Thumped

  The legendary smile disappears.

  “I . . . uh . . . I . . .”

  Jondoe looks my way and silently pleads with to me for the answer. He wants to know for himself—for us, really—more than the nurse. And when I say “us” I mean all four of us: the twins, Jondoe, and me. Before I can say anything, Grace approaches my bedside.

  “Both babies are in the breech position,” Grace says brusquely. “Did you know that?”

  I shake my head.

  “Do you know what breech means?”

  The image of a mare foaling hind-feet first comes to mind.

  “Bottom first,” I say, barely choking out the words.

  “Right,” Grace says. “Such deliveries pose serious health concerns for one or both of your babies.” She lowers her voice, gazes at me unblinkingly. “Life-threatening concerns.”

  I feel woozy. I know stories of long, excruciating breech deliveries with the most horrific outcomes. I try to steady myself with the memory of breech labors resulting in healthy bundles of joy.

  She studies me in a way that makes me nervous.

  “May I ask why you resisted the support of a healthcare professional?” Her tone is clipped, like she’s taking it personally.

  “I was supposed to deliver all naturally,” I reply, my voice pinched with worry.

  “Well, that’s not going to happen now,” Grace says, tightening her smile and clapping her hands together. “You’re going in for surgery.”

  “Surgery? I don’t want to be cut open!”

  Jondoe hears this and politely tries to disengage from the intake nurse without causing a stir. He smiles at her again, stunning her just long enough to sneak away.

  “But you do want optimal care.”

  “Of course! But—”

  “When you came through our doors, you tacitly, but legally, consented to receiving optimal care from the medical professionals at the Keystone Emergency Birthcenter as mandated by the United States government.”

  “I did? But—”

  “No more buts.” She holds up a rubber-gloved hand. “Your babies are already in a considerable amount of distress and this is the optimal care for such situations. We have a ninety-nine-percent success rate. Your surgeon is already prepping for the procedure.”

  “But . . . !”

  Is this it? The end I have at once wished for and dreaded for so long? How could the last eight months drag so slowly, and these last few moments fly so quickly? I’m not ready!

  “Relax,” she says soothingly. “Let us do the thinking for you. You will be unconscious, after all.”

  “Why can’t she be numbed from the waist down, but awake?” Jondoe asks as he flanks the opposite side of my bed. “What about an epidural or another nerve-blocker?”

  I’m grateful that he knows more about my options than I do. Grace inhales sharply, glances over her shoulder, and makes eye contact with another woman in white scrubs. Then she pats me twice on my upper arm.

  “We deliver hundreds of babies each week. I assure you that this is the quickest and most painless option. You’ll wake up and have your babies! What could be better?”

  The more she talks to me, the clearer it becomes that Grace is kind not because she’s an inherently kind person. She’s had to learn how to act kindly because it is the most efficient method for getting her patients in and out of the delivery room. She doesn’t really care about me. She only wants good statistics to report to her superiors here at the Keystone Emergency Birthcenter.

  “But what if I don’t want quick and painless?”

  Jondoe takes my hands in his. “Har—I mean, Mary, why would you ever want such a thing? You’ve suffered enough already just by carrying them.”

  Grace is gazing intently at Jondoe’s face. “He makes a lot of sense. You should listen to him. I’d listen to him and I don’t even know him.”

  “What if I want long and anguished? What if I want this experience to live with me forever?” I’m wailing now, drawing curious onlookers from far-flung corridors of the birthcenter, and I don’t care. “I can’t just move on with my life and never look back like this—like they—never existed. I refuse to forget these girls like my birthmother has forgotten me and my sister!”

  The words are barely out of my mouth when the second white-scrubbed woman approaches Grace with her hands behind her back, as if she’s being held captive.

  “Prepartum psychosis,” Grace murmurs to this anonymous healthcarer, who, without any warning, brings her hands out in the open and swiftly jabs me with a hypodermic needle in the exact spot on my arm Grace had patted moments before.

  “JONDOE!”

