The Devil You Know (5 page)

Ginny yelped out an Indian yell and ran in front of the truck. Both their faces popped up in the windshield as she passed them, and she kept whooping as she ran in her sock feet across the road and into the forest. Once she'd passed the first few trees, the darkness and the silence of the forest enveloped her. Ginny knew she was acting like a baby, but didn't stop running. She knew her Daddy would be angry with her if he were here, and she wished he was. She zigzagged through the trees even as she could hear voices yelling her name in the distance. She ran until she was sweating and her mouth tasted like she'd been sucking pennies. When Ginny turned around, she couldn't hear anyone, and she couldn't see any houses or lights. The forest was a curtain that had closed up behind her with rows of trees everywhere she turned.

Ginny sat down against one of the trees, onto the soft bed of needles at its base. She wished she had Mr. Oatmeal with her, or Floppy Dog, or even her deck of cards, even though it was too dark to see much of anything. Ginny stuck her thumb in her mouth and closed her eyes. The cold prickled under her shirt. She prayed to Jesus, her lips moving around her small thumb. She asked him to bring the deer to her to lead her out of the forest. Ginny imagined their arrival, heeding the call, deer by the dozens, whitetails by the hundreds, all coming for her and her recognizing every one, a stampede of firm and dainty legs whistling through the tall dark trees.

Tested

I
SET MY ALARM AND GET OUT OF THE HOUSE EARLY SO I CAN
buy the test at the drug store. That alone is probably going to make everyone suspicious, like what I am doing out of bed before noon on a Saturday? Before I leave, I check one more time to see if my period has come. It's the only time in my life that I've actually wished for cramps, backache, anything. I'm almost two weeks late.

The last few days have been so emo. I go back and forth between worrying and half-praying (even though I'mlike the least Christian person ever) and then being really optimistic like everything's going to be fine. The worst part has been not telling anyone. At first, I thought I'd tell Jade, but that's like announcing it on Facebook. Of course, I should be telling Brandon, but I haven't figured out how. I've thought about it, but I don't have any actual information to give him. What am I supposed to say? I might be? I could be? I can almost see his head tipping in that cute sideways way it does, and him looking like he just doesn't get it. He'll want some kind of answer. And I won't have one. Well, not yet anyway.

The tests are way more expensive than I thought they'd be, like the first time I had to buymy own tampons. Nearly all the tests come in packs of two. It seems like it's just a way to rip people off, but then I figure it must be so you can do it twice in case you don't believe it the first time. Really, they should make them in triple-packs, so you could do the best two out of three. In commercials, the ladies who use these things are always married and totally wanting to have a baby. They never show anyone sketchy or in high school, but I bet that's who buys most of them. The people who are hoping they're not.

Of course I have to see a pregnant lady in the lineup at the cash. She's so big and round, she's like a parade float. I keep looking around to see if there's anyone I know in the store. It would be a bad time to run into someone's mom. Now I wish I had told someone, so I'd have someone to stand beside me. I feel like a juvenile delinquent, one who doesn't even have friends.

I go next door to the Tim Hortons and head upstairs to the ladies' room. There's no way I'm going to take this thing home with me and then have to hide the evidence. I'd rather do it here and get it over with. There's no one else in the bathroom, thank god, and I get in the stall and get out the instruction booklet. It says for the best and most accurate results, you should do the test with “your first morning urine,” which means I've already screwed it up. But it claims it should still work, and I've come this far. The rest of the directions are pretty easy—just pee on the stupid thing. The hardest part is getting the stick out of the plastic wrapper. I have to tear it with my teeth, then I worry that a spit molecule has gotten into the test and ruined it. I squat and hold the stick into the pee stream. I'm so nervous I get a bit of pee on my hand. Gross. I put the cap on and set it down on top of the toilet paper dispenser after I put a few sheets of toilet paper on it to make a clean spot. You're not supposed to shake the test around or blow on it or anything, just leave it alone for three minutes. I get out my iPhone and set the timer. This might be the longest three minutes of my life.

