Joe (14 page)

Chapter
Twenty-three

Michael

He
was passing through the Quad  when he spotted the raven-haired girl—Joe,
her name was Joe, but he kept thinking of her in terms of her hair—crossing the
east end of the Quad in that swift way that she had. He stopped in his tracks
and spun around to go catch up with her, not totally sure why. Something hard
slammed into his right shoulder as he turned. Though his eyes were still following
Joe, it took him a minute to realize he’d bumped into someone.

“Oh, my bad dude. Sorry,” he said.

The guy he’d run into was, in a word,
plain. He had dull brown hair, a straight nose, and modest, firmly pressed attire:
a light blue button-up shirt tucked into khaki slacks. The guy said, “Hey, no
problem,” and smiled at Michael amicably.

Michael stared at him for a tiny moment,
noticing that the guy was not entirely plain. No, not entirely. His eyes were a
deep, glossy black, and though his mouth was turned up, those black eyes seemed
to be…burning with something. That was the best way Michael could describe it,
and because he had always had a talent for reading people, his returned smile
was forced and no doubt appeared a little uneasy.

But Michael had other fish to fry, so he
hurried on his way, casting thoughts of the not-so-plain guy out of his head
and catching sight of the raven-haired girl once again. He hurried after her. When
he caught up to her, a little out of breath and having no idea what he intended
to say, he slipped in beside her and matched her pace.

Her head was tilted downward and her
dark hair fell into her face. She seemed to be preoccupied with something, clutching
her notebook to her chest, and didn’t take notice of him. Michael cleared his
throat. “Oh, hey Joe,” he said, as if he hadn’t just damn near run across the
Quad to catch up with her.

Joe’s head jerked up and those strange
eyes settled on Michael. His accelerated heartbeat didn’t slow. “Hey,” she
said.

“Where you headed?”

She’d already tilted her head back down,
and Michael wished she would look at him again so he could see her eyes, but
her hair made for an effective curtain. “Huh-home,” she said. “You?”

“Yeah, me too. I only have one class on
Fridays.” He paused, searching for something else to say. “Where are you
parked?”

“Juh-just on the uh-other side of Blue,”
she said, speaking slowly.

Michael smiled. “Me too. I’ll walk with
you.”

Man, he felt like a douche. It was a
real challenge making small talk with this girl.

“Okay,” she said.

“So…what are you doing on Monday?” he
asked, finally finding his words. “Because I got this poetry thing here on
campus, I mean, it’s just a reading and probably not too many people will even
be there, but–Hey, you okay?”

Joe was looking at him now, her
silver-blue eyes staring firmly at his own. Her shoulders were all tensed up
and her mouth was set in a straight line. As he watched her, she parted her
lips as if to say something, the look in her eyes striking Michael as something
akin to fear. No, he thought, looking at her. Not fear. Terror. He was about to
ask if she was okay again when she spoke.

“Muh-muh-Monday’s no guh-good,” she
said, and as an after-thought added, “I wuh-want to, but Muh-Monday’s just…no
good.”

Somehow Michael got the strong feeling
that that answer had not been the one that was on the tip of her tongue just a
moment ago. She was smiling at him now, but he recognized it as the forced,
false one that she gave all of the customers at the bar she worked at. Did she
intend to be so mysterious, he wondered. He thought the answer was probably no.

She was looking down again. His
curiosity got the best of him, as it often did. “Hey, is something…troubling you?”
he asked. “I mean, it’s none of my business, but you kinda look like a ghost
just walked over your grave.”

She surprised him by bursting into
laughter. Her hand went up to her mouth to stifle the giggles, and on the side
of her face that was not visible to him he thought he saw her hand reach up and
brush a tear away. What was so funny that she was literally laughing herself
into tears? The feeling that the raven-haired girl was hiding something
increased and concern took the place of his curiosity.

They had reached the parking lot, but
Michael didn’t want to let her go without…without, well, making plans to see
her. But he could think of nothing else to say and was about to tell her
goodbye when she turned to him and grabbed his wrist. Her hair fell back from
her face and she stared at him for a moment with those strange eyes. She seemed
to be debating with herself over something. He waited, his heart leaping in his
chest with her soft but desperate contact.

