This Will Only Hurt a Little(26)

“Well, okay. Why didn’t you just say that?” He hugged me. “Is it cool if I stay?”

I nodded yes. What else could I say?

Here’s the thing. I should have broken up with Ben that night. Or the next week or the week after. But much like the Trey thing, I had made the decision that the only way all of this would be okay was if Ben and I stayed together and I don’t know what . . . got married? Had babies? And then we could tell the story of how we met when I was fifteen and we just knew we were meant to be together??

I hung on wishing, willing it to be different or better. Ben was disappearing more and more with his friends, and I was left waiting for phone calls that inevitably never came. Finally, one cold January night, I called and broke up with him. I’m sure it wasn’t a surprise, but he was still so mean on the phone. Afterward, I hung up and walked into the hallway and called out for my mom. I didn’t know what else to do. She came running from her room in her robe.

“Busy! Honey! What is it? Are you okay??”

I folded into her, sobbing. When I told her, she started to cry too.

“Oh, honey. If I could take it away, you know I would. You know I would take it all away if I could.” Then she put me in bed and got a cold washcloth for my head and scratched my back until I fell asleep.

As the school year wore on, I had a reminder every day in geometry class of my abortion. I watched—our whole school did, really—as Tasha got bigger and bigger. She was keeping her baby, not giving it up for adoption. Her family was being supportive, and her boyfriend, for his part, was sticking around. She would bring in sonograms and show them to me before class, and the day she told me she was having a girl, I congratulated her and told her how excited I was for her, and then I went to the bathroom and sobbed in the stall. Bailey and I threw her a baby shower. I made a little peach cake with baby booties on top of it; my mom helped me to get the icing right.

Ben’s friends would yell stupid shit to me as I walked through the quad. (They liked to say, “Watch out! There goes Jizzy Philipps!” Cool, dudes.) And occasionally they would toss gum wrappers or balled-up notebook paper in my direction. Even Alex, who I had thought was pretty cool. But I guess I was wrong. It became clear that Ben was dating another girl. A friend of Melanie, I think. But I didn’t see them much around campus. Our school wasn’t small, and it was fairly easy to avoid people you didn’t want to see.

One day, though, I walked into my science class and saw Mrs. Miller standing there. She was our substitute teacher. I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. I took my seat and started to panic, but I wouldn’t allow myself to cry in front of her. Do I really have to sit here for the next forty-five minutes with this woman who told me I’m going to hell?? I grabbed my bag and started to run out. When I heard her call after me, I spun around and looked at her. “I’m going to the counselor’s office and I’m going to call my mom.” And then I did just that.

When I was done telling my mom, she said, “Put your guidance counselor on the phone.”

Then I watched as she nodded, listening to my mom. “Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. Okay, Barbara. Yes, thank you.”

She hung up the phone and looked at me. “So listen. You can stay in here or go to the theater building. Whatever you want. You’re excused from that class, and any time Mrs. Miller is subbing, you just come right in here, okay??”

I still have no idea what my mom said. But I was so glad she said it.

Soon after that, Kate and her boyfriend James decided they wanted to set me up with a senior named Shawn Harris. I knew him a little because he was in a play I’d done that spring and we had hung out a bit backstage. I thought he was super cute. He was dating one of Kate’s friends Becca for a while, but they were broken up.

Shawn and I started hanging out, and before long, we were going out. Becca was pissed at me, especially since she thought maybe she and Shawn would get back together at some point. In order to keep the peace of our friend group, Kendra suggested a dinner at the Village Inn to smooth things over. All of us girls went. Becca showed up with Kelly Yi, Samantha’s best friend, whom she had become good friends with in art class. As the conversation began to get heated about who was allowed to date who, I started to tear up.

“Becca, I’m sorry,” I said. “I know you loved him, but you guys are broken up and . . . Look, I’ve had a really shitty year. After my abortion I felt like I would never recov—”

Kelly Yi cut me off. “Wait. You had an abortion, too?? When?”

We all looked at her, confused.

“What do you mean, too??”

“No—I mean. Wait. With Ben Miller?”

“Yeah. Who else?”

She looked at us, with wide eyes. “Samantha had an abortion in June. When you and Ben started dating. He knew. He gave her some money.”

My face fell. We all just sat there in stunned silence. Then I jumped up and ran to the pay phone and dialed his number. He picked up on the second ring. “Did Samantha have an abortion? Like when we started dating?? Like four months before I had one???”

“What the fuck, Busy? YEAH. I guess. So what?”

“So what?! So you got me pregnant like three months later???” I tried to compose my thoughts, but I was just so disgusted by him it was hard to get anything out.

“Well, what can I say? My family were Vikings.”