I keep my head down and my eyes on the floor as I enter the room again. I hear Mr. Laughegan’s voice softly.
“Autumn—”
“Oh my God, are you pregnant?” Alexis shouts. My knees lock and my head whips up. I stare at her.
“What? No,” I say.
“Are you sure?” Victoria says. “Because you—”
“Alexis, Victoria,” Mr. Laughegan says sharply. He turns back to me. “Let me write you a pass for the nurse.”
“No,” I say. I shake my head and sit back down at my desk. “I have another test next hour. I’ll be fine.”
“Are you sure?” he says. I nod and sit up straight to show how much better I am feeling. Mr. Laughegan shrugs and goes back to his closing comments for the semester. “Okay, since we didn’t finish Jane Eyre in time for the final, I’m going to have to assign some pages for you to read over the break.”
Jamie stretches his foot out so that our sneakers are pressed up against each other. I copy Mr. Laughegan’s assignment into my notebook and smile at Jamie.
“Hey,” he says when the bell rings. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah,” I say. Outside of the classroom, he pulls me into a hug. He’s headed across campus to gym; we won’t see each other for the rest of the school day.
“Love you, sick girl,” he says. “Even when your breath smells like vomit.”
“Thanks,” I say. He kisses my mouth and ruffles my hair.
***
I survive my math test and even the bus ride home. Finny and Sylvie get off just ahead of me. They walk down Elizabeth Street holding hands. I loiter at the bus stop and then follow thirty feet behind them until they come to the corner where Sylvie turns off. They kiss good-bye and Sylvie crosses the street. Finny waves at her and starts down the sidewalk again.
“Hey, Finny, wait,” I call out. From the corner of my eye, I see Sylvie turn around and look at us. I ignore her. Finny stops and turns. He waits for me to catch up with him. I’m surprised that he doesn’t look surprised. “Hey,” I say again when I reach him.
“Hey,” he says. I start walking again toward our houses and he follows suit.
“I have a favor to ask,” I say. I keep my eyes on the ground as I walk.
“Okay,” Finny says.
“Could you make sure that Alexis and Taylor and Victoria and—” I stop myself from adding Sylvie. “And everybody don’t go around telling people that I’m pregnant?”
“Why would they do that?” he says. This solves a mystery, and part of me is relieved. I’d always wondered how someone like Finny could be friends with girls like them; apparently he doesn’t realize what kind of girls they are. I understand that. I used to not know either. And Finny always thinks the best of people; perhaps he thought that they asked if I was pregnant out of concern.
“Because—” I falter on how to say it so that I’m not insulting his friends.
“You’re not, right?” he says quietly.
“Phineas!” I say. I look up for the first time to glare at him. He looks straight back at me.
“I—” he says. “I mean, they did say it was a possibility—”
“No, it’s not.” I say. “I’ve never even had sex.”
“Oh,” he says. His face changes to the startled expression I expected him to have when I called his name. I look back at the ground. We walk in silence for another minute. We’re coming up on our houses now.
“Could you just make sure—”
“Yeah,” he says. His tone is curt and I think I’ve offended him. It is true though; they are capable of spreading a rumor like that. For all I know, half the school already thinks I’ll be a new mother in the spring.
“Thanks,” I say. He doesn’t answer me. I glance at his face. He’s frowning. We walk up the lawn together and part ways when we get close to the porches. He does not say good-bye to me.
***
I go straight to my room and crawl into bed. I close my eyes and try to sleep. My body is starting to relax when I remember the way Finny looked at me when I told him I was a virgin, the way he frowned.
A spike of ice impales me through the middle. I can’t breathe around the spike; it’s too large. The cold spreads from my stomach into my lungs and heart, but it does not numb the pain.
What does it matter to you? I ask myself. The ice melts into a puddle in the pit of my aching stomach.
My Finny.
He isn’t your Finny.
I know that. But there is a difference between knowing something and feeling it. I’ve known that he wasn’t my Finny anymore, but now he is on the other shore, separated from me by an ocean I am afraid to cross, and I can feel it.
23
I’m not feeling better until Christmas morning five days later. I eat the eggs my mother makes as if I haven’t eaten in years. My father comes downstairs and kisses my mother for longer than normal. I ignore them and keep eating. When I’m finished, he goes into the living room to take the first load of presents over to Aunt Angelina’s and I go upstairs to get dressed.
When we were small, Finny and I would camp out under whichever Christmas tree we would open presents at in the morning. We’d lie side by side, staring at the tree, adorned with either my mother’s perfectly color-coordinated, store-bought glass ornaments or his mother’s mix-match of exotic beaded tassels from India and her eccentric creations of clay or paper.
We would whisper together and stare at the tree until the lights became blurry. In the morning, we would wake together and then run to get our parents so we could open presents.
I put on a black skirt and a green sweater. After a moment of deliberation, I choose a silver tiara that is so low it is nearly a headband. There were three Christmases after The Mothers decided we could not sleep together anymore that Finny and I were in such a rush to get to each other that The Mothers could not convince us to get dressed, and we opened our presents in our pajamas as if we had stayed the night together. It hasn’t been like that for years, of course.
***
Aunt Angelina hugs and kisses me. Mom hugs Finny and Dad shakes his hand around the last batch of presents he is carrying. Finny is wearing a button-up shirt and khakis. Our eyes flicker to each other but we don’t say anything.
By tradition, we open our presents one at a time, and we all comment and exclaim over each item. Finny is quieter than usual, but I don’t think much of it. I wonder if he’s still mad at me for saying his friends would spread a rumor about me.