Giftchild (22 page)

On my way
, she said.

I'm out taking pictures,
I texted back.
Can you pick me up?

Sure,
she said.
Where?

I gave her directions to the park down the street, and walked down to the empty playground while I waited.

Thick drops of water collected on the bar above the swing set, falling down onto the seats. I walked across the wet wood chips and snapped some pictures of the water collecting there. I knelt at the base of the swing set, taking shots of the dripping swings in the foreground, set against the backdrop of the bar, and the stormy sky beyond.

When I was done, I pulled my jacket down over my butt and sat on the wet seat. I held my camera in my lap, protecting it from the rain with my body, and flipped through the pictures.

I'd caught one of a particularly fat drop, stretching downward, top thinning against the seat, about to fall. Above it, the swing set loomed, dark against the dim sky. Only the raindrop had any shine to it. It was the best picture I'd taken in months—maybe all year.

"I win," I said. But of course there was no competition without Rodney around to care.

I tucked my camera under my jacket, where it wouldn't get any wetter than it already had, and kicked out my legs. A shower of drops fell down on me as my swing shook the bar, and I turned my face up into them, letting them drench me.

I put my hand on my stomach.

I tried to imagine the person the baby would be, my brother or sister, the sibling my parents always meant for me to have. Maybe in a few years I'd push him or her on a swing just like this, the way Athena used to do for me when I was three and she was five.

What would that baby think of me?

I opened my eyes again; the sky remained drab.

"I'll be the best sister ever," I said aloud. But that was wrong. If I was too good a sister, the child would wish that I were its mother. I'd be a good sister, but not as good a sister as Mom was a mother, so this baby would never have a reason to wish this had happened any other way.

And Rodney. Oh, goodness, Rodney. Would he be the child's brother-in-law?

I squeezed my eyes shut. Only if he forgave me. And that was a big, improbable if. I focused on breathing, in and out. In and out. I'd find a way to explain him, whatever we turned out to be.

What would my baby look like? Some cross between me and Rodney?

No
, I thought. Not my baby. Mom's.
Mom's.
I had better not slip like that in front of her.

Athena pulled into the parking lot a few minutes later and honked the horn.

"What are you doing?" she shouted out the window at me. "You're soaked!"

I was, and as I ran through the rain to reach the car, my shoes kicked up water from a pothole puddle, spraying my jeans even more.

Athena turned the heater up full blast. "Mom will kill you if she sees you like that," she said. She eyed my camera as I pulled it out of my jacket. "Get anything good?"

"The best," I said. "Totally worth it."

Athena shrugged down inside her own fleece jacket. "Just make sure your hair's dry before you go home. Where do you want to eat?"

"Carrows," I said. Rodney and I used to go there after shooting all the time, to compare spoils. "I want cheese sticks."

"Done," Athena said. And she drove out of the parking lot, water spraying behind the car. I was glad she didn't ask why. Taking Athena to do things that Rodney and I used to do together made me officially pathetic. But it was a rainy, lonely kind of day. When the sun came out, I'd try to do better.

Athena parked in the back parking lot, and we walked along the row of windows that faced into the seating area. As I turned to look in, I caught sight of Rodney, sitting at a table across the restaurant.

I froze, staring at the sleek brown hair of the girl sitting across the table from him.

Kara.

I couldn't breathe. As I watched, Rodney waved his arms in the air, in the way that he always did when he was venting about something.

To me. He vented his problems to
me
. I grabbed Athena's arm and pulled her to a stop.

Kara nodded and took a sip of her drink. She put her hand on the table as she spoke. But she didn't touch him. She just rested her hand near his as he rolled his head onto the back of the booth seat, and stared at the ceiling.

"What?" Athena said, following my gaze. "Wait, is that . . . ?"

"Rodney," I said. My chest ached. Rodney and Kara weren't going out, were they? No. Kara kept trying to get me to hook back up with him. She wouldn't do that if she wanted him herself. Besides, she had Ryan. Maybe.

