Ten Things We Did (And Probably Shouldn't Have) (7 page)

All the very best,

Suzanne

_______

From: Jake Berman

Date: Tues, 13 Jan, 6 a.m.

To: Suzanne Caldwell

Subject: RE: Settling In

Suzanne,

I’m thrilled the girls are settling in well. I knew they would. And Jake German? Sounds like he might be my evil twin. Maybe you should steer clear of him. Just a suggestion. Things in Cleveland (you were close enough) are great.

Best,

Jake

AND GOOD MORNING TO YOU

“Today’s the day!” Vi said, throwing open my door. We’d been living together for two weeks, and though I’d learned to change a lightbulb and run the dishwasher without causing a flood, Vi had yet to learn that I wasn’t an early riser. She, on the other hand, did a HardCore3000 exercise DVD every morning. There were five—abs; legs and glutes; arms and chest; cardio; and stretch. Yesterday, I’d caught the last two minutes and discovered it involved a gym mat and ten-pound weights. I’d spotted them in the front closet, but hadn’t realized they were in active use.

I yawned, glancing at my alarm. “I have ten minutes of sleep left. I don’t know why we didn’t kick everyone out earlier last night.”

“Because we were having fun! And too bad. Our appointments are this morning. I’m eight and you’re eight fifteen. And the clinic is in Darien so it’s at least a half-hour drive.”

I sat up. “Seriously?”

“Yup.”

“Why do we have appointments? We didn’t make appoint-ments . . . did we?”

“We did.” She pulled open my blinds with a flourish.

“But . . . you didn’t tell me.”

“I did not,” she agreed.

“Don’t we have school today?”

“Yes, school
is
going on today. But do we have school? No, we do not. We have appointments.”

“I can’t skip school!” If I got caught skipping, what would happen? Ohio would happen.

“You are not skipping,” she said. “You’re home with the flu. Your dad already emailed the school.”

“He did?”

“He did. Well, [email protected] did.”

“Oh,” I said. How very thoughtful of him.

THE SPY

I moved my car onto the street, and then waited for Vi to pull out of the garage.

“Shit,” she muttered as I opened the passenger door. “Get in fast.”

“What?” I asked, closing my door. “Why?”

“Too late,” she grumbled. She zapped down my window and a gust of cold air blew against the side of my face. I turned to see . . .

 . . . Lucy Michaels and her unblinking alien eyes.

Crap.

“Hi, guys,” she said, looking from me to Vi and then back to Vi. “Can I get a lift?” Crap, crap, crap.

“We’re sick,” Vi said smoothly. “Really sick. Contagious. I wouldn’t get too close if I were you.”

“You don’t look sick. And if you are sick, then where are you going?”

“The doctor,” I said. Which wasn’t a lie. So there.

“Together?”

“Yup,” we both answered.

“Where’s your mom?” she asked Vi.

“At work,” Vi said. “Where’s yours?”

“Inside. She drives me to school, but I’d rather go with you two.”

“Another time,” Vi said. She simultaneously rolled up my window and reversed onto the street.

Lucy stared. I gave an awkward wave.

“Oh crap,” I said under my breath as we took off. I peeked in the rearview mirror. She was still standing in our driveway. “This is bad. Maybe we should go to school.”

“We already told her we were sick. And sent emails.”

“Yeah. But. What if she tells her mom?”

“What’s the worst thing that can happen?” Vi asked.

“We get suspended for skipping? And my dad freaks out? And makes me move to Ohio?” I fidgeted with my seat belt.

“You worry too much,” she said.

True. If Lucy realized what was going on, then Lucy realized what was going on. Freaking out wasn’t going to help anyone. It certainly wasn’t helping me.

THE NIGHT AFTER THE FIRST TIME NOAH AND I ALMOST HAD SEX

“I’m sorry I freaked out last night,” I said to Noah. I was huddled under the covers and whispering so my dad and Penny wouldn’t know I was on the phone at one
A.M.
We always spoke before we went to sleep.

“Oh please. Don’t be sorry. Couldn’t you tell I was nervous, too?”

“No.”

“I bought five kinds of condoms ’cause I was worried I wouldn’t have the right kind.”

“You thought glow in the dark could be the right kind?”

“It was nighttime!”

