“Ugh. I hope Sugar Booger doesn’t go to forty-two weeks,” groans Celine Lichtblau, who, in my opinion, needs to tell her OB to adjust the dose on her AntiTocin. Taken in the right amounts, AntiTocin counteracts the all-natural chemical bond between biomom and pregg. Too much AntiTocin makes you a cranky bitch for nine months straight.
Ventura hoists her cleavage to get attention. It works. Her bra started as an A minus and is currently a D plus. With her luck, by the time she pushes, she’ll probably be a full F, the only time such a grade change can be considered progress.
“My donor has a flawless track record for making preggs that deliver within twenty-four hours of their due dates . . .”
If Ventura doesn’t stop bragging about how her RePro scored in the highest percentile in every category measured by the Standards for Premium Ejaculated Reproductive Material, I will tie my tubes.
“ . . . so I assume that Perfect will be no different.”
Same goes for referring to her pregg as “Perfect.”
Ventura picks up on my annoyance and runs with it as fast as a girl in her second trimester can run.
“All this bump talk must be soooooo booooring for you, Melody. . . .”
“Um, no,” I lie. “It’s fascinating. Braxton-Hicks and epidurals and Kegels and . . . stuff.”
I know I should be fascinated. But I’m not. And my trip to Babiez R U to try on FunBumps certainly didn’t help in this regard.
“I’m sure you do,” Ventura says crisply as the group around her giggles. And before I can make an effort to sound more convincing, she adds, “Oh, by the way, we passed Zen on his bicycle. . . .”
Ventura is obsessed with my friendship with Zen. She never fails to bring him up in conversation. “He’s so hot! I don’t know why you two don’t just bump and get it over with,” she says. “You’d really make such a cute pregg.”
Everyone knows why Zen hasn’t bumped me or anyone else: He’s a risky investment. It doesn’t matter that mixmatchy rainbow families are so on trend right now. High IQ can’t make up for his insufficient verticality. Apparently that hasn’t stopped him from giving gooooood everythingbut.
I stay calm. “I’m already under contract. You know that.”
“I bet he’ll be amped when you finally do pregg,” Ventura says, casting a look around at the crowd. “Then you and Zen can bump-hump all you want without worrying about breaking your contract. . . .”
On any other day, I could just let this go. But today isn’t an ordinary day, what with Harmony in hiding at my house and my parents trying to pimp me out and everything. I swear, if it weren’t a felony, I’d smack Ventura AND her adorable six-month bump.
Fortunately, if unintentionally, Shoko comes to my rescue.
“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with humping when you’re bumping. Raimundo and I went at it like crazy for the full forty-two and my first pregg didn’t come out all cock-knocked in the head.”
Doing it for fun. The one advantage to bumping as an amateur.
“Omigod, I was just scamming!” Ventura lies. “See you at the meeting!” Then she shoots me a departing smirk and leads the pregnancy parade into the school.
“Waddle with me,” Shoko says, taking my arm to hold me back. With an extra thirty pounds on her barely five-foot frame, she’s on pace with one of those giant prehistoric ground sloths. The journey from the parking lot to her locker is epic, like moving from one era of geologic time into the next.
I’m still seething. “She acts as if she’s the first girl in this school to go pro.”
“She’s scored a sweet deal,” Shoko says, adjusting her belly band. “Full college tuition, tummy tuck, a car . . . ”
“A car! She doesn’t even have a license! And what’s the big humping deal anyway? I’ve got all that written into my contract!”
Shoko levels me with a look that is barely more sympathetic than pathetic.
“Well, yes,” she says, patting my shoulder. “But you haven’t . . .”
Her eyes drop to my flat tummy.
“It’s not my fault!” I cry.
“I know it’s not.”
We inch our way up the steps before I say what I really want to say.
“You think Ventura is the future of the Pro/Am, don’t you?”
Shoko sighs with every ounce of extra poundage. “It’s not that I think she should be.”
“But you think she is.”
Shoko’s four chins nod.
