How It Ends (25 page)

“What?” I asked, my eyes bugging out of my head. “You mean right now?”

“Right now.”

“But what will I say to him? What if he hates me?”

“Just tell him what you told me. He'll be relieved.”

“You think?”

“Come on!”

I followed her over to my old table, my heart pounding with every step.

“Hey, boys,” Jody called out as we approached. “Look who I found.”

Charlie looked up and met my eyes, and for a split second I saw a flicker of something that looked like hope. Then his eyes dulled, and he nodded at me casually. “Hey, Jessie.”

“Jess and I were just talking about comic books,” Jody sang, pulling out the chair beside Charlie and shoving me into it.

“Yeah?” he asked cautiously as I stumbled into the seat.

“Yeah. I . . . I finally got a chance to read the one you gave me.”

His brow furrowed. “But you said . . .”

“I know. I hadn't looked at it yet.”

“Then why . . . ”

“I was—” I groped for words, looking to Jody for support. She nodded at me encouragingly. “Trying to impress you?”

He barked out a laugh that warmed my insides. “Impress me, huh? Interesting strategy.”

I blushed and looked down at the table. It
seemed
to be going okay. At least he hadn't gotten up and stormed off.

“So,” he said slowly. “What did you think?” The hopeful look was back, and my heart started to beat alarmingly fast.

“That you were right,” I said shyly. “One good comic can change everything.”

Charlie ducked his head and then flashed me a smile that made my heart leap.

“This is some painfully awkward shit,” Kevin broke in, earning a smack from Jody.

“Shut up, Kev,” she said affectionately. “This is romantic.”

I blink in surprise as Madge shifts her car into park and yanks the key from the ignition. We can't possibly be here already.

I look out the window at the squat gray building that looks absolutely nothing like I thought it would, and then let my head fall back against the seat.

Madge sighs, and I can feel her eyes burning their disapproval into me. I don't want to get out of the car, but I don't want to stay in here, either. The seat belt is too tight and Madge is sitting too close and I feel like this giant SUV is crumpling in on itself, trapping me inside. I suddenly realize that I've never sat in the front seat of Madge's car before. We've never done anything together that's just the two of us. Our first stepmother-stepdaughter bonding day, and it's a trip to the abortion clinic.

Why isn't she getting out of the car?
I shift in my seat and reach for the door handle, desperate to escape.

“Wait a minute, Anne,” Madge says. I freeze, my fingers hovering inches from the handle. There's a little flutter of something in my chest. Is she having second thoughts?

My eyes flick to her face, and I watch as her gaze travels past me to the building outside. She looks as conflicted and unhappy as I am. I feel a smile creeping up from somewhere in my body, but before it makes it to my lips, she says, “I hope today is a lesson to you. I don't want to ever have to bring you back here again.” Then she climbs out of the car and marches to the sidewalk, where she waits for me with arms crossed.

I want to refuse to get out of the car. I want to hole myself up in the back and scream that I won't go through with this. I want to take out my cell phone and call my dad and confess everything and beg him to make Madge stop. But I don't. I see the look on her face and I imagine the way Dad would look at me. I think about the kids at school who used to be my friends and how they see me as a dirty slut because I had sex with Scott. And I imagine nine months of walking the halls with a growing belly.

And the weak part of me wins. That sniveling, pathetic, scared part of me that always wins.
I'm not cut out to be a mother,
I think as I follow Madge into the building.
A mother wouldn't be this cowardly.

I hang back while Madge checks in with the receptionist. She can do all the talking, I decide. Let her bear the weight of this decision. I'll get through this by just following along and doing as I'm told.

But then there's a social worker leading me to an office and telling Madge to sit outside in the waiting room, and all my plans go up in smoke.

“I'm Janet,” she tells me, gesturing at a chair. “Please, have a seat.”

She perches a pair of half-moon glasses on her nose before flipping through a clipboard full of notes. “Your mother faxed over your background health information for us, but I'd like you to take a look at the forms and verify that everything is correct.”

I want to tell her that Madge isn't my mother, but I can't seem to find my voice. I hold out a shaking hand for the clipboard and pretend to read the forms while Janet watches.

“Part of my job today is to make sure you understand all the options available to you, and that you're confident in your choice to have an abortion.”

The word just rolls off her tongue, and I look up in surprise. I've heard
abortion
so many times lately, but it's always been whispered or hissed or shouted. I've never heard it said like a regular word before.

I pass her back the clipboard and nod, suddenly grateful that Madge isn't here. Janet's eyes crinkle when she smiles at me, and the lines around them look like kindness. I flex my fingers and imagine drawing her face.

I have to fight to focus on the words she's saying. She talks about adoption and giving birth and all the things I've already thought about and debated for an eternity. I want to press fast-forward on this speech, because I'm so done thinking about it.

“Annie?”

I sit up straight and nod as if I've been listening attentively.

“I'm not telling you anything new here, am I?”

“No,” I admit. “I've thought about all those things. A lot.”

She nods and adds a few notations to the form in front of her. “Let me ask you a more difficult question, then,” she says. “Is this your decision or your mother's?”

A chunk of ice cracks off my heart, and I see two paths ahead of me. On one, I open up to Janet and tell her everything—all about Madge and my father . . . and even my mother. She'd help me; I can see that. I could tell her about Scott and the girls at school. About how scared I am and how I'm not sure that I'm making the right decision. She'd smile at me and refuse to let me go through with this abortion. Then she'd bring in Madge and lay into her about ruining young girls' lives and taking away their choices.

On the other path, I'd tell her that I've made up my mind and that I'm confident in my decision. That way, I could be free of all of this. I wouldn't have to take on the responsibility of being a teenage mother, throwing away college and my future. I wouldn't have to endure the stares and the whispers and the jokes. And I wouldn't have to explain to my child why her father never visits and why I'm so young compared with the other girls' mothers.

