This Is So Not Happening (6 page)

Down in the corner there was a special section to click on for daddys-to-be. That was Jake. That was my boyfriend. I tried to picture him holding a baby, and when I did, he looked completely freaked out. But he might have to do it soon. He might have to actually take care of a human being. Him and Chloe. How were they supposed to do that? And wouldn’t they have to be …
together
to do it? My heart felt like it was gulping for air all of a sudden. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t figure out where I fit in that lovely domestic scenario.

“Hi, hon! Whatcha looking at?”

My mom breezed into the kitchen with a huge smile on, reaching back to tuck her hair up into a bun. I slapped my computer closed and almost took my fingertip off. My mother froze, suspicious.

“Ally?”

“I was just … looking for wedding presents,” I improvised.

Gray and Quinn strolled into the kitchen right behind her. He was all coiffed in a gray pinstriped suit that probably cost more than Jake’s Jeep. She was decked out in a cute tweed skirt, tall boots, and a high-collared shirt, her blond hair perfect and her makeup carefully applied. Honestly, I think Quinn actually believed a Hollywood talent scout was going to descend on Orchard Hill High out of nowhere and discover her on the FroYo line. I mean, who dressed like that for school?

“Oh. That’s sweet, Ally, but you don’t have to get us anything,” Gray said, giving my shoulders a squeeze as he passed me by. He joined my mom at the coffee machine and they shared a kiss as he poured half and half in her mug for her. Which made me think of how my dad used to do the same thing. Which made me nauseous. I pushed my Frosted Flakes aside.

“Gray’s right. Just make a good speech at the wedding,” Mom said.

My mouth fell open. She couldn’t be serious. “I have to make a speech?”

“Hello? You
are
the maid of honor,” Quinn said, peeling a banana as she sat next to me.

I dropped my head onto my hand. “Just kill me now.”

“Ally,” my mom said in her favorite warning tone.

I sighed and rubbed my face with both hands. It felt dry and tight, like my eyes.

“Ally?” Now she sounded more concerned. She placed her hand on my back and I tensed. “Is something wrong? Is it the wedding?”

“No.” I slid my laptop off the island and into its case. “I’m fine about the wedding.”

“Liar, liar …” Quinn sang, tilting her head to the side.

“Quinn,” her dad said in
his
favorite warning tone.

“What? I totally heard her on the phone last night telling someone all about how the wedding planning was stressing her out,” Quinn said.

My face burned. “You listened in on my phone call?”

“Well, you could try dialing it down a notch,” Quinn said, rolling her eyes. “They could hear you all the way in Newark.”

“Mom!” I groaned.

“Girls, please.” My mother held out her hands like two stop signs. She and Gray looked at each other over our heads and, surprisingly, smiled. “Well, they’ve got the sister thing down.”

Okay, now I really was going to puke.

“I have to go,” I said, gathering my stuff. “Dad’s probably
outside already. I’m going with him to Jump before school.”

I headed toward the foyer, but my mom followed me.

“Ally, hang on a second, please.”

I paused in the center of the marble floor, next to the huge potted tree I’d never seen anyone water. Yet somehow, it was still alive. One of the many mysteries of the Nathanson household.

“Remember what we said,” my mother told me. “At the end of the summer? You promised me that if there was ever anything wrong, you would talk to me about it.”

I yanked my backpack strap onto my shoulder, feeling heavy with guilt. Looking back on the summer always made me feel awful. I’d been a brat, plain and simple. I hadn’t liked the way things were going and instead of talking to anyone about it, I’d pouted and complained and acted like an idiot, trying to manipulate my mom into getting back together with my dad. After we’d had our long,
long
make-up talk, I had promised her I’d tell her if something was bothering me, but I’d also promised myself I’d be nicer to her. Which meant not complaining about her wedding and a speech I didn’t know I had to make.

But I also couldn’t tell her what was going on. It wasn’t my secret to tell.

“It’s just … there’s so much, between the SAT and college applications and the recruitment thing,” I told her. “I just want it to be over with already. I want to know where I’m going to be next year.”

I’d actually kind of like to be there already
, I added silently, wishing for a mode of escape from all the drama.

