Dancing Naked (2 page)

“I didn’t have the flu.”

“No?” He settled himself down on the couch beside her. “Just skipping school? That’s not like you.” He leaned over, his lips lightly brushing hers while his hand ran down her arm, over her hip and began its way up
her back, under her sweater. She was tempted to give in to the flood of wonderful sensations, that full-body rush. There was none of that clumsy, pawing stuff with Derek. He knew what he was doing. But that’s how she’d gotten into this mess in the first place.

“Derek.” Kia pulled away before he could unhook her bra. She reached for his hand—to keep it off her—and began massaging his palm. Her thumbs dug deep into his flesh. She waited until he made eye contact with her. “We have a problem.”

“Really.”

Kia could see he didn’t care.

“It can wait. It’s been way too long.” His eyes looked like hazy blue pools as he leaned forward to kiss her again.

She had more willpower this time. “No, Derek.”

He sat back with a sigh. “It’s
that
time of the month, right?”

Kia almost laughed at the irony. “No, that’s not it.”

“Oh, good.” The smile was back, but now it was looking more mischievous than sexy. “Everyone’s out,” he said. “Why don’t we help ourselves to a couple bottles of beer and find somewhere more comfortable to hang out? Then, when we get back to this,” he ran his finger lightly along her bottom lip, “it will be even better.” He leaned forward to kiss her again, but she pushed him away. She hated that he could still make her want more, even now.

She stood up and walked toward the pool table. “
This
is the problem, Derek.”

“This? What are you talking about?” He looked confused. Or was it angry?

She took a deep breath and let it spill out. “You knew
I didn’t want to ... to go all the way. But you said it was safe, you had a condom, but ...”

“But what?” He actually looked puzzled, as if he couldn’t see where she was going with this.

“I think I’m pregnant.”

Derek stared at her, stunned. She stared back. The desire that she’d just seen in his eyes had vanished, and they looked hard and flat. She noticed his jaw clenching. He finally found his voice. “You say you think. You don’t know for sure?”

“Right. But I’m almost three weeks late.”

“That’s it?” Derek brushed by her. He grabbed the pool cue from the hook on the wall. “I hear my sisters talking all the time. That’s no big deal.”

“It’s a big deal for me. I’m never late. Haven’t been since I started in grade seven. That’s five years without changing.”

Derek lined up his shot. “You haven’t taken a test or something?”

“No.”

The cue ball slammed into the colored balls. They spun away in every direction, but it didn’t look like any of them were going to sink into the pockets. Kia watched the cue ball. It rolled slowly toward a corner pocket and dropped in.

“Shit!” Derek flung the pool cue onto the table and turned to her. “Then take one. You can get them at the drugstore, cheap. And don’t bother me again until you know for sure.” He stormed out of the room and Kia heard him stomp down the hall. Then she heard the footsteps returning. She felt a rush of relief. He was going to apologize. He was just upset.

He stood in the doorway, glaring at her. “And don’t give me any of that crap about it being all my fault.” He spat the words out. “You wanted to do it as much as I did.” He spun around and thumped back down the hallway, his bedroom door slamming behind him.

Kia stared at the empty doorway, shocked. Don’t bother him? That was it? “Fuck you, Derek Klassen!” she yelled, hurling a cushion through the doorway. But he was right, she realized as she slipped into her shoes and left though the front door. She had wanted to do it. That was the part she hated most.

Jan. 5

Blue.

The blue of tropical water, the surf pounding the shore.

The blue of the sky on a brilliant spring day.

The blue of a speckled robin’s egg.

The ice-blue of Derek’s eyes.

The blue ring in the water.

It’s confirmed.

I am.

Blue.

The phone rang four times before he picked it up.

“Derek. It’s me, Kia.”

“Uh-huh.” There was not even a trace of warmth in his voice.

“I took the test.”

“And?”

“It’s positive. I am.”

For a second Kia thought the phone had gone dead. Then she heard him whisper, “Shit.”

“Exactly.”

“Okay.” Derek cleared his throat. “Here’s what we have to do. I’ll take you to a clinic tomorrow after school. We’ll get it confirmed at a lab. Those home jobs aren’t always accurate. It could be wrong.”

Kia knew it wasn’t wrong, but she didn’t argue. She was relieved that he was taking charge, and he was right, they did have to rule out any doubt.

“Make sure you have your health insurance number with you,” he added.

“Okay. And then?”

“Then, if we have to, we go to a different kind of clinic.”

