Holland

New York is amazing, exactly what I needed to take my mind off of King. Daddy’s meeting us at the hotel in Manhattan this morning. Mama and I flew in last night so we would be well rested for a Saturday full of touring the school and dorms, but even with all the excitement, I can’t shake the feeling of emptiness that’s been boring a hole through me all week. I’m actually kind of pissed that it’s affecting my Juilliard experience. If I hadn’t met King, I would be one hundred and ten percent peeing in my pants excited, but instead, I’m dark and gloomy inside. I put on a smile and fake it till I make it in front of my parents so they won’t be suspicious. I mean, this is my chance to study with the best of the best in the world. There should be no reason for me to be down in the dumps.

“You almost ready, honey?” Mama says from the adjoining room of the hotel suite.

“Yeah, I’ll be right there. I just have to find my shoes. Have you seen my white Converse?”

“Oh, Holland, do you have to wear those things? They aren’t very feminine or professional.” Mama is standing in the door with her hands on her hips.

“Yes, Mama, I do. We’re going to be doing a lot of walking, and I don’t want blisters on my feet. I’m wearing a skirt, see?” I say in my own defense, spinning in a circle to show that I’ve taken her advice to dress up a little. It’s a long, straight black eyelet skirt with a slit up the back. I didn’t have anything to do with this outfit, though. Savannah chose the white sleeveless blouse with a multicolored striped blazer. It’s hers. She insisted I break away from my black and white habit and add some color to my—in her own words—‘pathetically dull and boring’ ensemble. She wouldn’t approve of the shoes either, but I don’t care. This outfit’s modest, comfortable, and versatile—very much like me.

Mama rolls her eyes and turns to finish getting ready to go meet Daddy. I find my shoe tucked in the bottom my duffle bag. I swear I packed them both in my suitcase . . . Savannah. That brat tried to sabotage me. She hates Converse, says they’re clunky and sloppy. The nerve. And for some reason, she especially hates this pair that says Love down the back of the heel and Life on the other. I’m trying really hard to love life right now, so the shoes are my way of saying fuck this whole thing with King.

After a quick ride in a disgusting cab that smells like a mixture of barf and sweat, we walk past the reflecting pool in Lincoln Center and into my new home away from home, The Juilliard School. The June Noble Larkin lobby entrance is open and inviting, and I’m shocked that this enormous, foreign place actually feels like home the second I set foot inside.

“Sweetie, close your mouth,” My mom says, reaching out to actually close my mouth for me while Daddy brushes her hand away.

“Oh, leave her be, Gloria. She’s taking it all in. It’s pretty impressive, isn’t it, Princess?” Daddy’s arm circles my shoulder, pulling me into a side hug. God, I love him. He’s such an honest, patient, generous man that sometimes I wonder how he ended up with my mama—not that she isn’t great too. She’s just the opposite of him in every way possible.

“Yeah. Wow, it’s so much bigger than I thought. The pictures didn’t do it justice.”

“Nothing but the best for you,” Daddy says. His warm, smiling eyes are on me, and I have the sudden urge to cry. This is it; this is what I’ve worked my whole life for, what they have worked so hard to give me.

“Oh now, none of that, Princess. This is gonna be a fun day. no crying.” He gives me one more quick squeeze before opening the door to my future.

Juilliard is impressive and inspiring. After an hour of touring The Paul Recital Hall, The Peter Jay Sharp theater, one of ninety-eight private practice rooms, a library that houses original manuscripts by Beethoven and Mozart, and the classrooms where I’ll be taking my liberal arts classes, we are ready to head over to the dorms. Our guide suggests a lunch break first, though, so we roam the streets of Manhattan and settle on a little Italian restaurant where we stuff ourselves until we’re nauseated with the best pasta I’ve ever eaten.

An hour and a half later, our guide meets us in the lobby of The Meredith Wilson Residence Hall and we take an elevator to the seventh floor to tour a dorm suite. My parents haven’t told me anything about my living arrangements. They wanted it to be a surprise, but I couldn’t wait to see so I Googled it. I know that each suite is set up for eight students, including a common area in the center, with five connected bedrooms—three doubles and two singles. I’m assuming I will be in a double, as it’s less expensive, and I kind of like the idea of not being totally alone.

“This is nicer than my first apartment,” Mama says quietly, gazing out a bay window at the panoramic view of the Lincoln Center and Manhattan.

“Are you happy, Princess?” Daddy asks. He thinks this is the first time I’ve seen the dorms.

“Yeah, of course, Daddy. It’s beautiful. I can’t believe how much space there is.”

“Wait until you see upstairs. They have a fitness center and private practice rooms. No more driving to STRINGS to practice,” he says.

