Mr. Matthews calls it the 'Box of Doom' (he even writes it on a strip of silver duct tape using big block black-Sharpied letters) and Amy thinks the name's just about right.
It's an old shoebox, Reebok, she guesses from what's still visible of the design on the side. It gets passed around the room for every class project, always with the folded up slips of white paper inside, each with a name or a number or a topic. It's the perfect physical representation of what Mr. Matthews teaches them about the very first day of class: 'the power of random.'
"There are things in your life," he says, "you can't choose or pick or decide on. Sometimes life just hands you shit and all you can do is roll with it."
He's not wrong even if Amy wishes he was. She's known all about things she can't choose since the moment she did choose, when she pressed her lips to Karma's in front of the entire school.
And she's been rolling with it ever since.
She's almost halfway through her sophomore year and two weeks away from Christmas break and all she can think about is that stupid carol her Nana always sang. Except all Amy wants for Christmas is not her two front teeth. It's to get her hands on the Box of Doom before Karma does.
There's twenty-seven slips of paper in the BOD, enough for every person in the class. Each of them has a number on it (printed in that same Black Sharpie), each corresponding to a number up on the board and to an exact match of a note, taped to the bottom of a baby doll. The dolls are lined up, one after another, on the front of Mr. Matthews's desk, with their tiny baby doll asses sticking up in the air.
Amy would laugh if she wasn't so fucking terrified.
Twenty-seven possibilities are listed on that board. There's blended family, nuclear family, single mother, single father, step-mom, step-dad, same sex parents, mixed marriage. Some require partners and Amy knows all too well Karma's hoping for one of those, one that will let her choose who to work with.
She also knows Karma's first choice isn't her and she's oddly fine with that. Amy loves Karma, more than she even realized, but right now? She needs a break. Not a big one, not a lifelong separation. Just… something a little longer than the usual few hours they need for sleep (or that Karma has increasingly needed for him). Amy doesn't want a break-up, just a break, but she knows she can't say that to Karma. But she knows that until she can get her head straightened out, the last thing she needs is to be pretending she and Karma aren't just lesbians but lesbian moms to a (supposedly) adorable baby doll.
The BOD is circling the room and Amy's trying to track it, to follow the pattern from her seat in the front corner. She knows it's pointless because the BOD, like everything else in this course (the seating chart that changes every third class, the quizzes that arrive on days when there was no reading assigned, the days when an 'F' is an 'A'), is as random as random gets.
Mr. Matthews leaves it to them, letting every student makes the choice, each one deciding who they'll pass the BOD to next. The fucking thing is like some sort of academic STD and, for once, Amy really wants to be infected. She watches as the box makes its way around the room but there's no rhyme, no reason to where it goes.
Lauren passes to Lisbeth because they're sitting next to each other and Lauren, on principle, refuses to engage in such "social experiment bullshit". Lisbeth hands it off to Ronnie North because she thinks he's hot and Ronnie passes it to Shane for the same reason (and how the hell Shane pegged her as a lesbian but has been gaydar blind on Ronnie since the seventh grade Amy will never know). Shane sends it along to Ivy because she's nearby and he doesn't have to move and Ivy sends it to Tommy because he's not paying attention and that pisses her off.
Every pass, every step the BOD takes brings it one person closer, one degree of separation less between it and her. When it reaches Tommy, Amy thinks she's got a shot. After all, he's only a seat over from her and she's the closest person to him who hasn't had the box and let's face it, Tommy's goal is to do the least possible at all times.
Well, that, and to maintain the antiquated, would be normal anywhere but Hester social order that makes a jock like him and a pretty little fuckboy like Liam automatic 'boys'.
"Booker!" Tommy hollers. He stands up and moves to the back, to Liam's seat in the far corner, before taking a knee and holding the BOD out like it's some ancient relic he's returning to his king. "Choose wisely," he says (in the worst fake British accent Amy's ever heard). "Your fate depends on it."
Liam rolls his eyes as he reaches into the box. Amy doesn't even look (she doesn't have to) at Karma who she knows is watching Liam with the kind of rapt attention (and a bit of the drool) Amy reserves for doughnuts. That isn't really new. Karma's been that way since eighth grade, when her junior high crush, Andy Restovich, moved away, and Karma's unattainable crush fixation fell to Liam. Until recently, Amy was fine with that, really, even if she didn't exactly understand it.