Rodney rubbed his temples, stretching his eyes wide like he was trying to figure out an unsolvable problem.

Oh, no.

He was talking to her about
me
.

I came to my senses. Rodney could look up at any time and see me
spying
on him. I squeaked as I ducked down below the glass and rushed to the end of the row of windows, dragging Athena with me by the arm. I stood again, leaning against the building. Athena stumbled next to me, standing under the eaves of the building. Drops of water smacked the sidewalk in front of us.

I breathed.

Athena looked over at me like she wasn't sure what to say. "Do you want to go somewhere else?"

"Um," I said. We'd have to walk back by the windows, and if Rodney saw me, he'd know I was here, and that I ran away from him. I was getting more pathetic by the second.

I sank onto my butt on the strip of dry concrete beneath the eaves. My jeans were still wet from the swing, and they clung to my thighs. My vision went bleary.

I squeezed my eyes closed. I was
not
going to pass out here. There was
no way
I would come even
close
to letting Rodney save me from that again.

Athena sat down next to me, tucking her feet under her so the rain wouldn't drip on her shoes. "So, are they . . ."

"No," I said. They were just friends. They had to be, right? I mean, Kara was still all googly over Ryan, and she'd been trying to convince me to get back together with Rodney.

But that was last
month
. How much time had they been spending together? Had Rodney been taking her
shooting
?

My stomach turned. Even if they weren't together, Rodney wouldn't talk to me, but he was apparently just fine talking to Kara. He was cheating on me as his friend.
Friend
cheating. It was totally a thing.

I clenched my jaw. "Go ahead," I said. "Say it."

Athena squeezed my hand. "Say what?"

I sighed. "You told me sex would change everything. You warned me."

Athena's arm wrapped around my shoulders, and I leaned into her, the dampness of my jacket soaking into her fleece. I looked at the car. We were going to have to crawl past the windows on our knees if we didn't want Rodney to see us. I didn't even have to ask. I already knew that Athena would do it for me.

"I'm sorry," she said.

I looked up at her. "For warning me?"

She shook her head, sadly. "I'm sorry that you can't go back to being just friends."

I lowered my head onto her shoulder. "Yeah, well," I said. "I'm ninety-nine percent sure we never were."

For the next three weeks, I stalked the hallways and the quad, watching for Rodney and Kara. I saw Kara in class, of course, but she'd stopped talking about Rodney and Ryan, which was exactly what she would do if she didn't want to tell me she was dating my ex-boyfriend. I saw her with Rodney in the halls a couple times a week, always with their hands hanging at their sides, or shoved into their pockets. Not touching. Not yet. But how long had Rodney been interested in me, without holding my hand at school?

Years. That's how long.

Whenever he saw me watching them, Rodney gave me a nod, and I searched his face for traces of guilt, for some sign that he was totally over me. But his nods didn't seem to change, for the better or the worse.

If there was something going on, he wasn't going to give it up that easily.

I managed not to outright stalk them until the end of the third week, when I not-so-casually walked by the chess room at lunch, just to see if they were there.

They were. In the quick glance I got as I walked past, I saw Rodney and Ryan sitting across a chess board from each other, Kara perched cross-legged on the desk behind them.

Was she there for Rodney, or for Ryan? I shook my head. It shouldn't matter. Rodney was free to do whatever he wanted. I should be hoping that Kara would treat him better than I had. If I really cared about Rodney, I should be wishing him the best.

That day after school, I was pulling some books out of my locker when Rodney slapped a piece of paper against the metal door of the locker next to mine.

"Behold," he said.

I stared at the paper. I'm not sure if I was more surprised that he was talking to me, or by the big seventy-five written at the top. "You got a C?"

Rodney nodded calmly. I didn't know how he could do that—just stand there like talking to me was the most natural thing in the world. My heart pounded just thinking about all the ways I might screw this conversation up.

Chief among them was demanding to know if he was dating somebody else.

I stayed focused on the test. "I got an eighty one," I said. "I thought that was bad."