Our afternoon is long and exhausting. After looking through the room and all of the amenities in the residence hall, we are allowed to return to the school to wander around on our own.

When we get back at the hotel, I collapse into bed and thank God I wore my Converse. My feet ache, but it would have been so much worse if I’d worn the pumps Mama wanted me to wear.

I lay in the dark and listen to my parents chat in the room next door. You’d think they were going to be the ones living here next fall. It’s sorta cute how they banter back and forth, until I hear Mama kiss Daddy and tell him she would love to be a doe-eyed freshman if he were her professor. Ew. I get up and quietly close the adjoining door and turn on the light. My phone beeps and my heart skips a beat. I haven’t thought of King all day, but like Pavlov’s dog, the beep of an incoming text makes me hopeful. It feels like an eternity since I’ve seen his ruggedly handsome face or heard his gruff voice, and now every molecule in my body aches for his touch. Just like that, my long, happy day full of sensational new experiences turns to shit.

I toe off my shoes and kick them across the room into the bathroom and flop on my bed with a huff. I know it’s not him, but a tiny part of me wants to believe it is, so I hold the phone face down against my chest so I can’t see who it is. It beeps again, and again and again. Savannah. She’s popped my fantasy bubble with her relentless texting. I tilt the screen up and read her messages.

How’s the big apple? How was your tour?

Holland. I’m talking to you.

Don’t ignore me, woman.

Hey. Best friend Savannah here. Remember me?

My God, she’s impatient.

Keep your panties on, woman! It went great, dorms are nice and the views are phenomenal. NYC is the biggest place I’ve ever seen. Sorta scary. I think I’ll stay at school or the dorm for the entire four years . . .

No way. You have to get the whole big city experience, ride the nasty subway, get lost looking for museums, hang out in Central Park, party in clubs—oh wait, scratch that, sorry. How are you anyway?

Clubs . . . ugh . . . I can safely say that I will not be setting foot in a dance club ever again, even when I am twenty-one and legal. I think I’ve had enough of that scene to last a lifetime. I lie and tell her I’m fine and everything’s fine, but she knows fine is a blanket term for about a million things. This time fine means I’m horrible and struggling, but I’m still alive. She gets it, like only a best friend can, and steers the conversation away from any topic that might make me think of King, but it’s pointless. I’m alone and tired and emotionally spent; essentially, I’m weak. I want to call him, text him, reach out and tell him I’m thinking about him, and I miss him. I’d kill to watch his dark eyelashes fan up and down lazily, to feel his rough fingers trail up and down my bare backside while he holds me against his chest.

I’ve stopped texting and it’s my turn to reply, but I’m busy daydreaming about King, so when the phone actually rings in my hands, I jump and drop it on my face.

“Ow,” I shout, fumbling with the phone to answer it.

“Stop thinking about him,” Savannah says sternly.

“How did you know?”

“Lucky guess. You haven’t responded for like five minutes, stupid. You were either asleep or thinking of him.”

“So you risked waking me up after my long day?” I say.

“Had to be sure. Now go to sleep. Think of that crazy school of yours and how cool it’s gonna be when you don’t have any parents around to tell ya what to do.” I sigh heavily into her ear. Easier said than done.

“Yes, ma’am,” I say, dragging out the yes.

“Okay, night, don’t let the big city bed bugs bite.” She’s giggling now, because she knows how much I hate the thought of sleeping on sheets in a bed that millions of other people have slept on before me. They could have bedbugs—real ones.

“Shut up.”

“Shutting. Laters, baby.” Her Fifty Shades of Grey reference makes me smile. We watched FSOG with Mika one weekend when we were supposed to be studying. If my mama knew about that, she’d be as shocked as I was while watching it. I was aware of the basics about sex, but I’d never seen anything like that. I chalked it up to an educational experience while those two made crude remarks and laughed their horny asses off.

* * *

“You’re burning,” I say. Savannah has somehow fallen asleep under the scorching hot Houston, Texas sun. It’s the fourth of July and one hundred degrees in the shade. I’m panting and nauseous, desperately in need of a dip in her pool, and she’s just over there in her lounger softly snoring, one hand limp at her side, still loosely holding a romance novel she was reading earlier. I don’t know how she does it.

“Huh?” Her grip on the book tightens as she starts to come around.

“I said you’re burning, Sleeping Beauty, and I’m dying over here. Let’s get in the water before I puke all over your deck.”

“Gross. Okay, okay, ya don’t have to get all dramatic on me.” She sits up and pokes at her chest and belly, testing to see if she’s truly burned.

“Eh, it’s all good, just a little pink.”

I raise my eyebrows when she looks at me. She’s a lobster in denial.

