1. Alison
By eight-fifteen in the morning, I have already lied three times.
The first is to Mrs. Delaney at the front desk, when she asks if I’m feeling all right after I stop too quickly inside Edgewood’s main doors and have to pretend I’m fascinated by the spring concert poster while the floor settles under me. “Fine,” I tell her.
Lie one.
The second is to Penny, who catches me at my locker with a sleeve of saltines hidden behind my chemistry book and asks why I’m eating crackers before first period. “Skipped breakfast,” I say.
Lie two.
The third is to myself, when I catch my reflection in the little mirror taped inside my locker door and decide nobody can tell. That one barely qualifies anymore. It’s closer to prayer.
Lie three.
I tug the front of my blazer straight and turn slightly, checking the line of it from the side.
Edgewood’s uniform has never done me a single favor before — the skirts too short, the white button-downs too stiff, the forest-green blazers cut like somebody designed them specifically to make every student look like the child of an investment banker.
Now I could kiss whoever approved the blazer, because it hides almost everything.
Almost.
The skirt is the problem. Mine stopped fitting last week — not dramatically, there wasn’t some morning I woke up looking six months pregnant and screamed at the mirror.
The zipper simply started fighting me, then refusing me, and three mornings ago I admitted defeat and pulled the spare I’d bought in secret out of the back of my closet.
Two sizes bigger. It hangs lower on my hips and gives me room I didn’t used to need, and nobody notices. Nobody except me.
My hand starts to drift toward my stomach.
I catch it halfway there and shove it into my blazer pocket instead, because that’s the dangerous thing nobody tells you about keeping a pregnancy secret: your body keeps trying to betray you in a hundred tiny affectionate ways.
Hand to stomach. Protective turn in a crowded hallway.
The automatic smile when somebody mentions babies.
The crackers. The ginger tea. The fact that yesterday I nearly cried because Tobias left half a grilled cheese on his plate and, for reasons I cannot explain, melted cheddar smelled like the end of civilization.
I have become a collection of tells. Which would be manageable if I weren’t surrounded by people who have spent the last year learning how to notice things.
“You’re doing it again.”
I shut my locker. Penny is leaning against the one beside mine, watching me. “Doing what?” I ask.
“The face.”
“What face?”
“The one where you’re physically standing here but mentally you’ve left the country.”
“I don’t have that face.”
“You absolutely do.” She smiles when she says it, soft and easy, and some of the tightness in my chest loosens.
Penny’s been different since everything with Xander came apart and got put back together — not less herself, but more, like somebody went in and turned the lights back on.
She’s got a folder of sheet music hugged against her chest, and Xander is about twenty feet down the corridor pretending to have a conversation with Danny while looking over Danny’s shoulder at her every eight seconds.
I glance at him. He catches me. His eyes narrow.
I look away before he decides I’ve committed some offense punishable by death.
“Your boyfriend is staring,” I tell Penny.
“My boyfriend stares.”
“Your boyfriend is terrifying.”
“He’s very sweet.” I just look at her. She looks back. We both start laughing. “Okay,” she allows. “He’s sweet to me.”
“Important clarification.”
“Extremely.” She shifts the folder under her arm, and her voice goes gentler. “You sure you’re okay?”
There it is again. The question. I’m getting better at answering it without hesitating. “Yeah. Just tired.” Lie three.
Penny studies me for one second too long. Then she lets it go, which is one of the reasons I love her. She notices. She doesn’t pry. “Okay. Come on,” she says, pushing off the lockers. “Cat says if we’re late to assembly again she’s making a schedule.”
Edgewood is louder in spring. Graduation’s close enough to be real now.
College acceptances keep landing. Teachers have started talking about final projects and senior requirements, and somebody has decorated the student council board with paper flowers, like we’re all supposed to believe winter is finished because construction paper says so.
The hall is packed. Cat and Kaiden are near the stairs, Kaiden saying something into her ear that makes Cat roll her eyes even as she smiles, one hand braced against the wall beside her head, not touching her, but there’s something intimate about the shape they make anyway — their own little pocket in the middle of everybody else.
