Those Girls

  Patrick followed the direction of our eyes. “That was Stephen, my son.”

  I could tell by the look on Patrick’s face that he didn’t want us to ask what had happened to him. Dani stared down at her ID, her face flushed like she felt bad for being caught staring. I glanced at Karen, flipping eggs at the stove. She’d mangled one and was trying to put it back together, scraping at its edges carefully, cursing under her breath.

  * * *

  Over the next couple of weeks Patrick showed us how to clean the gym and work the front desk. He didn’t have a lot of work for three girls so we also had to get other jobs. Once we put some money together we’d be paying rent, but he’d said he’d give us a deal.

  Dani and Courtney found jobs waitressing right away and worked most nights, but I wasn’t having any luck and would sit awake in the apartment for hours. I wasn’t used to being alone so much—every creak and noise in the building made me jump. I’d think about Dad, how we used to wait up for him when we were kids, the sound of his boots on the stairs that last night. Then I’d think about heaven and hell, wondering where I would end up now that I’d killed him, wondering if my mom would be ashamed of me.

  I didn’t go to bed until one of my sisters was home.

  At the gym I helped Patrick organize his office and made sure people were up-to-date on memberships.

  “Be nice to get this all on the computer,” he said.

  “No problem. I took a class in school.” I was relieved I’d have something more to occupy my time—and my mind.

  Karen showed Courtney how to teach some of the aerobics classes and she caught on fast. I liked watching her do the complicated steps, bouncing up and down to the music, her blond hair in a ponytail. She’d dyed it platinum. Dani and I had gone the other way, darker, more of a chocolate brown. I liked how it made my eyes greener. It suited Dani too. She was still playing with her new short cut, trying different things, spiking it up or making it all messy. It made her seem older. I wanted to cut mine too but Karen said I had nice hair. She trimmed it one night for me, gave me bangs and showed me how to blow-dry it smooth and straight so it grazed my collarbone. She said the bangs made me look mysterious. I wasn’t sure about that, but I liked that I looked different.

  I looked like Jamie.

  We practiced our new names every day, calling them out to each other, saying them over and over as we went to bed. I’d stare at Courtney, saying, Crystal, Crystal, Crystal, again and again in my mind, but she was still Courtney to me and I had to think about her new name every time I spoke, hesitating when we were around people. It was hard with Dani too, but her new name suited her short haircut, the way she walked around the gym in workout clothes Patrick had found for us, her hair slicked back with sweat, her tanned arms all sinews, the muscles bunching and flexing as she practiced her jabs and uppercuts for hours.

  I slipped my new name on in the morning like it was a new outfit. I practiced walking different, holding myself different, my shoulders up, my eyes challenging. Jamie. I made myself answer the phone with a confident voice, “Phoenix Boxing. How can we help you?” With each file I transferred onto the computer, each box that I removed, I felt more in control, more like maybe things would be okay, maybe we could build ourselves new lives. But I was still afraid—of Brian and Gavin, of the police finding us, afraid everything would fall apart.

  Courtney and I shared a bedroom again—Dani was across the hall. I woke up yelling some nights, other times Courtney or Dani woke me up yelling out. Sometimes I just heard one of them crying. I wasn’t always sure which one, but it didn’t matter—we shared the same pain, the same nightmares.

  Sometimes I just walked around the apartment checking the locks, padding through the hall, sitting in the armchair for hours, watching the door.

  We didn’t talk about Dad or what had happened in Cash Creek. We didn’t talk about the ranch, our old house, Ingrid and Walter and Corey. They were all gone.

  Patrick and Karen never asked about the dark circles under our eyes in the morning—we often had breakfast with them at their house, which was walking distance from the gym. Karen would talk to Courtney about some music she wanted to create a routine around, and Patrick would tell Dani he wanted to teach her a new combination, and they’d pile my plate with more food, Karen laughing.

  “For such a small girl you sure eat a lot.”

  Patrick was teaching all of us boxing and self-defense moves. He said there were lots of programs we could take when we were a little older so we could be certified fitness instructors. He’d already signed Dani up for one.

  He told people we were his cousin’s kids. Both our parents had died in a car accident and he’d taken us on until we were old enough to go out on our own.

  He brought up the subject of school. “There’s one around the block, but it might get tricky if they need to see any paperwork proving I’m your guardian.”

  “I don’t care about school,” Courtney said. “I was failing anyway.”

  “What about you two?” he said to Dani and me.

  “I’ll get my GED,” Dani said.

  “Me too,” I said, feeling like I was going to cry. I blinked hard.

  Dani looked at me. “But you’re so good at school. You loved it.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said. “When I’m older, maybe I’ll go to college or university. I can take night classes.”

  Patrick was nodding. “Don’t give up on your dreams, girls. You just might have to find another way to get there.”