I must have been sitting there thinking about her question for a while, because Janet suddenly puts her pen down and starts to get up. She's going to get Madge, I realize in a panic. The biggest decision of my entire life is in front of me, and there's no
time.

I don't want Madge in here. I don't want to talk about this anymore. So I say it. “It's my choice.”

Janet's hands go to her hips, and she looks at me for a long time while I study the cuticles on my thumbnails.

When she sits down again, her voice is soft. “This is a permanent choice. There's no going back. Which is not to say it's not the right choice for you. It very well might be. But only
you
can decide that. So I'm going to ask you a very important question, and I want you to answer it honestly.”

I look up at her.

“Do you have any doubts about this choice, or have you made up your mind?”

I start crying. I can't help it. Because there's only one way out of this mess, and it's not
fair
that the decision comes down to me. I'm not the only one who brought me to this awful moment. So why am I the one who has to shoulder all the weight of this decision?

I could tell her all that. I could tell her I'm not sure yet and need more time.

But I don't. “I wish things were different. But I've made up my mind.”

She nods, all business, and writes something on my paper before asking me to take a seat back in the waiting room.

I sit three chairs down from Madge and refuse to look at her. She doesn't even care. She just shrugs and pulls out a book.

How can she sit there and fucking read?
We're about to take a life, and she's reading a shitty romance novel like it's nothing.

I can't look at her anymore, so I look around the waiting room instead. There are three other girls here, and I wonder about their stories. They're all young, though none as young as I am. Two of them look about seventeen or eighteen, and the other is probably in her early twenties. The girl in her twenties is alone, and I feel a pang of jealousy. I already know that I'll be walking around with the memory of today for the rest of my life, and I wish that Madge weren't a part of it.

I check out the mothers of the other two girls. They're so different. The one beside the blond girl is holding her hand, and that breaks my heart into a million pieces. They're leaning into each other, and the mom never takes her eyes off her daughter's tearstained face. I wonder what they talked about on the way here. I wonder if they made this decision together.

The other girl's mother sits rigidly in her seat. She reminds me of Madge. There's no handholding or reassuring pats on the leg with this woman. She never once looks at the shamed-looking girl curled into a ball beside her. She stares straight ahead, and I can feel the anger rolling off of her.

I wonder what Madge and I look like to them. Do they feel sorry for me because she's all I have left in the mother department? I want to announce to the whole waiting room that she's not related to me. That I didn't come from inside this cold woman.
She's just my stepmother!
I want to shout.

A woman in a white coat appears at the door on the far end of the room. She looks down at the charts in her hands, and my heart freezes.
Not yet.
“Amy and . . . Nicole.” She looks up and smiles while the two younger girls get up. The blond one's mother stands up with her and gives her a long hug. They rock from side to side while she whispers something in her daughter's ear.

I make eye contact with the other girl, and something passes between us. We're both crying. Her mother doesn't get up or even look at her. I know exactly how this girl feels.

I'm still thinking of her when the nurse comes back and calls my name. She shows me to a little closet closed off by a curtain and asks me to get changed and then sit on a chair in the hallway.

I stow my clothes in one of the cupboards in the little room and then tug at my shirt to make it longer. When they asked for a long T-shirt, I didn't really think about why. Now I find that it's my only coverage. I had to take off even my underwear.

I perch tentatively on the chair, pulling my shirt under me to act as a barrier between the seat and my body. I don't want to touch anything in here. Everything feels dirty.

I look around for another door. Some way to sneak out the back of this building and hide.

But then a nurse taps me on the shoulder and gestures to a dark room. I follow her and climb onto the table, starting to panic. I'm not ready to do this. I turn to the nurse and open my mouth to ask for help when a doctor rushes noisily in.

He peers at a piece of paper on the table and then smiles widely at me. “Annabel? My name is Dr. Duncan.” He snaps on a pair of latex gloves and takes a seat beside me.

“This is how things will work. I'm going to use this machine to get a look at the fetus and see where it's positioned. I'll then take some measurements to determine how far along you are. You're welcome to watch the screen or look away if you prefer. Some women find it helps them to accept the loss if they've seen the fetus.”

It's all so official. So scientific. I start to calm down a little.

The nurse positions my feet in the stirrups at the end of the table and pulls my T-shirt up. Embarrassed, I look away from my naked body and will them to hurry.

The doctor squirts cold gel on my belly and pushes a white plastic probe hard against my skin. The screen beside me flickers to life, and I see wavy lines and shapes that mean nothing to me. I feel like I'm watching from across the room.

I hear a series of clicks, and then a line appears on the screen. It spans the distance of a little bean shape in the center. I stop breathing and look closer.

“That's the fetus,” he says. “And that is its heart beating. It looks to be about nine weeks.” He makes a few notations on the paper and then snaps off the monitor. The nurse wipes my belly with a tissue and they scurry around arranging tools.

No one notices that I'm no longer a living person. Something in me died when I saw that little heart beating. But rather than jump up and take it all back, I just lie there and let the scene unfold. And when it's all over and they're congratulating me on how well I did, I feel empty. I wish they could give me a pill that would erase my memory of today. Some drug that could make this terrible feeling go away.

They take me to a little rest area where there's juice and cookies. Like we're a bunch of kindergartners on a break. I sit in a recliner, feeling dizzy and nauseated. Nurses start buzzing around me, taking my blood pressure and monitoring my temperature, but I barely notice them. I'm holed up somewhere deep inside myself.

There are other girls here too, but I'm not curious anymore. There's a low moaning coming from somewhere to my right, and the sound of someone trying to stifle her sobs, but I don't care. I don't want to know their stories or think about their lives. I'm full of my own shame. I haven't got room for theirs.