Michael Flanagan.
I’ve seen him only occasionally this summer. He’s been working at Woody’s, and Sophia is totally addicted to the cable car chocolate frozen yogurt, so we go there quite a lot. I try to stay in the car, because I don’t know what to say to him anymore. Andi’s all, Hey Michael! How’s the job? Emily’s in the car, I’ll tell her you said hi! Which drives me nuts. I’m in the car because I don’t want to see him, and he doesn’t say hi. Not anymore. He ignores me.
The thing is, I befriended Michael way before he was Mike. I went out of my way to get to know him because both of us were the class outcasts, and I figured we might as well be outcasts together.
I took pity on him. He used to sit at his desk and pick his nose when he thought no one was looking, but of course everyone knew. He was skinny, and little, and he smelled kind of sour although that didn’t bother me. And he was adopted, so the other kids would say that even his own mother didn’t want him. I felt so bad for him.
So one day I went up to him during recess and offered to split a Twix with him. We weren’t supposed to bring chocolate in, healthy snacks only, but I had it, and his face lit up. I told him there and then: You have to stop picking your nose because it’s gross. He was embarrassed, but he stopped.
I hadn’t ever had a best friend before, and I loved having one. I know we were an odd couple—I was twice his size, but he made me laugh so much. Sometimes the two of us would get the giggles so badly, my cheeks would hurt, and he’d clutch his stomach, moaning.
He had this tree house that his dad had made when he was small. You had to climb a ladder to get up there, and he had pillows and blankets for sleepovers. We’d take a ton of food up and just lie on the pillows and talk for hours. I told him everything. He was the best listener.
When my parents divorced, he was the one who totally got me through. He knew what pain was like because of being adopted. I know some kids are totally fine with it, and he always said that he loved his mom and dad, that he was really lucky and they were amazing, but he always had this nagging fear that his real mom, his birth mother, gave him up because he wasn’t good enough.
We were more alike than you might have thought.
If I wasn’t at his house, which I was almost all the time, we’d sit on the phone. He’d walk over and meet me every morning, so we’d get the bus together, and we’d do homework together every day after school. If it hadn’t been for Michael, I don’t even know if I would have got through it.
But then in eighth grade things changed. He went off to camp that summer, and I wrote to him every day—long, funny letters filled with silly stuff I’d seen, or done, things I thought would make him laugh.
I think I maybe got three letters from him all summer, and even calling them letters is a push. They were notes, totally impersonal.
Hey Em!
Having a great time! I learned to sail, and I’m playing football—can you believe it! You would totally hate it here See you when I’m back. Later, Mike.
I should have known. Later? What the hell was that? What happened to Love? And when did he become Mike? Of course, the minute he got back I saw that he’d become Mike at roughly the same time he grew a foot, his hair was bleached blond from the sun, and he suddenly seemed … built.
He didn’t look like weird, skinny, smelly, adopted Michael Flanagan anymore. He looked like Mike, a jock. He looked, in short, like one of the popular kids.
Maybe it’s as simple as that. I’d never stopped to think about it, but maybe it is as lookist as that: if you look like one of them, you are one of them. All I know is that I spent the summer before eighth grade missing my best friend desperately and writing to him every day, and we started eighth grade, and I lost my best friend.
I still don’t get it. How do you go from one day being virtually inseparable and telling each other everything, even those embarrassing awful stories that you would never tell anyone else, to being virtual strangers?
I’d pass him in the hall, surrounded by the pretty, popular blond girls. He’d look up and catch my eye, and I’d pause, expecting him to break away, to come and talk to me, but he’d just look away, as if he was embarrassed to know me.
I started hanging out with the emo/goth crowd, and the more involved I became with them, the more distant I felt from Michael.
