Bumped (11 page)

JONDOE PUSHES OPEN THE DOOR, SWEEPS INSIDE THE
bedroom, then heads straight to the floor-to-ceiling windows. He taps the blinds so they raise up to reveal a view of the woodsy backyard. A creamy sunbeam fills the room. Without warning, he strips off his long-sleeved white shirt, under which he’s wearing an even more formfitting sleeveless shirt. Across his chest spreads lettering I’m afraid to look at.

Despite my better instincts, I read them anyway:

OPEN UP WITH TOCIN.

I feel dizzy and my tongue tastes like rust.

“Come here,” he says, still looking out the window. “What do you see out there?”

“Trees,” I croak.

“Right,” he replies with a wry smile. “Trees.”

Then he turns, puts his arms around me, and pulls me toward the glass.

His left arm is under my head, and his right arm embraces me. . . .

“Smile, Miss Melody Mayflower,” he whispers in my ear.

Then just as quickly he abandons me to examine the wall covered in Melody’s MiFoto collage.

“This is your best friend, Zen,” he says, picking him out from a group photo taken at the Science Olympiad. His face gets grim. “Insufficient verticality must be a major bonerkiller.”

He points to a woman with her legs scissoring in midair, a ball floating on the flat of her shoelaces. “Ah yes, number fifteen, your favorite player on the U.S. national team.”

He drags a soccer ball out of corner with his foot. “I play too. But you know that.” He flips the ball in and out and up and around and over and through his two feet. It’s all a blur.

“Ready? Your turn,” he says, before passing the ball to me. But I’m not ready at all and it hits me in the knees and bounces back to the floor with a dull thud. Athleticism, apparently, is not something I share with my sister.

“Sorry,” he says flatly. “I figured . . .” He stops midthought, starts again, lights up with another smile. He spots a guitar case in the corner. “I think it’s cool that you play real guitar instead of guitarbot.”

Melody plays guitar? I had no idea she had an interest in music! So do I! We have more in common than I thought.

“Play something for me.”

“I don’t know . . .” I say. I’m in the worship band back at home, but I don’t know how to play any songs that are popular in Otherside.

“I’ve seen your file, I know you’re talented. I’d like to hear you live.”

Then he gets down on his knees in front of me and presses his hands together in prayer.

“Pleeeeeeeease?”

I nod yes, if only to get him up off the floor. A few more seconds and there would be nothing, and I mean nothing, I could do to stop myself from getting down on the floor with him. . . .

To pray!

He claps his hands, hops to his feet, and jumps back onto Melody’s bed. He contentedly rolls among her pillows and blankets as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.

I take the guitar and pluck some notes to see if it’s in tune.

“Go on,” he says, gazing up at me from his supine position.

Then, with my eyes closed, I sing a simple hymn to give me strength:

I sing it like I’ve never sung it before.

And as I do, I feel a tiny flame sparking deep inside me, the flicker of a single lit match in a place I’m not supposed to think about, and as I keep singing and strumming that light burns hotter and brighter and spreads its warmth up and out and throughout my entire body, and I sing and sing and sing until that tiny torch has set my entire body ablaze, an undousable conflagration of passion.

WITH SO MUCH GOING ON TODAY I COULD BARELY FOCUS ON
my flexbooks. The upside is that I’ve been too distracted to worry about what will happen once I catch up with Shoko for the Pro/Am meeting. I see her before she sees me, which isn’t surprising because she’s as wide as she is tall.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey,” she says back. “I passed my mucus plug today! You know what that means! Burrito won’t be far behind!”

Gaaaah. Why am I the only one who gets icked by talk like this? I’ve got to pull myself together.

“That’s breedy! Get ready for payday!”

“Yeah,” she says, rubbing the small of her back. “I’m just surprised. I thought Burrito would squat for a full forty-two weeks. . . .”

I catch Ventura and her adorable six-month bump making her way toward the classroom where the meeting is about take place.

“I’m sorry about this morning.” This time I mean it.

“It’s okay,” says Shoko. “I’ve been thinking about it and, you know, I’d be wanky too if Malia was MiNetting me all the time about keeping my legs closed and not making the same mistake she did.”

Malia isn’t flaming me. She’s warning me. Or trying to. Before it’s too late . . .

“She’s obviously not in her right mind right now. Hopefully she’ll get whatever therapy she needs at the Shields Center, and by the time she gets back you’ll already have delivered a pregg to prove that she was all wrong.”

Ventura is almost within earshot. I don’t want her making smirky contributions to this conversation. Thankfully, the conversation ends midsentence in a familiar way.

“Oy! I gotta pee.”

“Wait,” I say as she turns, “before you go!”

She smiles as I place both hands on her belly and rub it for luck.

