Butterflies in May Read online

  Twenty minutes later, a nurse leads me back to the counselor’s office. Debby is already at her desk, holding my file in her hands. She’s not smiling—not a good sign. As soon as I see her, I know what she’s going to say.

  “Ali,” she says, “the results are positive.”

  Positive. . . The results are positive. I’ve known all along, but it’s still a shock to hear her say those words. I’m shaking inside and start to cry. Debby hands me a box of tissues and reaches out to touch my arm. I have no idea why I’m acting like this. I’ve known for days this was possible, but I’d hoped the home pregnancy test had been wrong, that I’d goofed it up or something.

  “What about the abortion pill?” I ask. “Is that an option?”

  “It may be, depending on how far along you are. When was the first day of your last period?” Debby asks softly.

  “August seventeenth. . . I spotted a little in September. . . but it wasn’t like a regular period.”

  “That happens sometimes. And you’re right—it’s not a regular period.” Debby takes out a paper wheel and uses it to show me I’m about nine weeks pregnant. She looks at me for a moment. “I’m afraid it’s too late for the abortion pill, but you can have a surgical abortion, if that’s what you decide to do.”

  “Yes,” I say in a shaky voice that’s a little too loud. “I want to make an appointment now.”

  “Ali, you mentioned earlier that you haven’t told your boyfriend yet. Before making a final decision, you have time to think about what you want to do. Take a few days. Talk with your boyfriend, your parents. Discuss your options with them, too.”

  I nod my head, as if I’ll do exactly that, but I’ve already considered my options. The thing is, I don’t like any of them. “I can’t talk with my parents. They’d never understand. Besides, I won’t be changing my mind.”

  “Ali,” she says in a careful tone, “don’t choose abortion just to keep your parents and your boyfriend from knowing. This is a major decision, one you’ll have to live with the rest of your life. Some parents handle it better than you think.” For a moment, Debby looks seriously at me. “But if you’re certain that’s not an option, perhaps you could seek out another adult who can help you through this. Is there a grandparent, a school counselor, or a teacher who could help you?”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” I say, thinking right away of Aunt Laura. But no, she and Mom talk on the phone nearly every day. Aunt Laura would never agree to keep this a secret from her. Besides, I have Monica and Matt. They’re enough. I don’t tell the counselor any of this.

  Debby seems satisfied. “Good,” she says. “Take a few days to think about what feels right to you. The earlier you get serious advice and start looking into your options, the more control you’ll have. Then, if you still want to terminate the pregnancy, you can schedule an abortion,” says Debby, making a few notes on my chart. “But you really have the time to think this through more thoroughly. You’re only nine weeks pregnant, and it’s a fairly simple procedure for the first fourteen weeks. After fourteen weeks, the procedure is more complicated.”

  Debby gives me a packet of information, then talks about the possibility of financial aid and child support if I choose to keep the baby. But I barely hear her. My heart is racing, and I wonder if I’m having a heart attack. Matt’s grandfather just had one. Is this possible for someone my age?

  Debby continues to go over my options, but the words all float together. “First trimester surgical abortion. . . adoption services. . . prenatal care for the baby.” I can’t focus on her words. I’m a million miles away, as distant as the stars. Finally, Debby asks, “Are you okay?”

  I smile and nod to prove that everything is fine, but I’m not okay at all. Still, I don’t totally fall apart the way I half expected to on the way over here this morning. Before I leave, Debby hands me a business card with her name and phone number, and says, “If you want to talk, call anytime. This is my direct line. I’m here every day. Okay?”

  “Sure,” I say, taking the card, even though I won’t be calling. I’ve already made up my mind.

  Monica is flipping through a magazine in the reception area when I walk in. She looks at me. All I can do is nod.

  Monica gives me a hug. “We’ll get through this together,” she says. Monica stands next to me while I schedule an appointment. Ancient Wise Woman checks my chart and nods when I tell her I need an appointment and why. We set the date for Saturday, two weeks from tomorrow. When she gives me a card with the date of my appointment, Ancient Wise Woman looks at me as if she really understands what I’m going through.

