Life Interrupted (2 page)

             
Not that it matters, but I feel I should be allowed to clarify and say that I had a baby yes—well, have, as I wasn’t Juno and there was no glamorous woman with a huge home waiting to take my offspring.  I mean, my sister Stacy would have taken her in a heartbeat (it’s a girl, go figure, as I am about as adept at being a girl as a dinosaur is at being a human) but I thought it was a little stunting for the kid to grow up knowing her biological mother while being raised by her adoptive mother/aunt.  I’m not in jail, there is no court order stating that I can’t see her or be with her, so it just didn’t feel right.

             
Back to my point.  I got pregnant in March of my sophomore year, had my baby last year in December, and have a baby this year, my senior year.  I also only slept with one person, and though I would love to now tell you it was more than once, I digress, I am the cliché, the one that every sex education teacher loves to use as an example (including my mother. She teaches Biology at the University for Christ’s sake. Talk about
embarrassing
).  I had sex once, and I have a baby.  I know what you’re thinking—poor baby daddy, he slept with a naïve girl and now he’s got a kid.  You would be right, sort of. 

             
He is a poor daddy—and I mean that in several ways.  Number one: he is the worst person a girl could think of to get pregnant with (hooray for me for not only getting knocked up the first time I did the big
it
, but also making sure the guy was a complete and total tool just to add some icing to my already crumbling cake).  Number two: he would be poor, if you didn’t count the money he gets from his enabling parents and his “job”—local pot dealer.  Number three: he was a poor lay—go figure. 

We never spent much time together before the night of conception and we haven’t spent much since.  Everyone knows
she’s his because on the night we met (and conceived, yeah, that’s again where the slut part comes in) we weren’t overly concerned with who saw us do what, apparently. So, even Marcus knows she’s his but we don’t talk about it and I never ask him for anything because I figure although Gracie (the little one) will be messed up enough from having no dad, if I were to add in
stoner dad who impregnated mom on a night neither of them remembers too well
, the issues become more complicated.  Ms. Flynn’s always telling me to simplify my life and I figure this is one place I can really take that to heart.

             
Especially since right now my life is complicated enough.  For the past twenty minutes I’ve been sitting in Stacy’s living room while she stomps around, ranting about irresponsible teenagers (me) who get lucky and have babies (me again) without even wanting them (and a third time).  While responsible people (her) get shafted by God for doing things in the proper order (I bite my tongue but I really want to ask her what the “proper order” of getting banged is). 

Translation: Stacy just got her period.  Again. 

“I mean, it’s not like I’m asking for a miracle here, I just want to have a baby.”

“Some people consider a baby a miracle,” I say and watch h
er eyes narrow to slits.  I know I shouldn’t open my mouth, but I can’t help it, even after three years of talking to Ms. Flynn every week and having her tell me that my lack of impulse control is what gets me into trouble.  Something about Stacy’s logical way of assuming she’s a good person and, therefore, should get a baby makes me want to play devil’s advocate.  Or just get a rise out of her, if I’m being honest.

“Is that what you were thinking when you found out you were pregnant, Rae?”
Her tone is sharp, the same one she uses with her tough patients, I’m sure, but rather than have me quivering in my boots and reflecting on my actions, it just makes me smile.

Yes, Stacy,
I want to say. 
While sitting on the toilet in the girl’s locker room at barely sixteen, holding a stick I had just peed on, praying for it to say NOT PREGNANT while knowing I was about to throw up for the third time in two hours, I was thinking what a miracle it would be if my one-time sexcapade with a stoner had gotten me pregnant. 

But rather than say what I am thinking—put one in the victory column for me—I
say, “Point taken,” and let her go back to ranting.  This, really, is all she wants.  She doesn’t expect me to listen or even have an answer, she just wants an audience for her tantrum so when she’s done and breaks down into a fit of tears, someone is there to coddle and sooth and tell her how unfair it is, all the while affirming how amazing and deserving she is. I’m hoping Nick, her husband, gets home before this responsibility falls to me. 

“I mean, what am I doing wrong? I bought an ovulation test, I’ve changed my diet, regulated our sex life.  What else do I have to change before I get a baby?”

Here’s where Ms. Flynn might be right about my personality.  I
know
Stacy doesn’t want a joke or a wisecrack any more than she wants my advice.  As far as she’s concerned, I’m one of those statistics that is simply ruining her chances of getting pregnant, like there are only so many babies allowed to be born and I stole one from her.  And still, I can’t help what comes out of my mouth.