  In my pain and panic I shout out his name.

  And the whole world comes to an abrupt halt.

  melody

  IT’S A MIRACLE I DON’T FALL RIGHT OUT OF THE BLEACHERS.

  Ventura has gotten exactly the reaction she was hoping for. Though I try hard to keep myself together, I’m not doing a very convincing job of it.

  “Th-that’s that m-most ectopic thing you’ve ever said,” I stammer.

  “Is it? Rilly?” Her eyes are sparkling and her lips are stretched into her fullest smirk. “I know I’m right. Don’t try to deny it. What I don’t get is how you expect to keep this secret going.”

  I don’t. That’s what the Mission is all about.

  “I mean, like, how are you gonna stop the deliveries from getting their YDNA tests? Not that the results will even be necessary because it’s gonna be for seriously obvious that Jondoe isn’t the donor when the twins come out looking nothing like him. . . .”

  What?

  “And bear more than a passing resemblance to the Chino-Chicano who has been so scammily posing as your platonic best friend.”

  Whoa. She thinks . . .

  “Those twins are Zen’s!”

  And then Ventura folds her arms across her porny chest in triumph.

  Breathe, Melody, breathe. In and out. In and out. Is this such a bad thing for Ventura to believe? It’s not nearly as janked as the truth.

  “First of all, I’m with Jondoe. And second of all, my bump is my business, not yours.”

  She laughs, but there’s no joy in it.

  “You have about as much chemistry with Jondoe as Harmony does with Ram.”

  This is so obviously true that I almost have to applaud her for being the first person to point it out.

  “And it’s not about business with you and Zen.” Ventura pauses, smoothes her T-shirt over her flat belly, then looks up at me. “And it’s not that way about Zen for me, either.”

  Before I can even process this information, she continues.

  “You think the only reason I joined the debate team was just so I could get you all pissy by getting into Zen’s pants, right? Because that’s the type of powertrippy bitch you tell everyone I am.”

  I wince. Those are exactly the words I’ve used to describe her. Such trash talk is totally against the bylaws for the Pro/Am Pregg Alliance (“respect each other’s reproductive decisions”), but I can get away with such rule breaking because I’m a top-five trender on the MiNet and Ventura’s popularity is limited to the Princeton Day Academy campus.

  “But the truth is, I joined the debate team because I’m an awesome public speaker. Remember that speech I made right before I defeated you—by near unanimous decision—in the election of the Pro/Am President?”

  How could I forget? She had singled me out as the only unbumped girl in the room, someone who couldn’t possibly serve as an accurate representation of the group’s commitment to our nation’s reproductive prosperity. It was one of the lowest moments of my life.

  “Nearly all of it was off the top of my head. I mean, like, totally made up on the spot.”

  If that’s true, then I’m impressed. The girl definitely knows how to talk. The problem is that I am totally turned off by just about everything she talks about.

  “I needed more extracurriculars so I decided to put my skills to
good use by joining the debate team. Yes, Zen just happens to be the captain. But I would have joined the debate team even if it hadn’t been Zen I’d be working so closely with every day. More to the point, I would’ve joined if it had been Zen and he was still four inches short of the minimum height requirement. I wasn’t at all interested in Zen that way when I first joined.”

  She stops and tosses her glossy black hair over her shoulder. She’s trying to come across as carefree when she is clearly feeling anything but. I should know because I’m gritting my teeth into an unnatural smile not even a sponsor could love.

  “But then I got to know him,” she says.

  “And?” I ask, unsure of whether I want to hear the rest.

  “And Zen and I have more in common than you and he do.”

  Her words stab me in the heart. I can’t defend myself or my relationship with Zen because I’m afraid she might be right. What do we have but a history of getting on each other’s nerves for sport?

  “You, Melody, are living a lie. You can hate me all you want, but at least I’m honest about my ambitions. I know what I want and I’m coming to you, as one woman to another, to be up front about it.”

  And just when I think it can’t get any worse, it does.