  As we head out the door, I notice a mother with her newborn in an infant carrier. The baby is covered with a pink cotton blanket and is fast asleep.

  Chapter 4

  All weekend I play out a fantasy in my head. It goes something like this: I contract a rare but fatal disease and die. It’s something like that movie A Walk to Remember, only Matt and I play the starring roles. It’s tragic and beautiful and, because I die before anyone finds out I’m pregnant, I don’t have to deal with my current situation.

  But then I wake up Monday morning, still breathing. I check myself in the bathroom mirror—the picture of health. I hate mornings the most. The reality of what I’m going to do hits me the minute I wake up. I wish I could stop thinking about it.

  It’s a relief to be back in school. Everything feels normal again. Almost. English—blah, blah, blah. The word of the day is “ambivalence,” courtesy of Sarah Vogel. Carrot Top nods approvingly. “Yes, excellent word,” she says, writing it on the board, her chalk squeaking all the way. “AM-BIV-A-LENCE. . . It means the existence of mutually conflicting attitudes or feelings, such as love and hate.”

  No brownie points for Sarah—Carrot Top already knows this word. But I can’t stop thinking of it. Next is second period study hall—and Matt. Ambivalence. Do I tell him now? Yes. No. I decide to wait. This isn’t the sort of thing you whisper in class or write on a note and pass across the aisle.

  During lunch, I find Matt with Niles in the school courtyard. Niles is smoking a cigarette, which is “strictly prohibited” on school grounds, but it’s the one rule teachers don’t bother to enforce unless you’re obvious about it.

  “Hey, it’s Lois Lane,” says Niles as soon as he sees me. He started calling me that after the first issue of The Voice came out. Then he laughs at his own joke, though it’s not that funny or even original, and flicks his cigarette. Matt, sketching Niles, leans against a tree with his sketchpad balanced on his knee. He has to turn in three portraits a week, so he’s always looking for someone new to sketch. Matt has real talent. Even Mom, who works with freelance artists all the time, once admitted that his drawings are exceptional. That’s quite a compliment, considering how Mom feels about him.

  I sit down on the grass and attack my lunch—a hamburger and fries. It’s been three months since I’ve eaten red meat.

  “I can’t believe you’re eating that,” Matt says.

  “I know.”

  “Does this mean you’re officially a carnivore again?”

  “I don’t know. . .” As soon as I walked into the cafeteria and smelled the burgers frying, I knew I had to have one. I’ve already eaten about half of my sandwich when it occurs to me that I was craving red meat. Mom once told me she had craved oranges when she was pregnant with me. I try not to think about it, but it’s too late. I can’t eat another bite. I set the hamburger back in the paper carton and push it away.

  Matt glances at me. “Guilt?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Mind if I finish it?”

  “Help yourself.”

  Matt tosses his sketchbook on a patch of grass. “Thanks, Sherman,” he says to Niles, who’s writing himself a pass on the pad I saw him swipe off Carrot Top’s desk this morning. He can copy any signature perfectly on the first try. At Lakeview, a pink pass is your get-out-of-jail-free card.

  “Dude, you wanna skip class?” Niles asks, poise
d to write Matt a pass. “Pedraza’s coming, too.” Nick Pedraza hangs out with the burnouts, who spend more time getting stoned in the parking lot than they do in class. I’ve never had any classes with him, but I see him with Niles a lot.

  Matt shakes his head. “Not today. . . I have a trig test.”

  Before he leaves, Niles picks up the sketchbook, smiling. “Amazing,” he says, holding it up. “It looks just like me.”

  In the picture, Niles has his head resting in the palm of his hand. You can barely see the star tattooed on the inside of his wrist, but there it is. His hair looks a little wilder than usual, and Matt captured the look in his eyes—that slightly wild, reckless look—that Monica found so intriguing.