For a while we’d pass each other in the hallway and if neither of us were with anyone else, we’d do that “Hi, what’s up” thing, then, after a time, we’d just smile, then we’d nod, and suddenly we stopped even acknowledging each other. If I saw him at the end of the corridor, I’d change direction. If I absolutely had to pass him, I’d suddenly remember something I had to get out of my bag, so I’d be busy getting something, or texting someone … something, anything that meant I didn’t have to meet his eye.
By the way, he was doing the same thing. I saw him change direction many times. He didn’t get busy with his bag, but he got his phone out or pretended to be on it. I only know he pretended because there was this one day when he thought I hadn’t seen him. He put his phone to his ear and started having this fake conversation.
As he passed me, saying, “Yeah, it was a totally cool night,” his phone started to ring. I swear. His damned phone started to ring. He looked embarrassed, rightly, and I just gave him this withering look.
“God you’re lame,” I said. I know I shouldn’t have done it, but I had to. It was just so pathetic. I will say for a second he looked like the Michael of old. He looked sorry, and sad, and I just wanted to be back in the tree house, laughing.
He looked at me for a long time, then he said, “Em, I don’t even know who you are anymore.”
“Me?” I gasped. “Me? You’re the one who became this big freaky popular jock.”
“And you became this weird, miserable goth.” He stared at me then while I felt the knife turn in my heart. “And your hair. Your beautiful hair.”
“What? What about my hair?” I snapped.
“Why did you dye it?” He reached out and touched, actually touched my hair with such incredible gentleness, and I knew I was about to cry. I could feel the lump in my throat, and I turned so he wouldn’t see, and the tears started running down my cheeks, and he didn’t see.
“Fuck you,” I threw over my shoulder as I walked off. When I got to the edge of the quad, I turned around. He was still standing there, looking at me. But not close enough to see the tears.
I guess that’s when it all started to go a bit wrong for me. I started drinking in ninth grade. We’d steal liquor from our parents’ cabinets and go up to the canyon and get wasted; we started smoking weed, too.
I loved how both took me out of myself, numbed me to the point that I didn’t care about my parents, didn’t care that my mom was totally disinterested, and usually drunk herself. I didn’t care that my dad hasn’t wanted to have anything to do with me since Andi came on the scene.
I didn’t care that I had lost my best friend, and that there was nobody in the world who knew me anymore, and nobody in the world who loved me. There were times when life was so painful that I almost couldn’t get out of bed. I would want to hide under the covers forever, and just … disappear.
But my friends were doing the same stuff as I was.
Andi knew more than Dad. She’s always watching me. For the record, Sophia’s always watching me, too; but it’s different. I know she loves me, and I know she doesn’t judge me. Sure, she hates me some of the time, like I hate her some of the time, but at the end of the day, we’re sisters.
Put it like this. She might drive me nuts by being oh-so-mature and Miss Goody Two-shoes, but let me tell you, if anyone was ever mean about her, or did something to her, I would kill them. Seriously.
That’s why the watching doesn’t bother me, and anyway, it’s not just me. Sophia watches everyone and everything. She’s the one who usually warns me about Mom when she’s about to throw a shit fit. I have no idea how Sophia knows it’s coming, but she always does, and
she’ll text me and tell me to stay out of the way.
Sophia knows more about my life than anyone else in my family, but I don’t tell her everything. I know she doesn’t judge me, but there’s no way I would tell her about sex, for example. Or who I’ve had sex with. No way.
The judging thing is a big problem with Andi. Huge. I can get away with almost anything with my dad—he’s always willing to see the good, to believe the good—but Andi’s ready to jump on the worst, always sees the bad in every situation. At least when it comes to me.
I feel like she’s always judging me, and I’m always disappointing her. But then … there are other times she can be so nice, it confuses me. When I’m sick, or really depressed, or … today. I was so scared today, I am so scared by this whole pregnancy thing, and Andi is being amazing.
Every time I look in my dad’s eyes, I see this massive disappointment, but Andi doesn’t seem to be judging me, and when I was in there getting a scan, and they were rubbing the gel on my stomach, I was embarrassed and ashamed, and I really, really wanted Andi in there with me.
