Bumped

  I bite my lip to stop myself from yelping, but a squeal comes out just the same. He turns away from the rack and gives me a quizzical look, as though he’s not certain whether the sound came from me or a small rodent.

  “So. Your story,” he says.

  I wring my gloveless hands. “My story?”

  “Yeah, your story,” he says, stretching his arms above his head to touch the fleur-de-lis pattern in the pressed tin ceiling. “Why you decided to become a Surrogette . . .” His slim white T inches up, revealing too much.

  “Oh my grace,” I exclaim, again without thinking. I cover my mouth with my hands.

  “Oh my grace!” he repeats for the second time, covering his mouth with his hands. Then he laughs the deep-in-the-belly laugh. “Ha ha ha ha ha! Your file didn’t say you’d be funny,” he says again. “And you, Miss Melody Mayflower, are funny.”

  I am Miss Melody Mayflower.

  “You’re a trailblazer,” Jondoe says, running a hand along the irregular tree scraps jutting out of the walls. “I’m impressed. The first girl at your school to popularize reproductive empowerment.”

  “Right,” I say, numbly nodding.

  “All that, and smart too! So you’re applying to Global U. I guess you’re ready to expand your horizons?”

  “Expand my horizons,” I say truthfully. “Definitely.”

  We stop in front of a half-open door. He cranes his neck to take a peek.

  “And this is your bedroom.”

  NOT MUCH IN THE WAY OF VALUABLE EDUCATION HAPPENED today. If my parents had any idea, they would’ve made up for the wasted day by scheduling an after-school session with one of my academic drill instructors. Their cluelessness is by far the best thing about the schoolwide MiNet blind.

  In first period, Luciana Holquist, Eiko Cooper, Dea Lan, and Brynn Mandelbaum interrupted the Mandarin lesson by requesting passes to the nurse’s office. They’re the Cheerclones who tried to synchro-bump with the select members of the varsity basketball team known as the Ballers at the masSEX party Zen chauffeured the other night. They just couldn’t wait until the end of the day to see if they had succeeded. So it was all anyone could talk about for the rest of the class period because the biggest synchro-bump at our school so far happened last fall when three girls I coached on the Science Olympiad were tri-sperminated by Maxim, the only Olympian over five ten whose whole body wasn’t armored by acne. This was a challenging conversation to have in Mandarin, however, because we haven’t learned the words for “Cheerclones,” “Ballers,” “sperminated,” or “masSEX parties.”

  It turned out that the Cheerclones were far less successful than the Science Olympians, who had the left-sided brainskills necessary for accurately calculating ovulation. When only Dea returned with a plus sign, the rest of first period and all of second period calculus was spent congratulating her and consoling the rest of the squad.

  “You can always try again tomorrow!” Zen said encouragingly to Luciana, Eiko, and Brynn. “Why wait until tomorrow? How about right now? I’ve got five minutes!” He was determined to put the cheer back in Cheerclone. “Oh, I get it. You’re in a rush! I’ll do it in two!”

  “Oh, Zen!” They giggled through their tears.

  And then one of them—maybe Eiko, who can tell?—said something weird.

  “You totally owe us for bailing the other night.”

  But before I could find out what she was talking about, the bell rang and Zen bolted out of the classroom for his favorite class, an elective on the Decline of Western Civilization.

  My third period is Personal Health and Fitness. The girls in my class who were legitimately bent over with nausea in the bleachers were joined by so many others who were green with Sympathetic Morning Sickness that I had no choice but to join the boys in their soccer game, which was fine because after thousands of hours of drills and skills, I’m faster and have better footwork than half of them already and the other half had total-body hangovers from the weekend and could barely touch their toes to the ball without flinching in pain.

  Periods four (North American Language Arts and Culture) and five (Biogenetics II) were spent reading and responding to all the notes Zen was passing me now that he had brought comic relief to the Cheerclones and was back to obsessing about my sister. Since our school went MiNet blind, it’s for seriously more like 1836 than 2036.

