Loving Emily (8 page)

As I wait for the girls to come back, a couple of the club pros walk by.

“Great match, Ryan. You should go back into training!”

“Thanks. Maybe I will.” But I’m not serious about it.

The girls return, and Emily and I go out to my car.

“So she said she’ll be quitting the club pretty soon,” Emily says as she slides into the passenger seat.

“Who?”

“That girl we just saw. The blonde.” Emily’s voice goes neutral on the word
blonde.

“What do you mean?” I start the car and begin backing out of our parking spot.

“I mean she can’t play tennis much longer.”

I turn my head to stare at Emily. “What are you talking about?

A second later, I slam on my brakes, throwing both of us forward, and just avoid sideswiping another car. The driver blasts his horn at me, but I barely hear him.

“
What
did you just say?”

Her eyes round with surprise from my reaction, she repeats the terrible piece of news as if it’s nothing.

“Didn’t you know?” she says. “That girl’s pregnant.”

•   •   •

I pull my car into an empty spot and sit there gripping the steering wheel. We’ve travelled a whole fifty yards or so in the tennis club parking lot.

“Ryan, what is it?” Emily’s shoulder touches mine as she leans into me. Worry clouds her face.

“How do you know she’s pregnant?”

“She was feeling sick in the bathroom, and she told me. Why? What does it matter?”

“The night of your party, Michael told me he slept with Chrissie. Once. At the tennis club.” I’m staring straight ahead, my eyes burning.
I can’t believe this.

“What are you saying? That the baby’s
his
?” Emily’s voice hits the high end of the register.

I nod. “It could be.”

“But he only slept with her once!” she says. “I mean, it could happen, I guess. But it just seems like …
that girl
? She could have a lot of boyfriends.”

And she probably does,
her tone implies.

“You don’t like her, do you?”

“Well, it’s just that….” Emily looks sideways at me, “She flirts a lot.”

I can’t deny it. “She flirts with everybody.”

“Exactly. So she’s got lots of men around.”

“The thing is, Michael was worried about something that night. He said he had something bad to tell me, and I had to keep it secret. But he didn’t get a chance to tell me.” Guilt stabs at me.
He tried to tell me, and I wouldn’t listen.

“Really?” Emily sits very still, her hands folded in her lap, as she takes in this new information. “But you said he was slipping back into drugs, so it could have been that, too. And if it
were
his, wouldn’t Chrissie have gotten in touch with his parents, you know, after he ...?” She doesn’t finish her sentence. “She could have found them through the tennis club.”

“I guess so.” My hands loosen on the steering wheel, and I sink back in my seat, drawing in a big breath.

“Or she might even choose not to have the baby,” Emily says. She puts her hand on my arm.

“Yeah.” As always happens when I’m with Emily, a calm creeps over me. The tension drains out of my neck and shoulders, and my head clears.

“It shouldn’t be my problem, but it feels like it is. Michael was like my brother, you know?”

“Well, I bet it’s not even Michael’s.”

She’s probably right. I relax even more. We sit in silence for a few seconds.

Then, “How does that happen, anyway?” Emily’s studying the can of tennis balls in her lap. “To just sleep with someone
once
?”

A beat. The conversation has taken an interesting turn. “I don’t know, Emily,” I tease her. “How
does
it happen?”

I say it very suavely, as if I know all about it, when in fact I have not exactly had sex with a girl yet. It’s on my list of things to do, but I haven’t quite made it there.

She’s turning pink now. “I mean, usually when you have sex with someone, you really like them, right? You plan to do it more than once.”

A
really
interesting turn. But I can’t be with Emily now. Not after what I did to Michael.

“He said it was in the Pro Shop. At the club.”

“You mean, the
store?
Don’t people come in?”

I give her a dry look. “I didn’t discuss the logistics with Michael.” A pause. “But knowing him, well…. He didn’t exactly plan things out, you know? Especially not something like this.”

“I guess.”

I start the car again, then turn to her. “Thanks for coming with me today. It made it a lot easier.”