I kept my eyes closed the whole time because I wanted to pretend I was somewhere else. Anywhere else. Going through anything else. I wanted to pretend I was back in third grade, or fifth, Michael and I in the tree house, or going out to Stinson Beach for the day, shrieking with laughter as we jumped the waves.
I thought about that day Michael reached out and touched my hair, and how I was left with this tremendous loss, and I squeezed my eyes shut in that doctor’s office and didn’t move, not even to wipe away the tears that were streaming down my cheeks.
The thing is, it isn’t going to be okay. My whole life my parents have told me things were going to be okay, and they always have been. Even the divorce, which was awful, ended up being … okay. Dad meeting Andi was pretty fucking awful, and my life isn’t exactly great, but I deal with it.
Andi is a total bitch, but she can sometimes be nice. When she and my dad first got together, she used to do a ton of things with me. I hated that he had a girlfriend, but I liked what she did with me, and all the stuff she bought me. All I’d have to do was pause in a store and pick something up, say how much I loved it, and she’d buy it for me as a surprise.
Things haven’t changed that much, except she can’t buy me anymore. She never could, but for a while she seemed to think it was possible, so I let her.
I know Andi’s not a bad person, I just think she’s pretty fake most of the time. She pretends to like me, pretends to be interested, but I know she’d be much happier if I just disappeared. She loves Sophia, not me. She loves Sophia because she’s well behaved, and pretty, and slim. She looks a lot like Andi, in fact—like the daughter Andi always says she wanted. She looks like what she is: one of the popular girls.
But the real issue I have is that Andi makes everything about herself. Even this pregnancy. I bet she’s thinking that she and my dad could keep this baby. I can see a look in her eye every time we talk about adoption, and I know she’s thinking about it all the time, but she wouldn’t dare say it.
She’d better not say it because there’s no way in hell that would ever happen.
And that’s why I can’t stand her: from the moment she walked into our lives, everything had to revolve around Andi.
If Andi says jump, my dad asks how high. Sophia will do anything she asks. I’m the only one who refuses, who sees what’s really going on. Except … except those times, like today, when she was caring, and it felt real, and genuine. Those are the times when I think I could almost … almost love her.
When she was stroking my arm and put an arm around me afterward as we were walking out the clinic, and pulled me in tight, kissing the side of my head, I wanted to let her enfold me in her arms.
I wanted to believe her when she said it was all going to be okay.
* * *
But this isn’t something that’s going to be okay. It never was. Dad kept asking me how I didn’t know, but how are you supposed to know if you’ve never been pregnant?
Also, I had periods pretty much throughout. They were much lighter than normal, but there was still blood, and I had wicked PMS, but I seem to have that all the time anyway.
How was I supposed to know?
Maybe it crossed my mind, but not seriously. It was only hooking up. It wasn’t supposed to lead to … Oh, God. A baby. Yeah, yeah, I know how biology works, but my group and I just hook up for fun, and because we’re bored. It’s just … what everyone does. And the guys always pull out before … well. They say that makes it safe, but obviously that’s not true.
I didn’t even think about it as sex. It’s not like I particularly enjoy it that much. It’s just something we do. The guys seem to get far more out of it than the girls although Justine says she comes. I don’t know. I don’t think I ever have. I have no idea what it feels like, but I’m pretty sure I’d know if I’d feel something other than wondering when it will be over.
And that’s the other thing. My dad keeps asking me who the father is, but I don’t know. We’ve all had sex with everyone in our group, and sometimes other people. There are a couple of guys who are older who hang out with us, and I’ve done it with them. So has Justine.
I just can’t believe I’m about to have a baby. It doesn’t feel real. Andi’s downstairs now, on the phone to adoption agencies. I looked at the leaflets the doctor gave me but didn’t read them properly.
