A Sense of the Infinite (14 page)

I KEPT THE STORY SIMPLE. HOMECOMING
dance, boy, accident. I tried to make it sound as adult and reasonable as possible.

“I didn’t want to miss campus visits, so I decided to get it done while I was up here.”

Pauline wasn’t buying it.

“Why didn’t you tell Leslie?” she said, flat out, when I had finished my summary.

I skirted my eyes away from Pauline’s and started to ramble. Mom and I had been fighting, Mom didn’t like my friends, Mom would freak out if she discovered that I’d spent homecoming drinking Jack Daniel’s and Gatorade with a boy I
hardly knew, let alone the sex part.

“I’d already sort of denied that I’d been with a boy,” I said. “And then this happened and I didn’t want—I couldn’t stand—for her to look at me like that.”

“Look at you like what?” Pauline said.

“Like a disappointment,” I said. “Like a skank.”

“Is that how you see yourself?”

“No.”

“Then why would Leslie?”

I mumbled something about Operation Condom Drop. The truth is,
skank
wasn’t the thing I was worried about. It was something else. It was the cold glove that clenched at my stomach when I tried to finish my sandwiches. The way I sometimes saw myself in the mirror and wondered if Mom saw him when she looked at me. The way that revulsion would sometimes overcome me when I was in the shower or getting dressed for school, the tightness that lived in the corner of my heart, as if something there could hardly stand to be alive.

“I don’t want to give her any more reasons to hate me,” I said.

Pauline’s gray-blue eyes gazed deeply into mine. “Why would she hate you?”

“Why do you think?”

The clock on the mantelpiece ticked. The dog snored. Pauline drew in a short breath. “Leslie once told me she would
rather crawl barefoot through snow than see you suffering. She loves you more than anyone else in the world. It’s a spit in her face to say she wouldn’t want to be with you for every minute that you were going through this. A spit in the face.”

I wasn’t expecting Pauline to be angry. I lay there, stunned, while she got up and disappeared into the kitchen.

I pulled the blanket up to my chin. I wasn’t sure which was worse: the grief I imagined in my mother’s voice when she said this, or the love. I didn’t want to be responsible for either. I just wanted to disappear.

“I’d like you to sleep here tonight,” Pauline said when she came back. “Can you call your cousin to let her know?”

Knowing better than to argue with her, I pulled out my phone.

BEFORE SAYING GOOD NIGHT, PAULINE
gave me an ultimatum.

“I want you to tell her,” she said. “It’s not the kind of decision you’re supposed to make for another person, and you can call me a blackmailing bitch, but there is no way I’m putting you on a bus tomorrow in your condition. We’ll call her in the morning and you can explain.”

Pauline looked tired. She stood in the doorway of the den with her arms folded.

“You can hate me if you need to,” Pauline said. “If I was your age I’d hate me too. Leslie would never forgive me if I let you keep this a secret from her. I guess that’s more important to
me than being the cool auntie, even though I wish there was a way I could be both.”

She smiled sadly. I dropped onto the foldout couch and felt my world sink like a flooded canoe. Pauline came over and gave me a half hug.

“She loves you,” Pauline said. “I love you too.”

The pattern in the floor danced and flashed. I thought forlornly of the flowers on Ava’s desk. I nodded, and Pauline went away.

EVEN THOUGH I WAS ALMOST DELIRIOUS
from exhaustion, there was no way I could sleep with the phone call hanging over my head. I woke up Pauline’s computer and browsed distractedly. I started looking at old photos of Noe and me, the ones I used to upload religiously: Noe and Annabeth drinking lemonade on Noe’s patio, Noe and Annabeth making scared faces on a roller coaster, Noe and Annabeth wearing matching
Trivia Wars
T-shirts in tenth grade. I was so deep in my memories that when Noe chatted me I almost jumped out of my chair.

hey doll. how’s it going?

good,
I typed.
well—

yeah. good.

what’s up?

