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.She looked like she might cry.“Look at you!”I turned around to see Scarlett, much as I’d left her upstairs minutes ago, except maybe larger, if that was possible.She was at nine months almost exactly, her belly protruding up and outward so it was always the very first thing you noticed when she came into a room.Her dress had been made especially by Cameron’s mother, a seamstress, who was so happy Cameron was actually going to the prom that she spent hours, days, making the perfect maternity prom dress.It was black and white, with a semi-drop neck that showed off Scarlett’s impressive bosom, an empire waist, and it fell gently over her knees.She really did look good, if huge.But it was the smile on her face, wide and proud, that made it perfect.“Ta-da!” she said, sweeping her arms over herself and back down again, as if she was a prize on a game show.“Crazy, huh?”She just stood there, grinning at me, and I had to smile back.Since we’d decided we would go to the prom and fulfill our Seventeen daydreams, nothing had been normal.But then, nothing had been normal, or even close to normal, for a while.Since January, something had changed.It was all subtle, hard to see with the naked eye, but it was there.The way my mother held her tongue when I knew she was dying to offer an opinion, to dominate a conversation—to be my mother.She’d take a breath, already gathering words, and then stop, let it out, and look hard at me as something passed between us, imperceptible to the rest of the world.She’d backed off just enough, focusing on other things: selling Grandma Halley’s house and visiting her often, as well as the new book she’d started writing about her experiences being a daughter again.Maybe I’d be in this one.Maybe not.As for Macon, I hadn’t talked to him much since that night in my side yard.He seemed to be coming to school even less, and when he did I was skilled at avoiding him.But I still felt a pang whenever I saw him, the way I still felt a soreness in my wrist every morning, or a pain in my ribs when I lay a certain way at night.In March, when I heard his mother had kicked him out, I worried.And in mid-April, when I heard he was dating Elizabeth Gunderson, I cried for two days straight.I made myself concentrate on something more important: the baby.I saw it, small and hardly recognizable, when we had the ultrasound during Month Six.It had hands and feet and eyes and a nose.The doctor knew the sex, but Scarlett didn’t want to know; she wanted it to be a surprise.We had a baby shower at my house, inviting Cameron and his mother, the girls from the Teen Mothers Support Group, and even Ginny Tabor, who bought the baby a huge stuffed yellow duck that quacked when you squeezed it.But something was wrong with it, and it quacked whenever you picked it up, and then wouldn’t shut up until you took its head off, an option we never had with Ginny herself.Cameron’s mother sewed a beautiful layette set, and my parents gave Scarlett ten babysitting coupons, for whenever she needed a break.For my gift, I had blown up a recent picture of me and Scarlett, sitting on her front steps together.Scarlett’s belly was huge, and she had her hands folded over it, her head on my shoulder.I had it framed and Scarlett immediately hung it over the baby’s crib, where she or he would see it every day.“The three of us,” she said, and I nodded.And then we just waited, circling in a holding pattern, while the due date got closer and closer.We planned.We bought a baby name book and made lists of good ones: something simple, not bringing to mind someone else, like Scarlett’s, or needing a paragraph of explanation, like mine.We both knew how far a name could take you.We went to Lamaze classes, me sitting in a long row of fathers, her head in my lap.We were the youngest ones there.We breathed and we pushed, and I tried to tell myself that I could handle this when it happened, that I could do it.Scarlett was scared and tired, with all that huffing and puffing, and I always nodded at her, confident.And Marion had come around.She acted like she was firm on adoption until about Month Seven, early March, when I walked in on her in the nursery.The sun was slanting through the window, warm and bright, bouncing off the yellow walls, and the constellations Cameron had painted on the ceiling.Everything was ready: the clothes all folded in the drawers, the crib and changing table in place, the stroller finally assembled (with the help of a neighbor, who was an engineer and the only one who could figure out the instructions).She was just standing there, arms crossed, surveying it all with a smile on her face.And I knew it then.There’d never been a question of where this baby was going or who it belonged with.Of course, when she saw me she turned around and scowled, muttering something about paint fumes, and hurried out.But that was Marion.I knew what I had seen.And lastly, I walked with Scarlett to the mailbox as she carried the letter we’d worked and re-worked, all these months.Dear Mrs.Sherwood, it began, You don’t know me, but I have something to say.She dropped it in, the mailbox door clanked, and there was no going back.If we heard from her, we heard from her.If not, this baby had enough love to carry on.And now, on May twelfth, we were going to the prom [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]