Kids                                                                                                 Gabrielle Esposito

 

What did it mean to date Alex Vega?

            It meant that all eyes were on Victoria, all the time. Once Victoria was seen walking to Alex’s car one day after school, and once she kissed him in front of everyone, the entire population of Minisink Valley High School was watching. Especially Victoria’s grade, who remembered Alex clearly as the tattooed senior who was always wandering the halls when he should’ve been in class. Victoria got asked if Alex’s tattooed skin felt different from his uninked skin. She was asked what it was like to have a boyfriend who could drive. Victoria told anyone who asked what it was like to date Alex Vega. She watched them try to wrap their heads around her life.

            Claudia, Victoria’s best friend, was the only one who really understood what it meant to date someone older, because she was dating Ryan Furn, Alex’s friend. Victoria had watched the entire school swarm around Claudia when she started dating Ryan, and now Victoria felt she was finally playing in the same league.

Or, she had been.

            Victoria had been seeing Alex for two months before she slept with him. They’d only done it once, and that was three weeks ago. Since then, Victoria’s been avoiding his calls, ignoring his texts, trying not to think about him. But since she missed her period a week ago, it had become impossible for her to avoid thinking about Alex.

Now, Victoria is standing with each of her feet on a different tile of Claudia’s kitchen. There is ultimate silence, now that she’s drowned out the sound of Claudia’s shower. A leftover piece of Christmas wrapping paper, three weeks old, is stuck to the bottom of her left heal. Her body hasn’t moved in twenty minutes. Only her eyes move. They shift from the crumpled Rite Aid bag at the corner of the kitchen counter next to the stove, to the screen of her phone. There is a message from Alex. She reads the message over and over again, until her eyes begin to blur from the sunlight from the window, the screen, the countertop, and the yogurt-smeared bowls of this morning’s breakfast.

Her eyes dart back to the Rite Aid bag to clear her vision. The dull, slumped plastic that leans against the stellar white walls of the kitchen, a semi-gloss that Claudia’s mother compulsively scrubs after dinner is done cooking. The bag has been there since last night. Claudia and Victoria drove to Rite Aid after dropping Claudia’s younger brother, Mike, off at a friend’s house. Victoria is taking advantage of this Friday’s Conference day like Mike, but she finds herself wishing that she wasn’t here. She wants to be just waking up in her own bed, wondering what she’s going to do while her parents are at work. Not worrying about whether or not she might be pregnant. Had it been up to Victoria, she would’ve taken the test last night. But on Google, it said the test was more accurate in the morning, because it wouldn’t be diluted by the day’s fluids. The only thing that was going right was that Claudia’s parents were away for the weekend, cleaning their rental house in Long Beach. 

Victoria allows the sound of Claudia’s shower back into her senses, just to hear something other than silence. A harsh waterfall splatters in the shower. Claudia is probably wringing the conditioner from her hair.

            Victoria’s eyes fall back to the screen.

“Hey, Vicki, can we talk later?” Alex said. Victoria isn’t sure what she feels as she looks at the gray banner running beneath the white glow of the time. She wants to text him, to say something back to his simple message. Victoria’s been feeling something lurking in her system, but she’s not sure what it is. The only thing that she can think of to call it is anger, because when she looks at Alex’s message, she feels heat rise in her cheeks. She wants to confront him. Maybe she can find a name for her feelings in Alex’s words.

But now isn’t the time. She doesn’t want Claudia intruding on the conversation. Claudia is already against Alex even though he hadn’t personally done anything to Claudia. If Claudia starts making faces, or shaking her head, Victoria won’t be able to focus. She needs to talk to Alex maturely. However that was done.

But not now. Victoria wants to be alone when she does it. Somehow, it seems easier.

The water in the downstairs bathroom turns off. Victoria’s ears prick as the metal rings of the shower curtain scraped across the shower rod. There is the soft, collective shhhh of Claudia taking down a towel, and silence as she wraps it around her body. The door clicks, and Claudia emerges from the bathroom followed by a cloud of steam. Victoria still doesn’t move. There’s still the animalistic urge expanding Victoria’s veins. She wants—almost needs—to text Alex back.

Victoria’s turns toward the approaching wet footsteps. Claudia’s there, a towel wrapped under her arm. Her straight hair is brushed back away from her face, a sleek look. Claudia is lean and structured; her face is full of harsh angles. Those cuts of geography grew on Claudia in the last year of middle school. They made her look vicious, like a Doberman pinscher.

“Hey, Vicki, you okay?” asks Claudia. Her voice is gentle, contrasting her angular makeup. “You look sick.