0:12
What if it's positive? Who will I tell? What will I do? There's no way I'm telling my parents. My mom would freak. She had like, three miscarriages before me, and she always talks about how she wanted to get pregnant so bad. And then after me, everything went weird and she wasn't able to have any more kids, so I guess I'm the miracle baby. If I am knocked up, she'd probably be one of those creepy moms who makes her kid keep going to school and raises the baby as her own and then I have to spend the rest of my life acting like my kid is really just my little brother or sister. That's random, like a Lifetime Network movie. It might make her feel really sad, actually, after she had to work so hard to have a baby and being in the hospital all those times, for me to get this way so easily, just by accident. If I was her, I'd be pissed off. It's totally not fair that some people who want to get pregnant have such a hard time and then the ones who don't want to or don't mean to just do without even trying.

1:04
I'm such a dumbass, I don't even have a good excuse. Brandon's the only guy I've ever done it with and even that's only been a few times. Every other time we used a condom and then we got this unexpected opportunity, let's just say, and we didn't have one and went for it anyway. He pulled out, but obviously not in time. I've been meaning to go on the Pill. There's a Planned Parenthood clinic nearby and everything, but I just hadn't gotten around to it yet. I guess, no, I promise, that if the test is negative, I'll go there right away and walk in and get on the Pill. If.

1:27
If it's positive, I'll have to tell some people. And I guess I'll have to find out about getting an abortion. We went by this place in Jade's mom's car one day, and there were these people standing on the side of the road and yelling and waving big signs with pictures on them and at first I didn't know what the pictures were, because they just looked like a big blobby mess. And then I read the words and figured it out. I read one sign out loud by mistake. Abortion Kills Babies. Jade said, “Yeah, isn't that the point?” and I laughed, but hermomgot reallymad at her. But really, isn't that the point? Like, whether or not you think that's a good thing, that's kind of what it does. And even if you don't believe in it, it's gotta be better than waiting until after the kid's born. I saw on the news last week that the cops found somebody's baby in a plastic bag in a landfill. That's so shitty, throwing your baby in the garbage. I promise that no matter what happens, I won't do that. I won't be one of those trashy girls in the States that you read about who has her baby in the toilet at prom and leaves it to die while she goes back to dancing.

2:16
But here I am, in a toilet stall already, doing my pregnancy test, so I'm probably not any better than anyone else. I don't want to have a kid. I'm not ready. Moms are supposed to have their lives together, are supposed to know what they're doing. I hate when you're at the mall or wherever and you see a super-young mom and she's all tired and bitchy and yelling at her kid. Sometimes they grab the kid too roughly, or just talk to them like they're stupid and they hate them. That's so mean. It's not your kid's fault that you're not cut out for this job. But now I see that I could be that mom. Putting Coke in the kid's bottle and other stupid shit.

2:39
I looked up on Wikipedia about pregnancy tests. They used to have to do it at the doctor's office and then they'd inject a rabbit with your pee and then they'd kill it after three days and look at its ovaries and that's how they could tell. I'm glad I don't have to kill any rabbits and I'm glad I don't have to wait three days. Please god, please please let everything be okay.

3:03
In the window, there's a little minus sign. I reread the instructions and make sure that means what I think it means. I instantly understand why they give you two tests in a box, since I get the second one out right away to make sure. I didn't think to save any pee for this one, so I have to think about running a bath, dipping my hand in warm water. I can only squeeze out a shotglass worth, but it's enough. This time I stand over the test and watch the little window until the minus sign shows up again, and then I put both tests in the silver garbage can. The box falls into the corner, but it's gross back there, so I just leave it.

I leave the stall, wash my hands and put on some lip gloss. I'm happy that it's good news and everything, and I feel totally relieved, but…it's like I've just run up a bunch of stairs, or a big balloon has just burst. I think I might cry, but then I decide that it's probably nothing an iced cappuccino and a maple-dip donut can't fix. I'd text Jade or Brandon or anyone, but I just want to be quiet and alone for a little while longer. Everyone's still sleeping anyway.

