23. Multiple Choice
You find yourself unexpectedly pregnant at the age of seventeen, halfway through your senior year at boarding school.
Your boyfriend of three and a half years is headed to Dartmouth in the fall while you will be attending Duke University.
You are the Honor Board chair at your school and are well respected by the rest of the student body. Please answer the following questions:
A. Yes
B. No
C. Not yet
The answer to this is easy, Taylor thinks.
C. Not yet. She doesn’t want anything to change between Hakeem and her.
It’s their last semester of high school, they’re both into college, and they’ve both vowed to enjoy every second they have left at Tiffin.
Taylor—out of generosity but also fear—doesn’t want to ruin Hakeem’s senior year.
Yes, technically, it’s his fault she’s pregnant, but because it’s her body and because she can’t possibly expect Hakeem to understand the nuances of a menstrual cycle, ovulation, etc.
(can she?), she feels responsible. She is responsible.
When he begged to have sex just once without a condom, she should have said no.
2. If you don’t tell your boyfriend about the pregnancy, who do you tell?
A. Your mother
B. Your best girlfriend
C. A trusted teacher
D. Other
The answer here would be B—but Taylor doesn’t have a best girlfriend at Tiffin. She’s friends with everyone in her class to the same degree. If pressed, she might call Madison J. her “best girlfriend,” but Madison’s a casual acquaintance compared to Dub.
The answer therefore is D: Other. Other is her best guy friend, who is also her boyfriend’s best friend.
Yes, Taylor does realize how awkward it would be if Hakeem ever found out that Dub knew about the pregnancy while Hakeem was kept in the dark, but Taylor can’t worry about that right now.
She trusts Dub. They have swapped secrets.
3. What do you do about your unexpected pregnancy?
A. Terminate
B. Keep the baby and raise it
C. Have the baby and give it up for adoption
From the moment Taylor saw the positive result on the pregnancy test, her answer has been A.
She’s only seventeen, she’s headed to Duke, she has her proverbial whole life in front of her.
A pregnancy would derail everything, including Taylor’s mental health.
She’s in no way ready to endure a pregnancy and give birth.
It’s only as soon as Dub books her an appointment at a women’s clinic in Northampton for two o’clock on Saturday that Taylor begins to have second thoughts.
Shouldn’t she at least consider answers B or C?
Well, B is out. Neither Taylor nor Hakeem is ready to be a parent.
But what about C? By Taylor’s estimation, the baby is due in early August. She could have the baby, give it up for adoption—granting the dearest wish of some worthy couple—and still start at Duke on time.
Taylor knows that’s what someone stronger than her would do. But it’s beyond her.
Saturday afternoon, Hakeem has an away basketball game at St. Paul’s, so Taylor doesn’t have to lie to him; the team leaves on the bus at noon and won’t be back to camp until after seven.
Taylor thinks that she and Dub will Uber to the clinic, but instead Dub tells her they’re taking Andrew Eastman’s truck.
“Wait,” Taylor says. “Did you tell him?”
“Obviously not,” Dub says. “I just asked if I could borrow it for the afternoon, and he gave me the keys.”
As soon as they pull out of the Back Lot, Taylor starts to cry.
She isn’t morally strong enough to have the baby and give it up.
She’s worried about her parents being angry.
(Would they, like the Benbows, make Taylor come home to finish high school?
It’s too hideous to imagine.) She’s worried about every single person who knows her—from Ms. Robinson to Cassie Lee to her pediatrician, Dr. Gfeller—thinking poorly of her.
Chef Haz. Hakeem’s parents. Her fifth grade teacher, Mr. Hersh.
Her mother’s law partners. Her grandparents.
Taylor also has shallow, stupid reasons for wanting to terminate: She doesn’t want to be pregnant on spring break, she doesn’t want to be pregnant at graduation.
She bawls with abandon. She is a horrible person.
Dub has somehow thought to bring a pack of tissues, which he hands to her without taking his eyes off the road.
“We can stop for cigarettes too,” he says. “If you think that would help.”
“Am I Pippa Sacks?” she asks, and they both smile. Dub is a thoughtful person. Selfless. Taylor could learn from him. “How was your break? Did you hang with Cal?”
“I did,” Dub says. “He told me he loves me.”
“Dub! Did you say it back?”
Dub grins, and the mood in the truck brightens. “I did.”
Dub and Cal are eating second dinner late on Christmas night at the Durango Diner.
They both order “the Cure,” a plate of hash browns topped with cheese, sausage, and two eggs, smothered with green chili sauce.
Somehow they get on the topic of girls. Cal dated the hottest girl at their high school, Bree Gonigle, an Evangelical Christian, who was dead set on hanging on to her virginity until marriage, so sex had never been an issue.
Dub then tells Cal about Cinnamon—how they met at the Move-In Day cookout freshman year and became inseparable.
“Why am I suddenly jealous?” Cal asks. “Is this girl still scheming you from the hallowed halls of Tiffin?”