  “You have him so no one else can have him and it’s not fair,” she says, standing up. “It’s not fair to Zen. And, though I know you could not care less about my feelings, it’s not fair to me, either.”

  And as she walks away, I’m left to grapple with her unspoken confession.

  Ventura Vida is in love with Zen too.

  harmony

  “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO HER?” JONDOE ROARS.

  And all at once the whole world starts spinning again, only in the opposite direction and at ten times its normal speed.

  “I KNEW IT,” screams Grace, her professional façade shattered. “I’d recognize his smile anywhere!” She looks down at me in amazement. “And this is Melody Mayflower! OH MY GOD! We’re delivering Melody Mayflower’s twins!” She pumps her fists in the air in triumph. “Scrub up, everyone. This is our moment! We’re going INTERNATIONAL! Planet Earth is about to discover the Keystone Emergency Birthcenter!”

  There’s a whoosh inside my head and suddenly it’s like I’m looking at the room through backwards binoculars.

  I hear a chorus of voices shouting Jondoe’s and Melody’s names. I too need to scream, to urge Jondoe to tell the truth about us. What everyone needs to know if we’re ever going to make peace with the past. It’s me! Harmony Doe Smith! I’m the one about to be cut in half, not my sister!

  I can’t open my mouth but it hardly seems to matter. It’s as if Jondoe can read my soul.

  “I am who I am,” Jondoe proclaims. “But that stunning girl is not Melody Mayflower . . .”

  And at that moment another person rushes into the room with a white-coated army trailing not far behind.

  “Jondoe! I got your message! I got here as fast as I could. How is Harmony . . . ?”

  Ram? It sounds like Ram, but looks nothing like him. The beard is gone and he’s wearing a sinfully snug T-shirt and tight trousers and I’m seeing more of his body right now than I did on our disastrous wedding night. This cannot be Ram. The injection must be taking its hallucinogenic effect.

  “Harmony!” cries out Ram.

  “Harmony!” cries out Jondoe.

  Their voices are overpowered by uglier crashes of commotion. It would be upsetting but the noise barely reaches me now. It’s all far in the distance. I’m floating above the chaos, lifted by a glorious light, rising higher and higher and higher.

  I am at peace because I am not alone.

  She is with me too, my birthmother, smiling beatifically, waiting to welcome me into His kingdom with open arms.

  melody

  I’M STILL REELING FROM THE REALIZATION THAT VENTURA has a heart hidden underneath all that boobage.

  And it’s broken.

  All because of me.

  Gah. She really is as persuasive speaker. She’ll make a phenomenal politician one day because she’s talked me into the unthinkable: I feel bad for her. I mean, it must not be easy for her, competing against a Hottie for Zen’s attention and affection. My presence at PDA is pretty inescapable. My image is all over this school, from the PregGo Bars in the vending machines to the National Association for Procreation posters on the walls. If I’m sick of seeing my face everywhere, I can’t even imagine how she must feel about it. It’s no wonder she negs so hard on me. It all makes sense now.

  The door to the gym bangs open and I’m not thinking much about Ventura Vida’s feelings anymore. Zen races through the entrance faster than I’ve ever seen him run.

  Ventura must have threatened to go public with her accusations. And Zen is wanking out about it because he doesn’t know any better not to. Zen’s got an overloaded brain cache, but he isn’t adequately versed in the ways of female scheming because he can’t get this kind of knowledge on the quikiwiki. No, it’s embedded in our XX chromosomes, like hemophilia and red-green colorblindness.

  I know Ventura would never go to the MiNet with her gossip, not if she holds any hope of actually winning him away from me. Ventura is savvy enough to understand that betraying him—betraying both of us—would only bring Zen and me closer together, which is the last thing she wants right now. What does she hope to achieve by blackmailing us? That’s harder to figure out. I can’t underestimate Ventura’s ruthless intelligence. I’m positive that she’s already anticipating my response and plotting her counter-move. All this girl-on-girl hate is exhausting. Sometimes I wish we could dose on testosterone, punch each other in the face, and get it over with already.