"He's a bit of a tool, don't you think?" she asked Karma once.
"If by tool you mean he was sent here by the Gods to repair my broken heart and build me a romance that would put The Notebook to shame, then yes, Amy," she said. "Liam Booker is a tool."
At least she got the last part right.
Amy watches Liam (though not even half as intently as she knows Karma does) pull his slip from the BOD. "Fourteen," he says, holding his paper up. "I got number fourteen."
Mr. Matthews nods. "Ah," he says. "Fourteen." He says it in that way, that oddly teacher way, the way that makes it sound like it's something real, something significant, something that's going to teach you some life lesson you didn't even know you needed to know.
He flips over the doll on his desk, the tiniest one of them. He's got wispy blonde hair and pink flushed cheeks and doesn't look a thing like Liam (or, Amy thinks, like anyone anywhere) and he makes a soft crying sound as Mr. Matthews hands her to Liam before reading from the back of the card once attached to his baby doll butt.
"Single parent," he says. "Preemie baby. Mother was a drug addict who left the hospital against medical advice. She took a considerable amount of money from you and now you've got no idea where she is and your family refuses to help you in anyway."
Something passes over Liam's face for a moment and Amy sees it but when she (finally) glances over at Karma her best friend is still staring at him with that same love-fool expression she's always got. Whatever it was (and Amy knows it was something) it's gone as quickly as it appeared and Liam's back to his usual self.
"Sounds great," he says. "And maybe my family won't help, but I'm sure I can find an interested nanny or two, right ladies?"
There's a round of tittering giggles that swirls through the room (though it noticeably stalls by both Amy and Lauren so, apparently, they at least have that in common) and Amy could recognize the soft lilt of Karma's laugh anywhere.
"That's enough, Booker," Mr. Matthews says though his smile says different. "Pass it along now."
It's like slo-mo, like Amy's watching the train bearing down on her but she's stuck to the tracks, her shoelaces or her jeans or something holding there and even though it seems like she's got all the time in the world, she knows she's never going to make it. That's what it's like watching Liam carry the box toward her, carrying her chance.
And when he veers off, cutting back across the room and drops the box in Brandi's lap (Brandi, who sits next to Karma), it's like the train speeds up and the light from it blinds her and she never even sees what number Brandi picks. Only where she hands the box. And then Karma's picking and oh fuck Amy knows she's doomed.
It's that little slip of paper, the one Karma holds between two fingers (not that she's looking at it, she's still too busy staring at Liam), that Amy fears and she's sure the silent prayer running through her mind is anything but silent. She's positive that Oliver, on her other side, away from Tommy, can hear 'please not twenty, please not twenty' on an endless loop.
Karma unfurls the paper slowly, so fucking slowly and Amy is tempted to run across the room and snatch it from her, just to end the torment.
"Twenty," she finally says. "I got twenty." She glances up at the list, a huge grin rolling over her face even as Amy feels like she's gonna be sick all over Oliver's new cardigan. "Same sex parents," Karma says but all Amy hears are the oohs and ahhs she's from the peanut gallery and she doesn't have to look to know Liam is grinning from ear to ear and probably in his pants too.
"Do I even need to ask who your partner will be, Miss Ashcroft?" Matthews phrases it like a question he thinks he knows the answer to and Karma shakes her head because she does too and Amy has a moment, just a tiny one, when she thinks she could just say no. Let Karma find another partner. Let her pretend girlfriend pretend with someone else for just a little while (and the pretending.. oh it's getting to Amy… the pretending to be pretending and now the project is all pretending and she's almost forgotten what what it is she's pretending and what she's not).
But when Karma says her name Amy nods and smiles and avoids looking at Liam and really avoids looking at Shane and she knows she'll have to dodge him in the halls for the rest of the day.
Doomed. She's fucking doomed.
Karma arrives at Amy's locker precisely four minutes after last bell, as is her recent habit. She's never been that punctual (sometimes Amy even had to hunt her down at her own locker, though nowadays she's more likely to be found in the art room but that's one of those things Amy's getting used to not thinking about). Amy can't help wondering if Karma's so on time because her locker is right across from the newspaper-slash-tumblr offices and their photographers have a habit of heading out on assignment five minutes after school.
