Chapter 7

Melissa counts the pills lined up on her bedspread. Seven. Seven cheery orange capsules called Seconal. She found them in her parents bathroom, next to the Tums in the medicine cabinet. Her father had been passed out on the bed and she wasn't even quiet when she walked right in and took them.

Seven Seconals. Melissa says the words out loud, letting the "S's" roll off her tongue. She thinks she might be losing her mind a little bit. She feels a little crazy.

Melissa stayed with Darry the night before until the sun was coming up. His parents checked on him once when they got home and Melissa had said she was being picked up around midnight. It had been a lie, and Melissa left via Darry's bedroom window around 5:30 in the morning. When Melissa left, Darry kissed her sweetly on the lips and said, "I love you."

Melissa said, "I love you, too," and meant it. The blue pamphlet was still in the bottom of her purse. She hadn't mentioned it.

As she walked to the corner store to call Kimberly for a ride, she felt, for the first time, okay about the whole thing. She was gonna marry Darry and have his baby and she'd find a way to be happy. Darry had even said, "We'll have each other, that's something, right?" And Melissa had said back, "That's everything," and Darry really liked hearing her say that.

On the way home, Melissa told Kimberly everything. How she was pregnant and gonna marry Darry as soon as he graduated. How her due date was December 16. How her mom wanted her to give up the baby for adoption. How the pamphlet titled "The Adoption Option" was supposed to be in Darry's hands right now, and he was supposed to be agreeing to it. How she didn't even show him the pamphlet, or even consider taking it out of her purse. How Melissa didn't even like the baby until just now because she knew eventually she'd love it. Just as much as she loved Darry. Maybe even more.

Kimberly listened in stunned silence and by the time Melissa was finished talking, they were in Kimberly's driveway. They sat there for a while, and maybe woulda never moved except that Melissa had a sudden bout of nausea and had to lunge from the car to the hedges lining the driveway. Kimberly's brother would absolutely freak if anyone so much as dotted his car's interior with vomit.

When Melissa was done dry-heaving into the bushes, Kimberly had walked her home and given Melissa a big hug. She said, "I'm gonna support you no matter what."

Melissa counts the Seconals. Still seven. She closes her eyes for a minute and sees bright orange bursts behind her eyelids. Orange like the sunrise. Like the Seconals. She leans her head against the pillows.


Melissa's mom had been sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee when Melissa stepped through the front door. It had been six o'clock in the morning, and Melissa was still in the same blue dress as yesterday. Melissa's mom looked surprised to see her. "I thought you were asleep. You've been out this whole time?"

"Talking to Darry, Mom," Melissa had said.

Her mom made some comment about it being too late to worry about Melissa being out all night with her boyfriend. Melissa was kind of still feeling warm from her Darry-cocoon so she ignored it. She almost got all the way up the stairs before she heard her mom say, "How'd Darry take it?"

Melissa thought about the pamphlet in her purse. "Take what?"

She knew damn well what and her mother's tone said exactly that.

"You're not keeping this baby. You're not marrying Darry."

Melissa said, "I think I am, Mom."

Her mom had slammed down her mug hard enough that coffee sloshed over the rim. Melissa stayed at the top of the stairs. She held on to the banister and contemplated, more than once, letting go of the rail and pitching forward.

Her mom had stood up. "You are mistaken if you think this is a group decision, young lady." When her mom calls her "young lady", she means business.

Even at six in the morning, Melissa's mom is impeccable. Long black skirt, cream blouse with pearl buttons. Matching pearl earrings, hair done in a chic bob. Nails manicured, makeup flawless. There were some papers Melissa hadn't noticed before on the table. Her mom picked them up.

"When I get home tonight, we'll go through these," she said. "These are applicants. Nice families who can't have babies."

Melissa had sort of stopped listening. Well, tried to anyway. She again contemplated the stairs. She thought about Darry's lips against her own. She closed her eyes.

Eventually, her mother stopped talking and Melissa opened her eyes. She just turned and walked into her room. Sleep came easily. When she woke up again, the sun was high in the sky but she didn't feel rested. Her mind wasn't clear. If anything, it was more muddled.

Melissa gets up and goes into her own bathroom, and takes a bottle from the medicine cabinet marked Valium. She'd been prescribed these when she had to travel to California for a riding competition, and was unable to calm down enough to get on the plane. She takes out five white pills and lines them up with the Seconal. Orange, white, orange, white, orange, white, orange, white, orange, white, orange. A perfect pattern. Melissa likes predictability. She has to know what's going to happen next. She doesn't like change at all.

Melsisa doesn't want to die, she just wants to escape for a while. She thinks about Darry; looks at the phone perched by her bed and wonders about calling him. Could anything he'd say be more reassuring than the line of orange and white pills before her? Melissa picks up the first orange capsule and puts it on her tongue. She swallows it down with a glass of water and picks up the next one.

The sun is going down and Darry tries to ignore his rumbling stomach as he finishes up his history homework. His folks are kind of sore at him because he slept until almost noon and Pony ended up doing most of his chores. His mom gave Pony a good chunk of his allowance too, which Darry thought was unfair because he never asked Pony to do his chores. In turn, Darry got sore at Pony, which only made everyone else more mad and it really hadn't been that great of a day. Darry'd woken up in a good mood too, because he feels like he'd finally reconnected with Melissa.

