Twelve
Tovah
EVERY PATIENT HAS MY SISTER’S face. My mother’s. When I landed this hospital volunteer spot, I felt victorious, though I only work a four-hour shift every other week. I wanted more hours, but so did all the other high school volunteers who want to become doctors.
Today four hours might as well be forty. It’s my first shift since our results, and though I’m essentially a delivery girl—ferrying flower arrangements from the front desk to patients’ rooms, ensuring patients have water and blankets—I can’t concentrate.
“Can you deliver this to room 2420?” a nurse asks me from behind a person-size bouquet of roses. The tiny elderly woman is so happy to see it, her eyes well up.
I wonder who will bring flowers for Adina one day.
As I’m leaving the room, the tag outside the door informs me it’s 2240, not 2420, meaning whoever’s in 2420 is flowerless. I’m not about to steal the roses back, so I buy the nicest arrangement in the gift shop I can afford, scribble We’re all thinking of you. Get well soon on the card, and present it to the man in the right room.
I’m relieved when my shift ends. When I pull out my phone in the lobby, I have three missed calls from Lindsay, which is odd because I can’t remember the last time the two of us talked on the phone. I’m debating calling her back—I’m still annoyed with her for essentially ignoring me after the test results—when she calls again.
“Is everything okay?” I ask as I head into the hospital parking garage.
There’s a long, shuddering breath on the end of the line. “No.”
When she doesn’t elaborate, I say, heart rate picking up speed, “You’re going to have to give me more than that. Are you hurt? Is it something with Troy?”
“I’m at the Bartell’s on Forty-Fifth,” she says, “buying a pregnancy test. And I thought I could do it by myself, but I’m on the verge of a meltdown in the pregnancy test aisle, and did they have to put the pregnancy tests right next to the diapers?”
The words “pregnancy test” obliterate every other thought in my head. I unlock my car and jam the key in the ignition. “I can be there in ten minutes.”
Lindsay’s sitting on the aisle floor, hood pulled up over her head.
“Linds.” I sink down next to her and place what I hope is a comforting hand on her shoulder. Obviously I knew Lindsay and Troy were having sex, but we all put condoms on bananas in health class. We learned about the pill and the patch and what our teacher called “outercourse.” While I blushed through the entire sex-ed unit, I was glad no one simply told us “don’t do it.”
“Thanks for coming,” she says. She sniffs but doesn’t cry. “Can you pick one for me? I can’t decide. There’s too many.”
She’s right. Rows and rows of brightly colored boxes loom over us. “Probably not the kind that shows a smiley face if it’s positive?” It’s a horrible joke, but I’m not sure what else to say.
Fortunately, Lindsay’s not offended. “No, probably not,” she says, chewing back a smile. “Get two? To be sure?”
I grab the least pregnancy-is-a-beautiful-gift-looking ones and pull her to her feet and toward the front of the store. With her eyes cast downward, she hands a wad of bills to the red-smocked cashier. The impulse-buy section tempts me; I buy a few pieces of candy, because whatever the outcome of these tests, we’re going to need the mood-boosting phenylethylamine chocolate provides.
We decide without words that I will drive us both to Lindsay’s. I nibble a chocolate bar while we sit in traffic, though Lindsay just plays with the wrapper of the one I give her.
“Does Troy know about this?”
“No. I didn’t want to tell him until I knew for sure,” she says, and maybe it’s the phenylethylamine, but it feels good to have something that, for now, is only mine and Lindsay’s.
Lindsay flips on the lights in her dad’s single-story condo. Her parents divorced a few years ago, and she spends weekdays and every other weekend with her dad because her mom’s busy with school. She worked twenty years as an accountant before realizing it was draining the enjoyment from her life. After the divorce, she adopted two cats and a guinea pig and went back to school to become a veterinary technician.
Lindsay has always wanted to do it right the first time: go to the right school, get the right degree, marry the right person. It’s why she pushes herself with so many AP classes. However, she’s not as certain about what she wants as Adina or Zack or Troy or I am, only that she’ll figure it out once she gets to college. She likes most of her classes but doesn’t seem to deeply love any singular thing.
In the bathroom, Lindsay crosses her legs on the rug and I lean my back against the cabinet next to her.
“How did this happen?” I say as calmly as I can.
Lindsay sighs. “We started having sex without a condom. A couple months ago.”
“Without a condom?” I practically yell, and then get ahold of myself and lower my voice. “Sorry. But . . . without a condom?”
“We’re the only people we’ve ever been with. And I’m on birth control.” Twin pink spots appear on her cheeks. “We wanted to know what it would feel like. Without one.”
My face is burning too. “What did it feel like?”
