The Rules of Inheritance (23 page)

 

I shake my head. No.

 

Although lying to her has become a familiar thing, a sick feeling comes over me.

 

But these things I've discovered about my body? They are mine. Not hers.

 

All I know, she hisses, is that I hope you are still a virgin.

 

I stand and, without looking at her, walk away.

 

We are tense for days after that.

 

If only we had known how near the end was. It arrives swiftly, taking all of us by surprise.

ALL I KNOW is that there is a coming to, a waking up, as though I've been asleep or dazed. I have been, I suppose.

 

When I come to I am standing in the bathroom at school.

 

I have just walked in on Zoe. She is hunched in a stall, the sleeve of her sweater pulled up to reveal a smooth, pale forearm. She sees me and instantly hides whatever she is gripping in her other hand. I can't be sure, but I think it's a razor. I grab her hand and pull her toward me, my heart pounding, breaking, but she shoves me off, her eyes those angry slits, and she bangs her way out of the stall and past me.

 

She is closed. No matter what I say, no matter how hard I try, she has closed herself off to me.

 

At night we sit silently on the phone.

 

It isn't hard to see that during these last months with Henry, while I was losing myself in my body and in his, she was drowning. I picture her underneath the water, the slick green weeds reaching up to her ankles, her ebony hair spreading out around her face.

 

I have failed her.

 

I instantly turn my anger and my frustration onto Henry.

 

Suddenly I hate the way he stares at me in class, hate the way he presses himself into me so pliantly. I ignore him completely at school, trying to prove to Zoe how much I love her, how far I am willing to go for her.

 

I turn cruel in my desperation.

 

Henry is suffering now too. His eyes grow wider, more pleading by the day. I let his phone calls to my basement room go unanswered. We said that we loved each other, and now I want to take it back.

 

I want to take everything back.

SCHOOL IS ALMOST over for the year. Summer has come and with it, Georgia's intense humidity. My skirt clings to the backs of my legs now as I follow Zoe down the path to English class.

 

Henry and I see each other a few more times. We walk out in the middle of an English class one day and drive to the park. Into the woods a ways we fuck on the ground, dead leaves and twigs digging into my back, leaving little red indents along my spine, scratches against my shoulder blades, and bruises on the insides of my thighs.

 

It is one of the last times I will see him. School lets out for the summer a few weeks later.

 

A month into the summer break I go to Michigan with Zoe and her family. We had arranged this trip long before she started the cutting, long before Henry and everything that followed.

 

I am determined to follow through with it even though Zoe is hardly speaking to me.

 

We'd had big plans for Michigan. We'd plotted to sneak out in the middle of the night, to go into the town, to meet boys, to drink. We'd planned to lie by the lakeside day after day, our feet in the warm brown water, our necks long and girlish, turned to the sun. But Zoe still hasn't come around completely; she still hasn't opened back up, and I don't know what to expect.

 

I officially break up with Henry a few weeks before the lake trip. We go to the park, near the same place where we have so recently fucked. It is too much, I tell him. I'm drowning, I say.

 

I can see the tears in his eyes. His throat moves up and down. I feel empty inside.

 

At home my mother is sympathetic when I tell her the news, but I can sense the relief in her voice. She finds me in my room later that night. I can smell wine on her breath, but her tone is soft and she is loose.

 

Can we look at the stars?

 

I have covered my bedroom ceiling with glow-in-the-dark stars, and I push my homework to the side and turn off the light. My mother lies down beside me.

 

We have been doing this for as long as I can remember.

 

You are so much wiser than I was at your age, she says to me.

 

I don't look at her.

 

I look at you and I can hardly see the little baby I held in my arms all those years ago. You've become a young woman before my eyes.

 

I can hear the tears in her voice.

 

There is so much more to come, kiddo. Trust me.

 

She takes my hand, and I let her. We lie there looking up at the stars, and I cannot decide if I want to be like her when I grow up.

HENRY CALLS EVERY DAY after I break up with him. I scoff at the whispered messages he leaves, push my finger hard against the delete button. He leaves letters in my mailbox, hand delivered, filled with drawings, dried flowers. I make fun of him to Zoe. A small smile starts to crack the corners of her mouth.

 

The night before we go to Michigan, Zoe and I stay up late in her room. I want things to be the same as before, I tell her. She turns her eyes away. The wind blows outside and branches scratch at the window.

 

Our talk turns to Henry. He is so weak, we say. Why can't he see that I don't love him anymore?

 

We devise a plan.

 

It has been a couple of weeks since I've spoken to Henry. With Zoe listening on one phone, I call him on another. His voice is soft, careful about revealing its surprise at hearing from me.

 

I tell him I still love him. I tell him that I am going to Michigan in the morning but that when I return we will press into each other as though there had never been any space there at all.

 

I can almost hear the tears of relief slipping down his cheeks.

 

Zoe grins at me from across the room, and I gently replace the handset.

 

It is a three-day drive to Michigan. Zoe and I sit in the back of the van. We feed her little half brother Dramamine in a Coke bottle so he'll stop bothering us, and we roll our eyes at her parents, who are listening to a book on tape. We stare out the back window, at the road disappearing away from us, and I can feel her arm, soft and warm against mine. We stretch our feet out, and she puts her head on my shoulder.

 

When we finally arrive at the lake house, Zoe leads me upstairs to her grandparents' bedroom. She hands me the phone. The numbers come easily; I have dialed them so many times.

 

It was a joke, I say when he answers. Henry doesn't understand.

 

I can feel my throat swelling as I repeat the sentence.

 

I don't want to be with you anymore, I say.

 

Leave me alone, I say.

 

I hand the phone back to Zoe, and she clicks off the connection. We walk downstairs and out to the lake. I lift my face to the sun and can feel Zoe beside me doing the same.

SHORTLY AFTER I return home from the Michigan trip I realize that my period is late. I panic and count the days, backward and forward, coming up with the same terrible number over and over.

 

I sit, knees pulled to my chest, on the edge of my bed, rocking back and forth. I hate myself. I hate how cruel I've been, how desperate and confused and self-centered I've acted. I want to take it all back.

 

But I don't know how.

 

Finally I go upstairs and find my mother on the couch. I'm crying so hard I can hardly get the words out.

 

I think I'm pregnant.

 

Instead of meeting me with the fury I expect, her whole body softens. She folds me against her and lets me sob for long minutes, whispering over and over into my ear that it will be okay.

 

When I am done, she takes me into the kitchen and I stand there next to her desk as she calls the doctor to make an appointment.

 

Everything will be okay. We'll figure this out, she says, and sends me downstairs for a nap.

 

When I wake up, the world is warm and hazy. Summer is almost over. School will be starting again soon. I lie on my bed, staring up at the ceiling thinking about Zoe and Henry. When I finally get up and go to the bathroom, I realize that I have gotten my period.

 

Upstairs, when I tell her, it is my mother's turn to cry, and when she is done I lean back into her on the couch and we watch afternoon television like that, neither of us speaking for a long time.