“I know. I know it’s not easy,” my mom said, smoothing my hair behind my ear. “But you’re gonna do fine. You’re amazing, Ally. Any college would be lucky to have you.”

I smiled gratefully. “Thanks, Mom.”

“So, listen … there
is
something else I want to talk to you about,” my mother said as we walked slowly toward the double doors at the front of the house. “Gray wants to take me on a real honeymoon. Two weeks on the Amalfi Coast,” she said with a grin. “But if we go, that means …”

With a start I realized what she was getting at. My birthday. If she was gone for two weeks after the wedding, she wouldn’t be here for my eighteenth birthday. I took a breath, remembered my promise to myself, and lifted my shoulders.

“That’s okay,” I said. “We can just celebrate when you get back.”

“Yeah?” Her voice was an excited squeak. “Are you sure?”

“Totally. It’s no big deal.” But inside, my heart felt heavy. She was already doing it. She was already choosing Gray over me.

“When we get back we’ll do our traditional birthday dinner,” she told me. “It’ll just be a few days late.”

“Okay,” I said, backing toward the door. I saw my father’s newly leased Taurus idling in the driveway. “Cool. But I should go. Dad’s here.”

“Okay. Tell him I said hi!” my mom said awkwardly.

“I will.”

Outside I jogged to the car, feeling the weight of the conversation tug free from my shoulders. My father had the radio on, tuned to a classic rock station.

“Tell me you have those cinnamon roll things at the shop this morning,” I said, buckling my seat belt.

He chuckled, scratching at the stubble on his cheek. “Rough morning in the Palais du Nathanson?” he said in a French accent.

“Something like that,” I said.

My dad pulled out of the driveway and we cruised down the hill, past all the mansions and gated driveways and skinny women jogging with their tiny dogs, headed for town. I was just starting to relax when I saw a woman with a jogging stroller, pushing a sleeping baby up toward the crest. I closed my eyes and sunk lower in my seat.

“Everything all right, bud?” my dad asked.

“Yeah.”
Sure. Fine. Great.

“I was thinking, if you want to go over your applications one night this week, I could help you narrow things down,” my dad said, lowering the volume. “Maybe take some of the pressure off?”

I looked up at him. College. Applications. Visions of brick and stone buildings, fancy school logos, and happily smiling students hanging on lush lawns filled my mind, crowding out due-date calculators and gender predictors. The future. My future. Somewhere other than here, with people who’d never heard of Orchard Hill, of Chloe and Jake. And even though I felt a twinge of disloyalty, for thinking of a life beyond Jake, my chest filled with airy hope.

“Sounds like a plan,” I said.

My dad smiled, and for the first time in days, I smiled too.

The doctor’s office smelled like lemon. No. Not like lemon. Like a lemon car air freshener. It had that synthetic fake-citrus smell that’s so foul it makes the hairs inside your nose itch. Every time I breathed in, I wanted to heave. It didn’t help that it was, like, five-fucking-trillion degrees in there and everyone
was staring at me like I’d come to each of their homes and personally slaughtered their family pets. The pregnant woman in the corner with the graying hair. The couple that looked like newlyweds off some reality show with the leather, the dye jobs, and the bling. Even the janitor shot me a look on her way out, lowering her sunglasses so she could really give it to me.

What the hell was wrong with these people? Maybe me and Chloe were totally in love. Married even. Or maybe I was her brother. Yeah. Why not? God, they’d feel so stupid if they found out I was just her brother and I’d come here with her just trying to be nice. Jackasses.

“How long is this gonna take?” I asked Chloe, my leg bouncing nervously.

“I don’t know.” Chloe licked her lips and stared at my knee. “Could you please stop doing that? It’s making me tense.”

I opened my mouth to say something back—something probably stupid like “I can leave if you want me to”—but the nurse saved me.

“Chloe Appleby?”

Chloe cringed at the sound of her own name. I jumped up so fast the nurse looked confused and kinda disturbed. Like maybe
I
was Chloe Appleby.

“That’s her,” I said, pointing at Chloe.

From the look on her face, I’m pretty sure Chloe was coming up with ten different ways to murder me.

“Let’s go,” I said under my breath. All I could think about was getting out of that room and away from the Judgey McHolierthanthous.

“Right this way,” the nurse said, giving us a smile. A real one. At least someone around here didn’t hate us.

