“It’s not like in the movies. It takes a long time to start showing.”
“Oh.”
“ …”
“ …”
“Are you angry?” I whisper.
“Emily, no! How could I possibly be angry? Look … okay, it’s bad timing, it’s definitely not the ideal situation, but everything will be okay. I’ll be here for you, and we can figure this out together. I’m not going to let anything bad happen to my child, or to you.”
When he says those words out loud—my child—I think the gravity of the situation hits me for the first time. I am not ready to have somebody’s child.
“Del,” I say, trying to calm him, to make him quickly understand how things are going to be, “I’m not going to keep the baby. I have a plan, okay? I’m going to go stay with Renee at the end of the school year. I’m going to live in New York City with her and Bruce—my parents already told me it’s okay—and then I’ll give the baby up for adoption. Nobody will even have to know there was a baby. So you can’t tell anyone, all right?”
Del frowns. I can tell immediately that he doesn’t like the idea. “But it’s my baby, too.”
I nod. “I know. But it’s my body. This is what I have to do.”
“Well, I’m not sure I’m okay with that. You know I grew up without a real family. I don’t even know where my sister is. Now you’re telling me you’re gonna take my baby and give it to some strangers, just so you don’t have to feel embarrassed that you got pregnant?” His voice is starting to rise, and I’m starting to panic. I didn’t expect him to react this way. I don’t know what I expected, but certainly not the delusion that we could all become one big happy family. The idea is laughable, and Del should know that.
Maybe he doesn’t. “I grew up in foster homes,” he continues, and I can tell he’s trying to keep his voice steady. “You don’t know what it’s like not to have a real family. We can’t do the same thing to our baby.”
“Del, we’re not doing the same thing. Our baby will have a good home. I’ll make sure of it.”
He shakes his head. “No. No! This is my baby, too, and I’m going to raise it with you.”
“Del, shhh!” I grip his arm tightly. “You need to calm down. We can talk about this more. We don’t have to make any decisions yet.”
He stares at me. “It looks like you’ve been making decisions without me for quite a while.”
“Please don’t act this way,” I tell him. “I’m so scared.”
“There’s nothing to be scared about.”
He has no idea.
Usually, Del walks me back to my dorm, but not tonight. Tonight I trek across campus by myself, the snow and ice on the ground crunching beneath my feet. Being alone, outside in the cold, feels incredibly lonely and overwhelming.
Once I’m finally standing beneath Stephanie’s window, I pack a tight snowball and toss it as gently as possible at the glass. A few seconds later, her face appears in the window. I can see her sighing. It’s late enough that all the doors to the dorm are locked, so I stand in the freezing cold, watching and waiting as Steph takes her time opening the window and unrolling the rope ladder for me to climb up to the quad. I ought to send her father a thank-you card.
I don’t get a chance to have nightmares, because I don’t sleep all night. The next morning, Del isn’t at breakfast, but my father is. He approaches my table, where I’m sitting with my roommates, puts a hand on my shoulder, and squeezes.
I take a bite of my cereal, refusing to look at him. “Hi, Daddy.”
“Emily. Sweetie, I want you to come to my office during study hall.”
I have third period study hall, right after chorus and French. It’s the only class I have with Renee, and I’m dying to tell her what happened last night with Del.
“Can’t I come later?”
“Study hall,” he says.
I look at him. My vision is blurry, my eyes burning from lack of sleep. “What for?”
“There’s something we need to talk about.”
“Okay. I’ll be there.”
“Good.” He doesn’t smile. “I’ll be waiting.”
When Del doesn’t show up at all for breakfast, I start to worry just a twinge. Usually, he makes an appearance right before it’s over and sits with Ethan and a bunch of the other guys from Winchester on the other end of the cafeteria, pretending not to know I’m alive for my father’s benefit.
And when he doesn’t stroll past my locker before first period, I start to panic. He was irrational last night. What might he have done? I remember my dad warning me about him. But Del is the smartest person I’ve ever met. He wouldn’t do anything stupid, right?
