Dear X,

Today was the last day of school. Now all the other students are gone, and it’s just me, Teresa, and Brit. Plus Melly, who works here year-round. And the Salvation Army people. It’s like a ghost town. There’s nothing good on TV. It’s weirdly hot today, and Melly made us walk to the ice cream shop as our daily exercise, which is kind of funny. But, long story short: I’m bored. I’m bored and it’s midnight and you keep squirming around in my belly so I can’t sleep.

Sometimes you’re really a pain, X.

Heather was back here last week, by the way. She must have had a C-section because she was gone way longer than the two-week maternity leave. I thought maybe we wouldn’t see her again, but she’s a senior and she wants to graduate, obviously, so she came back for the last week.

Most of the girls come back here with their babies. They leave them at the daycare on campus and shuffle into class that first day with red eyes because they were crying because they hated to leave their babies, even one building away.

Heather’s eyes were red, too, but for a different reason.

She didn’t seem excited to tell her birth story, or to answer any questions the rest of us had about what it was like to squeeze something the size of a watermelon out of a hole the size of a lemon. She sat there in algebra reading the textbook, and then she started to work on some worksheets she’d missed. She did talk a little, though. She told me she’d missed me, although she might have been referring to my superior understanding of polynomials. She laughed at a joke I told. She raised her hand and asked Miss Cavendish a question.

She was better than I thought she’d be. She was keeping it together. An inspiration to us all, I’d say.

Then the daycare lady came in with a baby.

It wasn’t Heather’s baby, of course. It was this other girl Jennifer’s baby. About three months old or so. A boy. The lady from the daycare walked in and passed the baby to Jennifer. So she could breastfeed. It’s one of the benefits of going to school here. You can still breastfeed. In the middle of class. In the lunchroom. During PE. Whenever.

It took a while for me to get used to that. Breastfeeding is not something I’ve been exposed to much in my life, or, like, ever. And now at any given time of day, in comes the daycare ladies with the babies, and out come the boobs. They don’t even try to cover up because, I think, they want it to seem normal or natural or whatever, and so the babies get their meals right out in the open. I was pretty uncomfortable with it the first few times it happened. It was hard not to stare. But it doesn’t bother me anymore, so when Jennifer whipped out her breast to feed her baby, I kept doing my work. And then I happened to glance over at Heather.

Her face was red—completely beet-colored, starting from where her neck went into her shirt all the way up her cheeks and her ears to her hairline. She was staring at Jennifer. Well, she was staring at Jennifer’s baby, at that fuzzy little head pressed into Jennifer’s chest. There was this swirl on the back of his head. That’s about all we could see from our table.

It got quiet. The other girls noticed Heather’s face, too. We could all hear the sucking noises the baby was making, the little grunts and sighs, and the squeaks and scrapes of Miss Cavendish obliviously writing on the chalkboard.

Heather stared at the baby.

We all stared at Heather. We watched as her shoulders started to shake and then two big fat tears rolled down her cheeks.

“Hey,” I said, reaching over, putting my hand over hers. “Hey. It’s okay.”

“I know,” she said in this small voice.

I raised my hand. “Can Heather and I go to the chapel?”

Miss Cavendish spun around, annoyed. “What have I told you about raising your . . .” She looked from me to Heather. She followed Heather’s gaze to Jennifer’s baby. Then back to Heather’s face. Then at me. “Yes,” she said. “Go ahead.”

In the chapel, Heather stopped crying. She seemed embarrassed at the fuss she’d made, which really hadn’t been much of a fuss at all, if you asked me.

“I punched Amber last month,” I told Heather.

“You didn’t.”

“I swear.”

“How were you not expelled?” Heather asked.

“Because Amber was asking for it,” I explained, but I don’t go into details. “She provoked me.”

Amber hadn’t been in class today, I realized, and I was glad. The last thing Heather needed right now was to be told she’s abandoned her baby so she could go party.

