Chapter 32 Danger Do Not Recommend.
DANGER: DO NOT RECOMMEND.
Josie
EMMY’S KNOCK ON the trailer door almost scares me out of my skin.
Maybe it’s all those damn Halloween movies I’ve been watching late at night or maybe it’s because I’m staring into the mirror at a zombie makeup job.
Jimmy Fallon’s high ropes party is a Halloween party, after all, and I need a disguise.
When I open the door, Emmy gasps, and Mattie’s eyes go wide. He raises Possessed Baby between himself and me, as if she might serve as some kind of protective barrier. Frankly, even if I were a real zombie, I’d still think twice about going after a kid with a doll that looked like that.
“It’s just me, kiddo,” I tell Mattie. To Emmy I say, “What’s up?”
She swoops past me into the trailer with Mattie following behind like a loyal little dog. “My midwife’s on her way. The baby’s breech, and we need to remedy that.”
“How?”
“Moxibustion,” Emmy says.
“Moxi-what?”
“It’s, like, witchy acupuncture that makes babies turn head down.”
“And we’re doing it here, why?”
“Jason and Peyton went Halloween costume shopping.” She plops down on the couch.
“Jason’s taking her to Jimmy Fallon’s party tonight since I can’t do high ropes.
I was hoping you’d keep an eye on Mattie while Lukiana does her thing.
” She smiles. “Plus, you know, I thought it’d be something fun we could do together. ”
“Oh yes, women have been bonding over baby-flipping for centuries.”
I glance at Mattie, who is staring up at me with his dad’s hangdog look—the one that drives a thousand women a day mad. The kid is gonna be a heartbreaker.
“?Qué quieres?” I ask him.
“Can he have a Coke?” Emmy cranes her neck on the couch. “I told him you have Coke out here.”
Mattie’s pleading look instantaneously converts into a Ralphie-from-A-Christmas-Story smile, and he starts to do a creepy little dance, shoulders bouncing, arms dangling.
“Oh my gosh, he’s turning into a zombie! The cure for that is Coke. Go Coke it up, amigo. ándale.”
“?Sólo uno!” Emmy shouts from the couch. “You look great, by the way,” she says. “Zombie bride really suits you. Where’d you get the dress?”
“Bridal shop closeout sale and a pair of scissors.”
“Are you going to add some bloodstains?”
I shake my head. “I prefer noir to gore.”
“Good choice.”
Another violent knock wracks the door. We all jump.
“That’ll be her.” Emmy starts to get up, but I intercept and open the door to a hunched, elderly woman in a pink velour tracksuit—Malibu Baba Yaga.
The midwife grunts a greeting and assesses the space like a cat deciding which pile of laundry to sit on.
She clears the paintbrushes off my wicker coffee table to make room for her big bag o’ pregnancy supplies and then plunks a box of acupuncture needles onto the table beside some kind of paper-wrapped stick the size of a kindergartner’s pencil.
“Take off your shoes and socks,” she orders Emmy.
Emmy crunches to reach her feet, but at thirty-seven weeks pregnant can’t quite reach.
“I’ve got you.” I catch her foot and unlace her New Balance sneaker.
She settles back on the sofa with a sigh. “So, Jason told me there are a couple new actors on the show. Two guys from Mexico, and you know them.”
Uh-oh.
“I know one of them. Miguel.” I tug the shoe off and work on the laces of the second.
“How do you know him?”
“We lived in the same town.”
It feels so wrong that Sean knows more about my time in Mexico than Emmy does. I did a decidedly thorough job of hiding my past when we were back in Florida. Yes, this stuff came up, but when I steered the conversation in another direction, Emmy just let me.
“We did some acting together, too,” I add, feeling guilty.
“You were an actress?”
“I dabbled.”
I yank off Emmy’s socks and tuck them into her shoes. Her pedicure is perfect. Emmy lies down, and Lukiana immediately plunks two needles into the outsides of her pinkie toes. It’s borderline barbaric.
I scuttle out of the way as the midwife pulls out a lighter, strikes it, and holds the end of the moxibustion stick to the flame. A sweet, herbal smell cuts the air, a little like marijuana.
“So, how are things going with Sean?” Emmy asks.
I perch a butt cheek on the arm of the couch. It feels weird to talk about this while the baby witch is burning weird herbs at my friend’s toes, but here we are. “Things are good.”
She does a silent cheer. “He really likes you. Jason and I agree, we’ve never seen him like this.”
I want to believe what everyone’s saying—that I’m good for Sean. That he’s different with me. But it scares me, too. Sean’s not just an actor—he’s an A-lister. I could be the flavor of the week, just like all those other girls he’s dated. People could be reading this all wrong.
And what if he really is falling for me? That might actually be worse. My celebrity dance card got stamped a long time ago—with black, angry letters that read DANGER: DO NOT RECOMMEND.
“And how do you feel about him?” Emmy asks.
I sigh and give her my bad news face. “I can’t stand him. A lot.”
“Yes! I knew it! Josie, I’m so happy for you!”
She speaks me too well. “No, it’s not good,” I reply. “I’ve still got the same… issues.”
“Your pathological stage fright? What, did you have a traumatic thespian experience down in Mexico with what’s-his-name? Miguel?”