“Oh, this is just breedy,” I mutter. “Not even my best friend thinks I’m qualified to take over.”
I don’t mention how I know Malia would feel about it:
Break your contract while you still can!
“There is a question of your commitment,” Shoko says.
“My commitment?”
No one shows more commitment to school activities than I do! I’m president of the ECOmmunity Club, cocaptain of the soccer team (though we had to forfeit half of our season because we’d already lost Shoko and Malia when our striker was diagnosed with gestational diabetes), coach for the Science Olympiad . . .
Shoko grimaces, rubs her lower back. “Commitment to the cause,” she explains. “To bringing together amateurs and professionals in the promotion of positive pregging.”
“I was the first girl to sign a contract at this school! I made it the cool thing to do! And I’m not committed to the cause?”
“Well, not to be painfully obvious or anything, but it’s not like you can, like, authentically represent the Alliance when you’re the only unbump—”
“Prebump!”
“Prebump. Whatever. But you did just turn sixteen,” Shoko says with a sympathetic shake of her head. “You don’t have much time left. . . .”
For the second time today, I’m brutally reminded of the repercussions of my looming obsolescence.
This is all Lib’s fault. As my RePro Rep, Lib needs to man up and start earning his 15 percent. It’s his job to put more pressure on the Jaydens to hurry up and hire the Sperm to my Egg because my biological clock is ticking away.
I must look pretty depressed because Shoko abruptly changes the subject. “Gossip!”
My breath catches in my throat. I blinded the MiNet last night because I was studying—as always—but also because I felt like being antisocial. I don’t care if there are MiFotos of Melody Mayflower standing next to a veiled and anonymous Church girl at the Mallplex. I could easily claim that she came faithing hard at me as Churchies are known to do. But if the MiNet is surging with MiFotos of Melody Mayflower standing next to an unveiled Church girl who looks exactly like her, I wanted to avoid those pics as long as possible. Would anyone believe I was being fotobombed?
“Did you hear the latest about Malia?”
I can’t exhale yet.
If I take credit for making it cool for Shoko, Ventura, and everyone else to pregg for profit, am I also to blame for what happened to Malia?
THE DOORBELL RINGS.
I take a quick glance in the mirror, relieved to see more of Melody than myself. I inhale deeply, unlock and open the door.
It’s Him. I mean, him.
“Yes, it’s really me,” he says, removing his mirrored sunglasses and flashing a smile.
Haloed in a golden light of the late-afternoon sun, Jondoe is more glorious in person than he was on-screen. Or in my dreams.
“There’s no spontaneity in these transactions, nothing left to chance,” he says, with a wide, bright grin. “Lib said you’d be here, so I thought I’d just connect in your facespace instead of the MiNet. I know you don’t like the traditional trappings of romance like flowers, which you are so right in saying is ironic because you’re Miss Melody Mayflower and all. . . .”
I almost correct him. Then I remember. I am Miss Melody Mayflower.
“So I brought your favorite brand of GlycoGoGo Bars and a sixer of Coke ’99 instead.”
He presents me with a clutch of soda cans in one hand and a box in the other. Then he gi
ves me a knowing look and says, “We might need these later, you know, to keep our energy up,” and laughs in a way that is meant to encourage me to laugh along with him. But I can’t laugh, I can’t accept his gifts, I can’t do anything.
“I’m Jondoe,” he purrs. “But you know that.”
He bypasses the handshake and extends his arms wide, waiting for me to give him a welcoming embrace that I am in no condition to give. When I don’t respond, he makes a clowny frowny face.
“Oh, come on, I’m not that bad, am I?” He’s smiling again, teasing me.
He must know that he is the very opposite of bad. He is the finest evidence of goodness on this earth that I have ever encountered.
“You’re disappointed. You think I’m hotter in the ads,” he groans. But the smile is still there, fully confident that he could be no such thing to me or anyone. He speaks with cozy familiarity, as if we have known each other forever. “Oh, there’s not enough Tocin in the world to get you to bump with me. . . .”