“You sound like you’ve got experience with this stuff.” Kia rolled her eyes. It figured.

“I wasn’t born yesterday.”

“Do you want to do something this afternoon?” Maybe he could redeem himself—a little—by showing even the teeniest streak of compassion. At least pretend that he cared about her and how she felt.

“Do something?”

“Yeah.” Like get together and cry on each other’s shoulder, she thought. “Hang out, go for a drive. You know, do something.”

“Sorry, Kia. I’ve got too much homework.”

Homework? It was a well-known fact that Derek Klassen never did homework.

“Fine.” She hung up before he had a chance to say anything else, but there wasn’t the usual satisfaction in
getting in the last word. There was only a rush of anger— mostly at herself. How could she have been so stupid?

Kia logged onto the Internet. She tapped in the word
pregnancy.
A moment later a list with over 500,000 sites was displayed. Starting at the top, she read the headings until she came to one called
Week to Week Pregnancy Calendar.
She pointed the cursor to it and clicked.

The site came up. She scanned the information and then hit the print command. While she waited for the hard copy, she did some quick calculations. If a pregnancy lasts forty weeks from the first day of the last menstrual cycle, that made her seven weeks pregnant already!

Snatching the pages off the printer, Kia went down the hall to her room. After shutting the door, she glanced down the page until she came to the entry for seven weeks. She read:

The leg and arm buds have begun to appear. The brain is growing and developing. The heart has divided into right and left chambers. The eyes and nostrils are developing, as are the intestines, appendix and pancreas. All this, yet it is only the size of a green pea.

Hearing the front door bang open, Kia folded the pages and quickly tucked them into her journal.

“Which clinic are we going to?” Kia yelled over the din of the boom box.

“Over on the East Side,” Derek yelled back. “Don’t
want to run into anyone we know.”

Kia nodded and sat back in the passenger seat of his ’78 Chevy Impala. She watched the windshield wipers slap back and forth. The heater in his car didn’t work, so she pulled her jacket together and began to fold her arms across her chest, but that made her wince, her breasts were so sore.

Glancing at Derek as he sang along with his favorite rapper, Kia saw him check his reflection in the rear-view mirror, lick his fingers and smooth his already perfectly groomed hair. Then he went back to tapping out rhythms on the steering wheel, except when he was honking or giving another driver the finger, which he seemed to do every few blocks, just as a matter of principle. Kia looked away. Why hadn’t these things irritated her before?

They pulled into a Superstore parking lot. Kia saw the sign for the walk-in clinic to the right of the main entrance. She was beginning to think Derek had been here before; he knew exactly where to go.

The woman at the front desk told Kia to add her name to the long list on the clipboard and to have a seat. The waiting room was full; the only two vacant chairs were across the room from one another. Derek plunked himself in one, picked up a
Sports Illustrated
and began to flip through it. Kia sank into the remaining chair. On her right, an elderly man coughed hard, a phlegmy, rattling noise coming from his chest. She turned, putting her back to him just in time to see the small boy with a crusty nose on her left strike his baby sister in the face with a toy truck. The baby hollered, the mother smacked the little boy, and he gave a blood-curdling scream.

Kia stood up and went back to the desk. “How long do you think the wait will be?” she asked.

The woman smiled sympathetically, but shook her head. “It’s hard to judge,” she said. “Could be as long as forty-five minutes.” She placed a clipboard in front of Kia. “You might as well fill this out while you’re waiting.”

Kia took her time filling in her medical history. When she got to the last question, she paused.
Reason for today’s visit
, it asked. She looked over at Derek, who was still engrossed in the magazine. She considered putting
vasectomy for boyfriend
in the blank space, but didn’t feel like using the word “boyfriend.” She sighed and wrote in
pregnancy test
.

Each minute seemed an hour long. Kia paced across the front of the waiting room. The sneezing, sniffling and coughing were as incessant as the whining of the small children. She stepped outside and breathed in lungfuls of the damp air, hesitant to return to the stuffy, germ-filled room.

When her name was finally called, she glanced at Derek, expecting him to join her as she followed the nurse down the hall to the examining room. But he didn’t move, just stared back at her. She went alone.

The person who burst into the tiny room after what seemed like another hour didn’t look nearly old enough to be a doctor, but she shook Kia’s hand and introduced herself as Dr. Aya Miyata. She glanced down at the form Kia had filled out.

“So you think you’re pregnant.”

“Yes. I know I am. I took a home test, it was positive, and I feel gross. My breasts hurt. I know that’s how you
feel when you get pregnant.”