This Is So Not Happening (20 page)

Honestly, I wanted to pound her for saying that—for thinking that she had any right to tell me what to do when it came to me and Jake. But my heart hurt just thinking about what his reaction would be. I had an awful feeling he’d be crushed. And I didn’t want to be the one to crush him. I shouldn’t
have
to be the one to crush him. “I promise I won’t tell Jake,” I told her flatly. “I’ll let you do it. But I swear, Chloe, if you don’t do it before New Year’s, I will.”

January seventh. It was January seventh. It had been almost three weeks since Chloe had confessed. We’d been back in school for five days. My deadline had come and gone. She couldn’t use holiday break and the fact that the major players had been scattered on various vacations as an excuse anymore. She saw Jake every day. She saw Will every day. And she still hadn’t told.

Of course I hadn’t told either, but I kept telling myself it wasn’t my responsibility. I kept hoping she’d live up to her end of the bargain and do the right thing. But I kept being disappointed.

I couldn’t take it anymore. My body was filled from head to toe with white-hot, indignant fury. Every second of every minute of every hour of every day. If I didn’t do something soon, I was going to explode. Or punch Chloe in the face. Which probably wouldn’t do much for my karma—flattening a pregnant girl.

As soon as the bell rang on Friday afternoon I practically sprinted to Chloe’s locker. Jake was already on a bus to an away swim meet, so there was nothing she would be able to do right now, but she lived across the street from him. She could practically spit on his bedroom window from her own. If I had anything to say about it, today was the day Jake would be set free.

Chloe was slowly placing books inside her backpack. The moment she saw me coming she started to work a hell of a lot faster.

“Hey, Ally,” she said, closing her locker door as I arrived. “I’m just on my way to—”

“You’re telling him today,” I said through my teeth. My fingers curled into fists and I had this awful feeling that if she said anything other than “okay,” I was going to hurt her.

“I … I can’t,” she said, glancing nervously past me down the hall.

I cupped one fist with the other hand. “Yes, you can. You promised me, Chloe. You promised me you’d do it by New Year’s.”

“I know, but … we’re meeting the parents tomorrow,” Chloe said, adjusting her backpack straps over her shoulders. “The adoptive parents? They want to meet both of us. Apparently it’s important to them to talk to both the baby’s parents and—”

“Then maybe you should invite Will,” I said through my teeth.

Chloe took a deep breath, as if for patience. Was she kidding me? She was going to stand there and act as if I was making an unreasonable request? Buttoning her coat over her boat-size belly, she started to walk slowly down the center of the hall. I fell right into step with her.

“But Jake’s excited about it too,” Chloe said, averting her eyes every time someone turned to stare at her stomach. “If I tell him now … he’s going to be devastated.”

“And telling him after he meets these people will be so much better?” I said.

We reached the end of the hallway. A right turn led to the lobby. A left to the gym. Down the hall behind her I could see a bunch of guys from the basketball team messing around, downing Gatorades before hitting the weight room. Will was
one of them, his maroon-and-gold b-ball shorts hanging low.

“Ally, this is hard enough,” Chloe said, taking an almost condescending tone. “Just let me get through this weekend, and then I promise I will tell him.”

Will glanced over at us, checking Chloe out in a longing sort of way. I blinked, and it was as if I was being cooled by a calming breeze. Just like that, my anger was washed away. Just like that, I saw everything with perfect crystal clarity. I knew what I had to do.

“Fine,” I said.

Chloe pulled back, surprised. “Fine?”

“Yes. Fine. Whatever you say,” I told her, pressing my lips into a thin line. “It’s your baby.”

“Thank you,” she said, relief crossing her face, flattening the worry lines on her brow. She started past me, headed for the lobby. “I’ll see you at Annie’s party tomorrow night!” she said brightly, like we were just two friends chatting.

“You’re going to Annie’s party?” I asked, shocked.

Annie hated Chloe. She hated all Cresties. Except Jake. But especially Chloe. What was this about? And why hadn’t Annie told me?

