Immaculate (23 page)

“Fine.” I sighed. “You guys win.” Though now that I'd decided—or had been decided for, more accurately—I was relieved to have a whole day by myself to catch up on homework. “But just for today. And I expect a full report this evening, Han, about anything that you happen to hear about me. I want to know what people are saying. I want to know what I'm up against. No secrets, okay?”

“No secrets,” Hannah said, slipping the backpack around my shoulders.

“No secrets,” Jesse echoed. “Now let me walk you to the nurse.”

“Absolutely not. You two are already going to be late.”

“I have Mrs. Royer for Physics II first period, and we're totally compadres. We share a very deep, obsessive love of old-school science-fiction novels. Anyway, she won't be upset. She'll understand when I explain that you needed an escort.”

I nodded—because he was right, I really didn't want to be alone—and gave Hannah a quick hug before she ran off to first period. Jesse and I started for the nurse's office, walking the first few minutes in silence.

“So do you think Mrs. Royer knows all the rumors?” I asked. “About me, that is. Do you think all the teachers know about the baby, Virgin Mina, everything?”

“No secrets, right?” he asked, glancing over at me. “Yes, Mina. I think teachers know about all of it. I think they know a lot more about all of us than we'd like to think, and this doesn't seem like a story that could slip past their radar. But it's like that old saying—‘those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.' My mom's favorite catchphrase for my entire childhood and, even if I wouldn't admit it to her, pretty mind-blowingly true, don't you think?”

But Izzy and Nate had definitely mattered,
I wanted to say. Hadn't they? I nodded anyway. We were already outside the nurse's office.

“Thanks for walking me, Jesse. And thanks for . . . for putting up with all this. I still say it's not a fair trade-off, not anywhere close, but I hope you at least know how grateful I am to have a friend like you. I hope I can pay it all back someday.”

“Mina, stop, you don't—”

“Things won't always be this hard. Life will settle into place, and then it will all be different for us. You won't always have to be guarding me like this, I promise.” But as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized how hollow they were. When would things stop being hard? When would life be any shade of normal? When would people stop talking, stop staring, stop pointing their bored, ignorant little fingers?

“You're not forcing me into anything against my will, Mina. I like you—I really like you—complicated or uncomplicated. And you're right, things will settle down someday. And maybe when they do . . . I don't know, maybe when they do things really can be different for us.”

I wanted to ask exactly what he meant by
like
, wanted to pore over every last bit of it with a magnifying glass, determine the exact tone and emphasis and meaning behind each individual word, but I couldn't. I couldn't even meet his eyes, not without giving away every thought spinning through my mind.

So instead I muttered a quiet
thanks
as I gave him a weak, one-armed hug and ducked into the nurse's office, my head so dizzy with a weird blend of confusion and curiosity and hope that, suddenly, I felt quite in need of a sick day after all.

chapter thirteen

After Hannah showed
me the Virgin Mina website, I couldn't stop myself from compulsively checking for updates every opportunity I had. Refresh, refresh, refresh—attached to my computer for hours on end with the fear that if I got up, walked away, I'd miss the latest, most horrendous accusations yet. I had to know what they were saying about me, and I had to know as soon as it was said. It became an addiction, and I knew it couldn't possibly be healthy, not for me, certainly not for the baby, but I couldn't stop. I couldn't stop waiting for whatever was going to happen next, because it was becoming clearer every day—every hour, really—that this was growing to be much bigger than any high school kid's amateur web page. This was becoming a national story.
I
was becoming a national story.

I watched the number of comments grow—nine hundred to twelve hundred, two thousand, five thousand—as more and more sites spread the link across the Internet. My parents had both started to press the idea of involving the police, now that it was clear that we had, in fact, not reached “as bad as it gets” after all. Or anywhere close, for that matter. Jesse had been keeping constant tabs on the Virgin Mina page, too, and he cited the numbers in my ear so often that it was almost pointless for me to check on my own. I knew, of course, that something had to be done—but what could I do,
really
? Maybe we could have the website taken down—the police could do that much—but it wouldn't stop people from talking. It wouldn't erase the whole story from their minds. Where did the line of free speech cross over? What was slander and what was just plain old permissible cruelty? I couldn't very well slap handcuffs on practically the entire school population.

Regardless, it was Thanksgiving Eve, and I would have the next four days of refuge at home, four days to breathe the delicious fresh air outside of the suffocating school hallways. Four days to pretend that things were okay, that life was normal.