  I think your sister’s marriage is a mistake.

  I think you’re a victim of your own false consciousness.

  You have many upmarket qualities but a sense of humor is not one of them. For serious, though. Don’t you think it’s strange that she never talks about her fiancé? Or her wedding plans? When my sister was engaged her wedding was all she talked about. And she wasn’t even a virgin. Harmony has a lot more to look forward to on her honeymoon. . . .

  The Jaydens aren’t paying me for my sense of humor. What are you being paid for? And I did notice. But most of what they do in Goodside is strange. Why should this be any different?

  No price tag can be put on my skill set. But don’t get me off topic. We should offer your sister asylum so she can stay in Otherside. Forcing marriage is a violation of her basic human rights.

  What makes you think she wants to stay here?

  I’ve done my research. Most trubies don’t get five miles away from their settlement before they get scared, go back, and make a lifelong commitment to the Church. That she came here at all proves that she wants to stay.

  What if I don’t want her to stay here?

  If you choose to be so uncool and cast out your identical twin sister, then she can always stay with me.

  Won’t the Cheerclones get jealous? And how exactly did you bail on them Saturday night?

  Your sister is too important to waste time gossiping

  about how I spent Saturday night. This is a serious situation, Mel. You have an opportunity to do something here. To help.

  This time don’t wait until it’s too late.

  Wise enough not to mention Malia by name, Zen made the most winning argument he possibly could.

  JONDOE PUSHES OPEN THE DOOR, SWEEPS INSIDE THE bedroom, then heads straight to the floor-to-ceiling windows. He taps the blinds so they raise up to reveal a view of the woodsy backyard. A creamy sunbeam fills the room. Without warning, he strips off his long-sleeved white shirt, under which he’s wearing an even more formfitting sleeveless shirt. Across his chest spreads lettering I’m afraid to look at.

  Despite my better instincts, I read them anyway:

  OPEN UP WITH TOCIN.

  I feel dizzy and my tongue tastes like rust.

  “Come here,” he says, still looking out the window. “What do you see out there?”

  “Trees,” I croak.

  “Right,” he replies with a wry smile. “Trees.”

  Then he turns, puts his arms around me, and pulls me toward the glass.

  His left arm is under my head, and his right arm embraces me. . . .

  “Smile, Miss Melody Mayflower,” he whispers in my ear.

  Then just as quickly he abandons me to examine the wall covered in Melody’s MiFoto collage.

  “This is your best friend, Zen,” he says, picking him out from a group photo taken at the Science Olympiad. His face gets grim. “Insufficient verticality must be a major bonerkiller.”

  He points to a woman with her legs scissoring in midair, a ball floating on the flat of her shoelaces. “Ah yes, number fifteen, your favorite player on the U.S. national team.”

  He drags a soccer ball out of corner with his foot. “I play too. But you know that.” He flips the ball in and out and up and around and over and through his two feet. It’s all a blur.

  “Ready? Your turn,” he says, before passing the ball to me. But I’m not ready at all and it hits me in the knees and bounces back to the floor with a dull thud. Athleticism, apparently, is not something I share with my sister.

  “Sorry,” he says flatly. “I figured . . .” He stops midthought, starts again
, lights up with another smile. He spots a guitar case in the corner. “I think it’s cool that you play real guitar instead of guitarbot.”

  Melody plays guitar? I had no idea she had an interest in music! So do I! We have more in common than I thought.

  “Play something for me.”

  “I don’t know . . .” I say. I’m in the worship band back at home, but I don’t know how to play any songs that are popular in Otherside.

  “I’ve seen your file, I know you’re talented. I’d like to hear you live.”

  Then he gets down on his knees in front of me and presses his hands together in prayer.

  “Pleeeeeeeease?”

  I nod yes, if only to get him up off the floor. A few more seconds and there would be nothing, and I mean nothing, I could do to stop myself from getting down on the floor with him. . . .

  To pray!