  When I wasn’t at the gym during the day, I checked Dumpsters for cans and bottles that we could return for money, searched in the gutters and on the sides of the road, but I was nervous going down the alleys and always made sure I was home before dark. Sometimes I folded laundry for tips at the Laundromat. Dani was working hard, coming home sweaty from the gym and the restaurant where she was waitressing, taking on extra shifts when she could, bringing home leftovers she’d snuck into her bag. Courtney was working at a sketchy restaurant and started hanging out with one of the owner’s sons. She was getting too skinny, her face breaking out, and she’d take off for big chunks of time, sometimes not coming back to the apartment until the early-morning hours. When we got up she’d stumble out of bed, throw crumpled bills on the table, pull on clothes, and go to the gym.

  Dani and I talked about it one night.

  “It’s drugs. I’m sure of it,” I said. “She’s doing them and selling them.”

  “We’ll talk to her when she gets home.”

  We tried, but she brushed it off. “I’m fine, it’s all fine.”

  “Where’s the money from?” Dani said.

  “I’ve made some new friends, don’t worry about it.”

  Dani followed her into the bathroom. “It’s not fine—we don’t want this money.” She threw it on the floor.

  Courtney whirled around. “Now you care about being legal?”

  “We can’t get in more trouble,” Dani said.

  “Please, Courtney,” I said. “If the cops catch you and they figure out who you are, we’re all in trouble.”

  “Fine, whatever,” she said.

  * * *

  She stopped bringing money home after that, just small bills from tips, but she’d still take off for hours, occasionally not coming home at all. I couldn’t rest until I finally heard the door unlocking, Courtney’s purse being tossed onto the floor, the creak of her bedsprings. Sometimes she’d climb in with me, her back warm against mine, our breaths matching until we drifted off.

  Other times she’d be okay for a few days, hanging around the house more, or at the gym, seeming focused, present. Then she’d get an angry edge to her, snapping about silly things, or she’d just be quiet, hardly saying anything, huddled on her bed for hours, drinking beer after beer, staring at the wall.

  Dani gave her shit one day, accused her of spending all our money on beer.

  “You’re turning into a screwup.”

  “Someone gave me the
beer,” Courtney said. “And I was already a screwup.” She gave a bitter smile, held the beer high in the air. “Bottoms up.”

  * * *

  Soon Courtney started missing shifts at the gym. Dani flipped out, said Patrick and Karen would kick us all out, but Courtney just blew her off.

  “They’re not going to kick you guys out.”

  “If you’re not going to show up, you should just quit.”

  “Fine.”

  After that she only worked at the restaurant. We’d been worried that Patrick and Karen would be upset, but they seemed to understand. They’d ask how she was doing, and she was welcome for dinner anytime. Karen would watch her with that thoughtful, troubled expression and push more food onto her plate, which Courtney barely touched. But then I had something bigger to worry about.

  Three months after we’d escaped Cash Creek, I realized I might be pregnant.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I hadn’t thought about it when I didn’t get my period the first couple months. I’d never been regular—I’d missed months before—and had had some spotting, so I’d thought everything was fine. But when it didn’t come the next month, I started to get worried. I waited and waited, woke up every morning certain it would be the day. I didn’t say anything to my sisters for another couple of weeks, still hoping my period would come.

  It didn’t.

  I found Dani alone in the apartment, sanding the wooden frame of a floor-length mirror. She’d been scavenging for things left in alleys and bringing them back for our apartment: old chairs, a coffee table, another couch, plant stands, and mismatched dishes. We hung tea towels up as curtains, painted the chairs and the wooden table in different bright colors, stenciled flower patterns onto the kitchen cabinets. Slowly but surely it was becoming home.

  “Something’s wrong,” I said.

  “With Court—Crystal?”

  “It’s me.”

  She frowned “You sick?”

  “I haven’t had my period for a while.”

  She looked at me. “What’s ‘a while’?”

  I wanted to cry. “Not since … you know.”

  She jerked back like I’d hit her, leaned the mirror against the counter carefully, then slowly walked over and collapsed into a chair.

  “Shit,” she said.

  We’d never talked about getting pregnant. I remembered the look of relief on Dani’s and Courtney’s faces when they came out of the bathroom the first month after we left Cash Creek, but neither of them had ever asked me about my period.

  “We should get a test,” she said.

  I put one on the table, the plastic spinning for a moment like a compass.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “Stole it.”

  “You have to stop doing that—you’re going to get caught.”

  “It was twenty dollars.”

  “You could have gone to a doctor and they’d test you for free.”

  I couldn’t believe she was giving me shit. Then I realized she was just freaked out.

  “I didn’t know that,” I said.

  “Have you taken it yet?”

  “No. I’m scared.”

  “Maybe with the stress you’re just late.”

  I didn’t like the desperate, hopeful look on her face. The same expression I saw reflected back at me when I glanced in the mirror.

  “Maybe.”

  But the little line turned blue.

  * * *

  When Courtney came home that night, we told her. She sat down hard on the couch and looked up at us with a stunned expression.

  “This is so fucked up. What are we going to do?”

  Dani was sitting on the other couch, her feet under her knees. I was curled into its corner, my hand on my stomach, pressing down as though I could just squeeze the baby out of my body, feeling embarrassed, ashamed, like I had let us all down.

  “Is it too late for an abortion?” Dani said.

  “I don’t know,” Courtney said. “Don’t some places do it later?”

