We Are the Ants(45)

“When I found out I was pregnant, I wanted to abort. I wanted to finish college and start a career, and I thought a baby would derail my hard work.” Zooey’s voice was soft and soothing. “I made the appointment at Planned Parenthood before I even told your brother.”

“Obviously, you changed your mind.”

“No,” Zooey said, locking her eyes onto mine. “Charlie changed it. He told me our life wouldn’t be easy, that we’d struggle to pay our bills and put food on the table, that we’d argue and fight, and that there was a good chance we’d end up hating each other.”

I rolled my eyes. “How could you resist a pitch like that?”

Zooey smiled. “But he also told me that no matter what happened, we would love our baby like no parents had ever loved a baby in the history of the world. He said he would sell every last thing he owned to give our child the life it deserved.” She stopped speaking for a moment, but I could tell by the way she bit her lip that she wasn’t done. “Even though I agreed to have the baby, I still wasn’t sure until Charlie took the job with my father.”

“That’s not commitment; it’s survival.”

“Your brother gave up his dream for me, Henry.”

The pregnancy was making Zooey crazy. “Charlie doesn’t have any dreams that don’t involve naked cheerleaders and muscle cars.”

Zooey frowned. “Do you really not know?”

“Know what?”

“Charlie was enrolled in the firefighting academy.”

“Bullshit.”

“He gave it up to work with my father because he didn’t want to risk getting hurt and not being around for the baby.” Zooey seemed to be speaking both too slow and too fast. I heard what she said, but I couldn’t process it.

“I guess I don’t really know my brother at all.” I got out of the car and wandered into the bookstore in a daze. Charlie had secretly wanted to be a firefighter—something he’d never mentioned—but he’d given it up for a fetus. The little parasite wasn’t even born yet, and Charlie was already rearranging his life. That’s love. That’s what you do when you love someone. Maybe Jesse hadn’t really loved me at all.

When Jesse and I visited the bookstore together, I’d disappear into the science section, lost in books about quantum mechanics and space travel and theories I hardly understood but that fascinated me anyway. I’d lose track of time and Jesse, and have to go up and down every aisle because he couldn’t stand to remain in the same place. I loved science, but he loved everything. Sometimes I’d find him in home improvement, sometimes in philosophy, sometimes in fiction, his arms straining under the weight of all the books he was considering buying. It was always a surprise to turn a corner and see him standing there, totally immersed in whatever he was curious about that day.

As I wandered among the stacks, I kept hoping I’d -stumble upon him reading about the life of Rimbaud or searching the pages of cooking books for a great lemon meringue pie recipe. The most upsetting part isn’t that I never found him; it’s that he was everywhere.

“Henry?”

I dropped the book I was holding. I didn’t even remember taking it off the shelf. Audrey stood at the end of the aisle. She rushed toward me, grabbed the book off the floor, and looked at the cover. “Are you taking up cake decorating?”

“No.”

Audrey and I hadn’t talked much since the fair. “Looking for something in particular?”

I shook my head. “I just needed . . . Forget it.”

“What?”

“I wanted to feel close to Jesse.” I stared at my feet. “It’s stupid.”

“Not really.”

“Whatever,” I said. “I’ll see you later.”

Audrey stood aside to let me pass, but before I turned the corner, she said, “Wanna get a cookie?”

I stopped, turned around. “What?”

“A cookie. I can drive us across the street to the mall. If we time it right, we can get some fresh from the oven.”

“I don’t know.”

“You can’t hate me forever, Henry.”

“I can try.”

“But if you come with me, you can hate me and eat cookies. Win-win.”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine.”

Audrey grinned. “It’s a date.”

“It’s a cookie.”

“It’s a cookie date.”

? ? ?

“So we were making out, and my nose was running a little, but I had it in my mind that if I stopped kissing Jesse, he’d realize I was a loser and never want to kiss me again, so I ignored it and snogged on. I’m pretty sure we made out for hours, but when we turned on the lights, I screamed because Jesse’s face was covered in blood.”

“Gross!” Audrey ate her cookie as we sat outside the entrance of the mall.

“Turns out I’d had a bloody nose. It was smeared over both of our faces.” We’d gotten six cookies to split, and they’d been gooey and delicious at first, but all the sugar was beginning to sour my stomach.

Audrey laughed, and if I closed my eyes, I could imagine Jesse was with us, swapping stories and cracking up at our lame jokes. “Jesse never told me about that.”