  He claps his hands, hops to his feet, and jumps back onto Melody’s bed. He contentedly rolls among her pillows and blankets as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.

  I take the guitar and pluck some notes to see if it’s in tune.

  “Go on,” he says, gazing up at me from his supine position.

  Then, with my eyes closed, I sing a simple hymn to give me strength:

  “Love on me

  Love in me

  Love through me

  Jesus.”

  I sing it like I’ve never sung it before.

  “Love on you

  Love in you

  Love through you

  Jesus.”

  And as I do, I feel a tiny flame sparking deep inside me, the flicker of a single lit match in a place I’m not supposed to think about, and as I keep singing and strumming that light burns hotter and brighter and spreads its warmth up and out and throughout my entire body, and I sing and sing and sing until that tiny torch has set my entire body ablaze, an undousable conflagration of passion.

  WITH SO MUCH GOING ON TODAY I COULD BARELY FOCUS ON my flexbooks. The upside is that I’ve been too distracted to worry about what will happen once I catch up with Shoko for the Pro/Am meeting. I see her before she sees me, which isn’t surprising because she’s as wide as she is tall.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Hey,” she says back. “I passed my mucus plug today! You know what that means! Burrito won’t be far behind!”

  Gaaaah. Why am I the only one who gets icked by talk like this? I’ve got to pull myself together.

  “That’s breedy! Get ready for payday!”

  “Yeah,” she says, rubbing the small of her back. “I’m just surprised. I thought Burrito would squat for a full forty-two weeks. . . .”

  I catch Ventura and her adorable six-month bump making her way toward the classroom where the meeting is about take place.

  “I’m sorry about this morning.” This time I mean it.

  “It’s okay,” says Shoko. “I’ve been thinking about it and, you know, I’d be wanky too if Malia was MiNetting me all the time about keeping my legs closed and not making the same mistake she did.”

  Malia isn’t flaming me. She’s warning me. Or trying to. Before it’s too late . . .

  “She’s obviously not in her right mind right now. Hopefully she’ll get whatever therapy she needs at the Shields Center, and by the time she gets back you’ll already have delivered a pregg to prove that she was all wrong.”

  Ventura is almost within earshot. I don’t want her making smirky contributions to this conversation. Thankfully, the conversation ends midsentence in a familiar way.

  “Oy! I gotta pee.”

  “Wait,” I say as she turns, “before you go!”

  She smiles as I place both hands on her belly and rub it for luck.

  WHEN I OPEN MY EYES, I SEE JONDOE GAPING AT ME IN UTTER wonder.

  “That was . . .” He opens and closes his mouth a few times. For the first time since I met him at the door, he’s at a loss for words. Our eyes are locked for a few seconds of silence, and I’m thinking that I could live the rest of my life like this, just gazing into his limitless eyes, when he breaks the connection with a word.

  “Unexpected.”

  Jondoe pulls his knapsack onto his lap, reaches in and pulls out a thin white stick wrapped in plastic. He points it at me. I must look as thoroughly confused as I feel.

  “You don’t know what this is,” he says, more of a comment than a question.

  I shake my head.

  “Whoa,” he says with honest wonderment. “You’re like a nubie. Innocent,” he says in a quieter voice as he unwraps the plastic. “Surprising.”

  He opens his mouth, and gestures for me to do the same. I open my mouth and he laughs again.

  “I can’t do it from all the way over here!”

  He beckons me to come away from the window and without hesitation I float over to him without my feet touching the ground. We are too close now. I’m feeling hot and swoony again, like I did in the Mallplex yesterday, as if I’m being smothered by a veil made of soaking-wet wool.

  “Ahh,” he says, presenting his open mouth to me with his tongue out.

  “Ahh . . .”

  Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for your love is more delightful than wine. . . .

  He tenderly inserts the stick under my tongue, then pulls away and flops back onto the bed.

  “Close and hold for ten seconds.”

  I do as he says, which isn’t easy because my chin and the rest of my body are trembling. I realize now that the stick is a kind of thermometer. I watch as the white plastic turns bright green.

