Mothership (5 page)

For a split second I think that maybe Ducky has done this all on purpose, to force my hand with Dad. I’m ready to pounce on him, but one look tells me he feels awful enough already. I sigh. I might as well do this now. “Dad?” I say. He’s gonna blow a gasket, but he might as well blow it now, while I still have some mobility to duck. “I’m pregnant. Two and a half months.”

My dad does not blow any gaskets. He doesn’t blow any anything.

“Dad?” I say. He hasn’t fainted, or screamed, or stormed out of the room, which I’m pretty sure are, like, the only options the parenting handbook gives you when your barely-sixteen-year-old daughter tells you she’s knocked up.

He sucks in a deep breath through his nose, nods quickly, and, without saying a word, turns and walks across the room to his desk.

Dad is riffling through the bottom drawer of his antique gray filing cabinet. He’s had that old rusty thing for years, but I never thought there was anything
in
it. As I head over to see what’s up, Ducky hot on my heels, I see that it’s filled with all kinds of LED readouts and even old papers. My father must be the only person on earth who doesn’t simply upload everything to his lap-pad or phone.

“Uh, Dad?” I say. “What are you doing?” He doesn’t answer, just continues rummaging, and I raise my eyebrows at Ducky, who shrugs. I’m starting to wonder if there’s any chance that
instead of telling my dad I was pregnant, I accidentally told him I needed Great-Grandmom’s old meatloaf recipe.

“Found it!” he shouts, straightening up to his full height. He is gripping a thick green folder bursting with papers. Ducky and I lean in to stare as he slaps it onto the desk. The plastic tab on the top of the folder reads
TEENAGE CRISES
.

Inside the larger hanging folder are many thinner beige folders, each full of papers of their own. They all have labels of potential teen disasters—
TRIAXOCIL OVERDOSE, AUTO ACCIDENT, FLUNKS HIGH SCHOOL, JOINS A CULT
. Dad thumbs past each one until he finds the one he’s looking for—
PREGNANCY
. He grins and hands it to me. “Here’s everything we’re going to need.”

I pinch the bridge of my nose. “So glad I could help fulfill your dream of solving a crisis, Dad,” I tell him.

He’s definitely not listening. He’s so proud of his own preparedness, he’s practically giddy. “Look, I’ve got a scenario for every option.” He opens it up, and a storm of pages and LEDs tumble out onto the desk. For Christ’s sake, he’s even got notes scribbled on
cocktail napkins
. “Can’t say I was expecting to need any of these, but, well, that’s why you have a crisis folder in the first place, right?”

He looks up at Ducky then, as though noticing him for the first time. “Is it yours, son?”

It takes a second for Ducky to grasp what my father is asking him. When it finally does dawn on him, he goes completely bug-eyed. “Mine? Mine?” he sputters. “Oh, no. I mean, no sir, Mr. Nara. I wouldn’t—I mean, not that I wouldn’t, I mean not that I
would
—We haven’t . . .”

“You don’t know the guy, Dad,” I say.

Dad rubs his chin. “Do I want to?” he asks, and I shake my head. “I see,” he replies. “Then I’m assuming we won’t need this.” He points to an LED with a listing of local chapels.

I fight off the brain nova I’m getting from the idea of my dad trying to marry me off to either Ducky or Cole, and put a hand on his shoulder. “Dad,” I say, “I really appreciate that you’ve gone to all this work and everything, but I’ve already figured it out. I’m going to look up adoption agencies all on my own, so you don’t have to—”

“Are you an expecting teen mother?”

The voice is coming from the television.

We all turn to the screen. A tall, strong-jawed dude walks down a long corridor, carrying a baby and talking to the camera.

“Teen pregnancy can be a confusing time, and research has shown that the comfort and support of kindred spirits can greatly improve the health not only of the developing child, but of the mother as well. The Hanover School is a brand-new safe haven for confused young mothers-to-be. Our mission is to give otherwise unprepared young ladies the tools they’ll need to raise a child in today’s fast-paced world.”