“Have you tried getting drunk? It worked for me and mom.”

In hindsight, or even in plain sight, I know it wasn’t the right thing to say, and it’s not that I’m mocking her or her feelings.  I wish she could get pregnant; trust me, I probably wish it more than she does for the sole purpose that she can then start talking about something else and stop being such a martyr, but I also can’t help myself.  She acts as though my having a baby is something that I take for granted and that I’m so lucky to have a baby in high school.  Which, okay, I probably do take having Gracie for granted because at first, I wasn’t sure I wanted her.  I’m eighteen for Christ’s sake, let me be selfish for a minute and consider what my life would be like if I didn’t have a one-year-old.  But I do, and I am grateful because Gracie is the best baby in the world—and still, it doesn’t make having her any easier. 

The one thing I’ve been good at since I was little is volleyball.  I’m
almost six feet tall, it was either that or basketball and though I’m a big girl, I’m not really butch and that’s where the difference comes between volleyball and basketball players.  I’ve been ranked since I was a freshman, a top recruit people said, a natural division I pick papers wrote.  And then I got pregnant.

Do you know how many articles said that after Gracie came around? About as many
as the coaches who called me to ask to pay for me and my daughter to come visit their university.  Yeah, I’m lucky, I have a baby and parents (at least a mom, since my dad has the maturity level of a nineteen-year-old and didn’t even stick around to raise me) who help out.  No one kicked me out or tried to force me to have an abortion, no one exiled me from the city, and as great as everyone has been, my biggest fear is that I’m not sure I’ll ever look at her, my
daughter
, and not see what could have been instead of what is. And that’s harder than looking at my sister right now knowing she may never get a baby.  She can regret what she doesn’t have and I’ll listen, but I know more than she thinks because every day I look at my life and regret what may never be, for me and my daughter.

“Absolutely not.”

“You’re such a whore.”

“
False.  I was a whore last year, I’m a teen-mom this year.”

“Stop trying to be funny and look at me.”

Resigned, I look up from the calculus homework that I’m trying to concentrate on and have no notes to help with, thanks to my latest session with Ms. Flynn, to cock my head at my friend Katie.  At five feet four inches tall and maybe a buck ten, she’s the cutest sprite of a girl I’ve ever seen.  She’s also the most terrifying, especially on days like today where she’s all biker-babed out in a nose ring, black skinny jeans with seriously spiked black heels that make her a good four inches taller, and a black tank top with some sort of Asian writing stenciled on it in red.  Her hair, normally pale blonde to go with her sky blue eyes, is scarlet.  This look is all thanks to the influence of her latest boyfriend, no doubt.  The term “daddy issues” was invented for Katie.

“You know Coach is going to flip if he sees you in those stilts.
  Not to mention your hair color.”

Katie waves her hand in the air.  “Like he can tell me what to
do when I’m not on the court.”

I ignore this because we both know he can, and does, as he’s the only one who keeps her in line.  Her dad’s gone, her mom’s
living with boyfriend number four since the divorce—who doesn’t happen to like teenagers—and Katie fills the gap by disobeying everyone in a position of authority and waiting to be brushed aside. Coach never does, no matter how hard she pushes.

“Besides, Doug bought these boots
for me.”  Of course he did.

“How i
s Doug the biker boy?” Her face lights up with the first week glow she has for every relationship.  Next week will be the irritated eye roll for everything Doug does, and the week after that, if we stay on track, will be the constant complaining, the text arguments and the inevitable break-up.  Katie is nothing if not reliable.

“Amazing.  We went for a ride last night an
d drove all the way to the coast.  We got the bike up to 110.  He bought me my own helmet.”

“It m
ust be love,” I say and try not to gag.  Katie’s newest boyfriend is a twenty-year-old community college dropout whose current goal in life is to become a T Bird—John Travolta style.  He has everything from the Chucks to the jacket and the comb which he keeps in his pocket and uses when he waits outside of school for Katie.  But rather than Sandy, who Katie looks eerily alike, he prefers a more
Girl Interrupted
look, hence Katie’s overnight transformation.

