Chapter 18 Micah
Micah
Senior year and after
The night after graduation, Micah hadn’t minded being the designated driver, because she’d had no intention of drinking. After all, she was pregnant.
That changed at Derek’s party. The drinking part, not the pregnant part.
She hadn’t intended to tell James that night. She’d wanted to just pretend she was a normal eighteen-year-old about to start her adult life. Truth was, she wasn’t going to tell James at all. In fact, she was going to break up with him.
But then she saw him, his sweet face lighting up at the sight of her, and all of a sudden, she wanted to be alone with him, to have him see her the way she used to be one last time.
Because once she told him, or once she broke up with him—whichever she was going to do—this love he had for her would be mangled, if not dead.
So when she saw him at Derek’s, when he looked at her like she was the only person there, she led him upstairs, found the first empty bedroom and started kissing him before she’d even closed the door. Just one more time to be with a person who loved her, or at least thought he did.
He was thrilled. “You sure, Mike?” he asked between kisses. Though the nickname irritated her (was Micah really so hard? Wasn’t there a world of difference between Micah and Mike?), she tugged his shirt over his head, then did the same to hers.
It was when his hands settled on her breasts that she yelped and jumped back. That had hurt.
“You okay?” he asked, his eyes dropping to her cleavage. “Whoa. Um, new bra?”
She looked down, too. Her breasts swelled over the top of her bra, paler somehow, blue veins marbling her white skin.
And James—who had three oversharing older sisters with seven kids between them, all firm believers in breast is best, the type who’d whip out their boobs the instant their babies cried—looked at her, wonder dawning on his face. “Babe, are you . . . pregnant?”
Fuck. And then, in case her boobs weren’t an obvious enough sign, she ran into the bathroom and threw up. James came in and held her hair back and waited till she was done. She rinsed out her mouth, turned to him and said, “Looks that way.”
She was totally unprepared for his reaction.
“Really?” he said, his eyes shining. “Babe, really? That’s amazing!
” He pulled her into his arms and lifted her off her feet.
“I’m so happy! I mean, yeah, it’s not planned, but hey!
A baby!” He kissed her soundly on the mouth, and her heart turned to ash.
He was too good for her. He loved her, and she was fond of him.
Also, the baby wasn’t his. Pretty big detail.
Tell him right now, her brain commanded.
Just say “It’s not yours, James.” As she looked at his face, his sweet, innocent, ridiculously happy face, the words shriveled like a dying leaf.
What eighteen-year-old boy was thrilled that his girlfriend was knocked up?
Who, in this day and age, thought an unplanned teenage pregnancy was a good thing?
“I guess we should get married,” James said, kissing her forehead. He wiped tears of joy out of his eyes. “Wow, Mike. Wow.”
“Okay, chill, first of all,” she said, her voice sounding falsely strong.
“There’s a lot to think about. Like, should we keep it, even?
” Because an abortion would be very convenient.
She didn’t want to get one. No one did, did they?
No one woke up thinking, “You know what I’d like someday?
An abortion.” But it would free her from, well, everything.
From staying in Stafford, which was the absolute last thing she wanted.
From having to work in the bakery. From becoming a clichéd townie teen mom. From having to tell James the truth.
“Oh, dude, we should totally keep it. I mean, I always wanted kids. So what if it’s kind of early in the game? I’ll make good money as a mechanic, and by the time we’re, like, thirty-six, the kid will be in college. Plus, Mike, you know I love you.”
There it was again. Mike. You could count on Mike.
He’d help you move for the price of a cold beer.
She, on the other hand, was not a nice guy.
Or girl. She got around. Oh, she didn’t regret her sexual experiences, which yes, were more than average.
But sleeping with the baby’s father . . .
that she did regret. Because she had pursued him, and she knew he was married, and a father, and, up until two weeks ago, her English teacher. Mr. Bates.
The shame slammed into her like an avalanche.
“We’re not going to get married, James,” she said, her voice hard. “Jesus. Do you want to get stuck in this stupid little town?” It was cruel, because she knew he did.
“It’s not stupid, and why wouldn’t we get married? We’re pregnant.”
“I’m pregnant, James. We are not.”
“Mike. Come on. Let’s do this. Marry me.”
“You know what? You’re so fucking oblivious sometimes.”