My dad and Andi are talking about adoption as if it’s decided. They have decided I’m not going to keep this baby, we’re going to find some nice couple who will take this baby and raise it and give it a life filled with love.
But here’s the thing. This is my baby. It’s growing inside of me, it’s part of me, and no one else has the right to tell me what to do with my baby.
I may be seventeen now, but I’ll be eighteen by the time the baby comes, and I know I can love this baby. I know that I have so much love to give. All the love that’s pent up that I’ve never been able to let out? The love I used to have for my father before he betrayed me by marrying Andi? I could give it to this baby.
And she would love me back. I already know it’s a girl, and she would love me with all her heart. All children need is for someone to love them and listen to them, and I would do that. I would love her more than anyone else in the world.
I want to keep her.
I’m going to keep my child.
Nineteen
There is nothing in the world Brooke hates more than hearing the words We need to talk. They inevitably sound ominous, inevitably remind her of her father calling her in, reprimanding her for something she’s done of which she was entirely unaware. It doesn’t matter if they’re from a lover, a teacher, or her ex-husband. They always fill her with fear.
She knows this is something to do with her daughter. This is always something to do with Emily. Up until a few weeks ago, she would have reached for the vodka, drunk herself into oblivion, fed up with the constant crises and dramas that her daughter brings, removing herself from it all, drinking and sleeping the pain away.
But today—for today—she is celebrating sobriety. Forty-three days today. She hadn’t planned on getting sober, had always thought A.A. and rehab was for losers, and anyway, she wasn’t a drunk. She just liked a drink. That didn’t make her an alcoholic—there was a huge difference.
That was before the night she fell.
Forty-four days ago.
At two o’clock one morning Anne, Brooke’s next-door neighbor, heard water running, followed by a loud thump. Unbelievable that Anne was even up, but she was coming back from a fiftieth birthday party that had gone on far later than anyone had planned, was letting herself into her house when she heard the thump coming from the house next door.
Anne had paused; something had told her to check. The lights were on in Brooke’s house, so Anne had rung the bell, and when there was no answer, she had reached behind the heavy iron pot on the doorstep, pulled out the key that was hidden
there, and let herself in.
Upstairs, she found the bathwater overflowing, Brooke on the floor, lying unconscious in a pool of her own vomit, with blood gushing from her forehead. She must have fallen while running the bath and cut herself. Whether unconscious from drink, the cut, or both, thank God Anne was there.
Brooke woke up in the hospital with sixteen stitches in her head. She had no recollection of anything, knowing only that this time, she needed help. If that party hadn’t gone on late, if Anne hadn’t happened to be in the driveway, hadn’t happened to hear Brooke fall …
The doctors told her how lucky she was. Had she not been found, she might have died. She needed to get help. And fast. They sent an addiction counselor into her hospital room; by the time she left, she had signed up for the A.A. program at the hospital. Her first meeting was that afternoon.
“Ninety in ninety,” they said. Ninety meetings in ninety days. She got a sponsor—a woman named Maureen who had fifteen years of sobriety: serenity and wisdom poured from her every pore. Brooke’s own newfound sobriety was shaky, but steady.
She still wasn’t sure she wanted to be sober, but she looked around the meetings at all the people who were sober, envied them their lives. She envied them their calm, their wisdom, their positive outlook on life.
When they spoke of where they had come from, the blame, the resentment, the anger, the self-pity, she related. It was where she had been living for years, and it was that, more than anything else, that kept her coming back. She didn’t want to live in a haze of anger and blame anymore. She wanted to see the glass as they seemed to: half-full.
She speaks to Maureen once a day, has been told to call Maureen at any time. Day or night. Whenever she feels alcohol calling, or … for anything at all. Any problems, anytime she doesn’t know what to do.
Right now would be the perfect time to call Maureen. Her ex-husband is coming over because they “need to talk.” Dread has settled around her shoulders like a hair blanket, itchy and uncomfortable, too heavy for her to move.