Good For You

My arms surround her and I fight to keep my voice level, unwavering. “Tel me.”

“I can’t.”

I stroke her hair. “Yes, you can. Trust me, Dori. You can trust me.”

Her face is pressed to my shirt and she’s shaking. “I got pregnant.” Reverberations hum through my chest, like it’s me who’s crying. “Except for Deb, no one ever knew. Not my parents, not Colin, not my friends. Only Deb.” Oh, hel . “You never told him?”

Words muffled by her knees and my chest, she shakes her head. “He was already… with someone else. He wouldn’t have cared.”

Five-second Epiphany: I did this to Brooke, who did come to me, who did tel me. Even if she had been with another guy—or guys, the relationship was her and me, as failed as it was. I left her with a wretched choice to make and no way out of making it. I checked out, because I could.

Damn, damn, damn. I shove this realization aside for now, because what I owe Brooke, some guy owes Dori—but I’m the only one here to pay it.

“If no one knew, that means you decided not to…” I stop.

“Not to have it.”

Her sobs are the only answer I get. So this Colin guy dumps her, then she finds out she’s pregnant, and her sister helps her take care of it. She’s probably been raised on abstinence, and pro-life to boot. And to top it off, her sister—the only person in the world who helped shoulder this burden—is now one step up from a coma, with no interaction, no emotional connection to be had.

Christ, no wonder she went off the deep end.

Speaking of which, I am in way over my head.

*** *** ***

Dori

I can’t believe I’ve just dumped al of this on him. Minutes ago, we were making out, and he said what he said, and I told him about Colin, and there it was, this secret, beating on the wal s inside where I thought I’d locked it away forever.

Deb and I didn’t discuss it again, after the decision was made and carried out. She tried, once, but I promised her that I was fine and swore I’d rather forget it and get on with that I was fine and swore I’d rather forget it and get on with my life, because that was the reason for the decision in the first place. To get on with my barely fifteen-year-old life.

I faked the flu for a couple of days before going back to school. And then I survived the remaining weeks of my freshman year—seeing Colin in the hal s with his entourage, or his new girl, always smiling, not a care in the world. I learned to cry soundlessly, locked in a bathroom stal , doubled over, the heartache so bad it made me physical y il . I skipped class when I could get away with it, had trouble concentrating when I was there.

Maybe he had no idea what he’d done to me. Maybe he was just a careless boy, with no idea that I would be emotional y crippled by his offhand dismissal. At the time, it felt orchestrated to crush me.

Submerging myself in an endless loop of depressing music and isolation, I was hol ow and faded, a ghost haunting her own life. When summer began, I started spending most of the day in bed with the blinds closed. I contemplated suicide briefly, but couldn’t wrap my head around carrying it out.

Deb had just finished her first year of medical school, and her plans hadn’t included coming home for summer.

Suddenly, though, she was there in her old bedroom across the hal —her tidy shower caddy stored under the sink, her off-key serenade of pop songs in the shower echoing down the hal way every morning. She also resumed volunteering for community service projects—something I’d always been too young to do.

On her third day home, she plopped onto my bed with On her third day home, she plopped onto my bed with her cup of coffee, brushing the hair from my face. “C’mon, lazy butt. Get up. I need your help. These benevolent deeds aren’t gonna do themselves.” I moaned into my pil ow, but didn’t budge. I remember the feel of her fingers pul ing gently through my hair. Maybe not from that morning, exactly, but because I couldn’t remember a time when that wasn’t part of her wake-up-Dori protocol. “Dori, honey.

Listen… maybe you can’t keep this to yourself any longer.

Maybe you need to talk to Mom and Dad.”

I turned over. “You’d be in trouble if they knew.” She shook her head. “I’m a grown woman of twenty-three, and I can take care of myself with our parents. I’m worried about you. Staying in bed al day, not seeing your friends, barely eating anything. You sleep nonstop and stil look exhausted.”

Mom and Dad must have cal ed her. I was the reason she’d come home. They knew about the breakup, because there was no hiding the fact that Colin stopped coming to pick me up on the weekends. When asking me what happened only resulted in tears, they stopped asking. They must have gotten worried when the depression got worse instead of tapering off.

“I’m fine. I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to go on with my life like he never happened.”

She bit her lip. “Okay. If you get up. If you keep getting up every day, eat normal meals, sleep normal hours.” She sniffed lightly. “And if you shower daily, because lord knows you smel like a puppy rol ed in poop right now.” I couldn’t help smiling. It had been so long since I’d smiled that the movement felt unnatural. She leaned her forehead to mine, whispering our declaration of devotion, spoken countless times over many years: “I love you, baby sister of mine.”

“How much?” I played along, whispering back as she swam, blurry through my tears.

“As many grains of sand as there are on al the beaches in al the world,” she recited the words like a tender incantation.