Mothership (28 page)

My favorite part—and here I risk sounding like a lovesick adolescent, but I guess I don’t care—is afterward. Lying with Cole half under and half over the covers, tracing the constellation of freckles on his cheek and having him kiss the tip of my nose as we hold each other close, skin against skin. He smiles at me, in this way that I can tell he’s utterly happy in that moment, and he snuggles my head into the hollow between his neck and his chin. And we lie there for a long time, enjoying the sound of each other’s heartbeats.

Yeah, that’s pretty nice.

•  •  •

“Uh, Earth to Elvie.”

“Huh?” I look up. Sitting across from me at the lunch table, Malikah is waving her hand in my face.

“You alive in there?” she asks me. “Ducky’s been boring us with blow-by-blow Jetman recaps for the past ten minutes,
and you haven’t even tried to save us once. Jennie and I are
dying
over here.”

“Dude, let her space,” Leo says with a laugh. “So”—he turns back to Ducky—“do you use the Fuzer Field on the Mastodon King, ’cause I read online this great strat using—not kidding—the upgraded Hydro-rush.”

As Ducky and Leo and Greg continue their nerdfest, and Malikah turns to pelting Ducky in the side of the face with Tater Tots, Jennie sets a hand on top of mine. “You okay?” she asks me in a whisper.

“Yeah, I just . . .” I shake my head clear of thoughts. It’s been an entire day since Cole and I slept together. Nineteen and a half hours, not that I’m counting. And I want to tell someone.
Everyone.
I want Jennie and Malikah to weigh in the way they always do with complicated boy stuff, I want Leo and Greg to make fake barfing motions the way they always do with complicated boy stuff, and I want Ducky to . . . Well, I don’t know what I want Ducky to do, but it feels wrong to keep something like this from him. Something major.

Only . . . I can’t tell, can I? Because I promised Cole I wouldn’t make a peep until he had the chance to explain things to Britta, so that she’d hear it all from him, and not through the LMHS rumor mill. Which sounded so sensible and considerate yesterday afternoon as we snuggled under the covers. But now it’s just excruciating.

“No, seriously,” Ducky goes on, Leo and Greg glued to his every word. “I know it sounds idiotic, what with his resistance to ice damage, but try Hailstorm on him. When he does his Tusk-Crush, he’ll get frozen in place for two seconds.”

The worst part of it is that Cole is here, right now, in this lunchroom. I can see him at the table by the door, where he’s sitting with Britta and all her cheerleader friends. Every time he opens his mouth, I wonder if he’s going to tell her, to finally break the news that it’s over, that he’s found someone else. But he wouldn’t do it right here in the lunchroom, would he? That seems so harsh, so un-Cole-like. No, maybe he’ll do it right after school, when they’re alone in the parking lot. Or when they’re driving home. Or . . .

He is going to do it, right?

My stomach flips a somersault.

“Ouch!” I see the conjoined double tot skitter off the lunch table almost at the same moment that I realize I’ve been hit in the forehead with it. “Malikah, what the . . .”

“See something you like, eh?” she says.

“Huh?” I ask, stomach still churning.

Malikah raises her eyebrows suggestively in the direction of the door. “Someone’s got a hankering for a big helping of Cole-slaw.”

“What?”
I squeal. I glance at Ducky, who is still deep in conversation with the boys. Not listening at all. “No way. I just—”

“I don’t blame you,” she says. “He is dream
y
.”

“Oh!” Jennie pipes up suddenly, popping a gum tab into her mouth. “Did you hear about him and Britta?”

Flop!
My stomach’s on the move again.

“No, what?” Malikah asks. “They break up?”

“Nah. You think Britta’ll ever let her claws out of that one? No, it’s just she started a petition for prom king and
queen.
Already.
We’re freaking
sophomores
.”

I can’t. I can’t do this anymore. I need to talk to Cole. I need to make sure he was serious, that he cares about me, that he didn’t just sleep with me and then plan on throwing me away like some—

“Elvie?”

It’s Ducky calling my name now, his voice full of concern. And it takes me an entire second to realize that the reason everyone is staring at me is that I’m currently standing, hands gripped on the corner of the lunch table, staring at Cole Archer.

“You need to go to the nurse or something?” Jennie asks.

“I . . .” I blink. Words have completely escaped me.

And that’s when I catch his eye. Across the room Cole has noticed me standing, staring. And he gives me this look—this tiny little hint of a smile that I’m sure no one else even notices but to me speaks volumes.
Soon,
the smile promises.
Soon.

That is enough for me.

“I just have to pee,” I tell the gang, snapping out of my haze.

I’m zipping up my jeans in the ladies’ room when I see it.

The water in the toilet is neon blue.

Now, there are only two explanations. One, I consumed an inordinate amount of blueberry Juice Sticklers. Or two—and this is more likely, considering I hate Juice Sticklers—I am pregnant.

It kinda makes a girl wonder why she should even bother to take Preventra (the supposedly 99.999 percent foolproof
pregnancy and STD prevention pill) if the
very first time
she does the dirty she gets knocked up. The added pregnancy alert fail-safe feature of the pill almost seems more like a rubbing-your-nose-in-it feature.

By God, that Cole must have some Olympic-class swimmers.

Well,
I think, staring down at the irrefutable evidence of Cole’s and my little dalliance,
I guess now’s as good a time as any for Cole to break up with Britta, huh?

