Immaculate (15 page)

“I wonder then, if you
hadn't
been a virgin . . .” My eyes snapped open as he trailed off again, blushing profusely. “Sorry.” He shook his head, looking down as his teeth clenched in an awkward grimace. “Too personal maybe.”

“It's fine. Really. None of this feels personal anymore anyway. But if I wasn't a virgin, would they not have picked me? I don't know that, either. I didn't not have sex because I thought it was dirty or sinful or anything like that. I just wanted to be perfectly sure, I guess. I wanted to be completely in love.”

“Yeah,” he said. “That's how I've always felt, too.” He turned back to face me then, his eyes wide and curious. “But do you ever wish that you'd said no that night? To Iris? That maybe if you had, none of this would have happened?”

It was the first time the question had been said out loud, the first time I'd even really let myself analyze the possibility. There was no point in asking, not if I couldn't change that first response. But I had the answer, I realized. I didn't need to think about it.

“No,” I said, and I knew right away that I meant it. “Maybe if you'd asked me when I'd first found out about it. But now . . . No. I think it was the right answer. Or the only one, maybe.”

He nodded, as if it was just as simple as it sounded. “Well, it's been a pleasure meeting you, little one,” he said, grinning over at me as he moved his hand back. He stood up, reaching both arms down to help pull me to my feet. “Go home and get some sleep. I'll cover for you inside.”

I nodded, at a loss for expressing everything I was feeling in that one moment. “I don't know how to thank you.”

“Perfect, because you don't have to thank me. So don't waste any more time trying to come up with anything good, okay?” He put one arm around me and squeezed, an awkward half hug that left me feeling prickly and overheated. “I'll see you Monday?”

“Monday.”

I had an awful feeling about Monday, a horrible, creeping suspicion that everything was just a weekend away from erupting all around me. But the idea that Jesse would be there helped, made the day feel at least a tiny bit less ominous. And there was Hannah, too. There was always Hannah.

I gave one last wave before walking off to my car, my head whirling with everything that had happened in the past two hours, good and bad. My secret was officially out in the open, and the rest was just a matter of time. On the flip side, I'd made a new friend who believed me, or at least seemed to believe me, and who could verify that Iris had definitely existed.

But I'd also found out that Izzy had done the unthinkable, that not only had she abandoned me, she'd snuck around behind me and stabbed me in the back.

The sting hit me all over again. I had to see her. I needed her to admit to my face that she'd betrayed me. I needed her to feel ashamed when I walked into school on Monday or whenever that day would finally come, mobs of people pointing and judging me. Because of her. Because she didn't even have enough loyalty to keep my secret.

But most important, I needed her to know that I was fine without her.

Because if she thought that, maybe I could believe it, too.

chapter nine

I woke up
at four the next morning with my arms wrapped tight around my belly and a smile on my lips, the wisps of a happy dream I couldn't quite remember floating above me, just barely out of reach. I thought again about what I'd said to Jesse the night before, about how I wouldn't trade in my answer to Iris, not anymore. I was relieved to realize that it was still true this morning. I still believed. I believed in the miracle that was this tiny baby inside of me right now, right here in my bed with me. I curled to my side, hugging myself into a ball.

But just as I let my eyelids close again, willing myself back into my cozy, sunny dream world, I remembered what Izzy had done. I had no chance of falling back to sleep after that, tossing and turning in my sweat-soaked sheets as I went through the list of everything I wanted to say to her. I was tempted to drive to her house at that very moment, before the sun rose up above Green Hill, ring her cell phone over and over or toss pebbles at her window—do whatever it would take to make her come outside and face me. But I promised myself that I'd wait it out until at least nine, when I could knock on her door in broad daylight like a normal, civilized human being. I didn't want to raise any unnecessary suspicions with her parents, assuming Izzy hadn't already told them everything on her own.

I doubted that she had, though. On the outside, she and her mom and her stepfather were the perfect upper-middle-class family unit, about as shiny and pristine-white-picket-fence and four-car-garage as it could get in our town—the mini-mansion, Hannah and I liked to say, since it was easily the biggest house in the area, and reminding Izzy of the fact always got her hilariously worked up. One if not both parents came cheering with bells and whistles to all her many sporting events, no matter what time of day or how far the drive. They hosted over-the-top birthday parties each year without a blink at the price tag. Ponies, clowns, Moon Bounces, a mini petting zoo . . . what Izzy asked for, Izzy got—and what she didn't ask for, she still got. Her parents took her on a glamorous vacation every single summer that made my family's annual trip to the Jersey Shore feel like a few nights at an Econo Lodge in the middle of a toxic wasteland.

