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“Sure.” Lali barely glances in our direction. She says something to Sebastian and he laughs.
For a second I feel uneasy. Then I try to look on the bright side. At least my boyfriend and my best friend are getting along.
When we get outside, Maggie grabs my arm and whispers, “How far would you go to get what you wanted?”
“Huh?” I say. It’s freezing. Our breath envelops us like summer clouds.
“What if you really, really, really wanted something and you didn’t know how to get it—or you did know how to get it but you weren’t sure you should do it. How far would you go?”
For a second, I wonder if she’s talking about Lali and Sebastian. Then I realize she’s talking about Peter.
“Let’s go into the barn,” I suggest. “It’s warmer.”
The Kandesies keep a few cows, mostly for show, in an old barn behind the house. Above the cows is a hayloft, where Lali and I have retreated hundreds of times to spill our most important secrets. The loft is fragrant and warm, due to the heat from the cows below. I perch on a hay bale. “Maggie, what’s wrong?” I say, wondering how many times I’ve asked her this question in the last three months. It’s becoming disturbingly repetitive.
She takes out a pack of cigarettes.
“Don’t.” I stop her. “You can’t smoke up here. You could start a fire.”
“Let’s go o
utside, then.”
“It’s cold. And you can’t grab a cigarette every time you feel uncomfortable, Mags. It’s becoming a crutch.”
“So?” Maggie looks evil.
“What did you mean before—about how far you would go?” I ask. “You’re not thinking about Peter, are you? You’re not thinking about…are you taking the birth control pills?”
“Of course.” She looks away. “When I remember.”
“Mags.” I leap toward her. “Are you insane?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
I slide in next to her and fall back on a bale of hay, gathering my arguments. I stare up at the ceiling, which nature has decorated with swags of cobwebs, like a Halloween extravaganza. Nature and instinct versus morality and logic. That’s how my father would put this dilemma.
“Mags,” I begin. “I know you’re worried about losing him. But what you’re thinking about doing is not the way to keep him.”
“Why not?” she asks stubbornly.
“Because it’s wrong. You don’t want to be the girl who forced a guy to be with her by getting pregnant.”
“Women do it all the time.”
“That doesn’t make it right.”
“My mother did it,” she says. “No one’s supposed to know. But I counted backward, and my oldest sister was born six months after my parents were married.”
“That was years ago. They didn’t even have the pill back then.”
“Maybe it would be better if they didn’t now.”
“Maggie, what are you saying? You don’t want to have a baby at eighteen. Babies are a huge pain. All they do is eat and poop. You want to be changing diapers while everyone you know is out having fun? And what about Peter? It could ruin his life. That doesn’t seem very nice, does it?”
“I don’t care,” she says. And then she starts crying.
I put my face close to hers. “You’re not pregnant now, are you?”