            “Alex texted. He wants to talk.” Victoria turns her eyes away from the glowing phone. For a moment, Victoria saw the glowing afterimage of her phone’s screen over Claudia’s face. She’s quick to blink it away.

            “Talk? He’s got to know why you’re not talking to him. He shouldn’t have done that.”

            Taken off the condom, Claudia means. Victoria almost cringes at the thought of it. Alex had taken it off halfway through, said it felt better, wanted to show her. Victoria hadn’t said anything. She figured Alex knew what he was doing. He was older. Victoria hadn’t told anyone until she missed her period last week.

            “I don’t think you should talk to him,” Claudia says. She flips her wet hair over her shoulder. Drops of watershed collide with the chrome fridge.

            “Why shouldn’t I?”

            “What is there to say?” asks Claudia.

            Victoria bites her lip. Again she feel the physical rush of heat at the thought of Alex. It has nothing to do with pleasure. Why does she get that negative, grounding sense that wipes out everything else? Victoria thinks its anger, but that word only seems like it’s touching the surface of what she feels. There’s something going on inside her, and the only person who can shed light on her feelings is the person who evoked them: Alex.  

“Do you really think I’m pregnant?”

            “I don’t know. But evidence would suggest that it’s a possibility.”

            “I know, I’m late. But I think it’s just stress. We have state tests coming up, and I’ve got that paper due for Mrs. Freese on Monday. I’m just stressed.” She’s rambling, and hears the panic in her voice. It sounds as if her vocal chords are being braided together. She begins to spin an empty bowl, to give her hand something to do.

            Claudia wipes her brow with fingers still wrinkled from the water.

            “I guess we’ll find out,” says Claudia. “Maybe you should take the tests now. I have to go pick up Mike in fifteen minutes, and if we wait any longer, he’ll bug us.”

            Victoria starts to agree, then stops.

            “No. No, I don’t want to take the tests now.”

            “When, then?”

            “When you go and get Mike, I’ll take the tests.”

            Claudia frowns, ruining the smooth slope of her forehead.

            “Why don’t you want me here?” Claudia asks. “I thought that’s why you wanted to sleep over.”

            “It was. I’ve changed my mind.”

            “Why?” asks Claudia. A deep line cuts through her forehead. The shadows beneath her eyes draw the light. The room looks darker.

Victoria looks over at the Rite Aid bag heaped next to the stove. She’ll never forget the deep shame she felt as she carried those pregnancy tests through the store. Getting pregnant was supposed to be something that she could control, as a woman. Embarrassment was the wrong thing to feel. She had feared the very strangers in the store; they judged her just for buying pregnancy tests. She saw the looks they gave her, and how fast they looked away, as if they couldn’t believe it. Imagine how they would look at her if she were pregnant, and showing. The cashier hadn’t batted an eye when Victoria laid the pregnancy tests on the counter, but she had said, “Have a good night, young ladies.” There was something snide in that comment, as if the cashier couldn’t resist mentioning how young Claudia and Victoria were.

Claudia had been there at Rite Aid. She had heard the cashier’s comment, and snipped about it on the way back to Claudia’s. But Claudia hadn’t experienced the fear that Victoria had. It wasn’t her body that was possibly being invaded by an unwanted bundle of cells. It wasn’t Claudia stinging with warm, and strong anger. She doesn’t understand, thinks Victoria. And that’s why she has to take the tests by herself, and sort through the mess with Alex alone. It’s Victoria’s life. She has to fix it alone.

            “Then why can’t I be here?” asks Claudia. She crosses her arms over her chest, pops out a hip that brings shape to the sheath of towel wrapped around her body.

            Victoria feels tired all of a sudden. 

            “I just want to be alone when I take the test. This is private.”

            “You tell me everything.”

            Victoria hadn’t minded telling Claudia every embarrassing detail of her life like crushes, and failed tests. But the results of this test could change Victoria’s life. She might be pregnant. Victoria doesn’t want to deal with Claudia’s panic if she’s pregnant.

“I know. But this is different. Don’t you understand?”

            “Yeah, I mean, I guess.”

            It was clear that Claudia didn’t understand, because she was shuffling her feet, not making eye contact to confirm that yes, she understood and respected Victoria’s desire to be alone.

            “I just--”

            “It’s okay. I get it. You’re scared,” says Claudia.

“And nervous. But hey, I’m not the first girl to ever go through, this right?”

