Simone continued to follow me around at school in the weeks that followed. She would jabber away about anything and everything she could think of. I never said a single word back to her. Eventually, she grew frustrated enough to address the situation.
“Look, I said I was sorry. If it will make you feel better, I’ll invite you to the next party.”
I turned to look her in the eye for the first time in weeks and saw the self-satisfied smile she wore at getting me to at least acknowledge her with a look. I shook my head and turned away again. Did she think she could buy my friendship back with a party or two before graduation? She couldn’t even acknowledge my birthday a few weeks ago and we were all about to graduate in a few days.
“I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t realize you would be interested in stuff like that.” If only she had bothered to say that weeks before when everything first came out and when she wasn’t still keeping things from me. The fact was, it was now June, days from graduation, and I no longer cared.
I continued to ignore her as Jasper and James walked by. My former crush smiled - at Simone. There was something in that smile that made me realize what I’d overheard that morning was true. Simone and James were indeed a couple. In all the yapping she had done, it was funny that she left that part out. I was ignored in school, not deaf. Did she really think I wouldn’t hear things?
I got up, tossed my stuff in the trash, and walked to the library to spend the rest of lunch break there. A very flustered Simone attempted to follow until she saw where I went. It was the one place in school where I knew she wouldn’t stick around. I should have thought of it sooner. Then, my last few weeks of school might have been a more peaceful place.
“Cassidy!” Miss Lincoln called out as the door closed behind me.
“Hi, did you need something?” I asked her as I approached her desk in the middle of the library.
“Are you busy today? I checked in with your teachers to see if you’d be able to help me with a project for the next two days. They all said you were either exempt from final exams or had already taken them.” I nodded. “Okay, would you mind terribly if you were locked into the stuffy back room to go through some boxes for me?”
It was like a lifeline had been extended to me that I didn’t even realize I needed so badly. “Of course, I’ll help. Tell me what you need and I can get started on it today as long as you excuse me from the rest of my classes.”
“I will send word to your teachers that you won’t be back this year - unless you want to. Oh dear, I didn’t even think about it. You’re graduating and probably want to spend time with everyone before-”
I cut her off. “It’s fine, really. Everyone else still has work to do and I’d just be bored sitting in the classes while they test, do makeup work, or extra credit.” It was true, except the part that I would have any reason to spend time with anyone even if those things were not the problem.
After explaining to me that I needed to sift through all the old books and stuff that were hanging around in storage to see what needed to be given away, trashed or kept based on a criteria list I had been given, I got to work and put the rest of the world out of my mind. At least, I did until I opened the third box and right on top sat a pamphlet that caught my eye. It was old, probably from when my parents went to school there in the 1990s. I glanced around guiltily as if I was about to steal state secrets and stuffed the pamphlet in my backpack. It wasn’t like anyone would miss it. In fact, it would have gone in the trash pile, so I didn’t knowwhy I felt so guilty for helping myself. Miss Lincoln would have given me permission, but I didn’t want her to know about it. It felt like the first idea that gave me a future and I wanted to keep it all to myself until I figured out if it was doable.
By the timeI got home from school after the second day of working in the library, my eyes burned with the heat of unshed tears as the truth settled heavily on my shoulders. For some reason, no one thought I was good enough. At home, my stepmother was everything. At school, I had been Simone’s charity case friend. My face warmed along with my eyes as embarrassment swamped me. The fool was always the last to know. And what a fool I’d been.
At home, when Knuckles visited his grandparents, I was a mere convenience for a boy who didn’t like to be alone with his own thoughts. Neither he nor Simone considered me or my feelings at all. They were both selfish assholes who took what they needed from me and didn’t bother to give back one iota. The really sad part was that the only thing I wanted from either of them was their time and companionship. Yes, I had a ridiculous crush on James and dreamed of more, but I would have been content to be true friends. The kind who might have been worthy of his time no matter if we were alone at home or saw one another in the hall at school.
I had seen them both walking hand-in-hand down the hallway before I quietly ducked into the library. She wasn’t even trying to hide it anymore. Neither of them had bothered to tell me they were an item either. Not that I gave them muchof a chance. Still, Simone knew my phone number and hadn’t bothered to text or call. It was worse than when she pretended to be my friend before. At least then, she kept up pretenses with calls and texts outside of school. Since our big blowup, she hadn’t bothered to do that. I had begun to think that her following me around and sitting and chatting to me at school had been part of some show she put on. I had no clue who that show was for, though. It certainly wasn’t for my benefit.
“I’d ask what’s wrong with you, but I really don’t care. Pull yourself together. Your father will be home soon and I’ll be damned if your sullen, woe-is-me bullshit will steal his attention from me again.”
I got up and shut my bedroom door in my stepmother’s face. She said, “again,” as if that was a regular occurrence. I couldn’t remember a time in recent history when my father had chosen me at all, especially not when his new family hovered in the background.
I turned back to my desk where the same slogan, that originally caught my eye in the library the day before, stared at me. It was like a challenge had been thrown out and I knew I’d accept the minute the first tear finally fell.
“What if all I am is a crybaby loser who no one could ever love?” The object in question didn’t answer me. It was an ancient Army recruitment pamphlet that told me to“Be all you can be!”It was a relic I found in the dredges of our school library when I needed an escape, and I couldn’t help but ponder over the fact that it might give me more of an escape from my life than the couple of days I spent organizing things for Miss Lincoln.
The impulse to pick it up and take it home with me had been a strange one. Then again, maybe it was just me finally seeing reality for what it was. I couldn’t ask my dad to help with college because my stepmother would never allow him to spend that kind of money on me. I resented my father for that. Not forfailing to share his money with me, but for being so lost to his new wife that his daughter no longer felt it was possible to even ask.
Still, the words on that faded pamphlet called out to me.“Be all you can be!”What could I be? In my heart, I wanted to be a baker but I had no means to get started and doubted anyone would take me seriously. Could I be a soldier instead? They needed cooks in the military, right? The more I thought about it, the more it felt like my only option. It would get me away from my hometown, all the people who only wanted tiny fragments of me when it was convenient to them, and it might pave the way toward an education I desperately needed if I planned to own my own business one day.
As the tears continued to fall unhindered, a plan formed that I would quietly carry out in the days leading up to graduation. Luckily for me, I had turned eighteen a couple weeks before, so I didn’t need my dad’s permission to go sign my life away to my country for the next four or five years.
4.TWO PINK LINES
KNUCKLES
“We need to talk,”Simone said as she intercepted me after school before I could get to my motorcycle.
“What’s up, Sexy Simone?” I teased lightheartedly even though she seemed upset.
“This,” she said as she handed me a plastic stick. I glanced down and swallowed hard. This couldn’t be what it looked like. My eyes darted back up to meet hers. I could have drowned in the brown pools that stared back at me. They shimmered with unshed tears and I knew the test in my hand was exactly what I thought it was. When I didn’t say anything, she did. “I’m pregnant.” I barely heard those two words because they were whispered and at the same time they echoed in my head as if she had shouted them. “What are we going to do? My mom won’t help me raise a baby. She had to raise me all by herself.”
“How in the hell did this happen? We were always careful.”
“At Ashely’s party. The first time. Remember?” she asked. It hit me then that the first condom had broken. Neither of us thought anything of it because it didn’t seem like much was missing from the condom. I screwed my face up as I remembered thinking that. As if I could judge how much of my load was still in the condom versus what might have been leftinside her. As my father always said when he side-eyed me at the dinner table,“It only takes one tiny fuckup.”
