CHAPTER TWELVE
If only the grey carpet beneath my feet was sand, and the faint noise from the news station on the television screen was crashing waves. Instead, I uncross and cross my legs again as I slouch further down in the uncomfortable, tweed grey chair.
The pregnant lady sitting across from me continues to rock her two year old daughter in a small black stroller, who's red, tear stained cheeks are nothing compared to the screaming she was doing only a few minutes ago.
"Laney Emerson."
My mom pats my leg as she stands up beside me. She trails alongside me the first few steps before we part ways where the carpet changes to hardwood floor.
"Caramel?" my mom asks around a mouthful of a big black claw clip as she re-twists up her hair.
"Macchiato—Iced!" I smile. "Please and thank you!"
We trade smiles before the door to the office clicks behind her black puffy vest, while I follow the woman in navy blue scrubs down the hallway.
"The doctor will be right with you," the lady chirps as she places my file in the plastic bin hanging outside the door.
"Thank you." I nod, catching the door from her outstretched arm. The walls are the same light grey almost white color as they are in the waiting room, but the smell of sterile chemicals hits me instead of sweat.
Once the door clicks behind me, I pull my cross body bag up and over my head, tossing it on the floor. I kick off my shoes before reaching for the hem of my t-shirt. My black leggings are next and a little fussier to pull down, but I still manage to toss them on top of my bag along with my shirt. I reach for the light pink paper hospital gown and slip it over my shoulders before climbing up onto the light green examination chair that is always just a little to shiny and always reminds me a little too much of a lobster. If only the flat yellow ceiling lights over my head were the sun, I could soak in some much needed vitamin D while I wait. Instead, I remain hunched over, picking at my dry cuticles.
"Hello," my doctor hums as she walks in. "How are we today?" her voice is low and calm, like a lullaby, but her dark eyes seem too heavy to blink. Her mocha skin crinkles in the corners as she smiles, and wisps of dark hair appear to be falling out of her small ponytail. She clicks around on the computer, updating my file with the basics, before glancing back over her shoulder once more with an eyebrow raise and the million dollar question. "Are you still?"
"Yes." I nod.
"And you're still on the pill?"
"Yes."
"Are you sexually active?"
"No." I used to sputter out with a laugh time and time again, year after year once I hit puberty, at my annual physical with my pediatrician. Not just because my mom was in the room, but because it was the truth. But they'd always whisper it again when my mom left the room as they were checking my boobs for lumps. "No." I'd laugh lightly, solemnly shake my head, look them dead in the eyes, and sometimes all of the above, yet it still felt like they didn't believe me.
Boys are just cute with sweaty gym socks and baby faces until they aren't. We just borrowed pencils and wrote little notes on gum wrappers until we didn't. Training bras are just training bras, training for what—push up wire, until "your bra strap is showing," "cover those shoulders," "those shorts are too short," and "you don't know what an eggplant means?" and "please don't eat that banana in front of me, or do—pretty please do, do it just for me," and "just this one time, I promise, I won't tell—just this one time, I promise, I won't show anyone," and "yeah we hooked up," when really all they did was kiss, but then "yeah we hit second base," when really they went straight home, and "that girl has big boobs," and "damn that ass," and "drooling for abs," and "your nothing unless you have a nice rack," and "can you press me on the bench with those biceps," and "he has to be tall, taller than me," and "your legs, girl, your legs are long, why don't you wrap them around me," and "he better be large and long" because "no one wants to be small, god forbid you call him short" and even if you don't prefer the opposite sex, you still know what the opposite expects. Once you hit a certain age everyone just expects and expects and expects.
Just like they never believed me. Just like they wanted me—expected me—to blurt out that I'm sixteen, pregnant, and on every possible drug in the alphabet. As if I'm going to lie, sitting on shiny green leather, all hunched over, in nothing but scratchy pink paper.
****
"I really don't need any more earrings," my sister says as her hand continues to propel the tall white spinner rack around and around. "But at the same time I do because I'm sick of all the ones I have."