  After Niles leaves, I watch Matt inhale the rest of my lunch while I sit across from him, picking grass blades, and thinking about whether to tell him. It’s been on my mind since I took the test at the clinic. In the last six months, Matt has become my closest friend, next to Monica. I’m sure he’d want to know. I’m sure he’d think an abortion is the only way out of this mess. The thing is, I don’t want to tell him. If I tell him, it makes this nightmare all too real. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it. Maybe I should just wait until after the abortion to tell him.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks. “You’re so quiet.”

  “I was just thinking about next year. . . when we start college”—a flat-out lie. “What if I don’t get into Columbia or NYU?”

  “You will. . . And if you don’t, then you’ll get into Northwestern and we can still see each other.”

  “Oh, yeah? How’s that going to happen?”

  “I hear the train is pretty reliable from Chicago to Evanston.”

  “What?”

  “I talked with Meyers today, and I asked him about SAIC. Pratt’s great and has an outstanding reputation, but SAIC has an excellent art program, too, and it’s a lot closer to Northwestern. He thinks I have just as good a chance of getting a scholarship there as at Pratt, though probably not a full one. If I get a scholarship and a loan and keep working part-time, I think I can swing it.”

  “Wow,” I say, “that’d be great.”

  “Hey, guys,” Monica says, walking toward us with a bag of chips and a can of diet pop, her standard lunch when she’s dieting. “Mind if I eat with you?”

  Matt looks up. “Since when do you have to ask if you can eat with us?”

  “I just. . . uh. . . don’t want to interrupt you or anything,” she says.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “We’re just hanging out.” I toss Monica a look.

  “I gotta run anyway,” Matt says. “I’ve got a trig test next period, and I want to look over my notes.”

  As soon as he’s gone, Monica turns to me. “You didn’t tell him, did you?”

  “No.”

  “Ali. . . what are you waiting for?”

  “I may not tell him.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. What’s the point? I’m having an abortion no matter what. I already made the appointment.”

  “The point is, he has a right to know,” Monica says, slowly enunciating each word, as if I’m deranged.

  “I know, Mon, but I just can’t.” Before, everything was so perfect. So I play this game. As long as I don’t talk about it, it isn’t real. It’s the easiest thing.

  I avoid thinking about my next appointment at Planned Parenthood. It’s not hard to do. My teachers are in academic mode, pouring on the homework, and Andy and I have been working on a series of articles for The Voice about Illinois colleges and how to choose one—a dull but safe topic recommended by the authorities. (They weren’t “pleased” with last month’s article on fake ID’s.)

  I keep floating along, pretending it’s not really happening. I’m getting really good at it. During the week, I go to classes, work on my articles, and watch trash TV. The only time I really think about it is in the morning when I feel sick to my stomach and when I see the package of unopened tampons stashed in my bathroom drawer. But the weekends are harder. It’s Friday afternoon, and I’m in my room, listening to a CD and reading a book. Strike that. Trying to read a book. It’s no use. I can’t focus. I toss the book on my desk and notice the packet of information Debby gave me under a stack of textbooks and folders. I never opened the packet, and now it seems to be screaming at me to take a look. But I already made my decision, so why bother? Abortion is the only way out. I pull out the packet and bury it in my closet under a stack of magazines. Out of sight, out of mind.

  I go downstairs for a glass of water and find my mother working at the kitchen table, wearing a thick wool sweater and two pairs of socks. She has a bad cold and spent the day working at home. On the table are a huge mug of tea, a box of tissues, and a pile of black and white photos.

  “What are you working on?” I ask, sitting down in the chair next to her.

  “It’s a brochure for the hospital about our maternity program. I can’t decide which photo I like best for the cover. What do you think?” she asks, sliding two glossy prints across the table.

  Both photographs are good. There’s one of a mother holding her baby. The other is a close-up of a baby sleeping. The baby has a fringe of dark lashes that look slightly moist, and tiny, perfect lips.

  “I’d go with this one,” I say, handing Mom the one of the sleeping baby. “It pulls you in right away.” Then, all of a sudden, I feel myself choke up, and I’m certain that if she looks at me closely enough, she’ll see the truth.

  Instead, Mom smiles, apparently clueless. “I think so, too. Want to help me select the photos for the rest of the brochure?”