"Ready?" Karma asks
"For what?" Amy asks without looking up from her books. "The long walk home? Binging House Hunters?" She drops the last book she'll need in her bag and shuts the locker. "Some cheesy photo op you arranged without asking me?"
"I only did that once," Karma replies, not noticing the 'you just don't get it' eye roll from Amy.
Amy turns from her locker to find Karma's arm slid through hers as they start off down the hall, It's Karma's 'go to' move and always has been, even before they started faking it. Amy knows it hasn't taken on any extra meaning for Karma, it's more of a means to a continuing the ruse end, and maybe a way to give Liam Booker an extra little thrill.
And if he's so turned on by them together, Amy wonders, why can't he just leave them that way?
"Only once or not," Amy says, "it still sucked." Karma tugs her close and presses one quick (chaste, very chaste, as if that matters) kiss to her cheek. She's halfway through apologizing (again) before Amy can clear her brain of the fuzzy, spinning 'I wish she would never stop kissing me' feelings Karma's lips always set off.
Did she mention she was doomed? Doomed.
"Amy? Amy!"
The blonde snaps back to reality and looks at Karma questioningly. "I said," Karma says (and Amy can tell her BFF is getting increasingly frustrated with having to repeat herself but if that's the case then maybe she should just stop with the kissing and the touching). "We should probably get working on the baby project," Karma rolls on. "We've only got two weeks and the research alone will probably take a few days, not to mention taking care of Jenny."
"Jenny?"
Karma nods distractedly. She's smiling and waving at people (her people, her public) as they make their way down the hall and Amy can't help but feel a bit like a parade float. "I thought we should name her Jenny because it's nice and simple," Karma says. "And I know what it's like to be stuck with some weirdo name that makes everyone laugh."
Amy can see the logic. But… "What did Liam name his?"
Karma 'hmmmm's for just a moment before replying. "Jason."
Jenson. Janny. Amy can hear Karma's ill-advised and ridiculous ship names for the fake babies in her head already.
Though, she has to admit, any of them are better than Kiam.
More things. More things Amy needs to not think about. She sighs and keeps walking which, at points, feels more like dragging, as she has to pull Karma along (can't abandon the adoring public, you know). They're almost away, right at the edge of the school grounds when the car pulls up and this day (the one she thought couldn't get worse) goes from shitty to some circle of hell she's pretty sure Dante never even imagined.
The window glides down and his head sticks out and Karma's grip tightens on her arm and Amy wants to die.
"Need a lift?" Liam asks and Karma's in the car (front seat, natch) before Amy even has time to wonder if there's really that layer of smarmy in his voice or if she just wants there to be. She hops into the backseat (if the slow and labored and 'You have to be kidding me' way she moves can remotely be considered 'hopping') and shuts the door. Karma's bag and 'Jenny' and 'Jason' are on the seat next to her and Amy wonders what grade Liam might get if 'Jason' flew out of a car window and landed in a ditch somewhere between here and her house. Which is where she assumes they're going until…
"You don't mind, right Amy?"
"Right," she says automatically but then "Wait… what?"
Karma turns in her seat and Amy recognizes that expression. She's even named it since she's seen it so often lately. That's the 'please don't fuck this up for me and I promise I'll love you forever though not in the way you want because I'm not into girls' expression.
Though, to be fair, she's pretty sure Karma doesn't think most of that because that would mean Karma would know how she feels and since Amy isn't sure how she feels half the time, she's certain Karma doesn't know at all.
"Liam needs a little help on his project," Karma says. "And he needs an… objective eye… to check out his latest art and I was just saying that we don't really need to get working on ours right away because we've so got the same sex parents thing down. You know, because… lesbians."
She waves her hand between her and Amy, as if it wasn't clear which lesbians she was referring to because, obviously, Liam probably keeps at least one or two of them one hand for any occasion.
And oh, how Amy wishes she didn't really think that.
She leans back against the seat and sighs, knowing that arguing this with Karma is utterly pointless and will just make her already throbbing head hurt more. She watches Liam as he drives along and she can't believe he bought any of that. Either he's got the worst bullshit detector in the world…
Or he really wants Karma.
Things. More things. More things Amy needs to not think about.
Too bad she can't stop.