And it was also my birthday today, the big one-eight. Eighteen years old. I was officially an adult—a full-blown, baby-carrying adult—though other than my mom's traditional pancakes that morning, served on a faux silver platter with globs of homemade vanilla icing and rainbow sprinkles, the day hadn't really felt like much of a birthday, let alone a landmark, monumental birthday. No one at school other than Hannah or Jesse showed any sign of caring or remembering. Not that I'd expected anything from Izzy, but there had been nothing, not even a birthday wave, from any of my former friends—people who had seemingly erased all memories of the last decade's worth of celebrations together.

Hannah and Jesse came over after school, and the three of us hung around the living room for a few hours, chugging hot apple cider and eating our way through a box of ginger snaps while we helped Gracie make a chain of construction paper handprint turkeys to string along the fireplace. Jesse had brought a flashy new camera along that he was testing out for his uncle, and insisted on filming clips throughout the birthday night—a recording made much richer with Gracie performing a rousing song and dance routine to “Over the River and Through the Wood,” the only Thanksgiving song she could think of. Even if, she said with a big frown, we wouldn't be riding through woods, over rivers, or to a grandmother's house.

My dad picked up a few pizzas from Frankie's, my ritual birthday dinner for as long as I could remember, and he sat next to me at the dining room table while we ate. That was the only gift I really needed this year. He had been warming up in tiny but still noticeable increments each day since his talk with Pastor Lewis, but my birthday was the most normal day in a while by far. He sang “Happy Birthday” as loudly as ever, cut me the first piece of banana chocolate chip cake, and topped it all off with a quick kiss on my forehead. I could still feel exactly where his lips had touched, the sweet mark they'd left like a drop of perfume on my skin.

I had explicitly told my mom not to get me any presents, given all the inconceivable baby expenses to come. But after disappearing with my dad to clear away the pizza boxes and the remains of my cake, she reemerged with a beautiful white wooden cradle, and I burst out in tears.

“What's wrong, sweetie?” my mom asked. “Do you not like it? I know we said no presents, but your father and I would have wanted to buy this for your shower anyway, so why wait?”

“No, I love it,” I said, jumping up to wrap her in my arms. “Thank you. It's wonderful. Perfect. All of you here, my birthday, Thanksgiving. I'm just happy. I'm really happy.” I realized that my dad was still in the kitchen, though, and I wanted to thank him, too. “Where's Da—?”

“This is from me!” Gracie squealed, interrupting me. She pulled out a small yellow present from behind the sofa and shoved it into my hands. “Open it! Open it!”

I opened the box slowly and pulled out a thin, delicate silver bracelet from the puffs of tissue paper. I held it up to look at it more closely—a charm bracelet with tiny silver letters strung along the chain, spelling out
Dietrich.
At either end was a charm, one of a heart, the other of a little house.

“I wanted you to have something that could always remind you of us, even when we're not right next to you,” Gracie said, curling herself up on my lap like a cat. “So now you can never really feel alone.”

“I'll wear it every day, sweetie. And you are absolutely right. It will always remind me just how lucky I am to have you.” A tear rolled down my cheek, and I buried my head in Gracie's hair to hide my face.

“Well, my present feels a bit anticlimactic after both of those gifts,” Hannah said, tapping my shoulder with a sparkly gold gift bag.

I reached inside and pulled out a bright pink T-shirt, the words
SEXY MAMA
printed across the front in white cursive letters. I tugged it on over my sweater, and by the end of my runway stroll around the living room, we were all laughing so hard that my crying had become contagious.

“I figured it's time to be living out loud and proud, you know?” Hannah said, grinning through her tears.

“I would love to see how everyone at school would react to me prancing down the hallways in this. Maybe one of these days, hm?”

Loud, stomping footsteps from the kitchen made us all turn toward the hallway. My father appeared from the shadows at the edge of the room, his face drained of color.

“What is it?” my mom asked first. “What's wrong?”

“I . . .” he started, taking a few clumsy steps forward as he cleared his throat. “I had the news on in the kitchen while I was doing the dishes, and . . . and there's something that you need to see. Your story, Mina. Your story is on the news tonight.”

My breath hitched, and I forced myself to swallow. I couldn't possibly be surprised, could I? How could the local news, the national news even, not pick up on a story like this? This was the headline that golden news stories were made of, a scandalous human interest piece that seasoned reporters and rookies alike would battle over—who would get the first public interview, the most intimate details, the most stunning accusations.

Jesse jumped up to turn the TV on and quickly started scrolling through the channels, stopping when he landed on KBC and the feature we were waiting for:
Pregnant Teen in Pennsylvania Claims to Be Virgin
. My picture—the photo from the top of the Virgin Mina website, that atrocious Halloween angel costume—was radiating from the TV screen, and the reporter's voice was reading through some of the more repeatable posts.
Almost six months in, and she still hasn't cracked. Will she ever give it up?