She digs a hand into her thick black hair and pulls it across her face. Hiding. “I don’t know. Different. But then I missed my period. It’s two weeks late, I think. I’m not great at keeping track.” She yanks more of her hair across her face when I raise my eyebrows at her. “I know. I know. Believe me, I know. So I started googling things last night, and did you know pretty much any minor discomfort can be a pregnancy symptom? Mood swings. Fatigue. I was like, shit, I’m always tired.” She laughs, and this gives me permission to join in.
I’m probably supposed to say something reassuring like, I’m sure you’re not pregnant! But instead I say, “Let’s do this,” and I open one box and she opens the other, and I glance away while she pees on both sticks.
“And now we wait,” she says, perching them on the sink edge.
Wait. Her words knife through my stomach. Lindsay will know right away if her life will change. I had to wait four years.
The next few minutes are quiet, except for the sound of Lindsay yanking at stray threads on the bath rug. Silences aren’t supposed to be uncomfortable between close friends, but this one makes me itchy. Makes me wish I’d talked more in the weeks surrounding my own fateful test—if not to Lindsay, then to Adina, who clearly wanted to.
When her phone timer goes off, Lindsay snatches the two sticks and exhales deeply. “Negative. Thank God,” she says. “I’m going to buy a jumbo box of condoms this weekend.”
We’re lying on pillows on the floor in Lindsay’s room, an empty pizza box between us. Lindsay painted her nails gray and I painted my toes a glittery blue while we quizzed each other on Hamlet for our AP Lit test next week. We have school off tomorrow, and it’s been eons since I spent the night here. I’d forgotten she keeps a bottle of vodka (certified kosher, according to the label) hidden in her underwear drawer, which we drank shots of with our veggie pizza.
I’ve missed all this, as unremarkable as it is.
“Somehow, I thought senior year would be easier,” Lindsay says. “But it’s just as much work as ever. More, actually.”
“It’ll be worth it.”
She examines a smudged gray nail and twists open the polish to touch it up. “Can you believe I applied to fifteen schools? A little excessive, but I have to get out of this gloomy place. California sounds nice. Or Florida, or Arizona . . . somewhere warm.”
“ ‘What made you decide to apply to our fine institution?’ ‘Well, I want to finally get a tan.’ ”
“Direct quote from my application essays.”
High school graduation is an exodus. Most AP kids will be leaving Washington for universities with impressive names. I’ve always known Lindsay and I would end up at different schools in different states, and surely Adina and I will too.
Picturing Adina at conservatory chips at my heart. She’ll be struggling with her result so far away from the rest of us. A harrowing thought slams into me: this might be my last year with my sister, who, despite everything she’s done to me, was once my closest friend. If I haven’t already lost her, I’m in the process of it.
Something on Lindsay’s bookshelf catches my eye. Makes me forget Adina for an instant. That’s the maximum amount of time I can ignore what’s happened to us: a single instant.
“You still have that thing?” I ask as I get to my feet too fast, the vodka warping my surroundings, sloshing my brain around inside my head. I teeter over to the shelf and pull out a slim purple binder.
“I guess so?” Lindsay says, blowing on a nail as I sit back down and splay the binder between us. “I haven’t thought about it in forever.”
The first sheet of paper says ANTI-MAN CLUB in silver Sharpie bubble letters. The rest of the pages are filled with boys’ names and, for lack of a better word, infractions. We passed the binder back and forth throughout middle school and the beginning of high school—right up until Lindsay started dating Troy and was no longer AM enough for the AMC. There are sixty-seven names on it, and it would be a creepy thing to own if either of us was ever on trial for murder.
Maybe a pregnancy scare and the Anti-Man Club will bring Lindsay and me back together.
Lindsay starts reading. “Number twelve, Oliver Kang, for trying to look up my skirt when I was wearing a thong. Number twenty-nine, Cole Hammond. He copied my answers on a test in freshman-year English, and Mr. Jacobs gave us both zeroes. Number thirty: Mr. Jacobs. I haven’t forgiven any of them.” She flips the page. “Hey, Zack’s on here.” She squints at number forty-one, which, sure enough, says Zack Baker-Horowitz. “We wrote ‘Kelsey’ next to his name. Do you have any idea what that means?”
“Yeah. Kelsey Rawlings.” I grit my teeth, remembering. “She was the other sophomore class rep that year. Zack asked me about her. If I thought she’d be interested in him.” The two of them dated for only a month, though.
“And you were jealous.”
“Yes. Yes, I was.” I peek at the list again. “I’m going to show him.” In my altered mental state, it seems like a good idea.
Do you remember that list Lindsay and I made about all the guys we didn’t like?
Zack’s reply appears after a few minutes.
Yes. Troy and I always tried to steal that from you.
I snap a photo of number forty-one. You’re on it.
“What’s going on there? With you and Zack?” Lindsay asks, shutting the binder and settling back against her pillows. I groan. “What? You don’t like him?”