Victoria smiles, but a sudden sickness dabs the back of her throat. She wasn’t the only girl in history worrying over someone else’s decision. Victoria wasn’t the only girl currently dealing with the threat that she might be pregnant. There were probably more than 15 million girls right now, in the United States, who were teen mothers. Victoria wondered if she would be one of them, and then understood that she wouldn’t be, no matter what. Her parents would nearly kill her when she bit the hot bullet and asked for their signature on Planned Parenthood papers. She would have to explain about Alex, how nearly every time she went and “spent the night at Claudia’s,” she was in Alex’s cheap studio above Comparreto’s Bakery.

“Thanks for understanding,” says Victoria. Then, because it’s been bothering her, she asks, “Do you think I’m stupid?” Claudia had disappeared into the bathroom again. The door was slightly ajar, allowing mist to slip through, and spill across the floor.

“No! Why do you think you’re stupid?” Claudia asks.

“Because I didn’t say anything when he took it off,” says Victoria. She leaned against the counter, and pressed her finger against the phone’s home button. Alex’s solitary message screamed from the screen. She was going to call him. Soon. No more avoiding, no more hiding.

Claudia came out of the bathroom. Her tight clothes made her look sleek, polished: like she had her life together.

“What would have said?” asks Claudia. Victoria’s pale brows furrow. She knows that she has something to say, but doesn’t know what. Her throat has been tight since this morning, a feeling of blocked words, or being on the verge of tears. Victoria’s sure that once she talks to Alex, she’ll know what to say. For now, though, all she can do is shrug.

 “I’m going to get Mike,” Claudia says. “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.” Fifteen minutes to take the test, call Alex, get the results.

Claudia has her keys in her hand, the Minisink Valley ID card hanging at the end of the cord.

“Are you sure that you don’t want me to stay?” she asks. “I can be late for Mike.”

Victoria shakes her head. “Thanks, Claudia, but I’ll be all right.” Her fingers were practically itching to call Alex.

Claudia looks away for a second. When her eyes return, the brown irises are as cold as the frozen ground outside in the January cold.

“I’ll see you later, then,” says Claudia. “Maybe I’ll pick up some donuts on the way home.”

“Okay,” says Victoria. Claudia is gone. Victoria is finally alone. Victoria slides her phone off the counter. It goes into the pocket of her flannel pajama bottoms. Victoria walks over to the far corner of the stove. Her fingers loop through the handles. They go taunt when she lifts the bag up, and she swears the bag is heavier than it was last night. Victoria walks slowly to the downstairs bathroom. She shuts and locks the door behind her.

The interior of the bathroom is toned a bright butterscotch. The color is supposed to quell Victoria’s nerves with its neutral color; it doesn’t. Victoria’s hummingbird-heartbeat fret against her ribs. Her hands are cold; all the blood rushes to her face, feeding the familiar heat that now came in dealing with Alex. Victoria is having a hard time swallowing. The words are dying to burst out of her throat.

Victoria takes out one of the boxes of First Response tests. They’d bought three tests last night, two First Response kits, and one Rite Aid brand; they had been hopeless as to knowing how many tests they should buy, and what brand. They settled on First Response because Claudia had seen commercials of the brand on television.

            The pregnancy tests are swaddled in plastic sheaths, and nestle in the crook of the folded instructions. Victoria unfolds the instructions, and then does as they tell her to do. She puts the saturated pregnancy tests on the edge of the sink, with the light pink caps on.

            Five minutes, and Victoria will know. She opens the home screen of her phone, and sets a timer for exactly five minutes. The countdown has just started. Claudia will be back in ten minutes. Victoria doesn’t hesitate. She types in Alex’s number. He answers on the second ring.

“Hey, Alex. It’s me.”

“Victoria. Jesus, it’s good to hear your voice. I’ve been asking Ryan to text Claudia asking about you. You’ve ignored my messages. Is everything okay?”

In the background, there is the clanging of metal on metal, symptom sounds from Magyar’s Car Repair. Alex is at work. Again, Victoria feels the distance between them. Alex is working full-time, and she is a high school sophomore, possibly a pregnant one.

            “Are you mad at me?” asks Alex.

            “No,” says Victoria. Then she says, “Actually, yes. A little.”

            “Why?”

            “I’m taking a pregnancy test.”

There is silence on the other line that Victoria can’t fill. She has just thrown all of herself at his feet.

Alex said, “You’re not pregnant.”

Confusion tears across all regions of Victoria’s brain. “How do you know?”

“Because you can’t be. It’s impossible,” says Alex. “I pulled out.”

“That’s not one-hundred percent effective.”

“It’s not possible.”

“Why? Because you don’t want it to be?”

“No, because there’s no way that you could be—whatever.” Alex sighed, and sucked his teeth. “God, I should’ve never gone out with you. You’re too young.”