“You must have sun stroke. You’re fried,” I say.

“Come on, pukey, let’s swim.” She waves her arm in the direction of the pool and jumps up. How the hell does she do that? I’m dizzy when I stand up slowly and carefully in this heat, but she can go from zero to sixty in ten seconds without blinking an eye. I’m more sensitive to the sun, I guess, which is weird because she’s the one with blonde hair and fair skin, and I’m as dark as my daddy in the summer.

Savannah jumps into the deep end feet first, holding her nose, and I ease in via the stairs in the shallow end and meet her halfway across the pool.

“It’s like bath water.” I wrinkle my nose and shade my eyes with one hand.

“It’s been hot as hell for three weeks straight. It never gets to cool down,” she says, smoothing her wet hair away from her face with both hands and wringing the remaining water from it.

“You wanna go inside? You don’t look so great, pukey.”

“Stop calling me that, and yes, I need to lay down.”

“I think you’re the one with sunstroke, pukey,” she says, exaggerating her new nickname for me. I cup my hands together and shove a wave of water into her face. I squeal and turn to swim away before she attacks me.

I hate that she calls me that all the time now. I had the flu and I’m still recovering, but she just won’t let it drop. Savannah may be the motherly one in our friendship, but she’s totally not into sick people, so when she had to spend a week holding my hair and bringing me Sprite, she decided to punish me with a nickname.

Mama had to work, so she begged—or more like blackmailed—Savannah to help me. She saw Savannah come home a couple of mornings at dawn when her mama was at work. She promised not to tell if she stayed with me while I was sick. She wanted to know for sure that somebody was going to be here with me, and Savannah didn’t want to risk being punished.

When Savannah opens the sliding glass door on her porch, I gulp in the cold air-conditioned air and make a beeline for the couch, where I flop down on my back and pull my towel tight around my body.

“Shit, now I’m freezing,” I say.

“Well duh, you’re all wet, and you know my mama keeps the thermostat at like 70. Ya wanna go back outside?”

“God, no. I’d rather freeze. I can’t breathe out there.” I turn onto my side and curl into a ball, watching Savannah strut around the kitchen dripping wet, fixing us some sweet tea with not so much as a shiver.

“You gonna be okay to go to fireworks tonight?”

“Yeah, I should be fine once the sun goes down.” I hope. I really don’t want to miss it. Savannah is dating a boy from our little group of friends, and everyone is getting together to watch the fireworks and build a bonfire on the beach. Savannah ditched her summer itinerary after the debacle with King and me, but she’s still trying to pack as much fun into our last summer together as possible.

“Good, because I don’t want Troy to see me holding your hair back while you barf into the ocean.” She smiles and hands me my tea. I finish half the glass in one drink.

“You’re so compassionate, thanks,” I say, rolling my eyes and setting the glass on the coffee table.

“When’s your mama gonna be home?” I ask as she drops herself into a recliner sideways, dangling her long, tan legs over the arm.

“Not till eight. They close at seven, but she has to clean up.”

“The grill or the salon?” I ask. Her mama has to work at a bar and grill, a hair salon, and a nursing home to keep their house since her daddy left them.

“The grill. The salon’s closed on the 4^th of July, and the grill doesn’t get any business after six because of the fireworks and all.”

“Okay, do you have to check in or anything?” I need to go home and show my face before my parents go to their friend’s house for a BBQ.

“Nope, we can go whenever. She’s going out with Daniel. I probably won’t see her till tomorrow.”

“Is Daniel the big guy with long blonde hair or the Harley guy?” I ask. Her mama’s been through a dozen guys in the last month alone. I can’t keep up.

“No, silly. Both of those guys are old news. Daniel’s the slick, sexy suit she’s been seeing for a week or so. He’s hot and mysterious and . . . hot.” Wow. For her to say he’s hot twice, he must be volcanic. She’s not usually into her mama’s boyfriends. This one must be different.

“Is he nice?” I ask.

“Yeah, like really polite and stuff. He’s always shaking my hand and calling me Miss Savannah. I think she really likes this one.”

“That’s good, right? I mean, it’s been a couple of years since . . . well . . .”

“Since my piece of shit daddy ditched us and left my mama twisting in the wind financially and emotionally and me fatherless? You don’t have to pussyfoot around, Holland. It’s okay, and yeah, this could be really good if he treats her right and doesn’t turn out to be someone fake or into something illegal. Mama isn’t usually the best judge of character. She follows her heart all the time.”

Ouch. She wasn’t referring to my relationship with King, but ‘hot’ and ‘into something illegal’ hit pretty close to home.