Typically I never have the courage to rip Lindsay from Troy, even when I need her more than he does. Tonight I like having her to myself, even under these strange circumstances. After all, there’s no one else I can talk to about this.
“No . . . I do.” My mind is fuzzy and goopy, my synapses firing slower than usual. I throw back another vodka shot. It burns the back of my throat.
“What is it, then?”
There’s nothing stopping me from acting on my feelings for Zack. That’s part of the gift of this negative result.
“I’m . . . scared. Sometimes I start thinking about being with him, or kissing him, and then my mind inevitably jumps to sex.” I whisper the last word. Why does it feel so weird to say out loud? “I feel like I’m fourteen that it still embarrasses me like this.”
“Troy and I didn’t have sex until we’d been together for a year.”
“What was it like?” Lindsay never gave me details, and I was too shy to ask for them.
A dreamy look falls over her face. “It was nice, but awkward. We were in his car, and I kept thinking someone was going to drive by and see us.”
“And it felt good?”
Cadavers don’t scare me, but when it comes to sex, somehow my own living body does. When I’m running, I know exactly how to push myself. Sex would require relinquishing some of that control. Letting someone else in, both physically (ha) and emotionally. Leaping into an unknown that is all feeling and no logic. Someone touching my body and wondering if they’re comparing me to my sister.
“I mean . . . You know what an orgasm feels like, right? Do you ever”—Lindsay laughs awkwardly—“um, do it yourself?”
My cheeks flame. While I know masturbation is one hundred percent normal, it’s something I’ve never talked about with anyone. “Oh . . .” I say. “Sometimes?”
At some point it became something I do when I can’t fall asleep right away. I’ve only thought about Zack once or twice. Most of the time I read and reread a sexy passage in a book.
“That’s good!” Lindsay insists. “It’s important to know what you like. I had to show Troy what felt good, and he eventually got the hang of it. And it’s actually kind of great to tell someone what you want when you’re that close.”
“That does sound great. Being that close.” I let out a long breath, my face probably still several shades of red, but truthfully, this conversation is extremely enlightening and more of a relief than anything else.
“It doesn’t have to be scary. Okay, it’s mildly terrifying to take your clothes off in front of someone for the first time. But I guarantee they’re not looking at all the flaws you see when you look at yourself in the mirror. When you get to that point with someone, you’re so caught up in them that none of that stuff matters.”
“I doubt I’ll be taking off my clothes in front of anyone anytime soon.” I don’t want my body to be embarrassing—I want to own it, the way Adina does. The way I’m learning Lindsay does.
“If and when you do, you know you can talk to me, right?”
“Yeah. Of course,” I say, but I wonder where this offer to talk was when I was waiting for the results of the genetic test.
Lindsay slides her computer onto her lap and starts googling cat-eye makeup tutorials. She has a couple dozen windows minimized, AP study guides and college websites and financial aid information. My phone lights up with a text.
I was on the list because of Kelsey? Why?
Jealous. Also, it’s entirely possible I’m drunk right now.
Reeeeaallly. So I could ask you all kinds of secrets right now and you’d be too drunk to keep them in?
I show this to Lindsay, who steals the phone and types, My biggest secret is that I’m so hot for you. I yelp, steal it back, and write something a little more innocent.
*zips lips* *unlocks lips to drink more vodka* *rezips lips*
Why were you jealous of Kelsey?
Drunk Tovah is very interesting.
“Linds, I have to ask you something.” Then I force myself to be brave. After all, I’ve already talked about a number of things I never thought I’d talk about. “Is there any reason we haven’t talked about the test? The one I took, I mean.” As though it needs clarification.
Lindsay half frowns at me. “What do you mean? You never bring it up. I’m sorry. . . . I guess I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”
“I don’t know either. It was looming over me for so long, and now it’s . . . not.” But that’s not entirely true. It’s always going to be there, even if it never affects my body and mind.
“How’s Adina handling it?”
“We’ve barely talked, so I honestly have no idea.”
“I’m just so relieved you’re okay,” she says, emphasizing the you’re. “It’s horrible for her, but she’s not going to get it for a long time, right? Decades or something?”
“Yeah. It’s . . . a strange situation for all of us.” I chew the inside of my cheek. Lindsay can say she feels sorry for Adina, but she barely knows my sister. Then again, neither do I.
Lindsay gives me a little hug, as though it makes up for her recent lack of involvement. “Hey. I know what’ll cheer you up.” She clicks to Netflix on her laptop. “Have you seen this show? Everyone says it’s amazing. Troy’s already on episode four, so if we watch three tonight, I can catch up to him.”
“Sure. Okay.”
Whatever closeness I thought I’d regained with Lindsay tonight was fleeting, but instead of paying attention to the show or wondering how to fix our friendship, my mind turns to Adina.
I don’t want to lose her, too.