Rodney raised one eyebrow. "See? You finally beat me."

"I guess," I said. That had always been the goal—a friendly competition that he always won. If I'd scored higher than him before, I would have rubbed it in for hours. Days. Weeks even.

But now?

It didn't seem right to be happy.

"What happened?" I asked.

He rolled his eyes. "I guess all that studying you made me do had an effect after all."

I smiled. "You didn't really study with me. You mostly played video games."

Rodney crushed the test in his fist. "Yeah, well. Auditory learning for the win."

I swung my locker closed. It had never occurred to me that I might have been helping Rodney just by announcing stuff at him while he played. I always thought he picked up all the information in class. He never seemed to pay much attention to the material when we studied together.

"Thanks for telling me," I said. "I know you didn't have to."

Rodney shrugged. "Thought you should know."

I held my breath. If he and Kara were together, would he think
that
was something I should know? I busied myself with my backpack, shoving some papers in it at random. I expected Rodney to walk away, then, but he kept standing there, looking down at his wadded paper, like there was something else he wanted to say.

My heart skipped faster. I zipped up my backpack, stalling, giving him time. I wanted to know. Didn't I?

Finally, Rodney looked at me, staring straight into my eyes. "So this thing where we're not talking? I hate it."

My chest fluttered. He hated it? "That makes two of us."

Rodney looked down at my backpack. His voice was almost reluctant. "I miss you."

The world fell silent, as if nothing existed in it but him and me. I held perfectly still, when what I truly wanted to do was tackle him in a giant hug and make him promise never to avoid me again.

I held my breath. If I spoke, I'd say the wrong thing. This moment would devolve into a fight, which was the last thing I wanted. I could tell from the wary look he gave me that this thought, too, was mutual.

Rodney gripped his backpack strap. "So, what are you doing now?" he asked. "I mean, for the next couple of hours?"

Anything you want
, I thought. But I bit my tongue. Just because I
was
desperate didn't mean I had to announce it to him. I shrugged. "Going home, I guess. What about you?"

Rodney shuffled his feet. "I was thinking of studying in the quad. Want to join me?"

He didn't have to make it sound
painful
. But I guess it was painful to be around me, after what I did to him. If he was willing to try, even after everything, I couldn't blame him if it still hurt.

I kept my voice even. The last thing I wanted to do was scare him off. "Yeah," I said. "Sure. Of course." I pulled out my phone. "Let me text my mom, so she doesn't wait for me."

Rodney stiffened. "Is she going to be mad?"

I cradled my phone. This felt like a trick question, and I wanted to answer it perfectly. "I'll tell her I'm studying," I said. "We're allowed to run into each other at school. And we're still at school, right?"

Rodney sighed. "Sure."

That didn't seem like it had been the right answer, but it hadn't sent him running, either. I sent the text as quickly as I could. I didn't love lying to my mother, but this tender truce with Rodney was as delicate as a bubble. If I breathed too hard, it would pop.

We walked to the quad in silence, and not the comfortable kind. And I thought for a terrible moment that this was how things might be with Rodney from now on. Awkward. Uncomfortable. Like strangers—no, worse. Like people who used to be friends.

But Rodney just sat down at one of the lunch tables and pulled out his physiology book.

"Here," he said, flipping his book over. "Why don't you quiz me?"

I couldn't tell if that was a gesture to help me feel better, or a brush off. I turned my book to the nearest practice chart in the exercise section at the back of the chapter. The side-view of the penis stared up at me.

New unit. Reproductive anatomy.

Fabulous
timing.

"Maybe we should just study on our own," I said.

Rodney glanced down at the chapter and his face went pale. He nodded quickly, and pulled his book back in front of him.

I tried to imagine how this study session would have gone before. Could we have labeled the foreskin without feeling awkward? Would we have laughed our way through? I wasn't sure, now. That old relationship felt fuzzy—like a thing I might have dreamed. Especially since I was sure now we'd never really been just friends.