To put it mildly, he
is a douche—a one hundred and fifty pound douche whom I’ve already assessed and know I can do some serious physical damage to if he hurts her.  As I long ago recognized a pattern of idiocy in all of Katie’s boyfriends, no doubt a direct mirror image of her own sterling father who is currently a ward of the state for armed robbery, I always assess them at the beginning.   Since most of her boyfriends are emo or some other shit that keeps them from growing and looking healthy, it isn’t hard to intimidate them.

“
All I’m asking is that you meet his cousin and consider going out with us.  We don’t have a tournament this weekend and Doug told me Richie is really sweet and super good looking.”

“Well, if Doug says.”

“Don’t be a bitch, Flow.”

“Fir
st a whore, now a bitch.  Is this Doug’s influence or do you think of these pet names on your own?”

A smile twitches at her lips before she sighs and sits
down.

“
Doug doesn’t really like you, to be honest.”

“Color me shocked,” I say and turn
back to my homework.

“He says you
’re scary.”

I
can’t help my smile.  “Imagine that.”

“
I know, right? That’s why I suggested the double date with Richie—so he could see how sweet you really are.  I didn’t tell him about Gracie, though, don’t worry. I don’t want him thinking you’re easy.”

A laugh
escapes and I can’t help but shake my head.  “Thanks for that, but my answer’s still no.”

Katie groans a
nd leans forward.  “Come on, Flow, it’s just one night.  Besides, you haven’t been on a date since…”

I look up at her with a raised eyebrow. 
“Since I got pregnant? And that wasn’t even a date. Imagine if the guy bought me dinner first.”  I shake my head. “I think my reasons for avoiding this one are clear enough.”

“I was going to say since Tripp,” she says
, and has me pausing in the middle of my equation again.  “You haven’t been on a date since that night sophomore year when you went to the basketball state championship after party and hooked up with Tripp.”

When I say nothing—
how can I, I know she’s right
—she lays her hand over mine in a quiet show of support.  “I know you love him.  Loved him,” she amends when my eyes flash to hers.  “But he’s with Lauren, just like he was before the night you hooked up.”

A pain shoots into my stomach with her words and I have to suck in a breath.  Nope, I will not go back there.  Not to
that night, not to the night a few weeks later that was impulse which led to Gracie.  I won’t go back to all the nights before when I felt exactly like this—aching and hurting and swamped with love for someone who has never really seen me.  If it takes a date with some underfed hipster for me to prove it, bring it.

“Fine, but I’
m driving myself in case I feel the need to flee at any moment and I refuse to go anywhere that burns incense and plays bad live music all night.  I want a real restaurant with real food.”  Katie shrieks and launches herself at me and I laugh.  “I’m serious, Katie.  If I’m leaving Gracie with a babysitter, I want it to be worth it.”

She laughs and nods her head.  “It will be,
Flow, you’ll see.  I’m going to call Doug and tell him it’s on.”

I watch her wiggle her cell phone out of her pocket as she walks toward the edge of the cafeteria near the windows to get better reception.  When she passes the
basketball table, the boys all hoot and holler at her good naturedly and she does a pirouette—a miracle in her icepicks—but I’m already ignoring her, my eyes automatically drifting to the buzzed blonde who’s sitting in the last seat, his broad shoulders hunched as he wolfs down what is no doubt his third sandwich in record time.  He has a plain navy blue t-shirt on with jeans—nothing fancy or showy, which makes him ten times sexier.  If I was sitting next to him, I might be able to smell the gentle scent of his Old Spice deodorant, the only scented thing he wears.  I know that because I know him, better than I know myself at times.

Tripp Jones—
athlete extraordinaire, high school heartthrob, and the only person to ever break my heart.  The shit.

~

In fairness, Tripp doesn’t know he broke my heart and I would rather rip it out and stomp on it before telling him.  All heartache where he’s concerned is of my own doing, although Katie can find fault in just about everything he does.  I secretly think this has to do with the fact that Tripp dumped her after a three day relationship in the seventh grade because she wouldn’t let him put his tongue down her throat.  I punched him for that, and again for dumping her in front of the entire cafeteria at lunch, but Katie’s not one to forgive and forget, so in a moment of weakness two years ago when I told my best friend that I slept with Tripp and
things
had happened, she promptly warned me that wasn’t good.

How right she was.

Tripp and I met in the fourth grade when we were picking flag football teams at recess. He picked me, stating that even though I was a girl, I was big like a boy and probably better than most of his friends.  That comment alone made me fall in love with him—
finally
, someone who understood and appreciated my size and abilities.  The older we got, the more time we spent together, finding that we lived only a block away from each other, that our parents were friends from way back when, that we loved the same things: sports, video games, and Rom Coms.  (Seriously, he feigns interest in the Stallone and Schwarzenegger stuff, but really all he wants is McConaughey.  It’s hilarious.)