I find out soon enough. When I step into his office, my dad closes the door behind us, and when I get all the way inside I see both my mom and Dr. Miller waiting for me. But no Del. Oh. Shit.
Could he have told my parents that I’m pregnant? Could they have found out some other way? It doesn’t seem possible; it’s not possible. My mind flashes to an image of my dad standing with his ear to Del’s bedroom door. Oh God. Where is that boy?
“Daddy?” I ask, my tone tentative. “What’s going on?”
“Emily, there’s something your mother and I need to ask you. We really should be having this conversation at home, but at this point it doesn’t matter.” His tone is almost hopeless. “Does it?”
I glance at Dr. Miller, who gives me a pitiful smile. It’s not reassuring at all. “What’s going on?” I ask.
“Emily, honey. I want you to answer us honestly,” my mom says. “And I want you to know that, whatever your answer, we’ll deal with it. You aren’t going to be in any trouble.”
They know. He told them. Here it comes.
“Emily,” my dad asks, “are you using drugs?”
I’m so relieved that it takes all my effort not to laugh in their faces. “Am I what? What do you mean?” And then it occurs to me that all of my roommates smoke pot, and that I’m certainly around drugs enough. But of course, I haven’t been using them lately.
“I’m talking about cocaine,” my father says. His voice is shaking. “Are you using cocaine?”
“What?” I stare at him, dumbfounded. “I’m sorry, did you just say cocaine? Why would you possibly think that?” I stare back and forth at my parents. Then, without any fanfare, my father pulls a tiny bag of white powder from his pocket and drops it on his desk. “Because we found this in Del Sugar’s room this morning before breakfast. He’s been expelled. His parents picked him up about an hour ago.”
And like that, in three brief sentences, the whole world is pulled out from under me. Again.
“Daddy,” I say, trying my best not to cry, “this has to be a mistake. Del doesn’t do drugs.”
“Really?” My father’s tone becomes sarcastic. “And how do you know that?”
I stare at him, defiant. “You know how I know.”
“Tell me, Emily, have you ever noticed that he has a quick temper, or is easily excitable? Have you ever noticed a strange smell on him? And by that, I’m not talking about the cigarettes and dope that all you kids so routinely smoke practically right out your damn windows.” He’s getting angry now, angrier than I’ve ever seen him before. “It’s a smell more like kerosene.”
I feel slapped. I’ve smelled it on him a thousand times. But I’ve never even seen cocaine before today, and if my dad hadn’t just told me, I wouldn’t have known to connect the smell.
It all makes sense, though. All of those long disappearances. His dilated pupils. His constant sniffling. How could I not have realized what he was doing?
“When I talked to Del last night,” my father continues, “he told me that you two were in love. He said there was nothing I could do to keep you two apart. And you know, Emily, I almost thought he was right. But I noticed that he kept sniffling while we talked. And that he stunk. You know his IQ is off the charts, right?” My dad slaps his forehead in mock surprise. “Of course you do. I told you myself.”
>
I nod, tears slipping down my face, as my father continues to rant.
“It doesn’t even matter how smart he is, because boy did he ever screw up! I didn’t have to do a damn thing to keep you two apart. Del did it all by himself.” He picks up the bag again. “You know, he had this in his sock drawer? He barely even tried to hide it.” My dad shakes his head. “We can’t have kids like that at Stonybrook.”
“So he’s gone?” I ask, sobbing now, so panicked that my body feels electric.
“He’s gone,” my dad finishes. “Just like that.”
“Emily,” my mother interrupts, and from her tone I can tell she feels sorry for me, “you never actually answered your father’s question. Were you using drugs with him?”
“Oh my God, Mom, no! How could you even think that?”
“Because you’ve been sneaking around with the kid all year!” my dad blurts. “God knows what you’ve been doing with him, Emily! Have you been sleeping with him?”