Finally, as if making a decision she
might seriously regret later, she said, “Luh-look. You sh-sh-shouldn’t be here
on muh-Monday. I-I think…juh-just skip your classes on muh-Monday.”

Michael’s brow furrowed, and he found
that he couldn’t bring himself to look away from her. “I-I can’t miss Monday,”
he stuttered, as if her impediment had transferred to him. He smiled even
through his confusion. “Besides, I see you on Mondays.”

Joe released her hold on his wrist. Her
eyes studied him for a long moment, and then she sighed. “Puh-pleeease,” was
all she said.

“A-all right,” Michael said, and then he
grinned as a thought struck him. “I’ll play hooky on Monday if you play it with
me.”

The girl squeezed her eyes shut at this
and her head fell forward again, the curtain of her hair shielding her face
once more. “I can’t,” she mumbled.

That was twice that she had turned him
down. Well, third time’s the charm, right?

Michael folded his arms over his chest
defiantly. “Okay, Monday’s no good. Then Sunday. You hang out with me on
Sunday, to make up for my missed Monday with you, and you got yourself a deal.”

Her head jerked up and a smile slowly
spread across her face, and for a moment, Michael thought that she might throw
herself into his arms. She didn’t, of course. “You’re s-strange, you nuh-know
that?” she said.

His grin grew. “You must’ve rubbed off
on me.”

She smirked now, as if thinking of some
inside joke. Then she nodded. “Fuh-fine, Sunday it is. Be at Landry’s
t-t-Tobacco st-Store in puh-Peculiar at eight-thirty.” She turned to leave.

“Wait,” he called. “Eight-thirty in the
morning?”

She didn’t look back, but over her
shoulder, she said, “Yup. And b-bring some gloves. I’ll meet you th-there.”

Michael stared after her until she was out
of sight, and then began making his way over to his own car. He was happy.
Despite the fact that she seemed to turn his usually smooth conversation skills
into mush, he had gotten her to agree to a date. Well, sort of.

And only on the condition that he
skipped his classes this Monday.

Had she been serious about that? He sure
as shit thought so. But…
why?

Monday’s no good.

Yes, but why not? He thought that maybe
he should try to find out.

Chapter
Twenty-four

Claire

Her
sister was on to her. Claire could feel it. Nikki had been hanging all over her
since yesterday, when she had demanded that Claire skip her philosophy class to
go have a girls’ day. Nikki was like a hound dog sniffing around Claire’s
emotions, trying to figure her out. Claire loved her sister, but the whole,
what’s
really bothering you?
thing was getting on her nerves. Couldn’t a person
make plans to kill themself in peace? Apparently not.

She was in pain. Not physically, but
emotionally, which seemed to Claire to be even worse. The feeling of being
totally alone in this world was suffocating her slowly but effectively. Every
morning she woke up was the worst morning of her life. Dramatic? Maybe, but who
gives a shit? And Nikki just didn’t get it. No one
got it.

“I know what it is,” Nikki had told her.
“It’s that fucking worthless guy, isn’t it? It’s Brad, isn’t it? You’re
depressed because of that stinking, greasy bastard. Don’t lie to me, Claire. I
know it is.”

“Stop acting like you know what you’re
talking about, Nikki,” Claire had snapped. “You don’t know shit.”

Nikki said, “I know that Brad ain’t
worth the shit that falls out of his ass. I know that.”

But Nikki
didn’t
know everything,
as much as she liked to pretend. Nikki didn’t know that Claire was pregnant. No
one knew that except Claire and Brad. Nikki didn’t know that when Claire had
told Brad about the baby he had told her not to act like he was her boyfriend
now that she was knocked-up. He told her she probably didn’t even know
who
the
father was, but it sure as shit was not him. Nikki didn’t know that when Claire
received this response from the one and only guy she had ever been with she had
come home and smoked so much weed that she threw up and passed out. She didn’t
know that Claire had a hole in her heart the size of Texas and that it was
festering around the edges, growing dark and smelly and unbearable. No. Nikki
didn’t know shit.