I stop the rack and trail my fingers around all the different earring packs. I pick up a pack of all silver studs, ranging from small to big, with some stars and lightning bolts at the bottom. I reach my arm around, practically shoving it in my sister's face from where she's standing on the opposite side of the rack.
"Oh my god, yes," she hisses in excitement. "This is perfect." She yanks the pack out of my hand, while using her other arm to reach around and shove my shoulder in approval.
"You know," Alessia coos as she stares up at the little square mirror tilted down on the top of the other spinner rack on my right. "I've been thinking about getting my nose pierced."
"Says the girl who's never had her ears pierced." Violet mumbles. Her face is still blocked by the rack between us, but I see Alessia reach out and shove her arm in my peripheral vision.
"Still." She laughs, brushing her yellow blonde hair out of her face and leaning back up on her tiptoes to assess herself in the mirror.
"I think that would actually look really cute," I say.
"Yeah," Violet agrees as she leans in over Alessia's shoulder. "You do have the perfect nose for it."
"Right." Alessia reaches for her nose before slumping back down, flattening her white ked sneakers against the greying white store tiles.
"You should do it." Violet and her maroon sweatshirt fall back behind the rack, and she spins it with her hand once more. "Maybe I'll go with you and even get my cartilage pierced."
Alessia tugs at the sleeves of her white, long sleeve thermal before her fingers trickle over the gold chains of all the necklaces hanging on the rack in front of her.
Violet and I always look related when we go out because we always, somehow, wear similar colors, dark and neutral, and even similar outfits because "are we wearing actual clothes today or are we going for more casual," and "if I'm wearing leggings, you have to wear leggings otherwise I'll look like hobo standing next to you if you wear jeans."
But I always wonder what people think when they see Alessia standing next to us, usually adorned in everything lighter and brighter, even her physical features. The darkest thing about her is usually her jeans.
"I don't know though . . ." Alessia trails off. "Cause when I mentioned it to Michael, he said I shouldn't."
"Who cares?" Violet and I say at the exact same time, making the tall rack freeze between us. We both take a second to lean around it and stick our tongues out at each other and laugh before I turn to Alessia fully.
"Seriously, though, it's your body," I say while Violet starts mumbling something along the lines of "stupid ass troll," and it becomes too low and too incoherent for me to hear. I don't know if it's because she doesn't want to upset her friend, or even because two other girls squeeze past us, but I do know that it takes me an extra second to choke down my laugh because it's just another piece of evidence that we are related.
"I know, I know." Alessia waves her hands and shuffles on her feet before reaching up and scratching her upper arm. "Whatever. My moms would probably kill me anyway."
"Ha." Violet steps out from behind the rack with another pack of earrings in her hand. "Now that's probably true." She tucks her hair behind her ear on a laugh, revealing all her sparkly piercings. "But maybe Davina wouldn't mind."
"True. It's just—"
"Rebecca," my sister and her say at the exact same time, in the exact same low menacing tone, before their laughter carries them forward, away from the spinner racks and glass countertops, filled with jewelry and littered with perfume samples, and towards the wooden displays filled with shoes.
They always sometimes make me feel more like a mom as they go off babbling back and forth, and I'm left trickling behind them, but I'm used to it.
What I'm not used to is the way Alessia's face to lights up every time her phone lights up with a text from Michael, and for Violet to keep sending me her deadpanned "I told you so" look. But I decide to blame it on the fact that spring is in the air, flowers are blooming, birds are chirping, it's my spring break, and that warm fuzzy can't get enough of you feeling is what first boyfriends are made of.
But then again, those blinders and rose colored glasses can also be such bastards.
Someone had to say it. Even if it's just the miniature devil version of myself, whispering in my ear like she always does. She's always dressed in black, but with red lipstick and smoky eye shadow. She's cooler than the angel. I listen to her more often. Hell, the angel version stopped trying years ago. She also looks like me but with Alessia's aesthetic because that was me when I was seventeen minus the rose colored glasses. Blinders for sure, though. That's why the little devil is cooler. She feeds the ego better.
"Bastards," she whispers. "All of 'em."
Damn straight.