  He swings into a sitting position on the edge of the bed, feet firmly planted on the floor. He pats the mattress, inviting me to sit down beside him. I shake my head, no. I’m fine just where I am on the other side of the room, my back up against the wall.

  He comes to me.

  “Well,” he says, pulling out the stick from between my lips, “it’s a good thing I came today.”

  “It is?”

  “Green means go!”

  Green means go. I think of my green fertility gown hanging in my closet back in Goodside. Never worn.

  “You’re peaking.” He tosses the stick into the recycling bin. “We can bump this out tonight.”

  Jondoe claps his hands and rubs them together, like he’s warming himself up in front of a fire.

  I gulp loud enough for God Himself to hear.

  VENTURA VIDA HAS THE PEE STICK.

  “The Pro/Am has an image problem,” she says. “We’re just not sexy enough. I mean, rilly!”

  We reviewed the fund-and-awareness-raising success of “Why Save Yourself When You Can Save the World?” T-shirt sale. We signed a petition to get caf services to offer more fertile, high-folate versions of pizza and french fries because we’re gagging on the spinach and chickpeas in the salad bar. It’s the last meeting of the year, so there’s nothing else on the Pro/Am agenda except the vote for the next president. But this won’t happen until Ventura surrenders the pee stick. And she’s clutching the gold-plated positive pregnancy test like a talisman, unwilling to let it go and let someone else get a word in edgewise.

  “Princeton Day Academy is already on track to rack up forty-two preggs this year. That’s double last year’s tally, but accounts for only twenty-five percent of our school’s fertile female population! We shouldn’t be satisfied until every Little Tiger is wearing one of these!”

  She grasps the necklace that we all wear. Earlier in the meeting Ventura proudly added another bead to her chain during the Gestation Celebration, when all girls earn a bronze, silver, or gold bead for entering their first, second, and third trimesters, respectively. Everyone gets a glass bead just for joining, and births are commemorated with a diamond or rhinestone. Professionals usually have enough cash extra for the former, while amateurs have to settle for the latter—a good example of the type of thing that causes tension and called for the creation of the Alliance in the first place.

  As if reading my mind, V
entura says, “We’ve gone so far in putting our petty differences as professionals and amateurs aside. We can come together as a united front to make girls do the right thing and bump like all of us.” She makes a big show out of turning her head to look at me. “I mean, almost all of us.”

  Drawing attention to the embarrassingly blingless chain around my neck is totally uncalled for, even for Ventura.

  “We owe it to our community, both locally and globally, to try even harder to do better.”

  “Maybe we should follow China’s lead with mandatory inseminations,” I mutter to Shoko, hoping to get her attention.

  Shoko’s sitting right next to me, but she’s too busy digging through a bag of Big Belly Jellies to acknowledge what I’ve said. Apparently Ventura did hear me because she holds up the pee stick and makes a slashing gesture across her throat. Gah, she has nerve for a new girl. I make a big show out of putting my hand in the air, a gesture that she just as elaborately ignores.

  “The new man brands are getting way too much attention. You’ve all seen the Tocin ads. . . .”

  The room explodes with everyone’s favorite studs-for-hire.

  “For serious. How hot is Phoenix?”

  “I want me some Fitch!”

  “Jondoe! Omigod! Jondoe!”

  “Yes, they’re all major stiffies,” Ventura yells over the chatter. “But it shouldn’t be about them! It should be about us!” She pops her belly out in a provocative bump-and-grind. “Can’t PREGG without the . . .”

  “EGG!” shout Tulie Peters (sophomore, amateur, eighteen weeks) and Dyanna Merrill (senior, professional, fourteen weeks) in unison. They obviously practiced this call-and-response before the meeting. I have to give Ventura credit for getting a professional and an amateur to chant together in the spirit of bipartisan pregging. I’d also like to point out that you also can’t PREGG without the SPERM, but highlighting such contradictions in Ventura’s logic would go over like a raging case of hemorrhoids.