Will the Real Abi Sanders Please Stand Up? (22 page)

My hands shake. My heart, too. I love him.
But he thinks I would cheat on him.
The anger tries to push its way in again, but I swallow it down until it creates this sort of vacuum inside me instead. Blood rushes through my ears, making it difficult to focus on anything else.

“Hate to break it to you, Brynn, but if you haven’t been with anyone but me, you wouldn’t be knocked up right now.”

A chill sweeps over me. The air conditioner? Whatever it is, it feels strong enough to knock me over. No, break me apart, blowing pieces of me around the house. I shake my head, trying to make sense of what he’s saying. Trying to swallow down the need to vomit. “How can you say that? You know I love you. I’d never. I love
you
, Jason.”

He laughs. I used to love the sound, and now it’s beating me into the ground, sounding so different from any of his laughs before. “Didn’t you tell me your little boyfriend broke up with you the day before we got together? I’m sure you loved him, too. Grow up. I swear, you’re so naive.”

How many times have I told him I never loved Ian? The only other time I thought I was in love, I was a dumb kid… Kid…

This can’t be happening. Jason can’t be treating me this way. Not when I’m going to have our baby. A
baby.
I clutch my stomach. The word suddenly starts repeating over and over in my head, blurring and mixing with Jason’s angry accusations until it’s all I can hear or feel.

“Jesus, I’m such a fucking idiot!” He runs a hand through his hair. “How long have you known? Who told you? Figured you’d try and trap me, did you? Hate to break it to you, but it’s not going to happen.”

“What?” The word manages to tumble out of my mouth.

He’s pacing now, and my eyes dart around the room, following him. It’s a struggle when I can’t stop his voice in my head or the nausea in my stomach.

Hate to break it to you, Brynn, but if you haven’t been with anyone but me, you wouldn’t be knocked up right now.

“This isn’t a game, Brynn. This is my life. I could go to fucking jail over this shit. You have to get rid of it. I’ll give you money or whatever, but you have to get rid of it.”

Dizziness twists and turns around me, pulling me in, dragging me under.
Jail… Get rid of it…

Oh, God. I’m pregnant. I’m sixteen and pregnant. He wants me to get rid of our baby. My dad will never talk to me again.

With Jason by my side, I thought it would be okay. Thought we could make it work. I’d have someone else to love.

My eyes flutter and my legs go weak. I crumple to the floor, not sure what else to do. “Shit,” Jason curses from above me. An eternity later, he joins me on the floor. “Shhh, Brynn. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean… You just freaked me out. I… Shit, baby, you can’t tell anyone. I love you so much and hate to say this to you, but you can’t tell anyone. You have to get rid of the baby and no one can know it’s mine.”

He wraps his arms around me, pulling me to his lap. God, I want to feel safe here, the way he’s always made me. This is the Jason I know. The one who’s calm, sweet, and loving, not this man flip-flopping between anger and affection that I’m seeing now.

“Shh…don’t cry. I’m sorry. I love you. I just… I wanted you so much, that I couldn’t stop myself from lying. One look at you and I was a goner. When I found out how old you are… I did it for us.”

You can’t tell anyone…

“I couldn’t lose you, but don’t you see? This is serious shit. You don’t want me to go to jail for loving you, right?” His words are a blur, a muffled echo in my head.

You have to get rid of the baby and no one can know it’s mine.

My mom died, and now he wants me to kill our baby. Don’t know if I can do it.
Baby… Pregnant. No one can know it’s mine. “
What are you talking about?”

“Oh, Brynn. You’re so beautiful. Stop crying. I can’t handle hearing you cry. I’m so sorry, but you can’t be mad at me for loving you. That’s why I did it. You love me, too, don’t you? If you do, you have to get rid of the baby and not tell anyone. I’ll pay for it. I don’t want to lose you.”

If Jason can’t accept what happened, how can I expect Dad to? He’ll hate me. Be disappointed. He’s already broken because of Mom. “I love you, too,” I whisper. “But…” I don’t think I can do it. Kill my baby? Kill our baby?

“How far are you?”

“Seven weeks…”

“It’s okay. It’s not a baby yet. You can do this, Brynn. Do it for us.”

My stomach cramps. I just want to go to sleep. Want this to all be some kind of dream.

“I’m not mad that you knew,” he continues. “People sometimes lie when they love someone so much. That’s why I did it at first. We can keep on pretending like we have been. Keep being happy. I’m only twenty-three. It’s not like it’s that big a deal.”

Twenty-three, twenty-three, twenty-three.
The urge to throw up climbs into my throat again. Dizziness sweeps through me. “Jason?”

“Red, you have to trust me. It will work out. You’re my beautiful. My beautiful, Red. Don’t take that away from me. We’ll be okay… It’s not a baby yet, anyway.”

Each and every one of his words stabs into me at once. I don’t know which to focus on. Can’t make myself pick any. Love mixes with lies and there’s a part of us inside me and he says it’s not real. He wants me to get rid of it.

My body takes over and I’m scrambling away from him.

Jason walks toward me, but I can’t make myself back away any more. “Don’t pretend you didn’t know, Brynn. How could you not? I played your game because it made you feel better, but you know who I am. You always knew how old I was. Everyone else will know it, too. They’ll know you wanted to trap me. Or they’ll think you lied about your age. You wanted an older guy because you were messed up after your mom died. It happens all the time.” He shrugs.