But everything wasn't quite that glossy when you stripped away the top layer, even if Izzy very rarely went into details. It had taken until a few years into middle school of collecting bits of evidence for Hannah and me to really piece together how the family operated: a mom who needed a water bottle filled with white wine to kick-start the day, every day, and a stepdad who seemed to forget that he had a family at all when they weren't busy performing at public appearances.

Izzy had always had us as her second family, ready and waiting to fill in for her real one on the bad days. Me and Hannah, and my parents, who had treated both of them like special bonus daughters for as long as they'd known them. But apparently none of that had meant anything to Izzy. Or at least hadn't meant enough to stop her from abandoning all of it the second I didn't live up to her unfair expectations.

By eight thirty I put down my old tattered copy of
Anne of Green Gables
, the most reread and well-loved book of my childhood. I'd hoped that it would distract me, that the cozy, familiar words would calm my nerves, but I'd been staring at the same page for the last hour. I propped it back on the nightstand where I usually kept it, and pulled on a sweatshirt over my pajamas. I had kept the window next to my bed open all night, and I could feel that a cold front had moved in while I'd slept. The air was crisp and cool, the sort of perfect early fall morning that usually made me giddy with cravings for steaming pumpkin spice tea and cozy frayed flannel shirts. But it also reminded me of Izzy, of haunted hayrides and horror movie marathons, of weeks planning and coordinating and agonizing over our Halloween costumes. That Izzy was gone, though. The Izzy who was still walking and breathing and living was someone else entirely.

I stopped by the kitchen on my way out to tell my parents I was going to see Izzy, even though I'd considered slipping out the front door and bypassing the conversation altogether. My mom raised an eyebrow in a silent question mark as she stood up to hug me good-bye. My dad, however, continued reading his newspaper as if I'd never walked into the room at all. The blatant indifference made the knot in my stomach pull even tighter—I had thought I'd gotten used to him ignoring me, but after the other night, my hopes had shot up too dangerously high. Had I imagined it all? Was that image of my dad at the stove just a dream I had desperately wanted to make real?

No. It
had
happened. Maybe to him it had been a small, meaningless gesture, but to me it had been a gigantic one. I brushed it off, though, waved to them both anyway, and pulled myself together for the bigger challenge ahead.

I'd traveled the seven-minute ride to Izzy's house hundreds of times, the curves and dips in the roads connecting us as natural to me as the freckles dotting the backs of my hands and the blue veins running along my pale wrists. That morning was no different, and I found myself pulling into her driveway before I'd consciously recognized that I'd even turned onto her street. My sweaty palms slid along the gear stick as I shifted into park and stared out over the towering three-story stone house, the thick white pillars lining the porch like a row of royal guards.

I will not cry, I will not cry,
I repeated silently, looping in sync with each step along the brick sidewalk that carved through the deep green of her perfectly manicured lawn. The strong scent of boxwood and chrysanthemum, usually so fresh and welcoming, gagged me as I stepped up on the porch and banged the brass knocker against the front door.

“Coming!” I heard Izzy's voice call out, followed by the stamping of hurried feet down the front stairs that led into their foyer.

The door swung open, and Izzy nearly barreled into me before looking up, an expression of total shock flooding across her face as she registered whom she was seeing.

“I didn't think it was you,” she said in explanation, her hard eyes staring directly into my own. “I was expecting someone else.”

“We need to talk. Can I come in?”

“Now isn't a good time. I have a hockey tournament today, and my ride will be here any minute. That's why I answered the door. That's the
only
reason I opened the door.”

“Fine,” I said, wedging my foot against the door's lower hinge. “Then we'll talk on the porch.”

She looked surprised, maybe even a little impressed, by my defiance. “Fine then. You have a few minutes. Talk.”

“I know that you're telling people, Isabelle. I know that you're telling them everything, that I'm pregnant, that I'm claiming to be a virgin, that it's the reason that Nate and I broke up. I knew that you were angry with me and that you might never trust me or want to be my friend again. I'd come to terms with that, or at least done the best I could to ignore it most of the time, because, really, what else could I do? Beg for forgiveness? But I never, not in a thousand years, would have expected you to betray me like this. It's so low, Izzy. So despicably, disgustingly low.” I could have stopped there—should have stopped there—but the more I let go of everything that had been bottled up inside me, the more invincible and the more justified I felt.

“You've always been jealous of me—admit it. My family, my grades, my boyfriend, my life—all of it. And the first time something happens that makes you feel better than me, what do you do? You throw me in the trash and make sure that everyone else in Green Hill knows it, too. You make me sick, Izzy. Sick. I can't believe it took me this many years of friendship to see you for who you really are—a sad, desperate, pathetic little girl who's so lost in herself that she can't honestly give a damn about anyone else in her life. I don't need that. I don't need you.”