I patted Heather on the shoulder. “So a little crying’s nothing to worry about. That happens like every day around here.”

“I guess you’re right.” She wiped at her cheeks.

We were quiet again.

“It was a boy,” she said after a while. “My baby.”

“I know.” We all knew. Every time a girl at the school had a baby there was a birth announcement posted to the front of the school bulletin board. Heather’s baby was a boy, seven pounds, nine ounces.

“He had all this curly hair all over his head.” She smiled at the thought.

“Did you hold him?” I asked. This had been Amber’s question, but I really wanted to know.

“Yeah. For a few minutes,” Heather answered. “They say that skin-to-skin contact is important right at first. And I . . .” Her voice wavers. “I fed him. The milk you produce right after you give birth is full of all this good stuff the baby needs. But after that I let his parents take him.”

I squeezed her hand.

“They looked right together,” she said.

“You did good.” The door to the chapel swung open and I yelled “Go away!” to the startled face of the girl who was about to come in.

The door swung shut.

Heather laughed. “You’re funny. You act like a tough girl, but you’ve got a soft chewy center.”

“I do not,” I said. “So I have to ask. Did it hurt?”

“Yes.”

“Bad?”

“It was the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life.”

“Great.” I stared down at my ever-expanding belly. “That’s fantastic news. Couldn’t you have lied to me?”

Heather looked serious again. “The labor pains were pretty bad, too.”

That was about a week ago. Heather’s gone home. I’m trying to picture her in her bedroom, playing the flute. Going to college, maybe even going to college parties. Going on dates. And I wonder if I’ll ever see her again. Someday. If we’ll ever be in the supermarket, say, wandering among the tomatoes, and I’ll see her and say hi. And she’ll say hi, too, and we’ll go about our business, not revealing how we know each other, but smiling, because we remember that one day we had together in the chapel at Booth.

I had to take a little break from writing, because someone was knocking on the front door. It was after midnight and Melly’s a sound sleeper, so she didn’t answer. I went out in the hall and Teresa and Brit were already standing there, the three of us in our pajamas, listening to whoever it was knocking—pounding hard—on the door downstairs.

“We should call the police,” Brit whispered.

“We should wake up Melly,” Teresa said.

“We should see who it is.” I went to the door and opened it.

It was Amber. She was dressed in pj bottoms and a big T-shirt that was ripped at one shoulder. But her eyes were the thing that immediately caught my attention—they were so dark that they looked like holes in her face, and there were two gleaming trails of tears down her cheeks. She was panting like she’d been running. She looked like a wild animal.

“Can I come in?” she gasped, and then looked behind her like someone was chasing her.

“Go wake up Melly,” I told Brit. I pulled Amber inside and closed and locked the door. Then I walked her to our living room area and sat her on the couch. She leaned back against the cushions and closed her eyes and put her hand on her swollen belly like she was glad it was still there.

I turned on the lamp. Then I had to try not to look shocked.

There was a big purple bruise on Amber’s neck, circling it like someone had tried to choke her. And another matching bruise blooming on her shoulder half hidden by the ripped shirt.

I didn’t ask her if she was okay. The answer to that was obvious. And I didn’t feel any kind of satisfaction that this girl who’d been so full of herself before was now brought so low. I just thought, well, shit happens to everyone, doesn’t it?

Melly appeared in the doorway, hair a mess, wearing a robe but fully alert. Teresa and Brit trailed behind her.

“Are you okay?” she asked, sitting down next to Amber.

Amber shook her head. She lifted a hand to wipe at her nose, and her hands were shaking violently. “My dad kicked me out.”

Melly’s gaze went straight to the bruise on Amber’s neck. She grabbed the blanket from the back of the couch and wrapped it around Amber’s shoulders.

“Teresa,” she said calmly. “Call the police.”

Amber, out of all of us, had the best laid plans for her baby. But maybe all along she was telling us a story, a pretty fairy tale about her supportive family and her accepting friends and her perfect life.

I guess we’re her village now.

S