The Crash

Chapter 2

2

Once Jackson and I get inside, I bypass the mailboxes. I’m not excited to see the bills that await me, and I don’t have money in the bank to pay them anyway. Instead, we climb up the two flights of stairs to my apartment. The bulbs in the stairwell are low wattage, and the paint on the walls is badly chipped, but nobody here would complain. My feet throb with each step, but soon I’ll be home.

I stop at the second-floor landing, taking a few seconds to catch my breath. I’m always out of breath these days. I assume it’s because of the fetus growing inside me, keeping my lungs from expanding as much as I would like. Or it could be something terrible. I asked Dr. Google, and I didn’t like anything they had to say. It could be a blood clot in my lungs. It could be heart failure. It could be tuberculosis .

But my health insurance is awful, so I’m just going to keep my fingers crossed that it’s nothing serious.

Jackson’s brow creases in concern. “You okay?”

“Fine,” I gulp. I nod at the stairwell. “Let’s go.”

As soon as we reach the top of the last flight of stairs, Jackson’s phone buzzes in his pocket. He pulls it out and looks down at the screen. “Food is here.”

I hold out my hands for the bag of groceries. “You go down and get it. I’ll take it from here.”

He looks doubtful. “You sure?”

I shoot him a look. “What do you think I do every day when you’re not around?”

A flash of guilt passes over his thin face, but I don’t know why. It’s not Jackson’s responsibility to babysit me during this pregnancy. It’s nice of him to carry my groceries, but my baby and I are not his problem. And very soon—after the papers are signed—I’ll likely never see him again.

Jackson passes the groceries back to me. I juggle them in my arms while I walk down the hall to my apartment, digging around in my coat pocket for my keys. I almost get the door open when a sharp voice speaks up from behind me:

“ Another man, Tegan?”

I swivel my head to meet the watery, bloodshot eyes of Mrs. Walden, my elderly next-door neighbor. I discovered her first name is Evangeline when I saw a package left downstairs, but on the day we met, she introduced herself as Mrs. Walden, and even though we have lived next door to each other for two years now, she has made it very clear that I am still to address her as “Mrs. Walden.”

“Honestly,” she says, “it’s like you’re running a bordello .”

I have no idea what she’s talking about. In the entire time we have lived next door to each other, Jackson is the only man who has come to visit me aside from my brother. And the two of us aren’t even sleeping together. But it would be pointless to argue. In her eyes, I may as well be parading around the building with a scarlet letter on my chest.

Mrs. Walden’s eyes drop to my belly, protruding below my thrift-store black-and-green blouse with the empire waist. It has ruffles around the collar, and it’s so tacky I could cry, but at the time I bought it, I was in no position to drop a bunch of cash on clothing I would need for only four or five months. Anyway, Mrs. Walden isn’t judging me on my cheap, ugly shirt. She’s judging me because I am twenty-three years old, eight months pregnant, and unmarried.

But honestly, it’s none of her damn business.

“I meant to ask you, Tegan,” she says in her crackly voice. “Will you be moving to other accommodations once the baby is born?”

I rest a hand on my abdomen and am rewarded with a hearty kick. One thing I can say for this baby is that she has a ton of energy. More than I do right now.

“Maybe,” I say. “I haven’t decided.”

“You know, it will be quite disruptive having a baby around.” She lifts her chin. “All that crying at all hours of the night! What a nightmare.”

I put my hand back on the key protruding from the lock and turn it until I feel that satisfying click. “I’ve heard that babies cry a lot. It’s because they don’t know how to speak yet.”

“Nobody will be able to sleep!” she continues. “It’s very selfish of you to bring a newborn into a community that is mostly adults.”

“Well, it wasn’t like I planned it out.”

Her lips purse. “No, I don’t imagine you did.”

I want to snap at Mrs. Evangeline Walden that she’s got me all wrong. She’s made a lot of assumptions, and they are grossly incorrect. I am not the kind of girl who has a one-night stand and gets knocked up without even knowing who the father is, although now that it’s happened to me, I feel guilty for all the other women I’ve judged for it. I had big plans for my life, none of which involved getting pregnant at age twenty-two.

But the fact is I did get pregnant at age twenty-two. It was a one-night stand. And up until recently, I didn’t know who the father was.

So really, there’s not much I can say to her that wouldn’t be a lie.

Instead, I wrench open the door and offer her a smile. “Good night, Mrs. Walden.”

“I’m going to speak to management about—”

Mrs. Walden is smack in the middle of a sentence when I slam the door closed behind me. If she wants to complain to the manager that I am illegally populating the apartment with my offspring, then she can go ahead and do it. I’m not going to suck up to her. Not anymore.

As soon as I get my money, I am out of here.

I flick on the lights inside my studio, which only illuminates how painfully dreary it is. The white paint isn’t cracked, but it does have a dull, lackluster appearance, much like everything else in the apartment. It’s like there’s a layer of grime on every piece of furniture and appliance that I can’t get off, no matter how much I scrub.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I was working double shifts at the grocery store, desperately scraping together enough money to go to nursing school. And at the end of a shift, I could flop down on the couch and watch television to my heart’s content while chowing down on my dinner for one. I wasn’t supposed to get pregnant.

And in just over a month, everything will change. I’ll have a baby . A living, breathing human being who will be my responsibility. This baby will not be allowed to be alone and will require clothes, food, and eventually an education. And will presumably keep me awake half the night so that I become a zombie during the daylight hours.

I slide into my small kitchenette, where I can barely fit now that I have reached my third trimester. I lay the paper bag filled with groceries on the kitchen counter. Before I leave the grocery store every day, I scrounge around for an assortment of items that are close to or past their expiration date, and today I’ve got a bunch of canned goods as well as some bread and cheese. I’ve also got a small carton of milk that’s only one day over and will probably taste fine. And five cans of tuna fish.

Every woman has her own weird pregnancy cravings. Mine is tuna fish. Ever since my second trimester started and the nausea went away, I have been craving tuna. I can’t eat as much as I want due to the mercury content, but if I could, I would eat tuna for every meal, including breakfast. As a result, I have informally named my fetus Little Tuna.

Tuna for dinner, Mama?

Okay, that’s another weird thing. I often imagine that my baby is speaking to me from within my womb. I’m not losing my mind, I swear. I know my eight-month-old fetus is not capable of speech. But sometimes her sweet little voice talks to me, clear as day. Even though I haven’t seen her face yet, I already love her. I want her to have a better life than I’ve had and all the advantages I never got to have. And I’ll do whatever I have to do to get it for her.

That’s why I don’t even feel one scrap of guilt about the payday coming my way.