“I know. I was surprised too,” Chloe said, lifting her hands and shoulders. “Later.”

Then she traipsed off toward the lobby. Well, more like trudged. I suppose it’s hard to traipse when you’re carrying an extra thirty pounds or so.

Slowly I turned around to face the gym again. The guys were busy being guylike, laughing and shoving one another like they always seem to do. I took a breath, squared my shoulders, and steeled myself. My heart pounded with uncertainty, but my mind was completely made up. Chloe was clearly never going to
come clean. She’d made a promise and was continually breaking it. The girl may have been pregnant, but that didn’t mean she could do whatever she wanted. That didn’t mean she could lie to everyone. I was doing the right thing.

Besides, I’d promised her I wouldn’t tell Jake, but I’d never said a thing about Will.

I stepped up next to the pack of guys. They stopped talking to look me up and down in my hugely sexy baggy jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt.

“Will?” I said.

He dragged the back of his hand across his mouth, clearing away the red Gatorade mustache he was sporting.

“Hey, Ally,” he said. “What’s up?”

I clenched my jaw. “We need to talk.”

“I can’t believe I never realized that Will was the real father,” Annie said as she stood on her tiptoes on the top platform of a rickety step stool in her basement. The whole thing leaned to the left and David and I both lunged to steady it, but she didn’t even notice. She just tacked the end of the colorfully striped streamer into the corner near the ceiling, then jumped down.

“Yeah, well, maybe that’s because you’re not evil like some people,” I said, tossing the streamer wrapper into the trash.

“Um, yes she is,” David said.

Annie picked up a stuffed jelly bean and threw it at his head. It was Saturday afternoon, and the three of us were decorating for her birthday party that night. Annie had decided on a candy
theme, so we’d spent the last hour in her basement stringing rainbow-colored streamers, sticking huge paper M&M’s, lollipops, and peppermints to the walls, and filling up a zillion colorful balloons. She’d blown her entire paycheck on employee-discounted lollipops, Hershey’s kisses, peanut M&M’s, Jolly Ranchers, jelly beans, and caramels, which overflowed from bowls crammed onto the bookshelves and tables. It was only five o’clock and I was already so hopped up on mindlessly consumed sugar I felt like I was having a heart attack.

“
I
can’t believe you actually invited Chloe to your party,” I said, filling another balloon with helium from the rented tank. “What’s
that
about?”

Annie shrugged, turning away from me with a paper M&M and some tacks. “Nothing.”

My eyes met David’s across the room. Uh-oh. “That was not a
nothing
nothing,” he said. “That was a
something
nothing.”

“Annie, please don’t tell me you’ve got, like, a bucket of green slime set up for her or something like that,” I said. As much as I hated Chloe right now, she didn’t need any more public humiliation. She just needed to tell the truth already.

“What, like she doesn’t deserve it?” Annie countered, shoving the tack through the paper and into the wall.

“Annie!” David and I said in unison.

“Oh my God, no. I don’t have a bucket of slime, okay?” Annie said, raising her hands in surrender. “The truth is I sent out the invites in the five minutes between everyone finding out about her quote-unquote
shameful situation
, and us figuring out the Will thing. I kind of felt … bad for her.”

My jaw dropped. “You felt bad for Chloe Appleby?”

Annie hung her head. “I know, I know. I could flog myself.”

“Whatever,” David said, taking the filled balloon from my hand and tying it off. “She’s just one person. She’s not gonna make or break the party.”

“True dat,” Annie replied.

They bumped fists and got back to work on the streamers as I busied myself with balloons, wondering if Will had talked to Chloe yet. He’d been stunned when I told him the news yesterday in the hall. He’d said he asked Chloe about it himself the night of the bonfire and she’d sworn the baby wasn’t his. Big shock there. I couldn’t believe how casually she was going around lying to people she was supposed to care about. And now, tonight, Will, Jake, Chloe, and I were going to be in the same place. Together. Like four pieces of a social time bomb that, if assembled just the right way, could take out the whole party.