Dimples appear in both of her cheeks. “You’re welcome.” We sit there smiling at each other, until I finally pull myself together and take her home.

“P
lease take the last fifteen minutes of class,” Mr. Simpson announces in physics, “to pair up with one or two other students. You will be in these groupings for the rest of the year for lab work and the second semester physics project.”

I stare down at my hands on my desk. Michael would have been my lab partner if he were still alive.

Get up. Go find someone else.
But I can’t think of who to ask. Maybe, if I behave as if Michael’s still alive, I can make it true.

So I don’t look for another partner. I sit there, while the other kids mill around, forming groups. When the bell rings, I finally get up and try to make my escape.

Jonathan stops me at the door. “Do you want to work with us? I’m with Calvin Yang, but we can take a third person.”

“Yeah. Thanks, Jonathan.” I know it’s a pity offer, but I’ll take it.

For a moment I consider telling him about the pregnancy. But I haven’t heard anything about it from my folks or Michael’s. Emily’s probably right – it’s not Michael’s baby. I let it go.

A few minutes later, outside of Spanish class, Chase walks up to me. He’s wearing this sweat-shirt that looks like he dragged it up off the floor after maybe walking on it for a month.

We haven’t spoken since our fight by Emily’s locker. I set my backpack down—better to keep my hands free in case he tries to jump me. As anger and grief rise again, I imagine a margarita-soaked Chase coated in sand like some giant breaded pork chop. It’s a satisfying thought.

Chase starts this shifting thing he does, from one foot to the other. “You don’t have any of Michael’s stuff, do you?” he blurts out. “He was supposed to get something for me, but then he, you know…” His voice trails off.

“No. Like what? What was it?”

Chase shakes his head. “Never mind.” He drifts off.

That was strange.
I would just as soon not learn what Michael had for him.

•   •   •

It still burns me, the fact that Chase got Michael back into drugs after he’d been clean for three years. I remember the first time I saw Michael high. It was at our seventh grade school retreat, when we were taken off to this fancy resort place for three days to bond with our new classmates. I was sharing a room with Michael.

On the second night, I had gone to bed early. A hand on my shoulder woke me up.

“Get up.” Michael sat on me, crushing my arm into my ribs.

“Go away.” I pushed him off me and turned over.

A moment of peace, then, “You force me to take harsh measures.” He yanked the pillow out from under my head.

Groaning, I grabbed some flip flops and followed him out of the room in my t-shirt and gym shorts.

“Man, what are we doing?” I was yawning and half-stunned by the bright light of the hallway.

“Just shut up, okay?” We walked as quietly as we could down the hall to another door. Michael knocked on it, saying to me in a low voice, “You’re with Phoebe.”

“Huh?”
I did a double take. “Michael, what’s going on?”

“Just trust me, man.”

The door opened. In the room were another guy and three girls. It was a small room—and crowded. One of the girls gave me a meaningful look and walked over to me. This must be Phoebe. She was in my math class and had just moved here from some place like Houston. She wore skimpy shirts that rode way up on her belly and had this blonde hair that she flipped around while she talked. She talked a lot.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi.” I didn’t look at her.

“So I heard you know all these movie stars.”

I grunted a reply.

“That must be
so cool
. Like, who’ve you met? “

I’d met plenty, as a matter of fact, but I would have eaten battery acid before I told her anything. “No one really.”

I heard the striking of a match as this guy, Josh somebody, lit a joint and took a drag. Miss Anderson had warned us what would happen if we did drugs on a school retreat: “You will be immediately expelled.” I was sweating, picturing myself thrown out of school after only three weeks. But if I left now, I’d look like a total wimp.

The joint started moving around the circle. Phoebe, standing next to me, inhaled noisily and handed it to me. I did the only socially acceptable thing and sucked in a lungful of smoke, and then more lungfuls as the joint kept working its way around to me.

Soon, I was in some kind of time warp. Just lifting the joint to my mouth took about five minutes, and it was taking me ten minutes or so to inhale the smoke. Phoebe was laughing very, very loudly, a high-pitched laugh that went into my ear drum like an ice pick.