“Oh my grace!” I gasp at this sudden reminder of Jondoe’s intentions.
His face softens for a split second as it registers genuine surprise. “Ha ha ha!” He laughs beautifully, musically. “That’s funny.”
“I mean, um . . .”
My head fills with scrambled poetry from the Song of Songs, a book from the Old Testament that I’ve never cared much for before.
His mouth is sweetness itself; he is altogether lovely . . .
I cannot say such things! I will not! I swallow to clear my throat and try to speak.
“You look just like . . .”
Jesus.
He looks just like the Jesus in my dreams.
I’M NOT PROUD TO SAY THAT I BLINDED MALIA AFTER HER LAST MiNet rant.
They told me if I loved myself, if I loved my country I would give Angelina to her rightful parents and never think about her again. Why did you let them say those things to me? Why didn’t you try to stop them? You were my birthcoach. You were supposed to be there for me. . . .
I just couldn’t take the guilt anymore. I should have known that wouldn’t be the last I’d hear about her.
“Did she get out of the, um . . . you know, lockdown?”
“Over the weekend,” Shoko says, leaning on my arm for support. “Her parents are sending her to . . .” She looks over her shoulders and whispers, “The Shields Center.”
My intestines lurch. Only the worst cases get sent there, mostly girls who go mad after misdelivering.
“She’s totally lost it. Wackadoodledeedoo.” Shoko crosses her eyes. “She was still wanking out and screaming to anyone who would listen that she’s a victim of preggsploi-
tation and that the deal was off and she was keeping her delivery for herself. She was even using the B word.”
Where is my baby?
“Her parents are suing the RePro Rep for botching the whole transaction.”
I don’t blame them. Even before this postdelivery meltdown, we all talked about how Malia’s broker was the worst. He totally lowballed her. True, she wasn’t an easy sell. Malia is the nicest person I know, but niceness is not a quantifiable high-revenue quality. She’s short and sorta thick in both meanings of the word—she struggled to keep up in her classes. But she was tough on the soccer field, a true team player who would sooner make an assist than go for the goal herself. So nice. Always so nice. I think she ran unopposed for vice president because we all felt like someone so nice deserved to excel at something. At least that’s why I didn’t run against her. (Ventura hadn’t joined the Alliance yet. If she had, I doubt she would’ve had any such reservations because she’s just that powertrippy.)
Malia was willing to deliver a pregg for someone who wanted one, either because she was really that nice or because the pressure to keep up with the rest of us—pressure that began the moment I signed my contract with Lib—was just too much. Or both. She didn’t want to feel left out. And as the last prebump in the Alliance, I can hardly blame her.
Malia never disclosed the full terms of her contract but Shoko and I both have reason to believe that her Rep settled for something in the low four figures. When I told Lib about it, he told me it’s quantity-over-quality brokers like that who give commercial surrogetting a bad name.
“It was his mistake for showing Malia the SimFant.”
Surrogettes are never supposed to see 4-D because they supposedly come out really, really cute and we might get too attached. That’s exactly what happened to Malia.
“You know they upped her dose of AntiTocin, right?”
“Right. And it wasn’t enough?”
“Well, it was at first,” Shoko says. “But it turns out that she stopped taking it for the last few months of pregging.”
As I said, too much AntiTocin makes you a raving bitch for forty weeks straight. Too little and . . .
I want my baby.
“Malia can’t remember to bring her flexbook to school every day; I should have known she’d forget to take her pill.”
“Oh, she didn’t forget,” Shoko says brightly. “She confessed to her OB that she stopped taking her meds on purpose.”
On purpose? I’m about to pop an outtie. “Why would she ever do that?”
“That’s the best part.” Shoko lights up. “She said it was making her fat!”
Shoko is laughing so hard that I’m surprised her delivery doesn’t drop right here and now.
“It’s not funny,” I say.
“It is.”
“It’s not.”
“She was pregging. She’s supposed to get fat. How is that not funny?”
They took my baby.