“Sorry.” I twist my lips and press them together. I really do feel bad for both of them, and I admire her mama’s ability to bounce back. I wasn’t married for twenty years like Savannah’s mama, but deep feelings are deep feelings, and I’m not sure I’ll ever bounce back after King.

* * *

The bonfire was fun until it wasn’t. We were all oohing and ahhing over the fireworks that were being launched up the beach when my flu decided to come back with a vengeance. Troy was in fact a witness to Savannah holding my hair back while I violently threw up at the edge of the ocean.

I wandered down the beach earlier when my mouth started watering and the panic of impending sickness returned. I thought I was alone until I heard Savannah’s voice from behind me.

“Aw shit. Pukey again?” she says, right before I doubled over, wrapping my arms around my waist, and lost it.

“God, I’m so sorry,” I say, panting between retching and dry heaves. “I really thought I was better.”

She waits for me to settle, and when I’m able to stand up, her next words knock me down again.

“Holland, I think maybe this isn’t the flu. Have you had your period since . . . well, you know . . . since King?”

My period? It’s only been like . . . I quickly calculate in my head how many weeks it’s been since King and I were together. It’s been a month, maybe five weeks. I can’t remember when I had my last period. I sway when the dark horizon tilts and bend over when I feel acid in my throat again. It can’t be. It’s just the damn flu. I’ll be fine with a little more rest. I’m sure I just overdid it today in the sun.

“Troy. Come here,” she shouts, and I turn my head to the side. The ocean breeze blows my hair away from my face, and I see poor Troy standing on the edge of the bonfire, where he’s frozen mid-stride. He must have been coming to see about Savannah and stopped when he saw me getting sick. Now, he’s being summoned closer to the scene, and it’s clear that he would rather turn and walk through the blazing fire than come any closer.

“It’s okay. Don’t make him come. He’s freaking out.”

“I need help getting you to the car so I can take you home.”

“I can drive myself. I don’t want you to have to leave the party because of me.” She bends over and gives me a don’t be a moron look.

“We’re taking you home. You can’t drive, and I’m going to buy a pregnancy test at the drugstore so we can make sure you’re not carrying a prince or princess in there.” Her eyes move to my belly and back to my face.

“Stop saying that,” I yell, but she ignores me and takes my arm to help me toward Troy.

“We’re taking her home,” she says, trudging through the sand past Troy with me leaning heavily against her. Troy mumbles a weak protest, and Savannah whips her head around, smacking me in the face with the ends of her wild blonde hair. I can only imagine the look she’s giving him, because even with his obvious barf phobia, he’s jogging to catch up with us.

I manage not to throw up in Savannah’s Durango. The nausea is only mildly annoying by the time we’re home. My house is empty and still as she helps me to bed. She says she’ll be right back. She’s going to the closest twenty-four hour Walgreens for a home pregnancy test.

I don’t want her to. I don’t even want to entertain the idea that I could be . . . I can’t even think it, although it has been a faint whisper in the back of my mind the entire time I’ve been sick. I cannot be that girl, the dumb girl who gets knocked up before college and drops out, giving up on her dreams. But what if I am? Oh God, my life will be over. My parents will disown me, I’ll lose my scholarship to Juilliard, my dream of playing with The New York Philharmonic Orchestra will go up in smoke—sixteen years of blood, sweat and tears over.

My heart is pounding, and I’m shaking uncontrollably when I hop up, fling my comforter back, and race to my bathroom. I turn on the faucet and splash cold water on my face over and over until the vanity counter is covered in pools and the mirror is speckled with drops of water.

I look up into my terrified eyes. I thought this was over. I was starting to accept that the thing with King was just a huge mistake, probably one of many in my young adult life. But if I’m pregnant, it’s much more than just a mistake. It’s a barrier to my future as big and wide as the Grand Canyon, expansive and impossible to cross and dangerous as hell.

It’s one thing to get pregnant with some kid my own age, but to get pregnant with a dangerous drug lord who has more enemies than I can imagine . . .

“NO. I am not pregnant, and that’s final,” I yell aloud to no one but myself.

I grab a towel and wipe my face and mop the counter and mirror. When I’m done, I go back to my room, turn on the lights, straighten the bed linens, and get out my violin.

I don’t even hear Savannah when she returns. I’m exactly where I want to be, lost in the music, where no one can steal my dreams or crush my heart, where real life won't rear its ugly head and wreak havoc on my future with an unexpected baby.

She gently touches my shoulder, and I jump a foot off the ground and drop my lifeline to sanity—my bow.

She holds up a box containing two pregnancy tests and bites her lip. I squeeze my eyes closed until I see multicolored sparkles behind my lids. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to know. She carefully removes the violin from my tight grip and leads me to the bathroom, where my fate will be proven revealed and sealed.