Starlight (Peaches Monroe) (Volume 2) Paperback – September 2, 2013 (36 page)

“Peaches?”

I can barely breathe, let alone speak, but I gasp out, “Yes?”

“If there’s ever anything you’re scared to tell me, don’t be scared. I love you, and your mother loves you, and nothing will ever change that. If you promise to always tell us things, we promise to not be angry. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Now, you’re really at home right now? You didn’t have the calls forwarded?”

“Yes, I’m at home.”

“Did you take any drugs tonight?”

“Just Midol.”

“Okay, sweetie. We love you and we miss you already. Do you want a souvenir from Arizona?”

“Nope.” What I do want is to get off the phone so I can try to get some relief on the toilet, or maybe draw a bath, like he suggested.

“Are you sure?”

“No souvenir. Love you! Bye.”

I click the button to end the call, then strip off all my clothes during a pain-free flash. On the toilet, I have a small pee, but nothing else. My vagina seems to be leaking fluid now, so… I guess that’s just another weird puberty thing people don’t talk about. I can’t comprehend all this. It’s too weird.

I start running water into the tub, and then I climb in. I’m not even naked. I still have my socks on, and my bra. This makes me laugh.

I look down at my stomach, and the way the water is over my body, it looks like my body is moving even when it isn’t, with ripples moving across my belly.

I close my eyes.

I sleep.

The phone rings.

Nobody answers it.

I hear a car with a loud stereo drive by outside.

The water drips into the tub rhythmically. Drip, drip, drip. I drift.

I’m awake again.

I will just push and push until I feel better. I’m on my back, one leg hanging over the edge of the tub.

The pain is worse than before.

Something terrible is happening to me.

I’m going to die here.

I need to drain the water before I drown, but I don’t want to.

The phone is ringing.

Someone is at the front door.

I just want to sleep, escape the pain.

I try to take off my wet socks so I can be comfortable, but I can’t reach with my hands, and it’s too hard.

Why is everything so…

Am I awake?

Someone is banging on the door downstairs.

It’s the pizza man. No, it’s not.

I roll onto my side. I don’t want to hurt anymore.

There’s a crash.

I should be scared, but I’m not.

The phone is still ringing, and I know it’s my father. I know his ring.

He won’t let anything bad happen to me.

The airplane dropped from the sky, the engines roaring as we came in for the landing. The pregnant girl next to me was holding my hand and praying.

Pray for me, too
, I thought.
Pray for us all.

The wheels went RZZZZT on the pavement, the plane bounced like a car losing control, and then my seat felt more upright again. We slowed.

I let out a nervous laugh and turned to the girl. “See, everything’s fine.”

She released my fingers and looked around like someone waking from a nap. “My first time flying,” she said.

I nodded like an old pro of four flights. “You’ll get used to the landings.”

We got off the plane, and I hugged my new-yet-nameless friend goodbye. I gathered my luggage and set out for the taxis to take me to the bus station.

Beaverdale is too small to have its own airport.

The night the EMT guys found me barely conscious and in labor, I heard them talking about a helicopter, and how they might need to transfer me elsewhere for an emergency C-section. I was delirious with pain, and I had pre-eclampsia, so my blood pressure was sky-high. Everything seemed like it was happening to someone else—someone on TV—so I wasn’t at all worried. I struggled to keep my eyes open just to see what would happen next.

We drove to the hospital, siren on the whole way. The siren is louder inside the ambulance than you’d think, which only made me respect the calm EMTs more.

The next part happened quickly, with me barely getting transferred off one rolling bed to another, and there was an entire human being coming out of me.

They took him away, and I began to wail and wail, inconsolably. I didn’t know I was pregnant, and now I was so sure I’d fucked up this little human who deserved so much better than me. I was so sure he was going to have everything wrong. When they brought him back into the room, bundled up in a pale yellow blanket, I thought they’d brought me someone else’s child.

He was so perfect, so precious.

And I couldn’t look at him.

I couldn’t hold him, because I was too ashamed. The nurses would take better care of him, and they didn’t argue. They just took him away, checked my vitals, and whispered outside my door.

I stopped talking to everyone there, except for yes and no answers. I didn’t want to look anyone in the eyes. I wanted to die.

My parents arrived at the hospital in the morning, having come straight home as fast as they could. They didn’t say anything except that they loved me. I rolled over and said I was tired. They took turns staying in the room, so I was never alone.

For that, I will always be grateful. For their love, their forgiveness, and for never leaving my side.