Communion

Blink.

Blink.

Blink.

E
MILY STARED OUT THE WINDOW ABOVE THE TELEVISION SET.
A string of lights on the neighbours' back porch flashed white / off / white / off. She tried to time her blinks, first so that all she saw was white, then all she saw was off. Christmas Eve shows were shit anyway; three of their five channels showing
It's a Wonderful Life
. Their Christmas tree, all six inches of it, sat lopsided atop the set, with its flocked wire branches and little red beads meant to look like ornaments. It came in the mail with the other family gifts, long since opened and discarded or pressed into use: socks, chocolates, a Santa mug whose handle broke off in the box.

Emily pressed play on the CD player again and watched Carrie roll a joint on the coffee table. Occasionally something in the movie happened in time to the music, and Carrie laughed as the black-and-white couples danced and jumped into the swimming pool to The Red Hot Chili Peppers. Carrie turned it up, and the gay guy upstairs counterattacked with Erasure. Emily decided to run a bath.When she turned the taps, the pipes banged and shrieked as though the water was being beaten out of them.

“At least there's weed,” said Emily, lifting a hand out of the bath water as Carrie passed the joint. Carrie perched on the toilet, knees up and long purple toenails curled around the lip of the tub.

“And Bailey's, too,” Carrie chirped. “It's just not Christmas without it.”

“Yeah.” Emily was unconvinced. The squat brown bottle had cost almost as much a week's supply of shitty beer. They'd spent most of the December welfare cheque already. In six days, the rent would be due and the Bailey's would be long gone.

“What do you want to do tomorrow?” Carrie asked.

What Emily wanted to do was crawl into bed and stay there. “We could go downtown and walk around,” she offered.

“Nobody will be there. Everything will be closed.”

“Exactly.”

Emily slid down until her head went under. She held her breath for as long as she could, feeling her hair float around her face. When she came up again, Carrie was gone.

The girls sat in front of the TV and ate the remaining chocolates in the Pot of Gold box, then pulled the coffee table aside to unfold the sofa bed. Emily had a futon in the bedroom, but their damp basement apartment had turned the mattress black with mildew.

She crawled in beside Carrie; it was warmer together, even if Carrie was a restless and talkative sleeper. Emily listened to the sounds outside, remembering how hard it had been as a kid to sleep on Christmas Eve. The rain running through the gutters didn't sound like the promise of snow.

Emily awoke to Carrie sitting on the edge of the sofa bed, humming “Jingle Bells” and holding a mug out in front of her. “Merry Christmas, Emmy. I made a special coffee for a special Christmas girl.”

“Thanks.” Emily sat up and held the hot mug under her nose. The coffee, laced with Bailey's, smelled comforting.

“Still want to go downtown later?” Carrie asked.

Emily tried to be cheerful. “Sure thing. We could just ride around; see what's going on.”

“It's even stopped raining.”

“You know what we should do? Go downtown, but let's do the rest of those mushrooms first.”

Carrie leapt up so quickly that Emily sloshed coffee on her T-shirt. “I'll put the kettle on for tea!”

Emily peeled the wet shirt from her chest, sucked the sweet booze out.

Emily and Carrie had become friends over mushrooms. They'd eaten some bad ones on an end-of-high school camping trip with classmates. They hung their heads out of their neighbouring tents all night, barfing and groaning, muttering words of sympathy and compassion to one another under the cold, starless sky.

Since then, tea was the only way either would take them. They turned the radio on and filled the teapot with mushrooms and Red Zinger tea bags and honey. Every so often, one of them would add boiling water and stir the sludge with a wooden spoon. They sat in bed together, drinking tea and listening to carols.

“I had a dream about Jason last night,” Carrie said. Jason was the latest victim of one of Carrie's epic crushes. She had met him only a few times, but already he was her reason for living. Carrie had the power to spin a gossamer thread of attraction into something much more substantial using nothing more than her own imagination, and almost always, the object of her affection was willing to follow the fantasy she'd dreamt up.