First & Then(17)

“You probably shouldn’t be outside. It’s so hot.”

“They do it.” She pointed to the field.

“That’s different.”

Marabelle frowned in faint indignation. “Because they’re boys?”

I sighed. “Let’s go inside.”

“Do you want a soda or something?” I asked as we made our way back up to the school.

“Baby hates soda.”

Marabelle had few opinions nowadays that were actually her own. Baby was first and foremost, no matter what, and there seemed to be quite a few things that Baby couldn’t abide.

I was browsing the fiction section at the library last spring when I turned down a new aisle and saw Marabelle sitting on one of those library step stools. She had a pile of books in her lap. A cart stood nearby, abandoned.

Her back was straight, and her hands were folded neatly on top of the books in her lap. Her eyes were fixed on one of the upper shelves across from her.

“Hey,” I said, and when she didn’t move, “Everything okay?”

Marabelle blinked, once, twice, and then shifted her gaze to me. “Yeah,” she answered finally. “I just need to check something out.”

“Like a book?” I said, and she laughed. Laughed a lot, actually, until her eyes were glistening.

“Not like a book,” she said.

We went to the closest 7-Eleven. She stood by the snack counter while I tried to locate the right aisle. Her eyes were closed, and she was inhaling deeply. I thought for a second that she was panicking, but then her face relaxed, her lips curling into a smile.

“What are you doing?”

“It’s the best smell in the world,” she replied.

“Sorry?”

“Hot dogs spinning on heated rollers.”

I didn’t even know where to start with that one. “Come on. We gotta … just, come on.”

She took the test in the bathroom and made me come in to wait with her. I stood at the sink and she sat on the toilet seat, staring at the stick.

It wasn’t blue. I know back in the day they used to turn colors, but this one was just supposed to say PREGNANT or NOT PREGNANT. The letters were small but all too clear.

“Huh.” I remember being so freaking surprised, one, that Marabelle had sex before me, and two, that she could sit there holding that life-changing hunk of plastic and just look mildly … perturbed. Not sad or upset or scared or anything. Just perturbed.

“It’s got piss on it,” she said after a long silence. “Can you believe I’m holding something that’s got piss on it?”

I took the stick from Marabelle, even though she was right, it did have piss on it. I shook it a few times, as if, like a Magic 8 Ball or something, that would change the answer.

“Maybe it’s wrong.”

Marabelle didn’t say anything. It was so strange. Almost funny. She didn’t look upset. Most of all, she didn’t look surprised.

“What are you going to do?” I didn’t want to ask it, but I couldn’t help it.

Marabelle looked at me. “What do you think?”

“You … I mean, I don’t know. Are you going to have it?”

“He’s not an ‘it.’” Marabelle took the stick from me and threw it into the trash, and then she set about washing her hands. “He’s a baby and I’m his mama, and I don’t know what else you’d suggest I’d do but have him.”

“But you don’t have to keep him.” It flew out of my mouth. I couldn’t stop it. She was fifteen, and she was wearing pink plastic jewelry, for God’s sake. She was supposed to be someone’s mom?

Marabelle turned to me, hands dripping, and looked me in the eyes. I was taller—she had to tilt her nose up to look at me full in the face. “I’d get rid of you first,” she said, and then she left the room.

I had never heard intensity like that from Marabelle before, and I had yet to hear it again since. I couldn’t understand how she just knew like that, so strongly, without hesitation. I don’t think I’d ever been that sure about anything.

Now she was standing next to me at TS High’s sole juice machine, staring down the mango papaya and strawberry kiwi buttons with a mildly troubled look on her face.

I stuck a dollar into the machine. “Just pick.”

She rubbed her stomach. Then she hit mango papaya.

“How come you’re here after school?” Marabelle asked as we shuffled down the hall with juice in hand.

“I meet with Mrs. Wentworth.”

“That counselor lady?”

“Yeah.”

“She gave me pamphlets about special schools. She was nice. Nicer than my mama was.”

“You didn’t want to go to one of those schools?”

“Baby’ll never be normal if he’s not mainstreamed.”

I smiled a little.

“Why’re you here so late?” I asked as we rounded the corner to the main hallway.

“I don’t have a license,” Marabelle said. “Other people have to drive us around.”

“You want a ride home?” My car was cooperating this week, happily parked in the side lot next to Cas’s.

“No, I don’t mind waiting.”