If He Had Been with Me

At school, Angie lets me feel her stomach. It’s still not very big, but it’s taut like a drum. Everyone at school knows about her now, and all my friends know about my parents. At lunch one day, Alex asks if it means that my mother and Aunt Angelina are finally getting together. Sasha punches his shoulder and calls him an idiot.

“Seriously, dude?” Jamie says, “Did you really just say that?”

“You were all wondering it too!” Alex says. He rubs the shoulder Sasha punched with one hand.

“Yeah, but we weren’t going to ask,” Noah says.

“Noah!” Brooke hisses.

“Look, everybody, I knew you were thinking it. I don’t care. And no, they’re not.”

“Autumn, you want to feel my belly again?” Angie says. She knows it cheers me up.

“Sure,” I say.

There isn’t much else to cheer me up. I hate winter. Dr. Singh raises the dosage on my medicine. Last semester, I told Mr. Laughegan that I was starting a novel. I don’t feel like working much and I don’t want to disappoint him.

“Maybe you should get one of those sun lamps to sit under,” Jamie says. He’s driving me home from school. It’s snowing but not sticking, melting against the windshield and running off in thin streams of water.

“This isn’t just about the weather, Jamie. My parents are getting divorced.”

“Yeah, but you’re also depressed every winter, so maybe—”

“Are you sick of taking care of me?” I turn sideways in my seat to face him.

“No. Jeez, Autumn, I was just saying maybe it would help.”

“Sorry. I love you.”

“I love you too.” He turns on the windshield wipers and we don’t talk the rest of the way home.

***

Angie and Preppy Dave show us their apartment in his parents’ basement. They have a bed and a kitchen table. We aren’t allowed to stay for very long. Dave’s parents say they are giving them a place to live, not a place to hang out. At school, the other kids alternate between thinking it’s cool she’s married and looking at her with contempt. Angie seems oblivious to both, and every time her hand is on her stomach, she is smiling.

***

At the end of March, Sasha breaks up with Alex. She says it’s for good this time, and I believe her. They agree to go to prom together in April anyway, for old time’s sake. And then Brooke and Noah tell us, casually, that they don’t plan to stay together when they leave for college. They aren’t going to the same university, and they say they don’t want to ruin what they have by trying to make it work. None of us, except Sasha and Jamie, are going to the same school.

Sometimes when we’re all together, we talk about how high school is almost over. And how we will always be friends.

***

We’re eating dinner with Aunt Angelina and Finny nearly every night now. Afterward, my mother stays late over there and doesn’t come home until I’ve gone to bed. I hate being in the house by myself, so sometimes I bring my homework over and work at their kitchen table. Finny joins me and we do our homework together like we used to, except we don’t talk as much. Every evening, Sylvie calls him and he takes his phone into the other room for half an hour, then comes back and shoves it in his pocket before sitting back down. I heard at school that she isn’t going to college in the fall. She’s going to go to Europe for the summer, then take a year off to find herself or something like that. I want to ask Finny if they are planning on staying together, but I can’t.

I’m supposed to spend one evening a week with my dad, but it doesn’t always work out. When it does, he takes me out to restaurants in the city and asks me about school and Jamie. He’s always liked Jamie. His apartment overlooks the river and the Arch. It has a second bedroom that he says I can use anytime I want. I’m not sure what I would use it for.

A few green shoots begin to appear in the beginning of April. It’s still cold out, but things are getting a little better.

But only a little.