“You’d tell them I lied?” He said he loves me, but now he’d tell them I wasn’t honest about my age…

It hits me, knocking the air out of me, how much I don’t know this Jason, when he says, “Get rid of it and I won’t have to.” He’s so to-the-point. So cold that I don’t know if I want to keep crying or hurt him. I can’t believe I fell for him.

“I hate you!” I yell. They’re the most immature words in the world, but they’re all I have. “I
hate
you, Jason!” Stumbling, I run toward the door, but he grabs my arm. A pain shoots through my stomach. My eyes water. My ears feel full, almost echoey.

“You’ll break your dad’s heart. He’ll know his little baby is sleeping around and got knocked up. That you lied to sleep with a local baseball player. After losing your mom, can you do that to him? Everyone else will hate you for trying to trap me, too. Do you want that? Do you want everyone to know you’re a slut?”

I rip my arm away from him, covering my mouth with a shaking hand. He’s right. I know he’s right.
Everyone will hate you.
Haven’t I lost enough?

It’ll be my word against his.

Jason…
I love him, but he never loved me. How will I tell my dad? How will I be a mom?

“Be smart, Brynn. I swear to God, you’d better be smart and get rid of it.”

Ignoring his words, I run from the house. I don’t remember driving home. I don’t remember starting a fire in the woodstove and throwing in that stupid red dress. All I remember are his words. He doesn’t love me. Never loved me. He saw someone young and naive and he used me. He wants me to kill the baby.

I know I can’t, but I never get the chance anyway. The cramps start in the middle of the night. The rush of blood quickly afterward.

Dad hears me crying.

He takes me to the hospital.

His anger came the next day. The yelling, the disappointment.

He hasn’t looked at me the same ever since. No one has.

Jason was right.

I
NK IS
T
HICKER THAN
W
ATER

by
Amy Spalding

In her family, Kellie Brooks has always been stuck in the middle, overlooked and impermanent. Reconnecting with Oliver, the sweet and sensitive college guy she had a near hookup with last year, changes that. Oliver is intense and attractive, and she’s sure he’s totally out of her league, but soon things are spiraling out of her control. It’ll take a new role on the school newspaper and a new job at her mom’s tattoo shop for Kellie to realize that defining herself both outside and within her family is what can finally allow her to feel permanent, just like a tattoo.

C
HAPTER
O
NE

Where are you? I need you. (If you have time.)

I shove my phone into my pocket instead of responding to the very unlike-my-sister text Sara has just sent. My best friend is in emergency mode, and I am best-friending.

“But if what Chelsea heard was
true
, why would he be talking to
her
?” Kaitlyn stares at herself in the bathroom mirror and then spins away from her reflection. “We’re not even supposed to
be here
, and if he’s just going to talk to
her
all night—”

“No one cares that we’re here,” I say, even though I have no proof of that fact. I’m not letting Kaitlyn panic. “It’s a party. People go to parties. We can be people who go to parties now. Or at least bathrooms of parties.”

“Ha, ha.” She gets her phone out of her purse and checks it. For what, I don’t know, but whatever she’s hoping for isn’t there. “Seriously, Kellie, what am I supposed to do now?”

Here’s the thing: I don’t really know. But I will be The Friend with The Plan. “Probably we should get out of the bathroom. And you should just go walk in his sightline.”

“‘Walk in his sightline’?”

“Kaitlyn,” I say like this is all so obvious and I’m not just making things up as I go. “He supposedly told a bunch of people you were hot. Go be hot in front of him. He’ll stop talking to Brandy about whatever popular people bond over. He will make out with you.”

Kaitlyn peers even more intensely into the mirror. “You promise?”

If I’m honest, I’ll admit that lately I don’t exactly love gazing into mirrors where both Kaitlyn and I are reflected back. It’s been years since our bodies had first gotten the memo about grown-up things like boobs and hips, but now that we’re well into being sixteen, things seemed to have settled, and I guess we’re just going to look like this.

That memo circulating in Kaitlyn’s hormones must have used lots of references to the magazines she reads (and I don’t because Mom thinks they set bad examples and expectations for teenage girls). Kaitlyn emerged from puberty with a tiny waist and the perfect bra size: not flat-chested but not so developed people make up unfounded rumors about her experience level. Meanwhile, my hormones had taken that memo very literally. Boobs, check, hips, check, two of each and all in the right places.

A renaissance painting for Kaitlyn. Artless puberty for me.

Not that I’m Ugly McUggerstein or anything. Up until very recently, it balanced out, because Kaitlyn always had very normal brown hair that just sort of hung there, the way normal hair does. I’m pretty sure my hair’s texture had up until my birth only been seen on lions’ manes and expensive stuffed animals, but at least Mom dyes it for me. Currently, it’s flamey red and combed through with enough vanilla-scented styling product to behave. From enough of a distance, I absolutely look like I have beautiful, flowing, naturally vanilla-scented red hair.

Lately, though, Kaitlyn has been taking the Amex her parents gave her to make up for getting divorced or whatever to a fancy salon where she emerges with sleek caramel-colored hair that rests above her shoulders with a thoughtful little flip. The first time I saw the new style I told her it looked like angels had patted the ends into place with a flap of their wings. Yeah, that was a joke, but it really did look that flawless. No one prepares you for waking up to realize your best friend who grew up with you step by step and side by side is suddenly, okay, hot.