WHEN I OPEN MY EYES, I SEE JONDOE GAPING AT ME IN UTTER
wonder.

“That was . . .” He opens and closes his mouth a few times. For the first time since I met him at the door, he’s at a loss for words. Our eyes are locked for a few seconds of silence, and I’m thinking that I could live the rest of my life like this, just gazing into his limitless eyes, when he breaks the connection with a word.

“Unexpected.”

Jondoe pulls his knapsack onto his lap, reaches in and pulls out a thin white stick wrapped in plastic. He points it at me. I must look as thoroughly confused as I feel.

“You don’t know what this is,” he says, more of a comment than a question.

I shake my head.

“Whoa,” he says with honest wonderment. “You’re like a nubie. Innocent,” he says in a quieter voice as he unwraps the plastic. “Surprising.”

He opens his mouth, and gestures for me to do the same. I open my mouth and he laughs again.

“I can’t do it from all the way over here!”

He beckons me to come away from the window and without hesitation I float over to him without my feet touching the ground. We are too close now. I’m feeling hot and swoony again, like I did in the Mallplex yesterday, as if I’m being smothered by a veil made of soaking-wet wool.

“Ahh,” he says, presenting his open mouth to me with his tongue out.

“Ahh . . .”

Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for your love is more delightful than wine. . . .

He tenderly inserts the stick under my tongue, then pulls away and flops back onto the bed.

“Close and hold for ten seconds.”

I do as he says, which isn’t easy because my chin and the rest of my body are trembling. I realize now that the stick is a kind of thermometer. I watch as the white plastic turns bright green.

He swings into a sitting position on the edge of the bed, feet firmly planted on the floor. He pats the mattress, inviting me to sit down beside him. I shake my head, no. I’m fine just where I am on the other side of the room, my back up against the wall.

He comes to me.

“Well,” he says, pulling out the stick from between my lips, “it’s a good thing I came today.”

“It is?”

“Green means go!”

Green means go. I think of my green fertility gown hanging in my closet back in Goodside. Never worn.

“You’re peaking.” He tosses the stick into the recycling bin. “We can bump this out tonight.”

Jondoe claps his hands and rubs them together, like he’s warming himself up in front of a fire.

I gulp loud enough for God Himself to hear.

VENTURA VIDA HAS THE PEE STICK.

“The Pro/Am has an image problem,” she says. “We’re just not
sexy
enough. I mean, rilly!”

We reviewed the fund-and-awareness-raising success of “Why Save Yourself When You Can Save the World?” T-shirt sale. We signed a petition to get caf services to offer more fertile, high-folate versions of pizza and french fries because we’re gagging on the spinach and chickpeas in the salad bar. It’s the last meeting of the year, so there’s nothing else on the Pro/Am agenda except the vote for the next president. But this won’t happen until Ventura surrenders the pee stick. And she’s clutching the gold-plated positive pregnancy test like a talisman, unwilling to let it go and let someone else get a word in edgewise.

“Princeton Day Academy is already on track to rack up forty-two preggs this year. That’s double last year’s tally, but accounts for only twenty-five percent of our school’s fertile female population! We shouldn’t be satisfied until every Little Tiger is wearing one of these!”

She grasps the necklace that we all wear. Earlier in the meeting Ventura proudly added another bead to her chain during the Gestation Celebration, when all girls earn a bronze, silver, or gold bead for entering their first, second, and third trimesters, respectively. Everyone gets a glass bead just for joining, and births are commemorated with a diamond or rhinestone. Professionals usually have enough cash extra for the former, while amateurs have to settle for the latter—a good example of the type of thing that causes tension and called for the creation of the Alliance in the first place.

As if reading my mind, Ventura says, “We’ve gone so far in putting our petty differences as professionals and amateurs aside. We can come together as a united front to make girls do the right thing and bump like all of us.” She makes a big show out of turning her head to look at me. “I mean,
almost all
of us.”

Drawing attention to the embarrassingly blingless chain around my neck is totally uncalled for, even for Ventura.

“We owe it to our community, both locally and globally, to try even harder to do better.”

“Maybe we should follow China’s lead with mandatory inseminations,” I mutter to Shoko, hoping to get her attention.

Shoko’s sitting right next to me, but she’s too busy digging through a bag of Big Belly Jellies to acknowledge what I’ve said. Apparently Ventura did hear me because she holds up the pee stick and makes a slashing gesture across her throat. Gah, she has nerve for a new girl. I make a big show out of putting my hand in the air, a gesture that she just as elaborately ignores.

“The new man brands are getting way too much attention. You’ve all seen the Tocin ads. . . .”

The room explodes with everyone’s favorite studs-for-hire.

“For serious. How hot is Phoenix?”

“I want me some Fitch!”

“Jondoe! Omigod! Jondoe!”

