Bumped (10 page)

I’M NOT PROUD TO SAY THAT I BLINDED MALIA AFTER HER LAST
MiNet rant.

They told me if I loved myself, if I loved my country I would give Angelina to her rightful parents and never think about her again. Why did you let them say those things to me? Why didn’t you try to stop them? You were my birthcoach. You were supposed to be there for me
. . . .

I just couldn’t take the guilt anymore. I should have known that wouldn’t be the last I’d hear about her.

“Did she get out of the, um . . . you know, lockdown?”

“Over the weekend,” Shoko says, leaning on my arm for support. “Her parents are sending her to . . .” She looks over her shoulders and whispers, “The Shields Center.”

My intestines lurch. Only the worst cases get sent there, mostly girls who go mad after misdelivering.

“She’s totally lost it. Wackadoodledeedoo.” Shoko crosses her eyes. “She was still wanking out and screaming to anyone who would listen that she’s a victim of preggsploi-
tation and that the deal was off and she was keeping her delivery for herself. She was even using the B word.”

Where is my baby?

“Her parents are suing the RePro Rep for botching the whole transaction.”

I don’t blame them. Even before this postdelivery meltdown, we all talked about how Malia’s broker was the worst. He totally lowballed her. True, she wasn’t an easy sell. Malia is the nicest person I know, but niceness is not a quantifiable high-revenue quality. She’s short and sorta thick in both meanings of the word—she struggled to keep up in her classes. But she was tough on the soccer field, a true team player who would sooner make an assist than go for the goal herself. So nice. Always so nice. I think she ran unopposed for vice president because we all felt like someone so nice deserved to excel at something. At least that’s why
I
didn’t run against her. (Ventura hadn’t joined the Alliance yet. If she had, I doubt she would’ve had any such reservations because she’s just that powertrippy.)

Malia was willing to deliver a pregg for someone who wanted one, either because she was really that nice or because the pressure to keep up with the rest of us—pressure that began the moment I signed my contract with Lib—was just too much. Or both. She didn’t want to feel left out. And as the last prebump in the Alliance, I can hardly blame her.

Malia never disclosed the full terms of her contract but Shoko and I both have reason to believe that her Rep settled for something in the low four figures. When I told Lib about it, he told me it’s quantity-over-quality brokers like that who give commercial surrogetting a bad name.

“It was
his
mistake for showing Malia the SimFant.”

Surrogettes are never supposed to see 4-D because they supposedly come out really, really cute and we might get too attached. That’s exactly what happened to Malia.

“You know they upped her dose of AntiTocin, right?”

“Right. And it wasn’t enough?”

“Well, it
was
at first,” Shoko says. “But it turns out that she stopped taking it for the last few months of pregging.”

As I said, too much AntiTocin makes you a raving bitch for forty weeks straight. Too little and . . .

I want my baby.

“Malia can’t remember to bring her flexbook to school every day; I should have known she’d forget to take her pill.”

“Oh, she didn’t forget,” Shoko says brightly. “She confessed to her OB that she stopped taking her meds on purpose.”

On purpose? I’m about to pop an outtie. “Why would she
ever
do that?”

“That’s the best part.” Shoko lights up. “She said it was making her fat!”

Shoko is laughing so hard that I’m surprised her delivery doesn’t drop right here and now.

“It’s not funny,” I say.

“It is.”

“It’s not.”

“She was pregging. She’s
supposed
to get fat. How is that not funny?”

They took my baby.

“SHE’S OUR FRIEND AND SHE HAS POSTPARTUM PSYCHOSIS. HOW IS THAT FUNNY?”

“Oy.” Shoko blanches, clutching her belly. “Keep your voice down. Burrito just kicked me in the kidneys.”

“Sorry,” I say without a trace of apology in my voice.

“It’s just so Malia,” Shoko says derisively. “Who else would stop taking AntiTocin on purpose?”

I could have prevented this. I should have done something as soon as she stopped calling her pregg Shrimpy and renamed it Angelina. I should have spoken up in the delivery room. I should have warned the doctors.

“I don’t know how you can be so judgy about what’s happened to her,” I say, more to Shoko’s stomach than to her. “You were pregg partners!”