“I think we all need to calm down,” Dr. Miller interrupts, before I can even think about answering my dad. “Emily, I told your father that I haven’t noticed any signs of drug use during our sessions. But I was surprised that you didn’t confide in me about your relationship with Del. We’ve been meeting all year, and you’ve never even mentioned him.”
I glare at her, sniffling through my tears. “It was a secret. That means you don’t tell anyone. It’s kind of how they work.” Besides that, you would have told my father in a second. Hell, you probably tell him everything else already. “And to answer your question,” I tell my parents, “no, I have not been using drugs. Go ahead and test me if you want. I don’t even smoke cigarettes.” With my last sentence, I glare at my mother. She doesn’t show any signs of comprehension or guilt.
I wipe my eyes. “So that’s it. I’m never going to see him again.” But that can’t be it. Del knows where to find me, and I’m confident that he will. It’s only a matter of time.
“That’s it,” my father says.
The four of us sit in silence for a moment. Finally, I ask, “Is this over? Can I go back to study hall?”
He sighs. “Are you sure there isn’t anything else you want to tell us?”
I stare at him. “Yes, I’m sure.”
He stares right back for what feels like a full minute. “All right, then. Go ahead.”
Everyone looks at me when I come into the room, my face streaked with tears. I started crying hard as soon as I left my dad’s office, and all I could think about, besides Del, was getting to Renee and telling her what happened.
But she already knows. In true Stonybrook form, everybody already knows. Apparently, Dr. Exley’s first period Chem II spent the whole class staring out the window at Winchester Hall, watching Del and his parents pack his belongings into their car. And Ethan, since he’s a prefect at Winchester, spoke briefly with my dad this morning about the situation. It makes sense now; he was especially nice to me during chorus.
After school, Renee and I go into my room together. We’re alone for the moment. When I tell her about the kerosene smell, she looks just as shocked as I was. “Emily. You didn’t know that about him?”
“What do you mean? Of course I didn’t know. I never would have—wait, you knew?”
“Well, my mother has been in rehab like six times. I know what someone looks like when they’ve been snorting powder up their nose. And the way he smelled was a dead giveaway. He was probably going into the pier at Groton on the weekends or something. You know, the kerosene smell is a sign of something really low quality, something that’s been cut too many times.”
I stare at her. “How do you know that?”
She shrugs. “I just do. I’m sorry. I assumed you were okay with it.” She lowers her voice. “Emily, did you tell him?”
I nod.
“What did he say?”
I whisper in her ear.
“Wow,” she says. “You’re lucky he didn’t tell your dad this morning.”
“I know.”
“Well, what are you going to do now?”
I shake my head. I’m trying so hard to calm down and stop crying that my breathing is labored. But I can’t stop. All I want is to go back to the first night I ever met Del Sugar and change everything. I’ve been so stupid.
“I’m going to come home with you this summer.”
“And?” She winds a strand of hair around her finger. Her hair is still damp.
I hug her. I close my eyes. “I don’t know,” I say. “Can you help me?”
Renee nods. Her hair smells like strawberries and cigarette smoke. “Of course.”
“Tell me it will be okay.”
She pulls away. She sighs. “Everything will be okay,” she says.
But we both know that things won’t be okay. Not this summer, and maybe not ever again.
What is there to do? Once Renee is gone, I put my head down on my pillow and cry. Nobody blames me for what has happened to Del; everybody feels sorry for me. Poor Emily Meckler and her broken heart.
If they had any idea what I was really crying about, none of them would even want to look at me. I can barely look at myself anymore. There were so many signs that something was not right with Del, from my father’s warnings, to the precalc answers he sent me, to the constant smell of kerosene. How could it have taken me so long to see it? And why was he so careless about his drug habit? He’s too smart to have done something so stupid. It almost seems like he wanted to get kicked out. To leave me, alone.
chapter thirteen
It’s called a closed adoption, and Bruce Graham tells me—cocktail in hand, as we stand in his penthouse apartment in Greenwich Village at the beginning of the summer—that he thinks it’s my best option.
