Hate to Love You(2)
Shit happens and if you don’t die you pick yourself off the fucking pavement before a dog claims you as his turf.
Sweat stuck my palms together as I prayed like I hadn’t since I was ten years old, back when I believed there was a bearded hippie sitting on a cloud listening to my pleas for Caroline to get adopted.
Three minutes to go.
The bottle of vodka in my backpack called to me and I tried to resist its pull. Two minutes, thirty seconds until... Fuck it. Onto the bed went the Find Out and into my mouth the Absolut. Strong and energising, the fiery liquid slid down my throat like water. I wanted more but we were having guests for dinner and I couldn’t indulge.
Michael Jackson’s “Bad” rang out from my mobile and I choked on my booze. My friend Marcia was in a retro phase.
Her husky voice sounded worried. “Should I buy a mega pack of Huggies or get you some condoms for next time?”
“Shit if I know.”
“You’re not preggers,” she soothed. “The drugs screwed with your cycle and it’ll take a while for it to normalise. You’ve been late before, remember? It’s probably stress. Living at home with parents like yours would do anyone’s head in.”
The red crosses on my Christ’s Apostles wall calendar mocked me. “But I’m two weeks late and that’s the longest ever.”
Fourteen days ago there’d been a tiny show but that was it. Every time I went to the bathroom, every time I felt a twinge in my abdomen, I checked to see if it was my period. Nothing.
My eyes cut to the test. “Shit on a stick,” I croaked. “It’s positive.”
“A clear line?”
On a Find Out, the positive is indicated with a heart shape. It was faint but it was there, mocking me with its cutie little outline. It should have been a mask of horror. The back of my head hit the bed board and my body trembled. This could not be happening to me. My brain urged me toward denial but my stomach had other ideas. It lurched, churning the Absolut so violently I thought I’d have to make a run for the loo.
My voice rose hysterically. “What the hell am I going to do with a baby?”
“Shut up, hon. You’re going to count deep breaths with me and not talk unless I tell you to.”
She was only twenty-one but when she spoke in that tone—a combination of her natural assertiveness and her nurse’s training—people jumped to obey. I was no exception.
“I assume you’re not alone in the house, so icksnay on the reakoutfray, you comprende?”
I expelled a short, shaky breath. “I’m good—no more freaking out.”#p#分页标题#e#
“You have to calm down and think about your options. Last I heard Alex and his fiancée were in South America.”
“Fiancée? He told me he’d dumped her.”
Marcia made a disgusted noise. “Apparently not. Send him a PM on Facebook and tell him he knocked you up. He should know before he ties the knot, don’t you think?”
I cringed at the thought. As soon as I wrote down that I was pregnant it would become real. Impossible to deny.
“Yeah, I guess. No. Shit, I don’t know. I don’t want to tell him.”
I wanted to cry or hit something, throw the bottle of Absolut at the wall and scream at the unfairness of my predicament but Marcia was right. I had to seal my inner madwoman up in the attic before my parents’ dinner party.
“You could have an abortion,” Marcia said tentatively.
Her suggestion pulled me deeper into my nightmare. Regardless of my strict Catholic upbringing I’d always been pro-choice, but what I felt before peeing on that damn stick was drifting away from me now that pro-choice had become my choice.
How could I have been so stupid? All I’d wanted was to get drunk at Marcia’s party but when Alex Novak pulled me onto his lap I let him. He said he’d never been so hard in his life and he’d burst if he didn’t get inside me. When I looked into his eyes and read the truth of his words, I was flattered. That sounds pretty bizarre, I know. I’ve not got freaky magical powers or anything. It’s more like I can read single words or phrases when I look at people. See their truths whether they want me to or not.
It started when I was a child, when family and friends would pinch my cheek or sit me on their laps. My candid readings and blurted answers to their unasked questions caused my parents a lot of angry embarrassment, not to mention alarm. They went to Trenmore and consulted with Father Martin. He sat me down after church one Sunday, irritated and impatient to get home. Innocently, I asked him what a Marlboro was and why he was desperate for one.