I yank my phone out of my pocket and type a quick message to Cole before the lunch bell rings.

can u come over tonite? i want to tell u something.

It’s not thirty seconds before I get a reply.

sure thing. always luv our chats.

And at that I can’t help it. I smile.

I know there are a thousand and one reasons I should be freaking out right now, in the minutes after I’ve just discovered that I’m pregnant.

I’m too young.

It’s too soon.

I’ve only known Cole for a few months, and been speaking to him for a few weeks.

But.

But.

Just at the moment I’m not freaking out. I’m pretty positive
there will be lots of time for freaking out later. Just at the moment I’m letting myself revel in the fact that there’s a tiny little life inside me. A tiny little piece of Cole.

As the bell rings I stick my phone into my pocket, flush the toilet, and head off to French class.

cole? whats going on? why wont u call me back?

It’s been seven days since Cole and I slept together. Six days since I told him the news that I was pregnant.

Six days since I last heard a peep out of him.

It’s Easter Sunday, and I’ve been sitting on my bed all morning gnawing on a gigantic milk chocolate bunny that Ducky got for me, my legs curled up to my chest, alternately trying to call Cole and looking up pics of fetuses online.

A poppy seed. Our baby is the size of a poppy seed.

Cole hasn’t been to school all week. Not since I dropped the baby bomb and he raced out of my house, face ghostly pale, with some lame excuse about an orthodontist appointment. Which, given Cole’s perfect teeth, I should have realized was bull honky. There are rumors that he’s sick, rumors that he hooked up with a girl in Pittsburgh and skipped school to be with her, rumors that he witnessed a murder and is just lying low for a while. Yesterday I pulled my bike out of the garage to take a secret stalking trip past his house, before realizing that the dude never even told me where he lived.

I’m picking up the phone to call him again—for the thirty-third time, not that I’m counting—when I finally allow it to sink in. Maybe he doesn’t, as I’ve been trying to convince
myself, “need time to process.” Maybe he’s already done his processing. And maybe the outcome of all that processing was that he decided not to call me. Or see me. Again. Ever.

I put down the phone, and place a hand on my stomach, trying to feel the tiny thing growing inside of me.

I know, the way you know something in a dream—when it just
hits
you, and you understand immediately that it is absolutely true—that I will never see Cole Archer again. He’s gone, for good. Which means that he didn’t love me, and he won’t love this baby. And that’s when the tears come. Because suddenly it’s crystal clear, the entire situation.

I’m pregnant.

I’m alone.

I’m screwed.

As I hurdle down the garbage chute, a lot of things should be racing through my mind. Instead my only thought is,
Way to go, Elvie.

I am often incredibly sarcastic when addressing myself.

Really, I try to reason, I had no alternative. I didn’t
want
to knock poor Cole’s stupid lights out, but neither could I sit idly by and let my destiny be decided by warring factions of extraterrestrial hotties. As far as they’re concerned, I’m nothing but a disposable incubator—and especially now that I know the Goober was swapped for some evil Jin’Kai broodling, the safest place for me is on my own. Bob has shown that he’s no one to trust. And Cole? When I look into his eyes, I believe that he loves me, but the fact is that he lied. If he knew I was going to be squirting out another alien’s freaking fetus, what would he do then? One thing I know for sure is that when I get home,
I’m getting a termination,
STAT
. Because sixteen isn’t exactly the age I planned on being when all my junk dried up and became useless. And I will not—I repeat,
not
—play mommy to some evil Jin’Kai infant baby killer.

I land with an unnerving splat in the ship’s refuse reservoir. All of the garbage, waste, and trash from the entire ship travels via chutes into this one Dumpster, located along the hull on the bottom of the ship. It measures roughly twenty-five by ten meters, so that’s a lotta space crap, and it’s about as lovely as you’d expect. I’ve made a little Elvie-size crater in the muck, and various unmentionable liquids ooze and drip down on me as I try to right myself. My hand finds something slick and clammy, and as I push myself up, there is a queasy-sounding
pop-crunch
. My hand slips on the viscous substance, and I fall back, getting a nice view of the ceiling, which is dripping with garbage juice condensation. For a sickening moment I think about what it may be that I’ve just slipped in, but then a more pressing worry takes center stage: I can’t find Cole’s ray gun. It must have slipped out of my hand when I landed. A few panicked seconds later my hand slides over its smooth casing and I extricate it from under an empty carton of Chunky Chocolate Chipotle Craving Cream. I slide it safely into the back of my pants.

I pick my handholds more carefully as I attempt to lift myself up a second time. Soon I find myself standing waist-deep in shit. Or, to be more literal than figurative, shit and urine and old food and who knows what else. I’m suddenly nostalgic for when I had something in my stomach to barf. The dry heaving that follows is the worst.

I do my best to compose myself, and look around for the side hatch, which is usually only utilized if someone accidentally drops their retainer into the trash or something. Naturally it’s on the opposite side of the Dumpster. I pick my way through the muck, wading slowly through things so awful that I’m sure I’ll be having nightmares about them for years. Once I reach the hatch, I tap a few keys on the control panel to disengage the lock, and to my relief I hear the
hiss-pop
of the clamps releasing right away. It wouldn’t have been too slick if I had escaped two groups of alien masterminds only to die in an oversize garbage can.