I'd been looking straight at her the whole time I'd talked, but I was so high on my words that I'd barely noticed her reaction until I'd finished, my monologue neatly wrapped and tied up with a bow.

Izzy's usually golden, rosy complexion was so milky white that it was nearly translucent, drained of all expression. Her eyes were open, but they might as well have been closed for all they were holding back from me, like a filmy veil had been pulled down to protect her from the world outside. To protect her from me.

“Izzy?” I stepped back, pulling my foot away from the door. I wanted to undo it all, every last word. I wanted to start the whole conversation over—tell her what I'd heard, ask her for an explanation. My hands tingled to reach out and wrap themselves around her, but I held back.

“I never told anyone, Mina. Not a single person, not even my parents.” Her lips were moving, but her face was still stiff and bare. “I would never have done that to you. Never. I would never have disrespected our history together, and I would never have just stopped caring about you.”

A light flush was slowly starting to circle her cheeks, and her pupils seemed to focus and sharpen in the dim light of the porch. I was relieved—an angry Izzy I could understand, I could face. “Do you think this has been easy on me? Going through my senior year without my two best friends? I mean, seriously, how insensitive and clueless are you?” She laughed, a cruel, unfamiliar sound. “And you think I'm the one who's lost in herself . . . Priceless, Mina. Priceless. This conversation is over. Please be off my porch by the time my ride gets here.”

She slammed the door, and I stumbled back, almost tripping down the first step before I turned and ran to my car. The drive back to my house was even more of a blur than my trip there—I was lucky that some subconscious part of my brain managed to navigate stop signs and turns and passing cars, flashes of shiny metallic reds and blues that streaked past my windows.

As I parked in our driveway, I saw my dad puttering in the flowerbeds in front of the house. I fixed my eyes on the stone path as I walked up to the porch, refusing to give him any kind of acknowledgment. I was vulnerable enough as it was without adding his rejection on top.

“Mina,” he called out.

I nearly tripped over a loose stone as I froze midstep, completely knocked off balance by his greeting. I kept my head down, waiting for his next move.

“Mina,” he said again, more quietly, as he wiped his hands against his mud-and-paint-splattered work jeans. “I hope everything went okay with Izzy. Your mom . . . She told me after you left that you girls haven't been talking. I didn't realize.”

I jammed my hands into my pockets, biting back any of the bitter words that had raced to the tip of my tongue in response. He was trying, and I could, too. “Yeah, she's, uh . . . She's had a tough time wrapping her head around this. I can't say I completely blame her. And I guess I can't say I completely blame you, either.” I let it all out in one breath before I could convince myself to keep it in.

He was silent for a moment, probably because our dialogue had gotten so rusty and out of shape from disuse. “I see,” he said, nodding, as if each word was a weight lifted, a gasp for air. “I see. Well, I hope things are better after your talk. She'll come around. Give her time.”

Does that mean you'll come around, too
? I wanted to ask. But I didn't, because maybe this conversation was already enough of an answer.

“Thanks,” I said. “I hope so, too.”

We gave awkward nods to each other then, and I started toward the house, still in a confused daze. This morning I was invisible to him, and now he was consoling me. Step backward, step forward. But I was glad to be stepping, period, after standing still for so long.

My mom was sitting in the kitchen exactly as I'd left her, a half-full mug of what I was certain was lukewarm coffee still clutched in her hand, staring down at the newspaper.

“Mom?” I said, stepping so close, I was just inches from where she sat.

She jumped in her chair as she finally looked up, startled, and a small splash of coffee ran down the side of her mug and dripped onto the table.

“Goodness, sweetie, way to give me a scare. I didn't even hear you come in,” she said, dabbing at the spill with a napkin. She shook herself, and the fear seemed to leak away, replaced with a concern that lined the crinkles of her eyes. “Do you want to tell me about what's going on with Izzy?”

I nodded and slid into the chair across from her, resting my forehead on the smooth, cool wood of the tabletop. “People know, Mom.” The words felt sour as they slipped through my lips. I wanted to spit them out, fling them as far away from me as possible. “People know.”

“Oh, Mina.” She sighed. “I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry that it's out.” Her words sounded more resigned than surprised. “What happened?”

“Jesse . . . the kid I work with, the one who was there that night I met Iris. He overheard two girls talking about it at Frankie's. He said that the girl who did most of the talking had dark hair up in a ponytail. And she knew everything, Mom. She knew I was claiming to be a virgin. So I assumed it had to be Izzy, right? Who else?” I lifted my head up, meeting my mom's wide, somber eyes. “So I went over there this morning and freaked out on her, accused her of betraying me and a whole lot of other nasty things that I probably shouldn't have said. She told me that it wasn't her, that she hadn't told anyone. And as unlikely as that seems, I still think I might believe her . . .”