  I don’t have the courage. “Sorry, I can’t. I promised Monica I’d come by after school sometime.” All of a sudden, I have to get out of the house.

  “Will you be home for dinner?”

  “Sure,” I say, grabbing the denim jacket I left earlier on the kitchen chair.

  I let the screen door slam behind me and then hear Mom call, “Dinner’s in an hour!”

  The air is crisp and smells like wood smoke. I take a deep breath and exhale slowly, then half-run and half-walk to Monica’s house. It’s only six blocks away. Just one more week and it’ll all be over. Finished. Finito. The End. But I can’t get that photograph of the baby out of my head.

  When I get to Monica’s house, her mom answers the door. She hyphenated her last name when she remarried this summer, so now she’s officially Julie Jacobs-Marsac. I used to call her Mrs. Jacobs, but after the divorce, she insisted I call her Julie. She looks just like Monica, only 30 years older. Today, she’s wearing yoga pants with a fuchsia top, and her hair is twisted up in a knot. Julie owns a studio at Lakeview Plaza where she teaches yoga in the mornings and evenings, so I hardly ever see her in normal clothes. She smells like tomato sauce. “Well, hi. Come on in,” she says. “I’m in the middle of cooking dinner.”

  I follow her into the kitchen as she continues talking. “Monica’s not here right now. She ran to the store for garlic bread. Want something to drink?”

  “Sure, thanks,” I say. It’s hot in the kitchen. I feel a wave of nausea the minute I step inside. Something’s making me feel sick—it’s the onions or the garlic. My stomach rumbles. I sit down on a stool near the counter, and she hands me a pop in a juice glass. I take a tentative sip and watch as she chops green peppers.

  She asks about my parents and Matt, then starts blabbering about the weather and some cruise she’s thinking of taking with Steve, so I nod and smile and hope that if I don’t move, the nausea will pass and I can leave. She’s talking about her yoga studio and how she’s thinking of painting the walls when Kyle comes in the back door, carrying a navy canvas bag over his shoulder.

  “Hi,” she says. “Kyle, you remember Ali from the wedding, don’t you? She’s Monica’s friend.”

  “Sure,” he says, nodding. “Hi.”

  “Kyle’s home for the weekend to study for a big exam he has on Monday. He’s at North
western,” Julie explains. “I hear you’re applying there.”

  “Yeah.” I force a smile. My stomach rumbles again. I don’t bother to tell her my new plan that involves Columbia and NYU.

  “Maybe you and Monica could drive up some weekend and I’ll show you around the campus,” he says, helping himself to a can of pop. He takes a swig and leans against the counter. “You okay? No offense or anything, but you don’t look so good right now.”

  I don’t bother to answer. All of a sudden, I know I’m going to lose it. I clap a hand over my mouth, rush to the bathroom, and puke in the toilet. A few moments later, there’s a knock on the door I didn’t have time to close.

  “Are you okay?” asks Kyle, walking right in. I’m still kneeling next to the toilet, thinking about the baby in the photograph. Any other time, I’d be mortified to have him in here, but right now, I couldn’t care less.

  “Uh huh” is all I can manage.

  Kyle opens a cupboard under the sink and pulls out a washcloth, which he moistens with tap water. “You got a little in your hair,” he says, wiping it away. “You must have caught some bug. Some of my buddies were sick this week, too. One minute they’re fine, and the next thing you know, they’re heaving. Of course, it might have been because they were out partying too much the night before.” He grins.

  I wonder how Monica could possibly not like Kyle.

  Then Julie comes in and says something about a 24-hour virus going around, and wants to know if she should call my mom. I tell her, “No, don’t bother. I feel better. Really.” And this is how Monica finds us when she finally gets back from the store—me on the floor, Kyle beside me, and Julie leaning against the doorjamb.

  “What’s going on?” Monica asks. She gives me a long look.

  “Hey, Sis,” Kyle says in mock sweetness. “Nice get-up.”

  Monica is wearing black thigh-high stockings, a red plaid miniskirt, and a red sweater with a denim vest. She ignores him altogether.