Dub takes a sip of coffee and burns his tongue. “No. She’s dead.”
Cal reaches across the table for Dub’s hand, and the two of them look at each other for a moment while “Winter Wonderland” plays in the background.
“Do you want to talk about it…?” Cal says.
Dub has never wanted to talk about it with anyone who didn’t know Cinnamon, because how could they possibly understand? But not telling Cal feels like a relationship foul, and so he gives it a shot.
Dub, football; Cinnamon, guitar and theater.
Dub, gay and closeted; Cinnamon, depressed and untreated.
Friday night lights, Monday night Piano Bar, holding hands, FaceTiming after lights out, studying in the Sink, hanging with Hakeem and Taylor, sitting next to each other in class, in Chapel, in the Paddock.
Halloween couples costumes, Snapchat. A teary parting at summer break freshman year, a joyful reunion at the start of sophomore year.
Milkshakes at the Grille, Cinnamon perfecting the backward walk of a Tiffin tour guide, Cinnamon’s bad spells, her sessions with Dr. Pringle, Davi once blaming Dub for Cinnamon’s sadness.
The weekend when Dub slept in Cinnamon’s dorm room, holding her to protect her from herself.
Cinnamon, the only person on the planet who knew Dub’s secret.
“Then one night near the end of sophomore year, she took a bunch of pills she’d been stockpiling. She left a note saying she was sorry.”
“No,” Cal says.
Dub gazes at the artificial tree in the corner of the diner, its boughs dusted with fake snow. “There’s something else.”
“What?”
Dub hesitates.
1. Do you tell your boyfriend of six months about the email attachment left behind by your dead girlfriend?
A. Yes
B. No
C. Not yet—you wait until after graduation, once you know what’s in the attachment
The answer, which Dub prays he won’t regret, is A.
“Cinnamon sent me an email attachment, with strict instructions not to open it until the morning of our graduation.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Not kidding. It’s on my laptop right now.”
“And you haven’t opened it?”
“No. She asked me to wait until May.”
Cal leans across the table. “So you don’t know what’s in it?”
“I do not.”
“How long have you been sitting on it?”
Dub doesn’t even need to think. “Nineteen and a half months.”
“Does anyone else know about this?”
“My mom,” Dub says. “And my friend Taylor.”
“So you’ve told people?”
“Just those two people. And now you.”
Cal stares at Dub until he grows self-conscious.
Cal is so beautiful to him—the thick, dark hair, the ice-blue eyes, two days of growth on his face, his Queens of the Stone Age T-shirt softened by a hundred washings, all the colorful bracelets on his wrist including the rainbow PRIDE bracelet. How did Dub get so lucky?
“I can’t believe how much… integrity you have,” Cal says finally. “Anyone else would have opened it by now.”
“I’m not anyone else,” Dub says.
“I know,” Cal says. “You’re you. That’s why I love you.”
“You love me?”
“Yeah.” Cal plucks an uneaten sausage link off Dub’s plate and pops it in his mouth. “Is that okay with you?”
Dub grins. “I love you too.”
“Well then,” Cal says, and he flags their server for more coffee.
When the maps app on Taylor’s phone announces that they’re two miles away from their destination, Taylor gets a sharp pain in her stomach and doubles over.
“Are you going to puke?” Dub asks. He signals and gently pulls onto the shoulder. Taylor can’t puke in East’s truck.
Taylor groans. The pain is sharp and crampy, and a second later, she feels a wetness between her legs. “I need a bathroom.” She turns to look at Dub. “I think something is happening.”
“What?” Dub says. “What’s happening?”
“Can you find a gas station, please? Like, right now?”
“The clinic is only two—”
“Dub, please!” She’s huddled over her knees, crying again, this time from pain.
Dub pulls back onto the road and hits the gas; the engine roars like an animal. Dub goes five, ten, fifteen miles above the speed limit but no faster; he can’t get a ticket in East’s truck.
Dub talked to Cal that morning and told him that Taylor was pregnant and that he, Dub, was taking her to get an abortion. Cal said, “Is it just me or does your school have a lot of drama?”
Dub spies a Cumberland Farms up ahead and swings into the parking lot. Taylor is audibly breathing. This is bad, he thinks. He should just take her to the clinic, but he knows better than to suggest it again.
She gets out of the car and limps inside.
When Taylor enters the stall and pulls down her jeans, she sees blood everywhere. When she sits on the toilet, it trickles into the water below. She is miscarrying the baby she was about to get rid of, so why does she feel so sad?
She imagines Hakeem standing on the free throw line of the St. Paul’s gym.
Swish. He has no idea that Taylor is in a convenience store bathroom outside Northampton losing their child, a child that Taylor is now certain would have been beautiful and smart and athletic and talented, a child that combined all the best traits of both of them and none of the bad.
She can’t catch her breath, such is her sense of loss.
Real life is not multiple choice, Taylor realizes then. Real life is an essay question with a long, twisty answer that doesn’t always make sense.