I giggled, then said, “I just want to feel a hundred percent ready. Do you feel a hundred percent ready?”

“Yup.”

“Are guys always a hundred percent ready?”

“If the girl is you and the guy is me, then . . . yup.”

“I’m, like, ninety-nine percent ready.”

“And how do we get you to a hundred percent? No pressure. I’m just wondering. Hypothetically.”

“Uh-huh. I think to get to the hundred, I’ll need to plan it. Count down. Know it’s coming.”

“Get your palate ready.”

“Exactly.”

“Then plan away.”

“How about over Christmas break?”

“Deal,” he said.

“Deal,” I repeated. But then I worried. Physically I was ready. When we were together, I
wanted to
have sex. But what would doing it mean? Would I love him more? Would it hurt even more when we—if we—ever broke up? Would sex change us?

It had to.

But was I ready for change?

PLANNED NON-PARENTHOOD

I had been expecting something white. And sterile. Maybe like an Apple Store but less funky. I also thought it would be filled with nervous teens and their mothers. But it was just a regular doctor’s office with beige carpeting, felty chairs, old magazines, and paintings of Connecticut beaches on the walls. We had the choice to use our insurance or to pay cash. There was no way I was using my dad’s insurance for this. Thanks, but no thanks. Cash it was. No paper trail. At least payment was a sliding scale. I calculated how much I “earned” a year and qualified for a smaller fee.

“Have you ever been to a Planned Parenthood before?” Vi asked me. We were sitting side by side in the waiting room. I had just handed in my form but had kept the pen to give my fingers something to do.

“No, you?”

“Once.”

“How come?”

“A friend’s condom broke. Not her condom. But the guy she was with. So we came here to get the morning-after pill. It made her feel like ass, though. The whole thing freaked her out. At least she realized the condom had broken. What if she hadn’t noticed and then gotten pregnant?”

“Would she have had an abortion?”

“I don’t know. Probably.”

I looked around the room. There was one girl there with her mom; the girl looked slightly older than us, and I wondered if that’s what she was here for. Would she come with her mom if it was? “Would you do it? If you got pregnant now?”

“Yes,” she said. “Definitely.”

I tried not to show my surprise, but I must not have done a very good job.

“My mom was twenty-three,” Vi said. “Not seventeen. And my mother had my grandmother to help her. Who would help me?” She paused. “What would you do?”

I felt sad just thinking about it. “I don’t know,” I said. And I really didn’t.

“If you have a kid, I’m totally evicting you. I don’t do babies.”

I shook off my melancholy. “Hello, I’m not planning on getting pregnant. That’s why I’m here.”

“Me too. That’s why I’m going on the pill
and
using condoms. Liam is not going to be my baby daddy.”

“Neither is Noah,” I said. Despite all the mental preparation I’d been doing about sex, I hadn’t really thought about what I would do if I actually got pregnant. In my mind, losing my virginity and pregnancy had nothing to do with each other. A 3.9 GPA might get me into a good college, but it did not make me a genius.

What would I really do? Have the child? Drop out of school? Would Noah and I get married? Sure, Noah and I joked about it, but I wasn’t ready to get married. If I decided to have my hypothetical baby, would I have to go live with my dad and Penny? Or maybe I’d have the baby in France. France was better than Ohio. At least my brother was in France. He could babysit while I unsuccessfully tried to find a husband. What seventeen-year-old guy wanted to date a girl with a baby? I sank into my seat. I didn’t want to move anywhere. I wanted to stay here, have sex with Noah, and not have any consequences, ever. I would definitely be using the pill
plus
condoms. If condoms were the goalie, the pill was a defensive line.

“April Berman?” a nurse called.

My stomach leapt.

“I thought I was first,” Vi said. “Well, have fun.”

I raised an eyebrow and followed the nurse down the hall.

GIDDYUP

It was called a HOPE visit. Hormones with optional pelvic exam. I opted out of the pelvic part. Vi opted in. “Might as well find out what’s going on in there,” she said. “Plus more details for the article.”

First I waited in the little room the nurse put me in. Then a woman with long, flowing blonde hair and a big smile opened the door.

“Hello there!” she cheered, her eyes crinkling. “I’m Dr. Rosini. How are you doing today?”

For some inexplicable reason I loved her immediately and wondered if I could adopt her to be my mother.