Becca comes around the corner with Danny beside her, and he’s carrying her bag.
She is absolutely capable of carrying her own bag.
Danny knows it. Doesn’t matter. She says something and he bends his head toward her, because Becca talks quieter when she’s tired and Danny has apparently decided the rest of the world can adjust its volume around her.
Penny’s hand lifts. Xander sees it immediately, and his whole face changes — not much, but enough — and he leaves Danny mid-sentence to walk toward us.
And there it is. That little ache. Small enough that nobody sees it. Sharp enough that I feel it anyway.
All three of them get to exist. Not perfectly — God knows none of their relationships arrived gently — but they get to stand in hallways and look at each other.
Xander can put his hand at Penny’s back.
Danny can carry Becca’s bag. Kaiden can bend down and murmur into Cat’s hair while half the senior class flows around them.
Nobody has to pretend they’re strangers.
Nobody has to become cruel to keep the other person safe.
My eyes find Ryan before I mean for them to.
He’s coming out of the science wing with Iz.
I know his walk — which is ridiculous, but I do.
I know when he’s tired by the way his right shoulder sits half an inch lower.
I know when he’s irritated because he presses his tongue against the inside of his cheek right before he says something he’ll probably regret.
I know which hand he puts in his pocket when he’s carrying the penny, because the little metal ring catches on the lining and he checks it without realizing he’s doing it.
I know what he looked like last night, asleep with one hand spread across my stomach.
I know what his mouth feels like against the back of my neck.
I know he spent twenty minutes two nights ago arguing with something the size of a strawberry because our unborn child was, apparently, personally responsible for making me hate the smell of coffee.
Nobody here knows any of that. Here, he is Harrington. And Harrington doesn’t love me.
His gaze moves over the corridor — over Penny, over Xander, over me — and nothing changes.
Not one single thing. It’s impressive, honestly.
If I didn’t know him, I’d believe it. Iz says something, and Ryan laughs, and then we pass each other, close enough that the sleeve of his blazer almost brushes mine.
Almost. His eyes land on me for less than a second.
Cold. Bored. Like he recognizes my face only because we’ve been attending the same school forever and that’s the entire extent of his interest.
“Watch it, O’Toole.” The words are quiet — not vicious enough to draw real attention. Still, two boys walking behind him laugh.
I know why he did it. That’s the worst part.
Somebody near the science doors was watching — I saw Ryan clock him, a man I don’t recognize, maybe someone from administration, maybe someone my father knows, maybe nobody at all.
Ryan doesn’t take chances. Neither do I.
Still, knowing why doesn’t make the words disappear.
“Asshole,” Penny mutters.
I swallow. “He’s always an asshole.”
“Not usually to you.”
My eyes snap toward her. Penny’s already watching Ryan’s back. “What?” I say.
She shrugs. “Nothing. Just thought he mostly ignored you.”
My pulse starts beating harder. “He does.”
“Apparently not today.”
Xander reaches us before I have to answer. “What happened?”
“Harrington being Harrington,” Penny says.
Xander looks past us to where Ryan and Iz are disappearing around the corner, and his mouth twists. “Shocking.” Then his attention drops straight back to Penny. “You eat?”
She sighs. “Yes.”
He takes the folder out of her arms. She lets him.
I watch them start bickering about whether a banana qualifies as breakfast, and I have to look away, because the ache isn’t jealousy.
Not really. I don’t want Xander — obviously.
I don’t want what Penny has instead of what I have.
I just want to stop pretending mine doesn’t exist. For one morning.
One hallway. One stupid minute where Ryan could look at me the way he does when a door is locked.
I press my tongue against the inside of my cheek and follow them to assembly.
Because that’s the deal. Publicly, Harrington gets to hurt me.
Privately, Ryan puts his hand over our baby and apologizes for it afterward.
Sometimes both things are true at once, and I’m learning that’s basically the theme of my entire life.
By third period, the nausea has progressed from annoying to I may actually die in this classroom.