“Don’t say that.”

“What? That you’re young? It’s true.”

“So what? I seem to know more about this than you. It’s your fault if I’m pregnant, you just took the condom off. I never said that it was even okay for you to take it off. You just assumed.”

 “When I asked if you were down to fuck, you said you could handle it.”

“Because I trusted you to be responsible,” Victoria says. “That was a stupid choice on my part.”

“Why didn’t you stop me, then? Why didn’t you say anything?”

There was that question again. Victoria had asked herself why she hadn’t told Alex to stop. Claudia had told her that she didn’t have to talk to Alex because there was nothing else to say. Victoria had thought Claudia was wrong. She had thought that she would spend the next minutes of the countdown telling Alex how he had been wrong to not ask permission, and how he had betrayed her trust. That was what she was feeling: betrayal. But in talking to Alex now, Victoria realized that she had nothing left to say to him. Alex had betrayed her, and she didn’t want an answer from someone that she couldn’t trust. She was looking for closure in the wrong place. Alex was nothing but a kid playing grown-up. How could he possibly answer for what he did?

Victoria sat there with the phone pressed against her ear. Her tongue was pressed against the roof of her mouth, and it had no intention of moving.

            “You still there?”

            No, Victoria decided. She was currently unavailable. Victoria hung up the phone. She looked down at the dim afterglow of their conversation. The entire thing had begun and ended in under three minutes.

Victoria wanted to throw her phone against the wall, but she put it down on the counter instead. She was working hard to stop herself from shaking. Never in her seventeen years had she ever been surer of her words. They seemed to emanate from a space of confidence that Victoria hadn’t yet discovered. She felt empty now, not like she had been when she was talking to Alex. But she still felt like there was a residual shimmer lining her insides, making the black a little lighter.

The phone’s timer explodes. It buzzes into the granite sink counter until Victoria grabs it, and turns the timer off. She edges near the sink.

Two lines, one on each test. Not pregnant.

A wave of endorphins floods Victoria’s brain. Her smile dawns on her face for the first time since last night, and a wave of sedates her nerves. She’s safe. She closes her eyes, coming down from the panic that had flooded her system since she missed her period last week.

She doesn’t measure how long she sits basking in the knowledge that she isn’t pregnant, but eventually, a door opens. Victoria slips the tests into the Rite Aid bag, and goes out into the kitchen. Mike is there, and so is Claudia. She is holding a box of Dunkin’ Donuts.

“Hey, Vicki,” says Mike. He’s already got chocolate frosting dotting the pads of his fingertips. Colorful sprinkles frame the corners of his mouth. “What’s in the bag?”

“Nothing,” Victoria says. “Just trash.” But she puts it into the bag she brought to school with her, the one with all of her clothes. Claudia and Vicki would take a trip later, and dump it into a neighbor’s garbage can, as planned.

“Nothing?” Claudia asks.

“Yeah.”

A smile breaks onto Claudia’s face, and she gives Victoria a look that tells her everything she needs to hear.

“Great,” says Claudia. “Have a doughnut. Mike, go put your dirty clothes in the laundry.”

Mike rolls his eyes, but he goes downstairs to put his clothes from yesterday into the washing machine in the basement.

“I don’t think that Alex is ever going to speak to me again,” says Victoria.

“Who cares?” Claudia says. She picks out a doughnut, plain with vanilla frosting and confetti sprinkles. She pushes the box toward Victoria, plowing the leftover yogurt bowls to the side. “Have a doughnut.”

Victoria looks at the leftover selections. She’s looking with a clear head. There’s nothing else for her to worry about. She can go through her day, knowing that her life isn’t going to change. She didn’t have to confess to her parents anything she didn’t want to. Victoria wasn’t going to walk through the halls, hearing people whisper that getting pregnant was what she got for dating someone older than her. All Victoria had to worry about was what doughnut she wanted.

She grabs the last, or the only, Boston Crème out of the box. Victoria wastes no time taking a massive bite. Her teeth hit the center of the doughnut, and crème explodes out of the sides, into her hand, onto the floor.

“Victoria!” says Claudia, rushing to get a napkin.

Victoria looks down at the pale yellow pudding in her palm and on the floor. She starts to smile. It’s slow and restrained because Claudia is on the floor cleaning up the mess, but it is still a smile, unabashed by any worry.

She bends down to help Claudia, but fails at wiping the gesture from her face.

“What are you smiling about?” asks Claudia.

“Nothing, nothing,” Victoria says. “The doughnut’s sweet. That’s all.”