If I Tell Read online

  She forced a smile. “I’m not that old. And hey, you’ll be a big sister. It’ll be fun.”

  “Yeah. Fun.” I choked on a bitter laugh. “At least the baby will be half black. People might believe I’m actually related to someone in the family now.”

  I glanced around the café, wishing someone would come and interrupt us, wishing Jackson would accidentally start a fire behind the counter, anything to get me away from this conversation with my mom. When my gaze returned to her face, I winced at the need in her eyes. As if she wanted my approval. Needed it. “When did you find out?” I asked, my voice weak and crackling as I tried to sound like I was happy for her.

  “Yesterday. At my physical. When I couldn’t remember when I’d had my last period, my doctor insisted on a test. Voilà! Pregnant.”

  “How’s Simon taking it?” I asked, chewing on my lip. I already had a pretty good idea.

  Mom played with her hair, a hint of a giggle back on her lips. “I think it kind of freaked him out. That’s what I get for dating a younger man.” She lifted her shoulder and took a quick sip of her decaf and then put the mug down.

  “He went out last night with his brother. To celebrate.” She made air quote marks with her fingers. “He was hung over and snoring in bed when I went to work this morning.” She looked down, tracing a finger along the rim of her mug. “He hasn’t gotten drunk in a long time. I guess he just needed to deal with the news.”

  “I guess he did.” My voice cracked again at the end of the sentence.

  She glanced up. “It’s no big deal. He’s not usually a big drinker.”

  Which was a good thing, apparently.

  She folded a hand across her belly, oblivious to the thoughts bouncing around in my head.

  “Anyhow, he’ll be a great dad. I know he will. Once he’s used to the idea. He likes kids. ”

  Yeah. I’ve seen that too.

  She crossed her legs and leaned back, and I noticed the men watching her with matching expressions of disappointment and openly eavesdropping on our conversation now.

  “I’m already past the worst part of pregnancy, and I didn’t even know it. How funny is that?”

  “Hilarious. Hey, I know. Maybe I’ll get pregnant too. You could be a pregnant grandma. Now that would be funny.”

  “Jaz.” She uncrossed her leg and then glared at the men, not as unaware of them as she’d pretended to be. They quickly concentrated on their coffee.

  “I thought you’d be a little happier, you know? You and Simon are friends. He’ll be like a stepdad now.”

  A wave of nausea gnawed at my stomach. “He’s not my stepdad.” I pushed myself away from the table. I couldn’t be the one to ruin everything for her. Not now. But I also couldn’t make it through another minute with her.

  “Listen. I meant to tell you right away that I have an English project to finish. I forgot about it, but it’s pretty important and I have to get it done this weekend. Can we go shopping another day?” I stood up.

  “Really?” She blinked quickly. “I mean, sure. I was hoping you’d help me pick out some maternity clothes, but yeah, I guess we can do it another time.”

  “I really do have to go,” I said, feeling worse.

  “You sure you’re okay?” she asked. “You’re not upset about me and Simon?”

  “I’m fine. Just, you know, swamped with work.” My toe tapped up and down, wanting to run.

  “You like Simon, right?” Her eyes widened. Her bottom lip quivered a tiny bit. “I thought you’d be excited about a baby.”

  “I’ll see you soon.” Instead of answering, I turned from the table and bolted.

  The truth was that I had liked her boyfriend. Cougar Bait I called him as a joke because of his age. Too young to be my dad. He was one of the few black people I knew, and we’d gotten along great.

  Until last night.

  Because last night at Marnie O’Reilly’s party, my life had suddenly morphed into a bad imitation of The Jerry Springer Show.

  It was Simon. Simon with his tongue down the throat of Lacey Stevens. My mom’s boyfriend with my best friend. And how could I possibly tell my mom that now?

  chapter two

  My back pressed against the brick wall of the school as I huddled over my guitar, blocking out the rest of the world and lost in the lyrics to a new song. My cell rang, interrupting my thoughts, and my stomach swooped like a seagull diving for a fish.

  Oh, God, please don’t let it be Lacey.