David and Annie laughed over something and I chewed on my lip. It was a good thing Annie lived for Crestie scandal. Because I had a feeling that I’d already set up the best birthday present the girl could ever wish for. Big-Time Drama.

“The mom makes movie soundtracks for a living,” Jake said that night as David’s band, Controlled Chaos, screeched into a heavy-metal version of happy birthday. “Who knew you could even do something that cool as a job? And the guy coaches soccer. It was, like, meant to be.”

“Yeah. I guess,” I muttered.

On the other side of the room, Will stood with a few of his friends, his body rigid as he watched the band. Now and then I
caught him glancing over his shoulder at us, and every time he did I tensed. Had he talked to Chloe yet? What if he said something to Jake before Chloe had a chance to?

Why, why, why had I gotten myself even deeper into this mess?

“I wonder where Chloe is,” Jake said, checking his watch, his knee bending and straightening awkwardly to the beat. Well, roughly to the beat, anyway. He checked the stairs, which were partially obscured by a million strands of plastic M&M’s beads. “I thought she’d be here by now.”

“I just can’t believe Annie invited her,” I said, reaching for another handful of chocolate-covered pretzels.

Jake plucked one from my hand and popped it into his mouth. It made me think of Lincoln, and I suddenly wondered what he was doing right now. What life would be like if I’d kissed him that night at Faith’s. It was so weird how I could be seriously considering kissing someone one day, and then a few weeks later have zero contact with him. Just thinking about it made me blush. Luckily Jake didn’t notice. Or if he did, he didn’t ask about it.

“Why not?” he asked.

“Why not what?”

“Why can’t you believe Annie invited Chloe?”

I blinked. Was it possible that he was that clueless to what went on around him? Guys and oblivion. They seemed to go hand in hand.

“Because they’ve always hated each other,” I said with a serious “duh” tone.

“Really? Why?” Jake said, his brow knit.

I just rolled my eyes and ate another pretzel.

Just then the door to the basement slammed closed and a few people flinched. Minutes later, Chloe came teetering down the stairs, clinging to the railing as if for dear life. Even hugely pregnant, she was more stylishly dressed than half the girls in the room. She wore a black bias-cut skirt and a hot pink sweater with a boat neck and fluttery sleeves. Her skin was dewy with makeup and her light brown hair had been curled and pulled back from her face, just a few tendrils scooping around her cheeks. Jake stepped away from the wall at her arrival and she brightened at the sight of him, fluttering a wave in our direction. Looking for an open pathway through the crowded basement, she turned sideways to try to slide over, but she’d barely taken a step when Will was right in front of her.

My heart hit my throat and choked off my air supply. The music was loud enough that I couldn’t hear every word, but not so loud that a few didn’t make it through. Words like:

“Tell me?”

“Lying?”

and

“Loved you.”

Suddenly Chloe’s skin wasn’t quite so dewy anymore.

“What’s his deal?” Jake asked me, his nostrils kind of flaring.

Chloe shot us a helpless look, then reached for Will’s hand. He yanked it away and, at that moment, David’s rendition of “Happy Birthday” finally came to a wailing, pounding end.

“Just tell me! Am I the father or not?!” Will shouted.

“What?” Jake blurted.

The basement was so silent you could have heard a jelly
bean drop. Will looked around, clearly embarrassed, and Chloe started shaking.

“Chloe?” Jake said, walking toward her. Everyone got out of his way. “What’s going on?”

Chloe put one hand on her stomach and reached for Jake with the other. He automatically supported her arm, which it looked like she very much needed. Annie watched the action hungrily from the corner, and … was that a video camera in her hand? I felt so hot I thought I might faint.

“I can’t,” Chloe said. “I can’t—”

“Just tell me, Chloe,” Will said quietly, gently. “If I’m the father … you have to tell me.”