He put his hand on her arm, and she jerked away. “Leave me alone,” she said. “Just give me some breathing space, for God’s sake.”
“You’re the one who brought me up here,” he said calmly.
“Well, fine! I’m also the one who’s leaving you up here.” She slammed the door after her. She was mad he wasn’t upset, mad that life was so simple for him, mad that she’d gotten herself into this situation.
She knew she wasn’t supposed to drink, because it wasn’t good for the baby, which was just a clump of cells at this point.
So maybe drinking was the exact thing, because maybe that would bring on a miscarriage, and then she could say nature had taken its course and she wouldn’t have to get an abortion, and she wouldn’t be stuck in Stafford living her mother’s life, and she wouldn’t be tied to the baby’s father or James.
And if that didn’t work, she would get an abortion.
She was eighteen and an immature idiot with no right to be a mother.
She tried to ignore the small, intense pull toward that clump of cells.
Out by the pool, there was an actual tiki bar.
She grabbed a bottle of vodka and slipped off to sit under a tree, alone, and chugged, the liquid burning down her throat.
I’m sorry, she said to the blastocyst—where had that word come from?
She’d pretty much dozed through biology last year.
But her brain had tucked it away, maybe suspecting that she’d end up like this.
Micah had been consumed with the idea of a vagabond’s life since she was eleven and the Porter family took her to Barcelona, a place so teeming with music and flavors and colors that Vermont seemed as dull as a grandmother’s bedroom.
The seed had been planted. Someday, she’d go to Europe and South America, Korea and Thailand, working as needed to pay her way.
Maybe she’d get a gig as a travel writer.
Her future would be an uncharted adventure.
From eleven on, she’d longed to get started, to leave, to live at full speed.
She was the opposite of Eve, who wanted nothing more than to marry a local boy and pop out a couple of kids.
Every single adult in her life had warned her against her plan (or lack thereof) .
. . until Mr. Bates. He was an English teacher, married with three kids, whom he often referenced to keep the teenage crushes at bay.
But Micah didn’t have a crush on him. She simply saw him and knew she wanted to sleep with him.
A man, not a boy. She’d slept with four boys so far, fooled around with a dozen more, because wasn’t that what life was about? Experiencing things?
She knew she was beautiful. She couldn’t not know.
Every other person seemed to comment on it.
“Gosh, you sure turned out pretty, Micah!” a bakery customer might say.
“Have you thought about modeling?” (Answer: Yes, but we live in godforsaken Vermont, and my mother thinks it’s shallow and won’t pay for headshots.) There were the awkward, sweaty confessions from boys: “Your eyes are so blue” or “I’ve loved you since third grade.
” Bitter or envious admissions from girls: “You think you’re all that just because you’re beautiful. ”
And her sister, worst of all . . . Eve, who watched her with a creepy obsession, asking, “Why is your hair so shiny? What conditioner do you use? How come your eyelashes are so long? Are you taking some kind of vitamin? Do you do anything to your lips to make them so red? If I got cheek implants, do you think we’d look more alike? ”
Her beauty got her special treatment from time to time .
. . Gus at the movie theater gave her free popcorn, and the mechanic would change her oil and windshield wiper blades for free.
If someone put unwanted moves on her, she was more than able to shrivel their testicles with her sharp tongue and, once or twice, her strong fist.
The only place her looks didn’t seem to matter all that much was in the Core Four, where it was her sense of humor and irreverence, her ability to find adventures they’d never discover without her—driving to Boston and talking the clerk at the Mandarin Oriental into giving them a suite for $100, or taking the Paradise ski trail at Mad River Glen.
From time to time, her looks were acknowledged, but they were not her defining feature. Not with them.
And then, in October of senior year, Mrs. Collette went on maternity leave. Enter Mr. Bates, who’d be substituting for the rest of the year. Jasmine, Beck and Audrey were in AP English, taught by Mr. Manchette.
Mr. Bates’s eyes met hers that first day when she said, “Here,” during roll call, and an electromagnetic pulse rocked between them. For the first time, Micah felt the full power of her beauty.
It didn’t happen right away. Mr. Bates treated her like any other student. Then he started complimenting her essays, giving her the first A’s she’d had in high school. In December, she wrote a paper on the Himalayas, and he asked her to stay after class.