Bruce Graham is the kind of guy who’s always very well dressed and holding a drink more often than not. He smokes constantly, outside on the balcony, and spends more time on the phone with his agent and publicist and assistant—and surprisingly, Renee’s mom, although their conversations are more like screaming matches—than you could possibly imagine. I mean, this man is on the phone, drink in hand, at least seven to eight hours a day. I don’t know how he has time to do anything else.
Bruce is middle-aged, but he’s still pretty movie-star handsome. He’s tall and muscled with just the slightest bit of a gut. He has a full head of brown hair and chestnut eyes. On the train to New York City, Renee explained to me that Bruce has legal custody of her, even though he isn’t married to her mother anymore.
“How did that happen?” I asked.
We were sitting way in the back of the train. Renee wore an oversized sun hat and glasses so that nobody would recognize her.
“My mother has never been willing to say who my real father is. Probably some producer she had an affair with to get one of her early acting jobs. Anyway, she’s a mess, you know?”
I shake my head. “I only know what I’ve read in magazines.”
“Well, what you’ve read is mostly true. She’s been in and out of rehab since I was a little girl. I can remember walking into the living room and seeing Mark Parsons, her first husband, snorting lines of coke off of her naked belly. I was, like, five years old. So my mom straightened out for a while after her split from Mark, and then she met Bruce and they got married. He legally adopted me while they were together, and once they broke up she fought for custody, but it was just for her image. I’m glad I get to live with Bruce.”
The apartment is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Coming from a place like Stonybrook, where everyone’s parents are loaded, that’s saying something. I mean, there are stairs in this place; it takes up the top three floors of the building. The first story of the apartment is a huge studio space, with an open kitchen and living room, and an inexplicable teepee in the corner. Renee tells me later that the teepee is for Bruce’s dog, an enormous German shepherd named Wags, to sleep in.
The second floor is all bedrooms and bathrooms. And the third floor is—I a
ctually gasp when I see it—an indoor swimming pool, hot tub, and exercise room.
I get my own bedroom, bathroom, closet, and sitting room. After I’ve got my stuff unpacked, when Renee and Bruce and I are sitting around talking, he tells me about closed adoptions.
It’s basically like this: I’ll go to an adoption agency, and they’ll find a prescreened couple to adopt my baby. Without ever meeting me, the couple will take care of all my medical expenses. When I have the baby, I can see it if I want, but that’s about it; after it’s born, I sign away all my parental rights. Seventeen-year-olds aren’t supposed to be able to make decisions like this without parental consent, but thanks to some fudged paperwork courtesy of Bruce, I’m supposedly eighteen.
And then it’s like the whole thing never happened. At least on paper.
“The agency that I’m going to recommend you use has a reputation for finding wonderful families,” Bruce says to me. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but I happen to know several high-profile women who have fabricated their pregnancies, and adopted instead.”
I gape at him. “What do you mean, fabricated? Like, they faked them?”
Bruce nods. “That’s right. It’s very common in this industry. Women will do anything to avoid gaining weight.” He grins. “Since we’re all keeping secrets here, would you like to know some people who have done it?” And he tells me a few names that I can hardly believe. I mean, hiding a pregnancy is one thing, but faking a pregnancy and then adopting a baby?
“Why would they do that? Why not just adopt a baby?”
He takes a sip of his drink. “Because pregnancy is very popular right now, Emily. There’s nothing better for a woman’s career than being able to have a baby, work full time, and be back in a size zero within weeks of giving birth.”
“And it’s all a fake?”
He shrugs. “Isn’t almost everything?”
You’d be surprised how easy it is to hide a pregnancy. At school, I got ahold of some uniforms that were a few sizes too large, wore the shirts loosely tucked, and kept my blazer buttoned. The only tough part was making sure my roommates never saw me without clothes. I took showers early in the morning, before everyone else was up. I wore loose pj’s. And I got lucky; some women get really big when they’re pregnant, but by the time school let out for the summer, I’d only gained about thirteen pounds. Because of the baggy clothes I was wearing, there were actually a few people who asked if I was losing weight.