“They can't . . . They can't do this without my approval, can they?” I felt as if my heart had stopped beating, my blood had stopped flowing, but somehow I was still alive, still sitting on the sofa and watching what was on the TV in front of me. Gracie stiffened on my lap, clamping her arms protectively around my shoulders. I couldn't look down, though, couldn't bring myself to see the terror I was certain would be flashing across her eyes.

“You're eighteen now, Mina,” my mother said, her words quiet but steady. She said it so immediately, so absolutely, that I knew she must have been thinking about this for a while, worrying about what my birthday could bring.

Eighteen didn't just mean becoming an adult—it meant no longer being untouchable. No longer being protected or coddled by the law. I was fair game.

My picture vanished from the screen, replaced by an overly polished-looking middle-aged reporter standing in front of Green Hill High. “According to the heavily trafficked website, eighteen-year-old Mina Dietrich, lifelong resident of rural Green Hill, Pennsylvania, has remained strong to her claims of virginity since the news of her pregnancy first broke to the public in October. We've heard from several sources today in the small, tightly knit community of Green Hill, and by all accounts, Dietrich has always been a role model and source of pride for the town—at the top of her class, well liked by her peers, and actively involved in various volunteer organizations in the school and throughout the community. However, most Green Hill residents we've spoken with seem hesitant to believe any part of the story, and are instead outraged by the sacrilegious nature of the claims. In just a few minutes we'll be speaking with a few of them directly—Tana Fritz, mother of one of Dietrich's peers, and Kyle Baker, a longtime acquaintance and classmate of Dietrich's. For now Dietrich continues to attend classes at the high school, seemingly determined to go about ‘life as usual,' as one classmate reports. But many, such as Fritz, wonder if that will change, especially now that the story is quickly gaining ground throughout the country. Fritz even suggests a petition to the school requesting Dietrich's removal, citing the potential for safety issues as the story continues to strike up controversy. More from Green Hill after the commercial.” The reporter gave a tiny wink and a flash of her glowing white teeth, and then the screen clicked off into blackness.

“That's enough of this,” my dad growled. “That's
enough
. We've let these people talk about you right in front of our faces for too damn long, and I've had enough of it.”

“Tana Fritz?” I asked, shocked by the utter randomness of it. Kyle—yes, no bombshell there. But Tana? “Why does she get to have a say about me? Why should anyone listen to her opinions?”

I knew of Tana, but had never once spoken to her personally. She was the mother of Sara Fritz, the odd, loner type who'd bumped into me in the hallway after Jesse and Nate's fight. But unlike her timid, reclusive daughter, Tana had a reputation for throwing herself into the limelight—she was the type of parent who volunteered for every school event or activity across the board, and her name was a regular on the list of editorial letters printed in the local paper. She had an opinion about everyone and everything, so I guess I shouldn't have been entirely surprised that she'd have a hand in this.

Was that why Sara had looked at me that way? She'd felt guilty, of course, guilty that her own mother had tried to sabotage me with a stupid petition. She'd already known the plan. Did our class rank have anything to do with this? Knocking out the competition? Or maybe that was just a side bonus for a much larger religious grievance.

“They called today,” my mom said, her voice so low that we all leaned in to hear better. “KBC left a message today asking to talk to Mina, to us, but I didn't call back and I didn't say anything. I didn't want to ruin your birthday. I had no idea it would be happening this fast, especially without them getting through to you first, Mina. I'm so sorry I didn't warn you earlier.”

I was silent for a few seconds, my thoughts too mixed and messy to pin down. “It's okay, Mom. I don't know what I would have done differently if you had told me earlier. I couldn't have just jumped in front of the camera today. I'm not ready for that. I'm not sure if I'll ever be ready for that. What would I say?”

“Well, you need to say something, Mina, because they're sure as hell not going anywhere until you do,” my dad said, pacing behind the sofa in small, anxious circles.

I stood up, too angry and jittery to sit. “I can't lie and make up a daddy just to make them go away, Dad. I can't do it. I've gone this long, and I'm not changing my story now. That's not an option.”

“I think it's a little late for that anyway, Mina,” my dad responded, pausing to look me straight on. There was a rage in his eyes, an anger that didn't sit right on his usually soft and open face. “I say we wait to see what other requests come in from KBC or from other news outlets, because there
will
be other requests—that's one thing we can be sure about. And then you go on, you put yourself out there, and be the confused, honest girl who can't exactly explain what's happening.”