Chloe finally got out of her chair and we slowly followed the nurse. She weighed Chloe, took her blood pressure, and asked her way too many questions about her period. I stared at a pink calendar on the wall. On it was a stork dangling a wide-eyed, smiling baby right over the month of March.

“So your approximate due date would be …”

Chloe and I locked eyes. Due date? What? Already? The woman spun around a plastic wheel and smiled. “March twentieth!”

March twentieth. March twentieth. March twentieth. Suddenly I felt like I had about six and a half months to live.

“I’m just gonna have you pee in a cup for me and then you can see the doctor!” the nurse said brightly. She handed Chloe a plastic cup with a lid, sealed inside a plastic bag, and pointed her toward the bathroom. Seriously. Could this whole thing get any more effed up? Chloe ducked her head in a very un-Chloe-like way, and slipped inside. She started to close the door.

“Will your parents be joining us today, hon?” the woman asked.

Somehow Chloe’s head ducked even further. “Um. No.”

Then she shut the door. The nurse turned to me, grinning, as if this kind of thing happened every day and it was about as big of a deal as charging a cell phone.

“You’ll be in room five. You can wait for her in there.”

I glanced at room five. It was light blue and yellow and cheery, but to me it looked like the bowels of hell. I didn’t move. My mouth tasted like dirt. The nurse stood there with her arm out.

“Um … are they gonna, like … is the doctor gonna go … you know … like in the movies?”

I made a gesture with my hand that turned her face red. God, I wanted to die.

The nurse recovered and tilted her head sympathetically. “Yes, the doctor will give her a pelvic exam to confirm the pregnancy,” she said. “You can wait out here for that if you like.”

“Thank you!” I said in an exhale. I dropped onto the plastic chair just as Chloe came out and handed a cup full of yellow to the nurse. The nurse placed it on the counter, right at my eye level.

I wondered if they did lobotomies in this place.

Chloe stepped to the threshold and looked down at me. “You’re not coming in?”

My heart thumped. “Um—”

“You’ll need to strip from the waist down, hon,” the nurse said, handing her a paper sheet.

Chloe instantly got the picture. “Oh. Okay.”

“I’ll be right here,” I said. “If you need me.”

“Okay.”

Chloe walked inside like she was in a daze and closed the door behind her. Other nurses and patients walked by, did their business, went into rooms. I kept my eyes on the floor, letting my leg bounce as much as it wanted, avoiding catching any more criticizing looks. Finally someone stopped outside the room, knocked on the door, and went inside. Had to be the doctor, but I wasn’t sure. She said nothing to me, and I didn’t look up.

Five minutes passed. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty million. I could hear murmuring voices through the wall but couldn’t make out any words. In my mind I saw Chloe lying on a table, her legs open, the doctor coming at her with some scary instrument. My
stomach turned. I finally lifted my head to breathe and noticed that from where I was sitting I had a clear view of the parking lot out the window. My Jeep was parked right in the middle, its army green paint glinting in the sun. Suddenly I saw myself jumping behind the wheel, gunning the engine, and taking off for the shore. Getting. The Hell. Out of here.

My fingers twitched toward the keys in my pocket. Then the door behind me opened.

“Are you Jake?”

I looked up at the doctor. She was thin, pretty, and young, with brown hair, green eyes, and a purple T-shirt under her white coat.

“Um, yeah?”

“I’m Doctor Muller. Come on in.” She cocked her head toward the room like she was inviting me inside for a beer. Was she serious? I didn’t want to see what was going on in there.

“Come on,” she said again. “I won’t bite.”

It wasn’t her I was worried about. I shoved myself up and, staring straight ahead at the far wall—past where Chloe was lying—walked inside.

“It’s okay. I have my clothes back on,” Chloe said, sounding annoyed.

I looked at her. Only her stomach was showing as she lay back on the table. Her perfectly flat stomach. There was no way there was a baby in there. Just no way. Was that why they had called me in here? To tell me it was a big mistake? I turned toward the doctor and she was holding this wandlike thing on a wire.

“What’re you gonna do with that?” My hip hit the counter and I caught a glass bottle of Q-tips before they could smash
on the floor. “Sorry. Sorry.” I put it back on the counter with a clatter.