I hesitated, my hands hovering over the keyboard.

remember how you said the pill still worked if you took half?
I typed.

well

it doesn’t.

It took a few seconds for Noe to reply, and when she did it was first just a stream of exclamation points.

!!!

!!!!!!!

!!!!!!!!!!

ohmigod!!!!!

i know
, I typed.

what are you going to do?!?!??

i already did it

this morning

are you ok?!?!?

yeah

are you sure???

oh bethy. i want to give you the biggest hug right now

this year has been so crazy

i know,
I typed.

i want to wrap you up in a warm blanket

and rub your ears

and tell you everything is going to be okay

it is ok

i had my cousin

and all her friends were really nice

i’m so relieved it’s over

you should have told me

we could have talked about it

how far along were you?

nine weeks

ohmigod

so you were pregnant on halloween

and thanksgiving

and nobody knew it

crazy, right?

i need to go

can we talk in the morning?

might be hard

but i’ll try

are you sure you’re ok?

i just can’t—

god. wow.

i am sitting here in shock.

see you soon

yes! soon. i can’t believe we have school on monday.

i can’t believe it either

oh bethy. oh dear.

talk to you tomorrow, k?

ok

After talking to Noe, I still couldn’t sleep. I got up from the computer and started rummaging through Pauline’s books. The den seemed like more of a storage room; Pauline had moved cardboard boxes of books aside to fold out the bed. I pulled down one book and then another one, making a little stack to take to the couch with me. The cardboard boxes were mostly photography books; I dug through them and pulled out one about the boreal forest and one about polar bears. I was at the bottom of the photography box when my eye fell on a spine that wasn’t like the others. It was a scruffy journal held together by sagging elastic. I slid it out from between its neighbors and flipped it over.

Nature Notes
, said the cardboard cover. I slid off the elastic and opened it.

Property of Pauline Delacruz
, said the inside page, with a date from a summer eighteen years ago. When I turned the page, a dried maple leaf fell out.

Algonquin Paddle-o-Rama
, said the first entry.
Day Uno. Saw three moose, a bear, and a beaver. Tipped canoe, cookies lost, hot dogs salvaged. Rachel and Claire sang a war song, Pete and Gary banged the drums. Leslie cooked bannock with chocolate chips, yum.

I smiled at the mention of Mom, a smile that froze at the next sentence:

Our Fearless Leader Scott “J-Stroke” McLaughlin can’t read map, driving everyone crazy with inane route suggestions. Must cast him onto next mosquito-infested island, lighten load.

I sank onto the foldout bed, my ears ringing.

Scott McLaughlin. Mom. Canoe trip.

I wasn’t sure I could read this.

Day 2 yielded blue herons and lily pads, Day 3
Lev stung by a bee, Doctor Pauline administered dose of whiskey
, Day 4
Green Canoe Crew fell victim to Galloping Trots
, Day 5, snapping turtles and seven-foot moose,
Whiskey flowed at campfire, all were raucous and wild. much hooting and dancing. stumbled to bed.

Day 6,
Leslie acting weird, says she got her period. offered secret chocolate stash to no avail.
Day 7,
rain, thunderstorms, everyone miserable.
Day 8,
heading in.

There were some loose photographs tucked into the back of the journal. Pauline and Lev, paddling canoes. Mom building a fire. And one of the whole group: Mom, Pauline, Lev, a few women I didn’t recognize, a few men who couldn’t possibly be him (too young, too old, wrong skin color), and one boy in red swim trunks with hairy legs, who was the right age and the right color and had a face shaped just like mine. I found his name in the list written under the photograph.

Asshole
, I thought to myself as angry tears pricked at my eyes.
Asshole. Asshole. Asshole.

Could a word reach through space and time to burn someone? I hoped it could. I hoped he could feel the heat of it on the back of his neck. I hoped wherever he was, he knew how thoroughly he was hated.