Starting in the seventh grade, Tripp worked to maintain the l
egend his two older brothers left behind, dating as many girls as possible while holding a special place in the hearts of all of those he didn’t get around to.  To say it bothered me would be a mild term for it.  I fucking hated it.

I loathed
every girl he took to a dance or walked home or pushed against the wall outside of homeroom and kissed, but I loved him, so I continued to be his best friend, secure in the knowledge that one day
that
girl—whoever she was that week—would be gone and I would still be there.

That didn’t stop me from punching Tripp on a regular basis,
however, or abusing one of his girls in P.E. class when presented with the chance.  Our relationship was volatile, always ending up in a shouting match at which point I would end it by putting my fist into some part of his anatomy before storming off.  He always came after me a few hours later, bearing some gift (usually food) and we would laugh off whatever it was that had ignited us.  No matter what it was, Tripp never let us stay apart for long. 

I co
mforted myself with this knowledge all the way through our seventh and eighth grade years and into summer.  He might kiss other girls and hold other girls, but he never chased after other girls.  Only me.  Until freshman year.  Until Lovely Lauren.

I knew the minute Lauren Daemon stepped into the cafeteria at freshman orientation that I was in trouble.  Tripp, normally so loud and out there, stopped talking the moment he saw her, and after an hour and no comments, the only thing he said was her name. She refused him the first few months, never saying anything more than
no
when he asked her out to the movies or dinner or a party.  Undaunted, Tripp continued, ignoring all of the other available girls who threw themselves at him daily, including yours truly.

Lauren became Tripp’s mission in life.  She refused
him, yet he went back for more until finally, the day before Homecoming she agreed to be his date.  They’ve been together ever since, only separating that one time, the time I took him home after their blow-up at the basketball state championship after party.  The time that he reached for me and kissed me.  The time that he touched me and held me and told me how beautiful I was, sliding his body over mine and making me weak for the first time in my life.

             
It began when he called me, his voice angry and somewhat slurred as he asked me to take him home. 

“Rachel, I’m outside.” 
Despite the fact that everyone else—my mom included—calls me Flow (because unlike a normal, supportive mother she found my public period incident hilarious), Tripp has never used anything other than my real name.  It brings goose bumps to my skin every time.  Even that night, when I could hear the alcohol in his voice.

Just his name on my cell phone’s readout was enough to make my heart race.  We hadn’t spent as much time together since Lauren and he began dating, and honestly, I just missed him. 

“Tripp, what are you doing outside? It’s a party,
your
party.  You won.”  Tripp was one of the only sophomores to make the varsity team and start.  He was a star and he should be celebrating.

I slap
ped at Jason Metz’s hand, which was trying to find its way to my ass while we played pool.  “I don’t care, I can’t be in there.  It’s Lauren.”

I shank
ed my shot and dimly heard the hoots from the guys I was playing, but I didn’t care.  My heart was beating too fast, like I had just gotten done with a long run, and I held my breath thinking that this was it, this was the moment he was going to tell me he made a mistake, that he shouldn’t have ever dated Lovely Lauren with her long strawberry-blonde hair and flawless skin. 

“What happened, Tripp?”

There was silence on the other end of the line but I could hear him breathing, hear the rain coming down on the tin roof of the overhang.  I was already walking outside, already ignoring Jason Metz and his friends who were calling after me.  Tripp needed me, finally, he needed me again.

             
“She says I’m not possessive enough, that I’m too friendly with other girls when we’re together.”

Bitch
.  This is Lauren’s greatest skill, and the reason I hate her. (Well, the second reason. The first is because she’s small and petite and sleeping with the boy I laid claim on when we were eight, so in fairness, I was going to hate the bitch no matter what she was like.) 

Outside, I spotted
Tripp sitting on the step under the overhang, his forearms resting on his knees as his head hung.  He looked so dejected in that moment that even my hardened heart broke a little for him.  When I walked over, he looked up at me and a small smile curved his lips, his lids heavier than normal, his beautiful blue eyes a little glazed from the beer and the shock of no more Lovely Lauren.  I didn’t care, though, not when he took my hand and we walked to my car together.