  Of course, chances weren’t great since hardly anyone called instead of texting. Even Grandma texted. But for some reason, Lacey hated it.

  I put down my guitar and scooted across the cool grass. Reaching inside my backpack, I grabbed the phone and checked call display. Just as I’d suspected. Lacey. I switched the ringer off and tossed the phone back in my bag.

  “Jaz.”

  I lifted my hand to shield out the sun and peered into the shredded knees on a pair of jeans. “Hey, Ashley. Nice tips.” Ashley’s short blond hair had pink ends today. She rotated the color of her hair tips in a random pattern. Pink, green, blue. She said the colors had to do with her moods, but I hadn’t figured out which color meant what frame of mind.

  “Not all of us have your awesome spiral curls. I do what I can with what I’ve got,” Ashley said in her high-pitched voice. When we first met, she’d confessed to hating that she sounded like Minnie Mouse. Her observation made me laugh, but I didn’t admit it was kind of true because it obviously bugged her. After she’d told me that, I’d suspected we’d be friends.

  “So I thought we were going to meet in the Cave to study before class.” Her voice dipped a little lower, the way it did when she wasn’t happy. The Cave was an old teachers’ lounge converted into a study hall for students. In theory, teachers patrolled it, but mostly they left us alone in there as long as nothing illegal or too noisy went on.

  “Oh, shoot. I forgot. I’m so sorry.” I dropped my gaze to the grass. I’d totally blanked out on our study date. Stupid of me, especially since our friendship was still pretty new and I didn’t want to lose her, the only person my age I wanted to hang out with. She’d just transferred to Westwind for senior year.

  “You forgot about studying?” Ashley held out her slim hand to help me up. “Miss ‘I like to study more than a normal person my age should ever want to’? Is everything all right?”

  “I guess.” I grabbed her hand and pulled, and she stumbled since she’s shorter than me.

  We both laughed as she got her balance. I put my guitar in its case and then bent to pick up my backpack and slung it over my shoulder. “I’ve got a lot on my mind. I really am sorry.”

  Ashley tilted her chin, watching me. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Not really.”

  Ashley turned toward the front doors. “Okay.” Her body language said “slighted,” but I couldn’t do anything about it.

  “So you’ve probably been up since six to swim this morning?” I said to change the subject.

  “Quarter to five. We swam at five-thirty.”

  I groaned but admired her discipline. Ashley swam competitively at the pool next to her old high school, and though she didn’t talk about how good she was, I’d checked her out online and found she held a bunch of records. When I’d asked her about it, she’d shrugged. She’d been much more reactive when I told her I hated to swim. It wasn’t entirely true. I just never really got over the time I almost drowned in fourth grade.

  “You want to come to the pool after school? I have a lane to myself for two hours. I could spend some time teaching you the front crawl. I have extra suits.” She’d become determined to get me in the water, positive she could teach me to swim.

  “I have to work tonight.”

  “Well, another night then. I’m not giving up. No one should be afraid of the water. You have a natural swimmer’s build. I bet you’d be really good once you got going.”

  “Always optimistic, aren’t you, Ashley?” />
  “I can’t believe you don’t swim,” she mumbled.

  I shrugged, but in my head I pictured the kids surrounding me in the YMCA pool when I’d been eleven. Swimming around me, blocking me from reaching the ledge, laughing while I panicked and forgot what I’d learned about staying afloat in water and dog-paddled in circles. Terror banged in my chest as I’d struggled to breathe. My head started bobbing up and down while I heard distant gleeful shouts that my color was rubbing off and making the water dirty. I’d thrashed around, trying to keep my head above the water. The faces of my classmates flashed in and out in front of me, laughing and screeching as I struggled.

  And then, the surreal panic fled and turned into an absolute certainty that I was going to die. The realization had calmed me, and I’d stopped fighting against the pull of the water taking me under. My lungs stopped burning, and an exquisite sensation of peace took over. I could remember the tangible feeling even now. Six years later. Death welcoming me.

  “I can’t even float properly,” I said to Ashley, trying to push away the memory.

