A Spark of Light(97)

Jayla looked from Beth to her father. “Maybe I could talk to Beth privately?”

That was the instant that Beth understood her Day of Judgment had come, her moment before the Grand Inquisitor. But her father didn’t know this, and so he interpreted her sudden stiffness as fear instead of fatalism. “You can talk to us both. She’s only seventeen.” Her father gripped her hand, as if he could be the strength for whatever bad news was about to be delivered.

Was it Beth’s imagination, or did Jayla’s eyes soften as they met hers, as if she could couch the impact of her words? “Beth, your tests came back. Did you know you were pregnant?”

“No,” she whispered—a syllable that was maybe a lie and maybe a denial of what was surely about to happen.

Beth could not look her father in her eye. He lifted her hand, and for a breathless moment she thought that she had been wrong about him, that he would stand by her or forgive her or both. But instead he tugged until she could feel his thumb rubbing over the thin ridge of the silver promise ring he had bought her for her fourteenth birthday, the one that was supposed to signify that she’d stay pure until her wedding night. “Are you … did you … ?”

The nurse murmured something and slipped out through the curtains of the cubicle. Beth hardly even noticed. She was somewhere else—behind a playing field, under the bleachers, with stars overhead that spelled out the answers to questions she was afraid to ask out loud: Should I … ? What if he … ? Could this be … ?

Yes. Yes. Yes.

For one night, she had been worshipped. A boy had lit fires inside her in places she had not known could burn. He had prayed with his hands and his mouth and his promises, and she had made a single mistake: she had put her faith in him. Even after everything he had done, she had turned the memory of that night over and over in her mind until it was so smooth and polished it was no longer an irritating grain of sand, but a pearl.

She had to see it that way, because if it wasn’t rare and special, then she was an even greater fool.

But her father wouldn’t think that. She had believed that nothing could ever hurt more than the moment she realized John Smith was not a real name, that she had willingly given away something she could never get back—not just her virginity, but her pride. But this, this cut more deeply—the look on her father’s face when he realized Beth was damaged goods. “Please, Daddy,” she begged. “It wasn’t my fault—”

He seized on that escape hatch. “Then who did this to you? Who hurt you?”

She pictured John’s lips grazing the inside of her thigh, his mouth closing over her. “No one,” she said softly.

Her father clenched his fists. “I’ll kill him. I will kill him for laying a hand on you.” His words were full of angles and edges. “Who. Is. He.”

For a moment, Beth almost laughed. Good luck finding him, she thought. But instead of directing her fury at whoever John Smith was, she turned the full force of her blaze on her father instead. “This is why I couldn’t tell you.” Her own voice scared her with its true and perfect aim. “It’s why I went to the clinic in the first place. Because I knew you’d be like this.”

Her anger shook the curtains. Her fingernails bit into her own palms. She was a hydra. Her father had cut her down, and something twice as strong had grown in its place.

Somewhere, distantly, Beth realized that it had not been sleeping with a boy that had made her a woman. It was not even the pregnancy, or trying to remove it. It was this: being forcibly treated like a child, when she wasn’t one.

Her father stared at her. “I don’t even know who you are,” he said softly, and then he turned on his heel and left.

—


JANINE KNEW PART OF THE disguise of being a woman who wanted an abortion involved fooling her own tribe. She and Allen had talked about this, how it was safer, how it was almost a quality control checkpoint before she entered the Center. If she could get by the other pro-life activists with her blond wig and her hoodie pulled up to shadow her face, then she could likely convince the employees inside. Plus, if she walked past everyone and they didn’t call out to her the way they would any other woman, it might look suspicious.

So the only person who knew who she was, as she walked for the first time on the other side of the fence, was Allen. He met her gaze and then turned away to talk to another activist. Meanwhile, the others began trying to get her attention. She knew that the Center considered this harassment, but honestly, it was good citizenship—if you saw a murder in progress, wouldn’t you stop it?

“Good morning,” Ethel said, stretching her hand over the fence with a little pink bag dangling from her fingers. “Can I offer you a gift?”

Janine felt her heart pound. She couldn’t speak; what if Ethel recognized her voice? Instead she reached out and snatched the blessing bag. “You don’t have to go through with this,” Ethel said triumphantly. Janine knew why—if you could actually get one of the women to take a bag, you had already gotten into her head. “We can help!”

Turning away, Janine rang the buzzer at the Center’s front door, and two seconds later she heard the buzz that would let her enter. There were maybe ten other women sitting in the waiting room—young and old, calm and jittery, black and white. The woman at the reception desk had a name tag, VONITA. Janine gave her alias—Fiona—and watched Vonita highlight her name on a list. Then she checked her watch. “You’re the last one,” she said. “Let’s get you in for a quick lab test and you can do the ultrasound after counseling, so we don’t hold up the process. It means you’ll have to stay afterward, but only for a few minutes. Sound good?”