“Yes, they’re all major stiffies,” Ventura yells over the chatter. “But it shouldn’t be about them! It should be about us!” She pops her belly out in a provocative bump-and-grind. “Can’t PREGG without the . . .”

“EGG!” shout Tulie Peters (sophomore, amateur, eighteen weeks) and Dyanna Merrill (senior, professional, fourteen weeks) in unison. They obviously practiced this call-and-response before the meeting. I have to give Ventura credit for getting a professional and an amateur to chant together in the spirit of bipartisan pregging. I’d also like to point out that you also can’t PREGG without the SPERM, but highlighting such contradictions in Ventura’s logic would go over like a raging case of hemorrhoids.

Shoko’s hazy expression suddenly snaps into focus as she holds a creamy yellow Big Belly Jelly between her swollen fingers.

“Lemon ginger!” she says to no one in particular. “Aids the digestion.” She pops it into her mouth and then, as an aside, in between chews: “Burrito’s got his foot stuck in my poop chute.”

I snort with laughter.

“Excuse me,” Ventura says sharply. “I’m the one with the pee stick.
I’ve
still got the floor.”

“Sorry, Ventura,” Shoko says. “Burrito is making me stoooopid. I can’t stay focused for . . . um . . . you know . . .
shit
.”

Heads all around the circle nod in sympathy.

“Well, that’s all the more reason to vote before you go on birthleave,” says Ventura, tossing her glossy black hair over her shoulder. Ventura for seriously lucked out on the hormonal draw because her hair is more lustrous now than ever before. Poor Celine Lichtblau (freshman, amateur, eleven weeks) is losing her hair by the handful and she’s still got two trimesters left. By the time she reaches her due date, she’ll be balder than the delivery she pushes out in the stirrups.

I’m now shaking my hand like a Cheerclone without her pom-poms. Shoko’s face is back in the Big Belly Jellies. Ventura and her adorable six-month bump stand up and look over and beyond our little group, assuming a self-important posture as if she’s about to address a crowd of thousands, not tens.

“If I’m so lucky to be voted our next president today,” Ventura says, winking at the group, “I’ll make it my mission to rilly overhaul our image. We need to get sexier to attract more girls to our cause.”

She puts on her most life-or-death serious face.

“I know you’re all aware of the unfortunate circumstances that led to the dismissal of our former vice president.”

The whole room titters nervously. Ventura’s tone is somber, and yet her heart-shaped face takes on an even rosier glow.

“We live in frightening times, girls, and we need to be role models, not reneggers.”

Oh, no. I can already see where she’s going with this.

“It’s our duty to work together as professionals and amateurs to promote positive pregging for the sake of all the parental units who desperately want our deliveries. Do you appreciate how lucky we are to live in a true melting pot of races, ethnicities, and cultures? In the United States, deliveries of every color and creed are
valued
. Do you know that if we lived in the Middle East, or parts of Europe, we would be forced by law to pregg with our own kind to keep the gene pool pure?” A ripple of gasps moves through the group. “I know. It’s shocking to think that the government would try to stick its nose in our ladyparts.”

I’m hoping Shoko will break in with a joke about Burrito sticking his nose in her ladyparts, but she’s as hypnotized as the rest of them.

“Our mixmatchy preggs are the best way to promote peace around the world. Who are you going to hate if you have blood running through you from every continent?” She casts a sly glance in my direction. “That is, unless you’re like Melody here, who’s so pure that no swimmers are worthy of her womb. . . .
Just scamming!
”

Barely muffled laugher all around the room.

I hate Ventura Vida. I want to draw blood. And I’m
not
scamming.

“For the first time in history, teenage girls are
the most important people on the planet
.” She sings the last few words, of course. “We can’t all be like Zorah Harding, who, as we all know, is due to make her ninth and tenth deliveries any moment now!”

The room breaks into applause for the most famously prolific eighteen-year-old in America.

“But we can all aspire to her greatness, can’t we? Whether you’re an amateur”—and she pauses to look meaningfully at Celine and Tulie—“or a professional Surrogette”—she stops again to lock eyes with Dyanna and a captivated Shoko—“our nation needs
all
our preggs, girls, if we have any chance of reclaiming our undisputed status as the most powerful country in the world well into the twenty-first century and beyond. If we hesitate”—and now she slowly turns her head in my direction again—“our multicultural American society, a shining beacon of tolerance and empathy around the world, will die. I mean, like, rilly
rilly
die.”

Everyone is on their swollen feet. Everyone, including my best friend. Some are clapping, some are crying, all are rocking their huge bellies with patriotic pride. I imagine an army of unseen deliveries pumping tiny fists. “USA! USA! USA!”

Even before the votes are cast—all but two (thanks, Shoko) in Ventura’s favor—there’s no doubt in my mind that I am rilly,
rilly
humped.