I slipped the journal into my backpack and lay on the bed.

All I knew was I wanted to go home.

IN THE MORNING, THE CRAMPS HAD
dimmed. My phone was crammed with texts from Noe:

are you ok???

so worried.

where are you???

Noe seemed to think I’d come close to dying. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe there was a famous movie where the girl died, or she was imagining a more dramatic procedure than had actually taken place.

i’m fine
, I texted back.

i have to call my mom now.

poor dear.

thinking about you.

call me as soon as you get home.

When I ventured into the kitchen, Pauline was boiling a pot of herbs on the stove for me to drink. I thought of Ava’s roommate. I guess some of that stuff was good to do and some of it wasn’t. Pauline said it was mostly chamomile, with valerian to help me relax.

“Sometimes I forget what it feels like to be seventeen. I fought with my mom all the time,” said Pauline.

“What about?” I said.

Pauline rolled her eyes. “Clothes. Music. Swearing. Lev.”

We sat in her kitchen eating muffins that Lev had baked that morning. I started to think that Pauline had changed her mind about calling Mom and the knot in my stomach relaxed, but after we’d finished our muffins Pauline reached for the phone.

“Are you ready?” she said, then shook her head. “Stupid question.”

Mom drives a lot faster than a bus, especially when she’s angry.

She cried, called me an idiot, and said she would be there in five hours.

WHEN I HEARD THE CAR DOOR
slam in Pauline’s driveway, my heart jumped. A few seconds later, Mom burst into the house without knocking. Her hair was disheveled and she hadn’t taken the time to grab a sweater even though it was ten below. Our eyes met, and it was like someone had switched on a heat lamp. My body went hot all the way from my hair follicles to my intestines.

“I can’t believe you,” she shouted, and then she wrapped me in a hug that almost knocked me down.

I WANTED TO ASK HER ABOUT
the boy in red swim trunks.

I wanted to tell her about the cold hand and the sandwich halves.

I wanted to explain that ever since Ava had told me (I only ever thought about Ava telling me, even though the two tellings happened within a week), my body couldn’t always summon the energy to eat or bleed. That it wanted to shrink, even though I coaxed it to grow.

I wanted to explain that if I hid things from her, it was because I couldn’t stand to see Mom hurting any more than she could stand it in me.

It was winter-mixing. Rain mixed with snow. The trees were a runny green slurry coursing past the car windows. After the initial explosion, things had calmed down, and we’d all gone out to lunch. Mom and Pauline had griped about the stupidity of teenage boys and talked about the things they’d tried to hide from their parents in high school. Afterward I took a nap, and Mom and Pauline had talked in the kitchen for another two hours. Pauline wanted us to stay over, but Mom had to work in the morning. We drove to Ava’s dorm to pick up my things, and I’d scrawled a note for Ava on the back of an envelope.

Thanks for everything. Half Moon Mountain was the best
. Then we’d left.

Now Mom was being too quiet.

“Where does he live?” I said.

“Who?”

“Scott.”

Long pause. I looked down at my lap, conscious of having invoked a demon. At the sound of his name I could feel the car fill with icy air.
Sorry sorry sorry
, I thought, wishing I could take it back.

It was always like this, on the extremely rare occasion I tried to talk about him with Mom. Like lifting a rock to see the insects underneath, and seeing them scurry around in a panic. Feeling bad because all they wanted to do was stay safely hidden under their rock. Sometimes I felt like Mom regretted
telling me. At least my questions back then were dumb and harmless, not these ambushes that made her think about a person she’d rather forget.

Sorry sorry sorry
, I thought,
sorry sorry sorry.

I don’t know why I thought it was a good time to try for a conversation. Maybe because things were already so raw.

Mom named a suburb of a suburb of a big city an hour and a half from our town. “Why do you want to know?” she said tightly.

“No reason,” I peeped.

I squished myself against the window and stared at the road.