, then gave her a hug and went inside. As I walked up to the door, all I could think was … but have I changed?
Feeling the false smile still on my face—frighteningly similar to the one I’d seen on my mom so many times before—and the unspoken fear that was sinking over me while I outwardly “dealt with” everything going down around me, I knew I had the answer:
Not so much.