“Yeah,” he said. “That’s how I’ve always felt, too.” He turned back to face me then, his eyes wide and curious. “But do you ever wish that you’d said no that night? To Iris? That maybe if you had, none of this would have happened?”
It was the first time the question had been said out loud, the first time I’d even really let myself analyze the possibility. There was no point in asking, not if I couldn’t change that first response. But I had the answer, I realized. I didn’t need to think about it.
“No,” I said, and I knew right away that I meant it. “Maybe if you’d asked me when I’d first found out about it. But now . . . No. I think it was the right answer. Or the only one, maybe.”
He nodded, as if it was just as simple as it sounded. “Well, it’s been a pleasure meeting you, little one,” he said, grinning over at me as he moved his hand back. He stood up, reaching both arms down to help pull me to my feet. “Go home and get some sleep. I’ll cover for you inside.”
I nodded, at a loss for expressing everything I was feeling in that one moment. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Perfect, because you don’t have to thank me. So don’t waste any more time trying to come up with anything good, okay?” He put one arm around me and squeezed, an awkward half hug that left me feeling prickly and overheated. “I’ll see you Monday?”
“Monday.”
I had an awful feeling about Monday, a horrible, creeping suspicion that everything was just a weekend away from erupting all around me. But the idea that Jesse would be there helped, made the day feel at least a tiny bit less ominous. And there was Hannah, too. There was always Hannah.
I gave one last wave before walking off to my car, my head whirling with everything that had happened in the past two hours, good and bad. My secret was officially out in the open, and the rest was just a matter of time. On the flip side, I’d made a new friend who believed me, or at least seemed to believe me, and who could verify that Iris had definitely existed.
But I’d also found out that Izzy had done the unthinkable, that not only had she abandoned me, she’d snuck around behind me and stabbed me in the back.
The sting hit me all over again. I had to see her. I needed her to admit to my face that she’d betrayed me. I needed her to feel ashamed when I walked into school on Monday or whenever that day would finally come, mobs of people pointing and judging me. Because of her. Because she didn’t even have enough loyalty to keep my secret.
But most important, I needed her to know that I was fine without her.
Because if she thought that, maybe I could believe it, too.
I woke up at four the next morning with my arms wrapped tight around my belly and a smile on my lips, the wisps of a happy dream I couldn’t quite remember floating above me, just barely out of reach. I thought again about what I’d said to Jesse the night before, about how I wouldn’t trade in my answer to Iris, not anymore. I was relieved to realize that it was still true this morning. I still believed. I believed in the miracle that was this tiny baby inside of me right now, right here in my bed with me. I curled to my side, hugging myself into a ball.
But just as I let my eyelids close again, willing myself back into my cozy, sunny dream world, I remembered what Izzy had done. I had no chance of falling back to sleep after that, tossing and turning in my sweat-soaked sheets as I went through the list of everything I wanted to say to her. I was tempted to drive to her house at that very moment, before the sun rose up above Green Hill, ring her cell phone over and over or toss pebbles at her window—do whatever it would take to make her come outside and face me. But I promised myself that I’d wait it out until at least nine, when I could knock on her door in broad daylight like a normal, civilized human being. I didn’t want to raise any unnecessary suspicions with her parents, assuming Izzy hadn’t already told them everything on her own.
I doubted that she had, though. On the outside, she and her mom and her stepfather were the perfect upper-middle-class family unit, about as shiny and pristine-white-picket-fence and four-car-garage as it could get in our town—the mini-mansion, Hannah and I liked to say, since it was easily the biggest house in the area, and reminding Izzy of the fact always got her hilariously worked up. One if not both parents came cheering with bells and whistles to all her many sporting events, no matter what time of day or how far the drive. They hosted over-the-top birthday parties each year without a blink at the price tag. Ponies, clowns, Moon Bounces, a mini petting zoo . . . what Izzy asked for, Izzy got—and what she didn’t ask for, she still got. Her parents took her on a glamorous vacation every single summer that made my family’s annual trip to the Jersey Shore feel like a few nights at an Econo Lodge in the middle of a toxic wasteland.
But everything wasn’t quite that glossy when you stripped away the top layer, even if Izzy very rarely went into details. It had taken until a few years into middle school of collecting bits of evidence for Hannah and me to really piece together how the family operated: a mom who needed a water bottle filled with white wine to kick-start the day, every day, and a stepdad who seemed to forget that he had a family at all when they weren’t busy performing at public appearances.
Izzy had always had us as her second family, ready and waiting to fill in for her real one on the bad days. Me and Hannah, and my parents, who had treated both of them like special bonus daughters for as long as they’d known them. But apparently none of that had meant anything to Izzy. Or at least hadn’t meant enough to stop her from abandoning all of it the second I didn’t live up to her unfair expectations.
By eight thirty I put down my old tattered copy of Anne of Green Gables, the most reread and well-loved book of my childhood. I’d hoped that it would distract me, that the cozy, familiar words would calm my nerves, but I’d been staring at the same page for the last hour. I propped it back on the nightstand where I usually kept it, and pulled on a sweatshirt over my pajamas. I had kept the window next to my bed open all night, and I could feel that a cold front had moved in while I’d slept. The air was crisp and cool, the sort of perfect early fall morning that usually made me giddy with cravings for steaming pumpkin spice tea and cozy frayed flannel shirts. But it also reminded me of Izzy, of haunted hayrides and horror movie marathons, of weeks planning and coordinating and agonizing over our Halloween costumes. That Izzy was gone, though. The Izzy who was still walking and breathing and living was someone else entirely.
I stopped by the kitchen on my way out to tell my parents I was going to see Izzy, even though I’d considered slipping out the front door and bypassing the conversation altogether. My mom raised an eyebrow in a silent question mark as she stood up to hug me good-bye. My dad, however, continued reading his newspaper as if I’d never walked into the room at all. The blatant indifference made the knot in my stomach pull even tighter—I had thought I’d gotten used to him ignoring me, but after the other night, my hopes had shot up too dangerously high. Had I imagined it all? Was that image of my dad at the stove just a dream I had desperately wanted to make real?
No. It had happened. Maybe to him it had been a small, meaningless gesture, but to me it had been a gigantic one. I brushed it off, though, waved to them both anyway, and pulled myself together for the bigger challenge ahead.