  She pffted at me. “When’s the last time you tried?”

  I shrugged. I vividly remembered the shame. When I didn’t come back up, the lifeguard must have finally noticed it wasn’t just fun and games in the circle of kids. Maybe their screams changed to panic. I didn’t remember him jumping in to rescue me or giving me mouth-to-mouth or anything else until I started breathing again and threw up all over myself.

  I’d never gone swimming again after that day. At first I’d been certain that if I put myself in water again, I would die. Or that my color really would rub off and dirty everyone. As I got older that faded, but somehow even the thought of slipping on a bathing suit panicked me. Standing there so exposed.

  “You just haven’t been taught properly. I’m a good teacher,” Ashley said.

  She probably was. But I wasn’t interested.

  The whole fourth grade had been in on it. The ones who didn’t actually block me in the water had turned their heads. The teachers and parent volunteers had missed it. Afterward, not one of the kids ever said a thing about their part in my “accident.”

  After that day, everyone sort of stopped paying attention to me. I learned to take a book outside until we outgrew recess. I never knew if they stopped caring about me because they felt guilty they’d almost killed me, or if they were actually disappointed I hadn’t drowned.

  “I will get you swimming,” Ashley said.

  “You can always dream,” I said lightly.

  Ashley and I stopped then to avoid being plowed over by a group of rowdy boys. They bumped past us yet managed to completely ignore us as if we weren’t even there.

  “So. I didn’t see you at Marnie’s party over the weekend. I thought you’d be there,” she said after the boys went past.

  We went to my locker, and Ashley leaned against the wall while I dialed in my combination.

  “I actually was there for a while,” I told her as I reached for my English books from the top shelf of my locker. “I took off early.” Gently I stood my guitar at the back of the locker.

  “Fight with your boyfriend?” She grinned.

  “Nathan is not my boyfriend.” I scrunched my nose as if something smelled bad, shoved my backpack onto the top shelf, and slammed the door shut.

  Ashley licked her lips. They were always chapped from the pool. “Maybe not, but he likes you.”

  “He likes anything that moves.”

  “Well, except me. He’s not into lesbians.” She laughed.

  “I’m sure he would be, given the opportunity.”

  Ashley laughed again. “True.”

  Nathan was Lacey’s roommate and a regular at Marnie’s parties, which is where I’d met Ashley the summer before senior year. She had lost an old pocket watch she always carried around in her back pocket and was wandering around upset. When I asked her why, she’d fought off tears and I’d helped her search for the watch. We eventually found it under the cushion of a couch and then bonded over warm, alcohol-free Cokes in the living room, surrounded by a bunch of surprisingly mellow drunks.

  Ashley didn’t drink because she swam every day except Sunday and didn’t want to deal with hangovers or a pissed-off coach. I didn’t drink because losing control made me crazy, so we were the always the youngest and straightest people at Marnie’s parties, which weren’t exactly meant for the high-school crowd.

  Ashley used to hang out a lot with an older girl who I’d assumed was her girlfriend, but the other girl had been off in the kitchen smoking dope or something the night Ashley lost the watch, and after that they didn’t hang out anymore. I figured they’d broken up, but Ashley didn’t talk much about her love life. That was okay, because I didn’t talk about mine. Easier, perhaps, since I didn’t have one.

  Ashley and I headed down the hallway crowded with kids rushing to class.

  Everyone at Westwind knew Ashley was gay and that she’d transferred over from the other high school in town because she’d had enough of bullying. I think most of the Westwind student body wanted to seem cooler, so no one bothered her. We couldn’t beat their football team but we could tolerate the first lesbian in Tadita high-school history. The first open one anyhow. Go Westwind.

  Mostly everyone treated her the same way they treated me. They ignored her. This late in the game, that didn’t seem to bother Ashley.

  “Lacey was really out of it at the party,” she said after a moment.

  “What else is new?”

  Ashley glanced sideways at me but didn’t comment. Lacey had never made an effort to get along with her, but Ashley wasn’t the type to trash talk.

  “You’ll never guess who did show up,” Ashley said as we maneuvered our way around bodies going the opposite direction.