The dude is giving the camera the ol’ smoldering eyes routine, with just the right amount of sexy stubble accentuating his chiseled jawline.

“At the Hanover School we’ll provide you with a plethora of options. You’ll have access to our world-class infant care preparation courses, day care facility database, and even adoption agency networks, all right at your fingertips.”
Now the studly mister is joined by a whole team of similarly steamy men. The whole thing is so cornball that I think it must be a joke. I’m
just waiting for one of them to pull out a wrench and ask if my pipes need cleaning. They’re all holding babies, though, which is kinda ruining the vibe.

“The Hanover School for Expecting Teen Mothers. Come and experience a learned faculty, a supportive staff, and most important, new friends. Not to mention views that are out of this world!”
The camera pulls back and out of a window, and suddenly it’s clear that the hottie brigade is on the deck of a huge spaceship or something, waving out at the stars. Now I
know
this is a movie.

As the ad ends and turns into a promo for a new sitcom starring two robots and a superchimp called
Two Robots and a Superchimp
, I let out a snort. “Pregnant space school? Puhleeze. And why was everyone in that commercial a megahottie? Aren’t there any uggos at the Hanover School?”

My dad has an unsettling twinkle in his eye. “A low-Earth-orbit cruise liner. A
school
on a low-Earth-orbit cruise liner . . .”

“You can’t be serious,” I say, but my dad is already punching up the info on his phone.

“I’m going to download an application now,” he says. “Want to make sure you get in before all the spots fill up!”

“Dad, you’re kidding, right?” I look to Ducky for backup, but instead he bites his bottom lip and avoids looking me in the eye, which I know means exactly one thing.

“Ducky!”
I poke him in the shoulder. “No way. No way do you
agree
with him. Space school for pregnant girls?”

He looks me in the eyes then, and I almost wish he didn’t. Because the shitbird looks more busted up than I’ve ever seen him. “You can’t go back to school next year, Elvie. You know
you can’t. Britta will murder you
and
that baby. Besides, you’re always talking about going out into space one day.”

“How much do you think I’ll actually see floating in circles in a rusty tin can?” I say weakly. But even as the words are leaving my mouth, it’s already hit me. Ducky is right. My dad is right. A new school is probably my best option. And you can’t get much farther away from Britta without a passport to the moon.

“But . . .” I’m close to tears now too, and I hate Ducky for making me cry. I
hate
him. “A whole year?” My cheeks begin to quiver, and I know I’m a goner. “How am I going to . . .”

Ducky squeezes me up in a hug and kisses my forehead. “We’ll figure it out together,” he says softly.

“Go to hell,” I tell him. But I hug him back, hard.

•  •  •

It’s a hazy late August afternoon, near the end of my second trimester, that finds Ducky stuffing my suitcases into the trunk of my dad’s car. I told him I could pack it myself. I may look like the prizewinning pumpkin at the state fair, but I’m not crippled, for Jiminy’s sake. It’s getting harder to hide my bump now, and the farther my belly sticks out, the less likely it is that either my dad or Ducky will let me do anything on my own. I’m almost relieved to be going away to school, because if I stick around here, in two weeks I won’t be allowed to brush my own teeth.

Ducky grips my hand through the open window, so tight I think he might be trying to take my fingers as souvenirs. It’s been a good summer—lazy and relaxed, with very little to mar it except for the occasional leg cramp and the fact that I’m
now so ginormous that I basically need a series of pulleys and levers just to get out of bed. But I’d gain thirty more pounds if it meant one more day at home.

“Send me pics,” he says. “Every day. I want to know what everything looks like up there. And take caps of any hot spots you think might be choice places to hit up on our trip after graduation next year.”

“Of course I will,” I tell him. “And blink me. Like, every day. I’m going to be so bored without you.”