My head turned very, very slowly and I registered, far away, as if through the wrong end of a telescope, Michael on the bed with Kayla, and three or four minutes later I realized that
he was lying on top of her!
They had their clothes on, but
still!
I started to crack up, then stifled my laughter, willing myself to be cool.

I was in a big armchair with Phoebe, who seemed very far away, even though she was right there in the chair with me. She was doing something wet and frantic to my mouth with her mouth. She must have popped a breath mint or something, because I caught this intense blast of peppermint.

I went with it. I didn’t really like this girl, but her tongue was in my mouth, which made up for a lot.

I knew nothing about kissing at age twelve, but I did my best. Doing it with Phoebe was like wrestling with a suction hose. I was sure kissing had to be better than this – otherwise it wouldn’t be so popular. But at the same time, I had a wicked hard-on and was sliding my hand lower and lower down her back until it was
almost on her ass!
She seemed fine with it. See, Michael? You’re not the only one with game around here.

Then, someone said, “Heads up! I hear something!” We all froze. Phoebe’s pointy elbow was boring into my ribcage. Footsteps walked up to our door and stopped. Then a soft tapping on the door, as if the person outside was testing to see if anyone was awake in there.

In absolute silence, we waited. I thought my heart would knock Phoebe off the chair, it was pounding so hard.

The footsteps started up again and disappeared down the hall.

“Okay, that’s it, I guess!” I threw off Phoebe, peeled Michael off of Kayla, and dragged him down the hall to our room. Once safely back, I let go of his arm and said, “Dude! We could have got thrown out of school!” My lips felt huge and rubbery, and the room was slowly rotating around us.

“But we didn’t.” Michael was already climbing into bed.

I fell into my own bed, my head pulsing, thanking God we had escaped uncaught.

“Hey, Ryan.” Michael’s voice was muffled from his pillow.

“Yeah?”

“Phoebe’s hot, huh?”

He could have her.

On the bus ride home from the retreat, the guy who had been in the room with us, Josh, was caught with weed in his backpack and was expelled from Pacific Prep.

“Bummer,” was Michael’s comment. After that, he started smoking dope and trying harder stuff too with this druggie crowd at school. “Come party with me, man!” he would say, and I did a few times, but finally told him I didn’t like it and didn’t want to get into trouble. We stayed best friends, though. What with our regular lunches and tennis games, schoolwork, and the closeness of our two families, Michael was too much a part of my life to be anything else.

As for Phoebe, I avoided her for the rest of the school year and was glad when she transferred to this alternative hippie school for eighth grade. I heard she thought the Pacific Prep kids were boring and uptight.

M
y folks have been talking to Nat and Yancy a lot since the funeral and have invited them over for dinner. It figures, I think with a flash of anger, that we kids aren’t enough to make them stay home at night. They need a
good
reason, like the Westons coming over.

We’re all sitting around our big dining table, with Nat on my right and Yancy across from me. It hurts me to see only seven places at the table. From the sad way that Maddy and Molly are picking at their food, I can see that they’re feeling it, too.

Mom sits next to Yancy with an arm around her shoulder. People always say Yancy’s beautiful, but I think if you took away the fancy clothes and hair, no one would ever look at her twice.

Tonight, she has this lost, sad look on her face. Both she and Nat look older and really tired. Nat’s a handsome guy—Michael took after him—but now his face is puffy, like he’s acquired an extra chin. He speaks only occasionally and his hands shake through dinner.

We sit for a long time at the table and share memories of Michael. I don’t say much, since I still haven’t forgiven my folks or the Westons for what they did when he overdosed.

“Remember that summer on Martha’s Vineyard?” Mom says. Dad and Nat were filming a movie, and we were all living together in this big house we had rented. “When Michael and Ryan slept in a tent in the backyard every single night? They never used their bedroom at all, except to store their clothes!”

“During tennis matches,” Maddy says, “any time Michael had to change sides, he would always do a crazy jump over the net instead of walking around. It was so funny!”

“And he put fourteen cherry tomatoes in his mouth one time!” Molly says.