By the time the bus pulled into the Beaverdale depot, I felt like those hobbits at the end of the Lord of the Rings. There is nothing glamorous about traveling, unless you own a private jet that can land on a regular driveway, but I don’t think those have been invented yet.

The plan had been for my father to give me a ride home, since Shayla, my usual taxi, would be working. To my surprise, I stepped into the bus terminal and saw three familiar faces between the potted ficus trees. My mother held up a hand-made sign covered in stickers, reading
Welcome Home
. Kyle was holding a Mylar balloon shaped in a heart. His little orange T-shirt had Team Peaches written on the front with those standard block letters you get at T-Shirt Bonanza. My father looked embarrassed, but his expression turned to happiness as soon as he spotted me.

My mother called out in a stage voice, “Isn’t that Peaches Monroe? The world-famous superstar?”

I ran over to them quickly, my rolling suitcase wheels unable to handle the speed, the bag rocking back and forth with a thwap-thwap-thwap. I dropped everything and grabbed all three of them in a hug. Kyle wrestled free, so I had to chase him around the potted trees, threatening him with big, sloppy kisses as he squealed and squealed.

I nabbed him finally and spun around with him in my arms. “I missed you so much!”

He squirmed out of my arms and used his chin to point over to my suitcase. It was a gesture I’d seen my father make a thousand times. “What did you bring me?”

We walked back over to my parents, then proceeded out to the car, still talking.

“What makes you think I brought you something?” I asked, teasing.

“Mom said.”

“You don’t believe everything Mom says, do you? She puts vegetables in the chocolate cake.”

My mother elbowed me. “Libel and slander.”

My father cleared his throat. “Technically, it’s either libel or slander, but not both. It’s more of an accusation, but given what I’ve seen happen to zucchini in our kitchen, not a baseless one.”

We climbed into the car, both of us kids in the back. I gave Kyle the package from inside one of my shopping bags, and he tore through the wrapping.

It was a science kit I’d picked up at LAX, with over three hundred separate pieces to delight him and drive my parents crazy. We spent the short car ride to my house arguing over whether or not the package could be opened in the car, or if doing so violated my father’s rules for in-car conduct.

At my house, my father brought my bags into the house, and all three of them came in. My mother tidied up the living room (making some very big eyes over the ashtray full of evidence of Shayla’s recent downward spiral), then she karate-chopped the pillows. My father checked that the railing on the staircase was still secure (he’d fixed it two months earlier) and looked around for other hazards. Kyle went straight for the new fridge, as though he had a special psychic sense for new things, and started filling cups with ice cubes and water, much of it ending up on the floor.

Half an hour later, I’d shooed them away, and I went up to my bedroom to rearrange my walk-in closet to make room for my new designer clothes.

My parents had invited me to the house for dinner, but I’d declined, saying I was tired, even though I wasn’t
that
tired.

I tied the heart-shaped Mylar balloon to a dresser drawer, so it could bob around in my room until the helium leaked away.

Whacking the balloon with my finger and watching it rock in the air, I had to laugh. I’d missed Kyle so damn much while I was out of town, but forty minutes with him was more than enough.

I used to feel guilty about that, back when I’d come home from college for a visit and spend more time partying with my friends than seeing my family. I don’t feel bad about that anymore, though, because self-torture gets old, and life is hard enough without being your own worst enemy.

It’s easy to doubt yourself.

Every time I’ve been asked about my pregnancy, my memory shifts. My father says the clues had been there all along, just like in a great detective novel. According to him, I’d wrinkled my nose at certain foods the same way my mother had during her pregnancies. He hadn’t noticed the weight gain—not exactly, but he had been bothered by my louder footsteps on the staircase. He says that when I was on the phone that night, my moans had sounded exactly like my mother’s when she went into labor with me. Everything clicked in that brilliant brain of his, and he just
knew
what was happening. He’d even guessed I was in the en suite and instructed the EMTs to check there for me.

I’ve thought about those same clues a million times. There was a blouse I’d thrown away in disgust because it made me look pregnant, and when I say I was still getting my period throughout, what I should say is I wasn’t, and I didn’t care. My mind was hazy, and whenever I thought about my period… I changed the topic. But I must have known. On some level. I stopped going over to Toby’s house, and offered him no explanation. We’d been having fun, so why had I stopped? I think sometimes that another person lives inside me, and keeps my secrets from me. I’m not ill, like one of those people with multiple personalities, but I think I have secret closets in my head, where I put things I don’t want to think about, and the door is clearly marked:
Deny, deny, deny.