Scar Girl (The Scar Boys #2)(18)
It was fun to read about all the different programs of study offered; fun to read the sections called “campus life” and imagine myself fitting in somehow, and fun to lose myself in the student population totals, the number of applicants versus the number accepted, and the outrageous tuition costs.
I had made notes in the margins back when I was thinking of applying the first time. Leafing through the second time, after I’d been out of high school for six months, I saw what an amazing exercise in self-delusion a book like that can be. I had notes next to Yale, Brown, and Cornell. Until you start sending out applications, the possibilities are limitless and they are real. It’s kind of like Schr?dinger’s cat. The college has neither accepted nor rejected you until you apply.
Of course, the listings also showed what grades and SAT scores you needed to get in, so maybe the cat was more dead than alive. For the record, my grades sucked. Like, Hoover-vacuum-cleaner sucked. As for my SATs, well, let’s just say that both the reading and math scores started with a four. I couldn’t have even gotten into Transylvania University if I tried. And, yes, there really is a school called Transylvania University. It’s in Kentucky. You can look it up.
CHEYENNE BELLE
I was feeling so bad and so scared that I don’t really even remember how we got to the clinic. I know we took a cab, but I don’t remember the drive there at all.
When I stepped onto the curb I was pulled back to reality because, of course, there were protesters. Just a handful, which I suppose isn’t bad for a Saturday morning, but it was enough. They were in our faces the second the cab pulled away.
Some were women, some men, all of them yelling at us. They were like a disorganized pack of wild dogs.
“You fucking whore,” one old bat screamed.
“Don’t listen to her, child,” a middle-aged man said. “But don’t confound the sin of fornication with the sin of murder.”
“Just ignore them,” Agnes whispered in my ear. She locked arms with me on one side, Theresa on the other.
Just before we got to the last part of the walkway—I don’t think the protesters were legally allowed to go right up to the door—this Stepford wife jumped in front of me, holding what was supposed to be a fetus in a jar of red liquid.
“Please,” she begged us. “Please don’t do this. Don’t do what I did.”
I think she wanted us to believe she was holding her own aborted fetus. My adrenaline kicked in, because for a minute I forgot about the pain and forgot to be scared. I defaulted to my usual emotion when things weren’t going right: anger. Without really thinking, I wrestled my arm free from Agnes and I shoved the woman.
I didn’t mean for her to fall, but she did. Everyone gasped, even me. Theresa tried to catch the jar as it floated up in the air, but she couldn’t. It landed hard on the walkway and shattered.
The woman yelped like a coyote and, with lightning speed, gathered up her fetus. But not before I could see that it was a plastic fake. We just stepped around her and went inside.
“You fucking bitches!” she screamed after us. My sisters had to stop me from turning around and kicking her.
The waiting room was small. There were half a dozen chairs, a small pile of magazines on a coffee table, and pamphlets and posters everywhere about reproductive systems and reproductive rights. There were two other people there: a girl about my age reading a book called Crossing to Safety, and a guy in his thirties holding a clipboard. I figured he worked there.
“Hi,” he said, coming up to us before we were all the way in the room.
I was too out of it to answer, so Agnes took charge.
“Hello,” she answered. “My sister needs to see a doctor right away.”
“Oh,” he said as his face went flush. “I’m sorry, I don’t work for Planned Parenthood. You need to check in at the desk.” He nodded to the registration area, which was basically a wall of what I guessed was bulletproof glass with a small sliding window. An older and tired-looking woman sat behind it, watching the four of us.
“So what,” Theresa snapped at the man, “are the fucking protestors coming inside now?”
“What? No, no. I’m not a protestor.” The guy, who had jet-black hair and the bushiest eyebrows I’ve ever seen, was knocked way off his game. “I’m here working for Planned Parenthood, registering gir—women, I mean registering women, to vote.”
Agnes, Theresa, and I looked at each other. My sisters burst out laughing. If I hadn’t felt like I was going to die, I might’ve laughed, too.
“Yeah, Mister,” Theresa said. “I’m sure all the girls coming in here”—and she underlined girls—“are in the right frame of mind to perform their civic duty or whatever.”
I was feeling worse by the second, so I touched Theresa’s arm. She looked at me and understood right away.
She brushed past the guy, maybe a little rougher than she needed to, and escorted me to the desk.
The room was too small for the guy to get far enough away from us, so he called out to the woman behind the glass that he was taking a break and left through the front door.
“Don’t be too hard on him, girls,” the woman said, and she underlined the word, too. “He’s actually donating his time to help raise awareness about what we do here. As long as we have those lunatics out front, we need people like him in here. Now, does one of you have an appointment?”