When Inez doesn’t show up to school the next day, we worry. Nat wonders out loud if something is wrong with the pregnancy, if the spirits have hurt Inez somehow, if her anxiety is debilitating today. I reassure Nat everything is fine and insist it’s not about the spirits, but during fifth period, I ask to use the bathroom and I go bother the admin Mrs. Julie. She’s an older woman with short curly hair and a cackle like a movie character. She wears bright-red lipstick on her thin lips and has the nicest purses I’ve ever seen.
“Get out of here before I hit you with my ruler,” she says when I take the seat beside her. But I beg her, and she takes a look around to make sure the principal is in his office before passing me the phone. “You have thirty seconds.” I blow her a kiss. She rolls her eyes.
Inez claims she’s trapped in bed with a vomit bucket. “Be there tomorrow, Mother Mili,” she says and hangs up on me.
But as soon as the next bell rings, Nat and I, sneak out through the back of the building while the halls are packed and lockers are being opened, and hope no one notices. Darleny does. She’s coming back into school when we hit the yard and run into her.
I’ve been feeling a rush whenever I see her now, and I’ve found myself peeking around corners to stare at her, trying to steal glimpses of Jasmine on her when she thinks I’m not watching. But right now, in her baggy clothes, with her hair pushed out of her face in a clean sleek bun and her face bare, I can’t see Jasmine.
She smirks. “Off to bunk school and conjure some demons?”
I get ready to come up with some excuse, but Natalie puts a hand on my shoulder. “Darleny, if you tell anyone, you’ll have to explain why you weren’t here for fifth period. Why you’re hardly here for fifth period lately.”
Darleny shrugs. “Well, then, you creatures be safe.”
When she walks inside, I grip my backpack strap. “She’s been skipping fifth period?”
Nat looks at me like she’s wondering why I care. “Yeah, but the teachers won’t keep going easy on her ’cause of Jas. The sympathy card doesn’t last forever. I probably can’t even use it with Ma in rehab because I’ve used it too many times before.”
We ring Inez’s doorbell, and she opens it fully clothed. Her hair is in a gelled-up ponytail. Her sneakers are on her feet. There’s color in her cheeks and gloss on her lips.
“You don’t look sick to me,” I say.
“Not one bit of sick, Inez,” says Nat. “You look better than you have all week.”
Inez moves aside to let us in. “I have one mother, and neither of you is her.”
I’m not sure how she could act so careless about all of this. “Okay, when are you going to tell her that you’re about to be one and she can take care of you and her grandbaby?”
“I don’t need you to take care of me, Miliani. Worry about yourself for once. Don’t you need to be learning something to save the girl you love? How many more weeks do you think she can wait?”
Inez’s words and tone catch me off guard, and they must have done the same for Natalie because we’re both quiet for a moment before Nat sighs and sits down on the couch. “We’re worried about you, Inez.’”
Inez sits next to Nat and lies back against the couch. “What do you want me to say?”
“Anything would be great, since you’ve been saying a whole lotta nothing lately,” Natalie says. “You can start by telling us where you were today.”
Inez pokes at her cheeks, causing red blotches between her freckles. “I was supposed to meet up with Aaron today. I was going to tell him I’m … I’m pregnant. But he never showed.”
I want to talk shit about him, and I’m pretty sure Natalie does too, but we’d probably make Inez feel worse. She looks at us. “You guys cut sixth period for me? You love art.”
We lie on her couches for over an hour, eating snacks and watching Maury Povich. Jas got us hooked on Maury. She’d pretend to be him, mimicking his voice in the middle of class, and say, “You are not the father,” and everyone would start laughing.
Today on Maury, a woman slept with her cousin’s husband and got pregnant, but the baby isn’t his. It’s her fifth time on the show, and Maury still looks invested. The audience too. They holler and clap and say, “Ouuuuu.”
Inez says, “At least we know who my baby daddy is,” and we laugh until it’s not funny anymore. It’s the first time we’ve joked about her pregnancy, but it doesn’t feel right.
“I think the baby is the size of a pea right now,” I say.
This also doesn’t feel right. Inez never said she was keeping it.
Inez sighs. “Stay off the internet, Miliani. I was joking. It’s hardly a fetus.”
I want to ask her if she’s considering an abortion or if she’s being irresponsible and not thinking about it enough. I don’t even know how I feel. I just want to be there for Inez, but she turns the volume up on the TV, probably using Maury to drown me out.