His dad pokes his head into Darry's room and Darry nearly bounds off the bed, eager to eat dinner. He pulls a shirt over his head but stops when he sees the expression on his dad's face.

"Something's happened, son."

Darry's entire body freezes, his hands at the hem of his shirt, halfway through with pulling it down over his stomach.

His dad says, "It's Mel," and Darry swears he stops breathing, too.

He follows his dad out of the room as if on automatic pilot. His hunger is completely gone, and replaced with an uncomfortable churning in his stomach that makes him feel like he has to throw up. Darry doesn't ask questions because he's afraid. It scares him even more when he sees his brothers sitting stony-faced on the couch and his dad says his mom is already waiting in the truck. Darry barely looks at his brothers. He follows his dad out to the truck and gets in.

The ride to the hospital is silent. Darry can't speak, he's sure he physically can't, until it feels like his head might explode if they hit another red light. So then he turns to his mom and says, "Just tell me she's alright."

His mom doesn't. She looks sad and says, "I don't know, honey."

There isn't much his mom doesn't know. It makes Darry uncomfortable that this is one of those times.

"What happened?"

Darry's thinking, car accident. His mom says, "She took some pills," and Darry is sure he misheard until she says, "Her mother found bottles of Seconal and Valium by her bed and couldn't wake her up."

That's pretty much impossible to mishear. He just doesn't understand. He would think about the baby, wonder about it, but he's pretty sure he'll punch a hole in the truck window and he knows his folks can't afford to fix that. So he forces his hands against his sides and doesn't think at all until they get there.

Melissa's mom looks impossibly pulled-together and calm, and Darry feels that's got to be a good sign. Except that Kimberly is there too, and she's crying into her brother's shoulder. Melissa's dad isn't there, and other than a woman with two children climbing all over the waiting room chairs, there isn't anyone else. Darry follows his mom and dad toward Melissa's mom. Darry knows she isn't so hot on him lately, so he hangs back a little. Kimberly looks up at him, teary-eyed, and then gets up and hugs him. Darry's pretty sure he's never touched Kimberly in his life so he's a little surprised. Still, it's nice to feel comforted and he hugs her back.

She sniffles when she pulls away, and Darry puts a hand on her shoulder, thinking he should comfort her somehow. They're the two people closest to Melissa since her dad started drinking, and Darry feels a sort of camaraderie even though they never really talked very much or bothered to get to know one another. He wonders if she knows about the baby. He figures if she doesn't, she'll find out soon enough because he has to know. As much as he doesn't want to ask, he has to know if it's okay.

Melissa's mom stands up and Darry's mom hugs her. Darry's dad pats her on the back. Then his mom asks, "How is she?" and Darry is pretty sure he stops breathing again.

Her mother shakes her head and purses her lips, with an expression Darry can't quite read. Disappointment?

"The doctor had to put her on a respirator for a while to help her breathe, but he doesn't think she'll need to be on it overnight."

Darry hears the exhaustion in her voice and sort of feels sorry for her.

"So she's going to be okay?" he asks.

She looks at him for the first time, but quickly looks away. Darry doesn't really blame her. He honeslty didn't expect her to be overjoyed that he knocked her daughter up. She nods fractionally, but it's enough for Darry to feel a huge weight lift off of his shoulders.

"We're lucky she's not in a coma," she says. "Her blood pressure dropped dangerously low and -- "

Now she looks at Darry again, and Darry thinks it isn't a good sign. It's not only that she's looking at him, but it's how she's looking at him. Like she feels sorry for him. He wants to put his hands over his ears so he doesn't hear it. He knows what's coming. Everyone does, because his mom puts her hand on his back and his dad looks down at the floor and scuffs his shoe on the gleaming white tile.

"The baby didn't survive," Melissa's mom says. "They've already aborted it."

It's out. Kimberly must have known, because she doesn't react, and Darry thinks she even knew the baby was dead because she just puts her hand on his arm and says, "I'm sorry, Darry."

His mom says the same thing. Melissa's mom doesn't say anything, and Darry's glad because he's pretty sure that if she had the audacity to say she was sorry, he'd call her a liar to her face. She just walks back over to the chair she'd been occupying when they arrived and sits down, hands folded primly in her lap.

Darry stands there for what seems like an eternity. He doesn't move, and no one makes him. His mom stands next to him for a while, and his dad follows Kimberly to the chairs and sits in one of them. Darry watches the little kids climbing all over their mother's lap at the other end of the waiting room. He watches the mother get frustrated that they won't sit still. He watches her try to give them crackers and grapes that she's put in little sandwich bags, but they don't eat more than one bite at a time before going back to climbing all over everything. Darry thinks he should be happy that he can go to A&M now, that everything went back to normal in the blink of an eye. But he isn't happy, not by a long shot. He watches the mother try to control her children and he doesn't think he'll ever be happy again.

TBC...

Thanks to all reviewers!