For months I watched Shoko and Malia grow bigger by the day. I watched them swap MyTurnTees, share tubes of You Glow Girl! stretch-mark remover, and share bag after bag of Big Belly Jellies. I watched them bond with each other because they were forbidden to bond with their bumps. I watched them and thought I wanted to pregg right along with them.

Now I’m less excited to pregg than I am scared to be the only girl who hasn’t.

“Oh please, I don’t feel sorry for her at all,” Shoko snaps, hands still rubbing her sides. “And if you had bumped already, you wouldn’t either.”

“What’s
that
supposed to mean?”

“I know what it’s like to look and feel like I’ve smuggled a watermelon up through my breedy bits, to need a half hour to waddle from the parking lot to my locker.” She sighs heavily. “None of it is much fun, but pregging for the highest bidder was the best decision I could have ever made. If I had been traumatized by the experience, would I have agreed to do it again?”

I guessed that she would not.

“Reneggers like Malia make the rest of us look bad. If it keeps happening, it will be harder for Surrogettes to push for profit. Until you’ve walked a mile in my swollen feet, I doubt you’ll be able to understand.”

That’s exactly why Malia picked me to be her birthcoach. As the only one who hadn’t pregged yet, I was the only one who might listen to her pleas. She knew well before she was wheeled into the delivery room what she wanted to do. And if she had only trusted me enough to let me in on her secret, I might have tried to help her.

At least I’d like to think I would have.

By the time we reach Shoko’s locker, I feel like I’ve walked a
million
miles in her swollen feet. This has been the longest, slowest trudge of my entire life.

“I’ll see you at the meeting,” I say.

“Uh-huh.” She doesn’t look at me.

I’m feeling for seriously sad as I press my way through the noisy, packed hallway to my own locker. The crowd doesn’t part when they see
me
coming. . . .

Shoko and I never battled like this before she pregged. I’ve been blaming it on a combination of all-natural hormonal fluctuations plus synthetic ones brought on by AntiTocin. But maybe the tension between us has nothing to do with what’s happening to her and everything to what’s
not
happening to me.

A hand touches my shoulder from behind. Before I look, I know who it is.

“I’m sorry,” Zen says.

I go for the hug, rest my chin on his shoulder, and hold on longer than necessary.

I CAN’T SPEAK.

“So you were about to tell me how I look just like Jondoe from the Tocin ads,” he says in a playful way. “I get that all the time.”

I can’t move.

He leans into the doorway trying to get a peek at the interior. “Are you going to let me in?”

“Oh my grace!” I jump to the side.

“Ha ha ha!” He laughs again. “That’s funny.
You’re
funny.” He raises an eyebrow, as if we’re sharing a secret. “The file didn’t mention that you had a sense of humor.”

He brushes past me and I breathe in his earthy-sweet scent.

“Whoa,” he says, pausing at the two towers in the common room. “This is an impressive collection of dead media.”

He slips a square plastic case from the top of the stack and shows it to me. On it is a picture of a girl who looks to be around my own age, dressed in a tight red top and blasphemously short skirt. She’s on her knees, but she’s definitely not praying.

“You know the rappers Fed Double X?” Jondoe asks, without waiting for an answer. “This is their mom,” he says, tapping the case. “She was a major bonermaker back in her prime.” He glances up and gives me an appraising look. “You’re way more reproaesthetical than she ever was.” Jondoe carefully puts the case back where it came from.

I bite my lip to stop myself from yelping, but a squeal comes out just the same. He turns away from the rack and gives me a quizzical look, as though he’s not certain whether the sound came from me or a small rodent.

“So. Your story,” he says.

I wring my gloveless hands. “My story?”

“Yeah, your story,” he says, stretching his arms above his head to touch the fleur-de-lis pattern in the pressed tin ceiling. “Why you decided to become a Surrogette . . .” His slim white T inches up, revealing too much.

“Oh my grace,” I exclaim, again without thinking. I cover my mouth with my hands.

“Oh
my
grace!” he repeats for the second time, covering his mouth with his hands. Then he laughs the deep-in-the-belly laugh. “Ha ha ha ha ha! Your file didn’t say you’d be funny,” he says again. “And you, Miss Melody Mayflower, are funny.”

I am Miss Melody Mayflower.

“You’re a trailblazer,” Jondoe says, running a hand along the irregular tree scraps jutting out of the walls. “I’m impressed. The first girl at your school to popularize reproductive empowerment.”

