“We're fine,” Josey says.”Thank you.”
“Sure. Let me know.”
“We will.”
“Have you told your parents?” Theo says, as the saleslady walks away.
“No,” Josey says.
“Are you going to?”
“I might, if I need to, but I'd rather not, honestly,” she says. “They'd just make it a big deal. I really don't want this to be a big deal. The thing is that I don't...I don't feel like this is a big deal, you know? I'm not sitting here in denial or something.”
“I know,” he says.
“It would be different if this really felt like some decision, I guess,” she says. “But it's not. I have a zillion obligations. I'm going to college soon, and I have to work my ass off to turn that deferral into an acceptance, and I still haven't heard from Cambridge, and there's just no way I can do that stuff and be pregnant. Not to mention I don't think I want a kid ever, and definitely not when I'm seventeen. I can't be a mother. I don't even own any decent clothes.”
“You do now!” Theo says.
“Oh, you're right! I'll just keep it, then. Go buy me a ring.”
He puts his arm around her and kisses the side of her head. “Do you want me to make the appointment?”
“I can do it,” she says. “I'm going to schedule it for the end of next month, after basketball's over.”
“You should probably quit basketball,” I say.
“No way, that would look terrible on my application. Plus I checked online, it's totally fine. My Sims still use the treadmill in their last trimester, I can play basketball at five weeks along.”
“They'll let me be at the appointment?” Theo says.
“Yeah, I checked that online too.”
He gives her hair a little tug. “Good.”
Josey looks at me. I'm still standing by the shoe displays. Still poking a high heel into my palm. “You can be there too,” she says. “You know. If you want.”
“Sure,” I say.
“Yeah.”
We just stay where we are for a little while, not saying anything.
I end up spending two hundred dollars on shoes I don't think I'm ever going to wear.
Because I guess I think this is about me.
19
To my relief, I find out that I'm not quite horrible enough a person that I avoid Theo and Josey on purpose. The first two lunch periods after our shopping trip I do feel a flutter in my stomach telling me to run away when I see them at the table, but I squash it down. (I do not steer into it. I squash.) And after that, it goes away, and none of us talks about it and we just pretend that everything's normal.
It probably helps that my life steps in and makes me avoid them entirely unintentionally, because my Humanities teacher assigns us an enormous group project out of nowhere, and the wariness my group members have towards me reminds me that I'm still very much the new kid, and that I probably haven't exactly helped myself integrate by ignoring everyone my own age in favor of two social outcast seniors, so there's a lot of smiling and work-bearing and sure-we'll-meet-on-your-schedule concessions that I have to make that the rest of them really don't. Somehow the wedding went from way in the distance to three-and-a-half-months from now, so everybody is going a little insane, and a week after Josey found out she was pregnant, I get a phone call way too early on Saturday morning.
“Um. Hi?”
“Oh, shit, sorry, I woke you up?”
“Who is this?”
“It's Lucas,” he says. “You don't have my number?”
“I have your cell number...”
“Oh, yeah, I'm calling from home. Sorry about that.”
“Is everything okay?” They have Lexie, so maybe there's a problem there.
“Yeah, I just had something to ask you.”
“Okay?”
“So you're taking the SAT soon, right?” he says. “Because my dad is like, he's really on me to prepare for the PSAT because I did really bad at it this year.”
“The PSAT really doesn't matter,” I say. The only one that even sort of matters is the one he's already apparently done very badly on, since that's the one they look at for merit recognition and things like that. I barely remember taking my second one last October because I knew better than to really care, and because I was a little distracted with my obsession with a boy I thought I would never get to have.
It's hard to believe that wasn't even four months ago.
“Yeah,” he says, “Try telling my dad that. Anyway he's all on me to get a tutor and I thought of you because I know you're prepping for the real thing so maybe this would be like good practice for you too, reviewing all this old stuff with me.”
“I'm actually taking a prep class,” I say. “Starting next week.”
“Oh,” he says, just as I'm realizing that is probably the least charitable statement anyone has ever made.
Backtrack. Backtrack. “Which means I'll probably actually be an okay tutor,” I say. “Since I'll be reviewing stuff at the same time, it'll be fresh on my mind. I can just bring over my classwork and we can go over it.”
“Oh! Yeah, totally, that sounds really good. I could pay you. Of course. Not much.”
“You want me to come to your house?”
“Yeah, if you don't mind.”
“Reimburse me for gas, maybe?”
“You're on.”
“So we're going to meet up on Wednesdays,” I say to Theo, when we're at the diner on Saturday, demolishing milkshakes. “Since my class is on Tuesdays. It'll be like when you read over your notes to help cement the stuff in your mind or whatever.”
“I