  I didn’t guess.

  “Your mom’s boyfriend, Simon.”

  “No kidding?” I kept my voice level, my eyes straight ahead.

  “He came by to pick up his younger brother. Simon was the one who ended up getting wasted, though, and Damien ended up driving him home.”

  Before she said anything else, I cut her off. “What an idiot. It’s like he’s trying to recapture his youth or something.”

  “Simon’s not that much older than Marnie. He’s younger than your mom, right?”

  “I have no idea how old Marnie is,” I said as we slipped inside our English class. We slid into chairs in the relative safety of the middle row just as the bell rang.

  “Twenty-two,” Ashley supplied.

  I peeked at the back of the room where Jackson usually sat. He raised an eyebrow and tilted his head.

  “Hey,” he mouthed.

  I couldn’t help a slight smile but forced myself to turn away, ignoring the little solo jig my stomach performed. So, we were going to acknowledge each other now? With an effort I forced myself not to look back again. I failed, and when I peeked, he was smiling. I dropped my gaze to my desk, my cheeks blazing.

  At the front of the class, Mr. Dustan began giving instructions. His favorite student came around and dropped exams on our desks. When I finished the test, I looked back at Jackson. As if he felt my eyes on him, he glanced up and raised his pencil in the air, saluting me. A smile turned up my lips, but I got up and took my paper to the front of the class and left.

  Alone.

  ***

  When I walked into the living room, Simon was sprawled on Grandma’s comfy leather couch. He made me sick, so I focused on Grandma and ignored him.

  Not a strand of her storm-cloud-colored hair was out of place. She looked a little frail in her old-lady jeans and yellow cardigan, but under it was one tough woman. The only time I’d ever seen her cry was after Grandpa Joe died. And that was only once. Never since.

  On the couch opposite Simon, Mom looked relaxed, but obviously appearances could be deceptive. I’d bet money she’d only included me in her meeting with Grandma to be a buffer, in case Grandma disapproved of her pregnancy. Grandma would p
lay it down in front of me. To her, I was still a child.

  “Hey, Jaz, my second favorite lady. How’s your song writing going?” Simon sounded on the verge of revealing the punch line to a secret joke.

  “Second?” Grandma asked. “What about me?”

  He threw back his head and laughed. “It’s a tie.” He held up his hands in defense.

  I rolled my eyes. “Can you get on with this? I have to go to work.” Their news was not something I wanted to hear over and over again. I’d rather go back in time and erase everything. Maybe I’d start with Simon’s existence. He frowned at me but I paid no attention, fighting to keep in my anger and the desire to stand up and tell everyone what I’d seen. The low-down dirty dog.

  My stomach grumbled and I glanced at the coffee table. As always, Grandma had snacks laid out on her expensive china. She didn’t like fancy things going to waste and used the china at every opportunity. She had the same metabolism as me and believed in eating carbs. I grabbed a homemade cinnamon bun off a plate and shoved a chunk in my mouth as I plunked myself in the La-Z-Boy chair off to the side of the couches.

  Simon stared at me, tugging on his earlobe. “How’s it going, Jaz?” he asked, tilting his head. “Everything all right?”

  I pointed to my full mouth, chewing slowly. He’d have to get used to silence and snarky answers. Our friendship was so over.

  “She’s at the top of her class with most of her grades,” Grandma bragged. “And still a musical genius. Always on her guitar and writing new songs.”

  I shoved more cinnamon bun in my mouth and kept chewing. I could add I was still pretty much socially inept to even things out.

  “Beauty and brains,” Mom said, smiling at me a little too hard.

  “Good thing she takes after her grandma,” Grandma said.

  Mom snorted. “Well. On that fitting note. We have a surprise for you.” Mom leaned forward and picked her purse up off the floor. She unzipped it and pulled out a small, blue velvet box and thrust it into Grandma’s hand.

  Simon leaned forward, watching them with his huge paw-like hand reaching up to cover his mouth. His lips were turned up in a smile, and I wanted to snatch it off his face. What right did he have to look excited?