“Seriously, dude?” Jamie says, “Did you really just say that?”
“You were all wondering it too!” Alex says. He rubs the shoulder Sasha punched with one hand.
“Yeah, but we weren’t going to ask,” Noah says.
“Noah!” Brooke hisses.
“Look, everybody, I knew you were thinking it. I don’t care. And no, they’re not.”
“Autumn, you want to feel my belly again?” Angie says. She knows it cheers me up.
“Sure,” I say.
There isn’t much else to cheer me up. I hate winter. Dr. Singh raises the dosage on my medicine. Last semester, I told Mr. Laughegan that I was starting a novel. I don’t feel like working much and I don’t want to disappoint him.
“Maybe you should get one of those sun lamps to sit under,” Jamie says. He’s driving me home from school. It’s snowing but not sticking, melting against the windshield and running off in thin streams of water.
“This isn’t just about the weather, Jamie. My parents are getting divorced.”
“Yeah, but you’re also depressed every winter, so maybe—”
“Are you sick of taking care of me?” I turn sideways in my seat to face him.
“No. Jeez, Autumn, I was just saying maybe it would help.”
“Sorry. I love you.”
“I love you too.” He turns on the windshield wipers and we don’t talk the rest of the way home.
***
Angie and Preppy Dave show us their apartment in his parents’ basement. They have a bed and a kitchen table. We aren’t allowed to stay for very long. Dave’s parents say they are giving them a place to live, not a place to hang out. At school, the other kids alternate between thinking it’s cool she’s married and looking at her with contempt. Angie seems oblivious to both, and every time her hand is on her stomach, she is smiling.
***
At the end of March, Sasha breaks up with Alex. She says it’s for good this time, and I believe her. They agree to go to prom together in April anyway, for old time’s sake. And then Brooke and Noah tell us, casually, that they don’t plan to stay together when they leave for college. They aren’t going to the same university, and they say they don’t want to ruin what they have by trying to make it work. None of us, except Sasha and Jamie, are going to the same school.
Sometimes when we’re all together, we talk about how high school is almost over. And how we will always be friends.
***
We’re eating dinner with Aunt Angelina and Finny nearly every night now. Afterward, my mother stays late over there and doesn’t come home until I’ve gone to bed. I hate being in the house by myself, so sometimes I bring my homework over and work at their kitchen table. Finny joins me and we do our homework together like we used to, except we don’t talk as much. Every evening, Sylvie calls him and he takes his phone into the other room for half an hour, then comes back and shoves it in his pocket before sitting back down. I heard at school that she isn’t going to college in the fall. She’s going to go to Europe for the summer, then take a year off to find herself or something like that. I want to ask Finny if they are planning on staying together, but I can’t.
I’m supposed to spend one evening a week with my dad, but it doesn’t always work out. When it does, he takes me out to restaurants in the city and asks me about school and Jamie. He’s always liked Jamie. His apartment overlooks the river and the Arch. It has a second bedroom that he says I can use anytime I want. I’m not sure what I would use it for.
A few green shoots begin to appear in the beginning of April. It’s still cold out, but things are getting a little better.
But only a little.
60
“Are you going to vote for Finn?” Sasha asks.
“For what?” I say. We’re at Goodwill, looking through a rack of old wedding dresses. It’s Sasha’s idea for her prom dress. Mom is making me buy a dress from a department store; she says that, right now, she needs something like buying me a real prom dress. I didn’t put up as much of a fight as I might have in the past. Brooke bought a dress from a department store too. She says that there are a lot of sequined nightmares at the mall, but it won’t be as hard as I think to find something cool.
Angie is making her dress out of blue crepe. It’s hard for her to find clothes now. Her mother-in-law buys her maternity shirts that look like something Sylvie would wear if she ever got fat. Mostly Angie wears giant T-shirts from bands that broke up in the nineties.
Angie holds up a mock Victorian dress with a high collar for me to see.
“If you want to tell Alex to keep his hands to himself, that will do it,” I say. I go back to searching the rack.
“Well, since I’m about to be the last virgin of our friends, I might as well look the part,” she says. I look up again. Sasha has the dress flung over one arm.
“Jamie told you about that?” I say.
She nods. “Yeah, why didn’t you?”
I shrug. “I dunno,” I say, and I honestly don’t. “It doesn’t seem real, I guess.”
“Well, you’ve got two months and one week until it will be all the way real.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” I say. I finger the yellowed lace on the nearest dress. “What were you saying about Finny?”
“Oh, are you going to vote for him for Prom King?” I feel my face scrunch into a grimace.
“He’s going to run for Prom King?” I say.
“He and Sylvie together. I thought you would know.” I’m not surprised that I didn’t know though. When Finny and I do talk, he never mentions Sylvie. Ever since Christmas, he usually only asks how I’m doing and I say fine and then we watch TV or go finish our homework. Sometimes we talk about school or the weather.
“I guess that was Sylvie’s idea,” I say. “No wait, I know it was. He hates being the center of attention.”
“But he’s so popular,” Sasha says. I shrug.
“That’s not his fault,” I say. “He’s likable.”
“I guess,” Sasha says. “And he is so hot.” I shrug again. She looks down at the dress in her hands. “I’m going to look so cool,” she says.
***
My mother and I go shopping on the first day that it actually feels like spring. Mom’s face is thinner and there are always circles under her eyes, but today she is excited.
“Now,” she says, as we glide up the escalator toward evening apparel, “is all pink entirely banned?”