And her decision was not a
spur-of-the-moment thing. It had come to her slowly and slyly, presenting
itself after she had peered behind the other doors—her other options—and
decided that they were not options at all. None of them, not even a secret
abortion, was going to solve her problems. None of those doors offered a way
out. None of them offered her freedom. And that’s when the word had popped into
her head, almost whispering itself into her consciousness.

Suicide

It was an ugly word, she knew that. To
speak of it in earnest, to even think of it was…taboo. But, she hurt so much.
Perhaps if Nikki or someone,
anyone,
had told her that it was a
deceitful word, a promiser of things it couldn’t deliver, a permanent solution
to a temporary problem, she may have been able to conduct more rational
thoughts. But no one had said that to her. Her sister, though a writer, may have
a way with words, but she did not know the words to say to Claire. And how
could she, when she didn’t know shit?

So, each day, Claire’s resolve grew.

And with it, the enchantment of that
ugly word took hold, wrapping up her mind with its promise of freedom, its lies
about the end of her anguish. She was too young and naïve to be able to think
past it.

Now, as she drove out of the UMMS
parking lot back to her apartment, she saw picketers out on the lawn of a
medical facility just outside of the campus. The traffic light ahead of her
switched to yellow and then red. For a moment she considered hitting the gas
and running through it, but her foot fell on the brakes instead, and her car
came to a stop. She tried to keep her eyes straight ahead, but the picketers
were shouting and waving their signs around.

They were on both sides of her car, not
in the street, but crowding the sidewalks that flanked her. There were old
people and young, mostly white, probably numbering about sixty in all. As
Claire scanned the crowd, her grip tightened on the steering wheel and her eyes
began to burn with hot tears.

The signs said things like:
Abortion
Kills Babies! Abortion is MURDER, and of course, It’s a BABY, not a CHOICE!
One particularly disturbing sign had a cartoon baby sitting in a jail cell,
tears streaking down its face and a sign in its own hand proclaiming:
I’m
innocent.
The caption read:
Abortion is a baby’s death penalty.
And
the worst one, the one that made Claire slam her foot on the gas the moment the
light returned to green, read:
A baby’s arms are already forming 28 days
after conception.

She cried all the way home. Twenty-eight
days after conception? She was already six weeks along. Could the silent thing
inside of her really already have grown arms? It was a thought that she was not
prepared to deal with.

But even after she got home, drew
herself a warm bath and settled into it, she found that whether or not she
wanted to deal with it, the thought was already there. She hadn’t really been
thinking of the child in her womb as a baby, more so just a problem. The fact
that it took a bunch of fanatic picketers for her to consider it made her feel
ashamed, on top of feeling depressed. What the hell was she going to do?

She could not, under any circumstances,
tell her mother, but obviously she wouldn’t be able to keep it from her for
long. The problem was that she didn’t think she would make it through a
pregnancy, either. Not because she didn’t think she would make a good
mother—and man, that thought hurt her heart—but because she wouldn’t be able to
deal with all the backlash that would come when people began to figure out that
she was pregnant. Her mother especially. There was just no way out.

Well, there is
one
way.

Yes, but if it has
arms
already…

Claire hadn’t much pondered the question
of whether or not abortion was moral. She had always felt that that sort of
business belonged to those who faced the dilemma, and had no interest in
digging into the affairs of others.
But, it’s not “others” anymore,
Claire-Bear. Not anymore.

No, not anymore, but she still didn’t
want to think about it. It was sort of a sardonic feeling, because while she
longed to be free of all the demands placed on her, she wished that this one
little time someone else could make the decision for her. But, they couldn’t,
because that type of business belonged to the person who faced the dilemma.

What if Brad had
wanted
the baby?
Would she be so quick to pull the trigger then? Unhappy thoughts. Unpleasant
questions. She decided she would ignore them for now. There was always
tomorrow, right?

No, not right. Claire didn’t know it
yet, but on Sunday night she would get some news that would make the decision
for her, that would shove her right out onto the ledge.

After her bath she wrapped herself in a
towel and climbed into bed with just that for her clothing. She considered
rolling up a nice, fat joint to help her get some sleep, but didn’t. Luckily,
she was exhausted enough to pass out without assistance after a time. She’d
wanted that joint. One thought had stopped her from having it.

Arms…Twenty-eight days…I’m six weeks.