“No, you won’t,” he argues. We’ve had this conversation about a billion times in the past three months, but now, knowing this is the last time we’ll have it, it’s almost sweet. Familiar. One more thing I’ll have to miss. “You’ll be too busy having adventures.”

“Adventures, my ass,” I say, and pull him halfway into the car for a killer hug. “At least in space no one can hear your water break, right?”

Ducky laughs into my shoulder. “You’d better hope Hanover has a better physics teacher than Ms. Schneider.”

“Every day, you hear me?” I tell him, tugging on his ear. “You’ll blink me
every day
?”

He tugs my ear right back. “I promise,” he says. And I know he will.

Watching Ducky wave from my driveway while my dad pulls onto the street, I figure I now know what it must feel like to have your arm yanked out of its socket. I’m about to up and geyser all over my scoop neck, when my dad interrupts my reverie.

“Did I tell you that the L.O.C.
Echidna
is one of the
original orbiters?” he says. “Commissioned in 2046. Can you believe that?”

Nonemotional Elvie would roll her eyes at her father right now. Nonemotional Elvie would tell her dad,
Hello, you’ve been totally blabbering about how much you love these old ships for, like, months now, poring over floor plans at the dinner table, spouting anecdotes and factoids, and making me memorize the locations of all the emergency pods, and telling me four thousand times not to use the toilet during a Yeomen’s Curve. And PS, if you really think your daughter might get sucked into the crapper because of a sudden vacuum, maybe you shouldn’t shoot her off into space to begin with.
But nonemotional Elvie checked out about the time her stretch marks got to be the size of the Mississippi River, and now it’s just me. Miss Sappy Pants.

Dad’s still going on and on about the push to recommission old space cruisers as commercial real estate, seeing as they’re all stuck up there in orbit anyways, and I’m trying
not
to think about what I’m leaving behind—when I notice that Dad’s voice seems to be getting more distant. I turn to see what’s up.

Leaning fiercely to the left, my father is driving with his head completely stuck out his window, still chatting away as if he did this sort of thing every day.

“Dad! What the balls are you doing?”

“Sorry?” He sticks his head back inside the car. My eyes must be as bugged out as beach balls. “Just practicing. You know, in case the hood pops up one of these days while I’m driving and I can’t see out the front. Be prepared for any situation, Elvie.”

Maybe pregnancy hormones make you mental or something, I don’t know, but for some reason this strikes me as the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. I let out a guffaw so loud that I nearly upchuck the pancake sundae Ducky made me for breakfast.

Dad looks over at me then, and I think he’s going to lecture me more about preparedness, but he doesn’t. He gets this sort of sad, crooked smile on his face, and he tells me, “I’m going to miss having you around, dearheart.”

Talk about sniffle territory. I try to swallow down the lump in my throat, but no luck. “I’ll miss you, too,” I tell him.

It’s at that moment that my phone buzzes in the pocket of my stretch-waist maternity jeans, and I smile, thinking how very Ducky it is to be sticking to his one-blink-a-day promise already.

But when I flip the phone open, I see that the blink isn’t from Ducky.

It’s from Cole.

i <3 u more thn the starz

I stare at the phone for a good three miles’ worth of highway. Cole Archer? He can’t even
speak
to me for five months after I tell him I’m carrying his love child, but as soon as I’m about to blast off into space, he suddenly <3s me? My heart skips so many beats, I’m pretty sure either me or the baby is going to pass out soon.

“Elvie?” My dad slows the car to a stop. “We’re here.” I look up from my phone. Sure enough, we’ve arrived. It’s a
relatively small shuttleport with only three launch pads. Right now there’s just the one shuttle, prepped and ready to shoot us into orbit, casting a long shadow over the entire parking lot. “You okay, kid?”

I don’t even stop to think. I delete the message. And then, thumbs whipping through the menu tabs, I delete Cole, too.

“I’m just great,” I say, stuffing the phone back into my pocket. And I step out of the car.