She weighed me and took my blood pressure. Then she sat down across from me and started asking questions about my medical history (no problems, regular periods), about my sex life (none yet, but HOPE for future), who my intended partner was (long-term boyfriend; yes, he was my age), did I have someone at home to discuss my sexual relationship with? (Er, yes, Vi was at home.) She asked lots and lots of questions and I gave her lots and lots of answers.

Then we got down to business.

“There are a number of birth control options,” she said. “There’s the NuvaRing, there’s the Depo-Provera shot, there’s condom use, there’s the pill.”

“I’ll take that one,” I said.

She laughed. “We can give you a prescription. But remember that while the pill does protect against unintended pregnancy, it does not protect against HIV or STDs.”

“Got it,” I said. Since I would be Noah’s first and he would be mine, we didn’t have to worry about that part.

She gave me three months’ worth of pills, talked about reactions and side effects, and told me to come back for a prescription when they ran out.

“Take a pink pill every day for twenty-one days, then a white one for seven. Take them at the same time every day.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said.

OUT AND ABOUT

Instead of going straight home, since we were playing hooky anyway, we decided to go to the Norwalk mall. “It’s time to put another dent in your allowance,” Vi said, pulling out of the Planned Parenthood parking lot.

“But what if we need the money?”

“For what?”

“A rainy day?”

She pointed to the gray sky. “Looks like it’s about to snow.”

“Not sure if that counts.”

“You’re too good,” she said. “You need to live a little.”

“Hello! I am skipping school! I went to get birth control! Now I’m shopping when I should be in calculus! I am living a lot!”

“True. But you’d live better in new lingerie.”

VICTORIA’S SECRET

After two hours in the mall, I had two new pairs of jeans, a new pair of boots, and three new sweaters. Now I was at Victoria’s Secret wearing a black, lacy baby doll in one of the changing rooms in the back of the store.

“How do you look?” Vi called from the changing room next to mine.

Oh. My. God. My boobs were popping over the top, and the lace below showed everything. “Like a porn star,” I yelled back, giggling.

“Let me see!”

“Half my butt is hanging out!”

She jumped out of her room and then pulled open the curtain to mine. She was wearing a red silk teddy that tied in the front. “Hells yeah! You do look like a porn star!”

I posed like a pinup girl and slapped my own butt, which looked ridiculous as it was encased in the black baby doll and my own bright pink cotton panties. “I’ve never actually seen a porn movie.”

Vi gave me a wide-eyed look, as if to say, “You sweet, innocent girl, you.” Then actually said, “They’re demeaning. But somewhat instructional.”

“Look at
you
,” I said, indicating her red silkiness.

“It’s horrible. I feel like a Christmas gift. I want lingerie that screams power, not please untie me.”

I thought of my mother and snort-laughed. “My mother always pronounced it lin
-jer-
y. She is not good with accents.”

“Good thing she moved to France.”

“She also calls condoms, con-
domes
.”

“Ha.”

I closed the curtain, slipped off the baby doll, and put my jeans and shirt back on, and then stood in front of her room. “You know, I once made a trip to this very store . . . with my mother.”

“You did not!”

“I did. She told me to wait outside with my brother but . . . we got bored.”

Vi pulled open her curtain. “Tell me she was buying flannel pajamas.”

“Au contraire.” I lifted up a package of black thigh-high stockings that the store had conveniently put in a display by the rooms. “She took these on a trip to Cancun.”

“Ugh. Did she wear them?”

“Why yes, she did, actually,” I said, putting the stockings back.

“It’s sick that you know that. It’s also sick that I could tell you the symptoms of my mother’s UTI infections.”

I shook my shoulders as a sign of being creeped out. “Gross. I’m going to pay for this and check in with Noah.”

“Check in? Language like that is why I don’t want a boyfriend.”

“Call him. You know what I mean. He’s probably wondering where I am.”

“He must be thrilled you’re going on the pill.”

I hadn’t actually told him yet. I wanted to wait until it was all set. I was thinking I would tell him this weekend when we were casually hanging out in my basement. Finally. He still hadn’t been down there with me. Every day after school he had practice or a game or homework, or some family thing he had to do. We’d hung out with other people, I’d cheered at his home games, but we hadn’t had a moment alone.