“SHE’S OUR FRIEND AND SHE HAS POSTPARTUM PSYCHOSIS. HOW IS THAT FUNNY?”
“Oy.” Shoko blanches, clutching her belly. “Keep your voice down. Burrito just kicked me in the kidneys.”
“Sorry,” I say without a trace of apology in my voice.
“It’s just so Malia,” Shoko says derisively. “Who else would stop taking AntiTocin on purpose?”
I could have prevented this. I should have done something as soon as she stopped calling her pregg Shrimpy and renamed it Angelina. I should have spoken up in the delivery room. I should have warned the doctors.
“I don’t know how you can be so judgy about what’s happened to her,” I say, more to Shoko’s stomach than to her. “You were pregg partners!”
For months I watched Shoko and Malia grow bigger by the day. I watched them swap MyTurnTees, share tubes of You Glow Girl! stretch-mark remover, and share bag after bag of Big Belly Jellies. I watched them bond with each other because they were forbidden to bond with their bumps. I watched them and thought I wanted to pregg right along with them.
Now I’m less excited to pregg than I am scared to be the only girl who hasn’t.
“Oh please, I don’t feel sorry for her at all,” Shoko snaps, hands still rubbing her sides. “And if you had bumped already, you wouldn’t either.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I know what it’s like to look and feel like I’ve smuggled a watermelon up through my breedy bits, to need a half hour to waddle from the parking lot to my locker.” She sighs heavily. “None of it is much fun, but pregging for the highest bidder was the best decision I could have ever made. If I had been traumatized by the experience, would I have agreed to do it again?”
I guessed that she would not.
“Reneggers like Malia make the rest of us look bad. If it keeps happening, it will be harder for Surrogettes to push for profit. Until you’ve walked a mile in my swollen feet, I doubt you’ll be able to understand.”
That’s exactly why Malia picked me to be her birthcoach. As the only one who hadn’t pregged yet, I was the only one who might listen to her pleas. She knew well before she was wheeled into the delivery room what she wanted to do. And if she had only trusted me enough to let me in on her secret, I might have tried to help her.
At least I’d like to think I would have.
By the time we reach Shoko’s locker, I feel like I’ve walked a million miles in her swollen feet. This has been the longest, slowest trudge of my entire life.
“I’ll see you at the meeting,” I say.
“Uh-huh.” She doesn’t look at me.
I’m feeling for seriously sad as I press my way through the noisy, packed hallway to my own locker. The crowd doesn’t part when they see me coming. . . .
Shoko and I never battled like this before she pregged. I’ve been blaming it on a combination of all-natural hormonal fluctuations plus synthetic ones brought on by AntiTocin. But maybe the tension between us has nothing to do with what’s happening to her and everything to what’s not happening to me.
A hand touches my shoulder from behind. Before I look, I know who it is.
“I’m sorry,” Zen says.
I go for the hug, rest my chin on his shoulder, and hold on longer than necessary.
I CAN’T SPEAK.
“So you were about to tell me how I look just like Jondoe from the Tocin ads,” he says in a playful way. “I get that all the time.”
I can’t move.
He leans into the doorway trying to get a peek at the interior. “Are you going to let me in?”
“Oh my grace!” I jump to the side.
“Ha ha ha!” He laughs again. “That’s funny. You’re funny.” He raises an eyebrow, as if we’re sharing a secret. “The file didn’t mention that you had a sense of humor.”
He brushes past me and I breathe in his earthy-sweet scent.
“Whoa,” he says, pausing at the two towers in the common room. “This is an impressive collection of dead media.”
He slips a square plastic case from the top of the stack and shows it to me. On it is a picture of a girl who looks to be around my own age, dressed in a tight red top and blasphemously short skirt. She’s on her knees, but she’s definitely not praying.
“You know the rappers Fed Double X?” Jondoe asks, without waiting for an answer. “This is their mom,” he says, tapping the case. “She was a major bonermaker back in her prime.” He glances up and gives me an appraising look. “You’re way more reproaesthetical than she ever was.” Jondoe carefully puts the case back where it came from.