The pain comes in waves. So does the blood—so much blood. My once-sky-blue sheets are now ax-murderer red.
There is a knock on my bedroom door. Before I can make myself answer, my mother is beside my bed. “Ed!” she screams. “Call an ambulance!”
I can’t wait for it. I pass out, and the first responders arrive without my noticing. I miss the ride to the hospital too—the reckless weaving through the streets, the sirens wailing and lights flashing, the other vehicles diving for the curb to get out of the way. Inside the ambulance, the paramedics do whatever it is paramedics do, and though I am the one they are doing it to, I am unaware.
I don’t remember arriving at the hospital either—only the vague blip of lights whizzing past overhead and voices talking around me. I wonder if I’m dying, and then I lose consciousness again.
When I truly wake up, I have to blink the world into focus. I am lying in a hospital bed, looking up at the ceiling. I turn my head and see that my arm is attached to some kind of machine. On my other side, a pouch of clear liquid hangs from a pole. A long, skinny tube snakes its way from it to my wrist. I’m groggy, and my stomach hurts. I feel like a wrung-out dishrag.
My mother is there. She jumps up from a chair and presses her worried face against mine.
“Oh, Emma. Emma,” she says, clutching my hand. Finally she pulls away and looks at me hard. I can tell she is trying to understand.
Then I see my father standing at the end of the bed. He’s holding two cardboard cups of coffee. He sets them down on the tray table stretching across my legs and hurries to the other side of the bed. Ignoring the monitor on my finger, he takes my hand in both of his.
“Oh, baby,” he says. “Thank god you’re all right. Your mother and I have been worried sick.”
I smile. At least, I try to. But the muscles in my face have seized up, and nothing much happens. “Sorry,” I say. The word comes out as a croak, so I try again. The second effort is no better than the first.
My father pats my hand, as if to say he understands, but I know he doesn’t.
“You women and your female troubles,” he says awkwardly.
He has no clue.
But my mother does. Though she smiles at my dad’s lame joke, her grip on my hand tightens. Oh yeah. She knows.
The doctor keeps me in the hospital overnight, but I am released the next morning. My parents take me home.
I enter my bedroom cautiously, half expecting to see the previous day’s horror. But there’s not a trace. My mother has taken care of it, and the room is as pristine as it has been my whole life. It looks exactly the same—right down to the blue sheets on the bed. New ones. The old ones will be in the trash. Not even my mother could clean away that much blood. And she would want all evidence of what happened gone.
It is a quiet day. My parents and I retreat to our corners, avoiding awkward conversation. My mother stays in the kitchen with her pots and pans, ignoring the fact that she’s making enough food to feed the neighborhood. My father holes up in his man cave, watching football with the sound turned way down. I hide in my bedroom, pretending to read.
I’ve just lived through a six-week nightmare, capped off with twenty-four hours of pure hell. Even so, I am still having trouble getting my head around everything. This kind of stuff doesn’t happen to girls like me.
Except that it did.
I’m barely three months into eleventh grade, and the year is already unforgettable—for all the wrong reasons.
It started when Jen and I both made the senior girls’ volleyball team. The two of us have been joined at the hip since kindergarten—Brownies, gymnastics, tennis lessons, summers at the lake, lemonade stands—we’ve done all of it together. We even kid around that one day we’ll marry twins and have a double wedding. So we kind of expected that if one of us made the team, the other would too.
For a while it was great. The schedule for the senior girls was the same as for the senior boys, so game days were like a big party. After the matches everyone would meet up at a fast-food place for a few laughs before heading home.
Then something happened. Jen and I both fell for Ross Schroeder. He’s the power hitter on the boys’ volleyball team. And he’s in twelfth grade. He has it all—a jock with good looks, smarts and personality. Every girl in school thinks he’s hot, so why not Jen and me?
At first we laughed about it. I mean, it figures we would fall for the same guy, right? However, it soon became clear that neither one of us was going to back off. That’s when things got a little tense, especially when Ross was around. But the day he picked up the tab for my food at the restaurant, our friendship was over.
Jen and I were standing in line behind him.
“Root beer, not cola—right?” he said to me.
My stomach flipped. I was flattered that he’d noticed what drink I liked. I nodded.
“Fries?”
I smiled and nodded again, reaching into my pocket for money. He shook his head.
“This one’s on me, Emma.”
“Thanks,” I said. I waited for him to ask Jen what she wanted.
When he didn’t, I could almost see the wall going up between us. She didn’t even sit with Ross and me, and as soon as she was done eating, she left.
Despite having the coolest guy in school all to myself, I felt like a heavy rock had just dropped into my stomach.
“There goes my ride,” I said, as I watched Jen’s car pull out of the parking lot. “I better call my dad.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Ross said. “I can give you a lift home.”
A quiet tap on my bedroom door jerks me out of the memory. I look up from the page I’ve been staring at ever since I opened the book.
My mother pokes her head into the room. “Supper’s on the table,” she says. “Lasagna—your favorite.” Then her head disappears. But in a second it’s back again. “Oh, and Emma, I think it would be best if you stayed home from school tomorrow. Give your body a bit more time to recover.” She shrugs. “You know.”
I want life to be normal again, and that includes school. So I say, “Honestly, Mom, I’m fine. I’m just a little tired. All I need is a good night’s sleep.”
She shakes her head. “Missing one day is not going to affect your schoolwork. I think it’s best. You can use the time to book a follow-up appointment with the doctor.”
I bite the inside of my lip. Visiting old Dr. Abernathy is the last thing I want to do. I saw how he looked at me in the hospital. The only reason he didn’t start preaching right then was because my parents were there. Behind the closed door of his office, I won’t be so lucky.
“You need to talk to him,” my mother says.
Why? I almost blurt. What’s there to talk about?
I was pregnant, and now I’m not. I don’t even want to think about it, never mind talk about it. Nobody was supposed to find out. But now Dr. Abernathy knows, and so does my mother— even though she hasn’t come right out and said anything.
I squeeze my eyes shut and wish myself anywhere but where I am.
When I open them again, I’m still sitting on my bed, and my mother is still watching me.
“Supper’s getting cold,” she says and heads back to the kitchen.