“Right,” I say, numbly nodding.

“All that, and smart too! So you’re applying to Global U. I guess you’re ready to expand your horizons?”

“Expand my horizons,” I say truthfully. “Definitely.”

We stop in front of a half-open door. He cranes his neck to take a peek.

“And this is your bedroom.”

NOT MUCH IN THE WAY OF VALUABLE EDUCATION HAPPENED
today. If my parents had any idea, they would’ve made up for the wasted day by scheduling an after-school session with one of my academic drill instructors. Their cluelessness is by far the best thing about the schoolwide MiNet blind.

In first period, Luciana Holquist, Eiko Cooper, Dea Lan, and Brynn Mandelbaum interrupted the Mandarin lesson by requesting passes to the nurse’s office. They’re the Cheerclones who tried to synchro-bump with the select members of the varsity basketball team known as the Ballers at the masSEX party Zen chauffeured the other night. They just couldn’t wait until the end of the day to see if they had succeeded. So it was all anyone could talk about for the rest of the class period because the biggest synchro-bump at our school so far happened last fall when three girls I coached on the Science Olympiad were tri-sperminated by Maxim, the only Olympian over five ten whose whole body wasn’t armored by acne. This was a challenging conversation to have in Mandarin, however, because we haven’t learned the words for “Cheerclones,” “Ballers,” “sperminated,” or “masSEX parties.”

It turned out that the Cheerclones were far less successful than the Science Olympians, who had the left-sided brainskills necessary for accurately calculating ovulation. When only Dea returned with a plus sign, the rest of first period and all of second period calculus was spent congratulating her and consoling the rest of the squad.

“You can always try again tomorrow!” Zen said encouragingly to Luciana, Eiko, and Brynn. “Why wait until tomorrow? How about right now? I’ve got five minutes!” He was determined to put the cheer back in Cheerclone. “Oh, I get it. You’re in a rush! I’ll do it in two!”

“Oh, Zen!” They giggled through their tears.

And then one of them—maybe Eiko, who can tell?—said something weird.

“You totally owe us for bailing the other night.”

But before I could find out what she was talking about, the bell rang and Zen bolted out of the classroom for his favorite class, an elective on the Decline of Western Civilization.

My third period is Personal Health and Fitness. The girls in my class who were legitimately bent over with nausea in the bleachers were joined by so many others who were green with Sympathetic Morning Sickness that I had no choice but to join the boys in their soccer game, which was fine because after thousands of hours of drills and skills, I’m faster and have better footwork than half of them already and the other half had total-body hangovers from the weekend and could barely touch their toes to the ball without flinching in pain.

Periods four (North American Language Arts and Culture) and five (Biogenetics II) were spent reading and responding to all the notes Zen was passing me now that he had brought comic relief to the Cheerclones and was back to obsessing about my sister. Since our school went MiNet blind, it’s for seriously more like 1836 than 2036.

I think your sister’s marriage is a mistake.

I think you’re a victim of your own false consciousness.

You have many upmarket qualities but a sense of humor is not one of them. For serious, though. Don’t you think it’s strange that she never talks about her fiancé? Or her wedding plans? When my sister was engaged her wedding was all she talked about. And she wasn’t even a virgin. Harmony has a lot more to look forward to on her honeymoon. . . .

The Jaydens aren’t paying me for my sense of humor. What are you being paid for? And I did notice. But most of what they do in Goodside is strange. Why should this be any different?

No price tag can be put on my skill set. But don’t get me off topic. We should offer your sister asylum so she can stay in Otherside. Forcing marriage is a violation of her basic human rights.

What makes you think she wants to stay here?

I’ve done my research. Most trubies don’t get five miles away from their settlement before they get scared, go back, and make a lifelong commitment to the Church. That she came here at all proves that she wants to stay.

What if I don’t want her to stay here?

If you choose to be so uncool and cast out your identical twin sister, then she can always stay with me.

Won’t the Cheerclones get jealous? And how exactly did you bail on them Saturday night?

Your sister is too important to waste time gossiping
about how I spent Saturday night. This is a serious situation, Mel. You have an opportunity to do something here. To help.

This time don’t wait until it’s too late.

Wise enough not to mention Malia by name, Zen made the most winning argument he possibly could.