I snicker because, wow, that is so ridiculously close to the truth that I might just use it as a euphemism from now on. “Something like that.”
Lukiana blows out her smelly stick and retires to a far chair, plops some headphones on, and pulls out her knitting.
Emmy closes her eyes and folds her hands on top of her belly.
This is our MO, Emmy’s and mine. She pushes, I shut down, she stops pushing, and all my secrets get to stay happily buried.
But I know it’s not fair of me to keep doing this.
I should tell her more. She’s my best friend, and she deserves to know.
“Miguel and I were in a show together for a little while.” Six seasons is a little while, right? It’s all relative—Guiding Light ran for seventy-two years.
“A TV show? In Mexico?” Her eyes snap open, and she reaches for her phone on the coffee table. “How could you not have told me this? What was it called?”
Dammit, dammit, dammit! Not the phone. “It was a long time ago. And that’s not what’s impor—”
“What was it called?”
If she looks it up, she’s going to find out everything, bit by bit, like hopping from one stepping stone to the next.
“What, was it a porno? Is that why you don’t want to tell me?”
“Yes, it was the most popular teenage porno of the early 2000s.”
“Never mind. I’ll find it. I don’t see anything under your name, but I can look him up. What’s his last name? Never mind, I can find it in the entertainment news. Everybody’s talking about the new Lost Star crossover.”
Curse you, Information Age. But there’s nothing I can do to stop this save ripping the phone out of Emmy’s hands and throwing it across the room, which, let’s face it, would only be a temporary solution anyway. I take a deep breath. Maybe her knowing will be a good thing. Maybe it’s time.
“Oh my God!” Emmy cries, and I feel my eyes squeeze shut in shame. She starts to get up. Why? Can she not take my heinous puppet-torching past lying down? Is she mad that I lied to her? Is she going to slap me?
But no, she’s just rolling onto her side. “Lukiana, the baby’s moving! I think it’s trying to flip!”
“Stop!” The midwife’s roar is that of the goddess of fertility herself. She crosses the room like a Viking ship on a dark and dangerous sea. Then, plucking out the needles, she rotates Emmy like a pig on a spit.
“It flipped!” Emmy cries. “I felt it! It was like a loaf of bread just flopped inside of me.”
Lukiana now has Emmy in a deep squat and is palpating her bump. “The baby has turned!” she confirms.
I exchange a baffled look with Mattie, who is lurking in the doorway of the spare room probably wondering if he should tell a trusted adult about what he’s witnessing.
“Está bien. Todo está bien.” I give him what I hope is a reassuring nod and add a thumbs-up for good measure. He backs into the room like Homer Simpson into the bushes.
Emmy grins from her squat. “This means I can still have my home birth.”
Lukiana has whipped out an ear horn–looking thing from her bag o’ pregnancy supplies and is bent over like a Cirque du Soleil performer, listening to Emmy’s bump.
“Baby’s heartbeat is good. You sit on the floor for a little while. I check again in fifteen minutes.” She goes back to her knitting.
“I’m going to finish getting ready,” I tell Emmy as she settles in a yoga pose on the floor. If I’m not in her sights, maybe she’ll forget about looking up Club Bilingüe.
“Wait! Come here.” She waves me over, her face giddy.
I take a deep breath and lower myself onto the couch near her. It appears I’m not getting off that easy. I steel myself to come clean. Tell her the whole thing. Should I start at the beginning? When my mom first met Juan Ernesto? Or should I jump right to the part where I blew it all up?
“I know what it is,” she says, before I can start.
“You do?” How is that possible?
She nods, amber eyes shining. “It’s a girl.”
Oh! We’re not talking about me. “But you asked Sean and me to do the gender reveal.”
She wrinkles her nose. “I had the imaging center send the results to me instead. I had to know.”
A little laugh bursts out of me. Suddenly this all seems more real, knowing it’s a little girl in there and not just some shadowy mystery baby. “Are we still going to decorate the nursery with dinosaurs?”
“Yes, but I’m going to need you to paint bows and tutus on them. And the T. rex needs to be holding a cute little parasol.”
“Pink rubber ducks floating in the tar pit?” I suggest.
“Shh! Lower your voice! I don’t want Mattie to hear. Nobody can know that I know.”
More secrets. I feel weighed down with them. At least this is a good one. I look up at the beach-themed clock on the wall, the same one that used to track the evenings back in our old trailer park in Florida.
I fold myself onto the floor with Emmy and drape my arms around her. Tears prick at my eyes. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the mix of emotions: joy, excitement, gratitude. And guilt.
Yeah, guilt’s in there, too. Emmy’s just told me her biggest secret of the moment, as friends do. And I can’t bring myself to tell her mine.
Plus, I can’t help but wonder if I’ll ever get to have a moment like this. Will there ever be a family that I can truly, one-hundred percent know I belong to, because I created it?
“I’m so happy for you and Jason,” I whisper, giving her an extra squeeze. “And Peyton, too. She’s going to be so excited about little Boba Tea!”
“Thanks for sharing this with me.”
“Of course,” I say, choking down the lump in my throat. “We’re BFFs. Siempre y para toda la vida.”
“Always and forever,” she agrees.