  I didn’t like how they were talking about me as though I weren’t there, not even asking what I wanted to do. I studied my bare feet—small, like my mother’s, the baby toe with hardly any nail. I felt a sharp ache, wished I could speak to her.

  “Maybe we should talk to someone,” I said.

  * * *

  We went to the free clinic the next day. A doctor examined me, took a blood test, and confirmed the pregnancy. I was sixteen weeks along, due the third week of April. I hated his hands on my body, the way he coldly asked about my period and the last time I had sex, most of all hated telling him it was a boy I’d met in the summer. I was glad Dani was in the exam room with me. She asked him about abortion, and I knew the deal by the warning tone of his first sentence, “Past the first trimester…” He handed Dani a bunch of brochures. We left.

  At home I locked myself in my room and read the brochures cover to cover. Courtney and Dani were in the kitchen. I could hear them talking in low voices and knew that they were waiting for me to come out so we could make a plan. We’d barely spoken on the bus ride home. I couldn’t even look at them, hating the anxious look in their eyes, feeling their thoughts.

  I walked into the kitchen, a blanket wrapped around me, and huddled at the table.

  “Do you want something to eat?” Dani said. “Maybe some soup or tea?”

  “No, thanks,” I said.

  She sat down across from me. “That doctor was just a jerk. You’re still allowed to have an abortion. Courtney can ask her friend—”

  “It’s the size of an avocado,” I said. “It can hear me.”

  “What do you want to do, then?” Dani wasn’t freaking out, but I could feel her panic.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “We can’t keep it,” Courtney said. “We can barely afford ourselves. Patrick and Karen might throw us out.” Her voice rose, fear making it breathy. “What if it looks like him?”

  “I need time to think,” I said.

  “You don’t have much time,” Dani said. “You’re already sixteen weeks.”

  “I know! I just need to think.” Doors were closing on me, slamming one after another.

  “Jess, you can’t—”

  “Leave me alone.” I got up from the table and went back to my room.

  * * *

  We didn’t talk about it for the next few days, but I could feel them waiting for my answer even when we weren’t in the same room. I avoided them as much as possible, sat alone for hours, looking at the calendar, feeling time slipping away. I read all the brochures again and again, stared at the photos of the fetus, the tiny hands. I went back to the clinic by myself, talked to another doctor, who explained about the complications of late-term abortions, the risks. I had to decide soon, but I was paralyzed with fear.

  I’d wake up in the middle of the night, pressure bearing down on my chest, so heavy I couldn’t breathe. I’d think about my dad. I’d already killed someone—if I had an abortion, was I killing another person? But what would it be like to give birth? Could I stand the pain? What would happen to the baby? What would happen to me?

  Finally, after a week, I came out one morning while Dani and Courtney were having breakfast. They looked up at me expectantly as I took a seat at the table.

  “It’s too late now.”

  Dani looked furious. “If you’d dealt with it a week ago, you—”

  “It was already too late,” I said. “I’ll give it away. It’ll go to someone else, someone who wants a baby. They’d never know, and the baby wouldn’t know.”

  “Are you sure you want to do that?” Dani said. “You want to go through all of that and then give it away? It’s nine months—then you have to give birth.” Her voice hammered into me, dominating, talking to me like I was a child.

  “I know what it means, Dani. I’m pregnant, not stupid—and it’s forty weeks, not nine months.”

  She looked surprised by my anger, by my newfound knowledge. Sh
e was used to being in charge, leading us into and out of battle. But this was my body.

  “I’m going to give it away,” I said.

  “You have to tell them,” Dani said, still clinging to her authority, making me be the one to tell Karen and Patrick, punishing me for going my own way, making my own decision. I felt another surge of anger. Blame whispering at the back of my brain. If she’d listened to me before, we wouldn’t have been in that town. I pushed away the thoughts. It wasn’t her fault.

  The next day we told Patrick and Karen.

  Karen looked flustered. “Do you … do you know what you want to do?”

  “I’m going to give it away.”

  “The father…”

  I shook my head. Courtney started to cry.

  Patrick looked at her, then back at me. “Whatever you want to do, kid. We’ll help you out.”

  “We can stay?” I said.

  “Of course!” they said at the same time.

  They looked stunned that we had worried about anything else. I felt a weight lift off my shoulders, but then an ache deep inside. It had been decided.

  I was going to have a baby.

  * * *

  I was terrified of giving birth and couldn’t read certain sections of the book Karen had bought me without my chest getting tight and panicky, overwhelmed by the feeling that I was hurtling toward something I couldn’t stop—and it was going to hurt a whole lot. I already felt like my body wasn’t my own anymore, like an alien or a parasite had moved in and taken over.

  We hadn’t told anyone at the gym yet, but I felt like everyone could see just by looking at me, and I couldn’t meet their eyes. At the clinic I studied the other pregnant women in the waiting room, the rings on their fingers, the happy glow on their faces, the way they would curve an arm protectively around their stomachs. I wasn’t showing yet and wondered what they’d think if they knew, if they’d think I was a slut, a bad girl. I wondered if I was doing the right thing.