  Zen is running around in circles, swiveling his head all around, trying to find me among all the preggers sitting in the bleachers. I leap—well, I’m incapable of leaping—I lurch to my feet.

  “Zen!”

  It would be a very romantic moment if I wasn’t saddled with forty excess pounds of synthetic and possibly parasitic skinfeel. I wave my arms to get his attention, which is totally unnecessary because I’m not easy to miss. Zen cuts straight through the Quidditch match in progress and almost gets taken down by a Beater hurling a Nerf quaffle right at his machopartes, but he’s saved by the same lightning-quick reflexes that serve him so well in Ping-Pong.

  By the time he gets to me, he’s practically staggering and can’t catch his breath.

  “Jondoe [pant] . . . MiNet . . . [pant] . . .”

  I help him out by doing the talking for him.

  “I know! She told me! Ventura thinks you’re the donor!”

  He’s slicing his hands through the air, shaking his head nononononono.

  “The [pant] . . . truth [pant] . . .”

  Zen really needs to do more cardio. He looks like he’s about to puke, but that’s not stopping him from yanking on my arm to make me follow him back down the bleachers.

  “Ow!” I say, trying to shake him off. “Dose down, Zen. She doesn’t know the truth. No one knows the truth.”

  “You’re not getting it!” he gasps. “The whole world knows now!”

  And he shoves his MiVu Mini right under my nose with one hand while trying to drag me out of the gym with the other. “Now.”

  I’m about to ask Zen how he hacked the campus MiNet blind again when seeing and hearing Jondoe takes my breath away.

  “Harmony is in the operating room right now, making our deliveries. That’s right. Our deliveries. I’m here to make things right. I’m the father of Harmony’s twins, not Ram. I did not bump with Melody Mayflower. Not because I couldn’t—I’m as potent as ever and totally could have bumped it out on the first try if I wanted to—but I didn’t even try. After I met her sister, Harmony, I was thinking more with my heart than my . . .”

  It’s just like Zen said. Jondoe. On the MiNet. Telling the world the truth.

  BORN AGAIN

  Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
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  —Hebrews 11:1

  melody

  WE HAD NO TIME TO WASTE. WITHIN A MINUTE OF SEEING JONDOE on the MiVu, I dashed out of the gym, across the campus, through the parking lot, and into the passenger side of Zen’s car. I didn’t think I was still capable of running at all, let alone sprinting, but it’s amazing what a terrified rush of adrenaline can do.

  Zen and I didn’t speak until we had put at least a half mile between us and the school. This took literally, like, ten seconds. Only then did I realize that we weren’t in Zen’s VW Plug at all.

  “Zen! Whose car is this? Gah!”

  “Asif’s,” Zen said, checking the rearview.

  “Zen! Aren’t we in enough trouble already?”

  “The paparazzi know my car, Mel. They’re gonna be looking for it,” he says as he programs the autodrive. “We had to borrow Asif’s Aero if we had any chance of getting away before the media surrounded the school.”

  “But did you have to steal a quarter-million-dollar sports car?”

  “It’s hardly grand theft auto when the owner doesn’t bother to password-protect his keycode. And Asif will thank us for borrowing his car because he’s dying to get in the famegame, and this model Aero will ultimately become identified as a notorious part of our getaway and he’ll start trending just by association.” Zen’s eyes are wandering all around. He’s obviously MiNetting right in front of me. “And we needed something fast if we want to get to the birth center before . . .” His voice trails off. “Oh.” Then again. “Oh!”

  “What is it? Did something happen to Harmony?”

  The thought of Harmony in the stirrups brings tears to my eyes, which mucks up my MiNet. I wink-right-left-right-blink-blink-double-wink but I can’t log on.

  “She delivered the twins!” Zen cheers.

  “She did? When? I knew she wasn’t telling me the truth last night! Arrrrgh! I can’t get on!” I try to rub the moisture out of my eyes. “Why is my MiNet so janked right now? Tell me what’s happening!”