I hesitated. How could I tell a bunch of strangers when I hadn’t told Noe? Wasn’t that a kind of betrayal? Maybe I was still angry at her for ditching our plans so easily, and this was my twisted way of getting back at her. Or maybe I trusted Ava’s friends in a way I didn’t trust Noe. They seemed so grown-up, and we were still kids. I needed a grown-up right now, not a kid—did that make me a traitor? I wasn’t sure.
I thrust these complicated thoughts aside and blurted, “I had an accident. With a boy. Ava’s taking me to the clinic tomorrow.”
The kitchen was quiet for a moment. Then one by one, the girls put down their bowls and spatulas and teacups and came to put their hands on my shoulders and back.
“Are you scared?” they said.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Don’t be scared!” they said. “Don’t be scared!”
The girls all had some story about a close call they had had with a broken condom or a birth control pill.
“My twin sister tried to do an herbal abortion when we were fifteen,” said a big, dark-haired girl who might have been called Jade or Jane or Jacey. “She got the recipe out of a fantasy novel. We stayed up all night brewing herbs on the stove.” She chomped her cookie, then peered at it suspiciously. “How old was that butter?”
“Which book was it?” everyone wanted to know.
“That one with the fairies.” She glanced at me appraisingly. “We could do one tomorrow, if you want. Co-op opens at eight, they have all the herbs.”
“Keep your witchy paws off my baby cousin,” said Ava. “Annabeth, don’t listen to her, she has no idea what she’s talking about.”
A girl named Leah started telling a story about a time she got pregnant by accident. “He was like, ‘It broke and I don’t have another one!’ And I was like, ‘Okaaaaay, I guess we have to stop.’ And then we were like, ‘What if we’re really, really careful? Like, ninja-careful!’”
Leah had had an abortion at the same clinic I was going to in the morning.
“The people at the clinic are really nice,” she said. “They’re really nice. You’re going to be okay.”
Ava’s roommates reminded me of a chorus of batty aunts in a musical, trading off solos in a medley of reassurance and advice. I couldn’t believe they were only three years older than me and Noe and everyone in our year at school. They seemed so different, somehow. Like they belonged to a bigger world.
When Ava took out the last tray of cookies, everyone gathered around to gobble them up. I hung back, grateful for the distraction. When the cookies were gone, the girls had moved on from their cheerful interrogation and started talking among themselves.
At one a.m. Ava’s roommates dumped the cookie trays in the sink without washing them and tromped up the stairs to bed.
“Tired?” Ava said.
I nodded.
“Come on. I’ll show you my room.”
57
IN THE MORNING, AVA TOOK ME to the clinic. The nurse asked me some questions and had me pee in a cup, and put me down for an appointment the following morning. They couldn’t fit me in the same day. At first I was disappointed, then relieved. It meant I wouldn’t have to miss the campus tour that Mom had signed me up for. Even though that was a small thing, it seemed important somehow—like at least I wouldn’t have to let her down in that one regard. So when she asked me about Northern, I’d have something to tell her about.
Ava and I drove back to campus and she left me in the student union building to wait for my tour guide. I sat on a purple couch and took out How to Survive in the Woods. A few minutes later, a boy in a bright blue shirt with NORTHERN UNIVERSITY on the front asked if I was Annabeth. He had geeky glasses and a hat with earflaps and a button that said NATIVE AMERICAN STUDENT CENTER.
“I love that book,” he said, tapping the cover. “They sell it in the bookstore here. Did you know Wilda McClure’s from Maple Bay?”
The boy’s name was Loren, and he was in his first year, studying forestry.
“We can swing by her old house after the tour, if you want. It’s a museum now. It’s kind of cool.”
First, we went to the Arts building and the Science building and the Engineering building and the Music building, and through the freshman dorms. Some people had their doors open. I peeked into the rooms as we walked down the hall, making a mental note to tell Noe that they already came with mini-fridges before I remembered that she wasn’t applying. Loren told me about the dragon boat race that happened every April, and the community farm where students could grow their own vegetables and learn to milk a cow.
The Wilda McClure house had an exhibit on the ground floor with all her old camping stuff. Wilda McClure’s tent. Wilda McClure’s backpack. The binoculars and notebook with which Wilda McClure tracked the comings and goings of wolves. Loren caught me staring at the glass display case with the canoe and smooth wooden paddles in which Wilda McClure had explored over two hundred lakes.
“My mom would love this,” I said. “It’s actually her book.”
“Want me to take a picture of you with the canoe?”
“Nah.”
“Come on. You’ve got to have something to show the parents.”
Loren grinned. I hesitated, then dug my phone out of my bag. “The camera’s not very good.”
I stood beside the canoe with my arms at my sides.
“Smile,” Loren said.
While he was taking the picture, the museum attendant came out from behind her booth. “Now one of you together,” she said.
It was weird to explain that we were complete strangers, so Loren gave her the phone and I moved over so he could stand beside me.
“Say cheese,” said the museum attendant.
“Cheese,” Loren and I said.
I texted the first picture to Mom while we were walking back to the student union building.
oh my god, is that the wilda mcclure house? she texted back.
It made my heart break a little to know that Mom was so excited for me.
campus tour was awesome, I typed. going to lunch with ava, then theater lecture.
amazing! Mom wrote. have fun.
58
THAT NIGHT WAS AVA’S ROOMMATE’S birthday. We all ate cake and drank something called Moscow Mules in the warm, messy kitchen, then bundled up in our hats and coats and mittens and dragged some big pieces of cardboard to a place called Half Moon Mountain, which was really more of a steep, snowy hill at the far edge of campus that looked down over the forest and town. You could slide down on the cardboard like a toboggan, with the twinkly lights of town rushing at you and the dark, jagged trees whispering past on either side, then tromp back up the hill on stairs someone had cut into the snow.
I slid again and again, sometimes sitting on the cardboard, sometimes Superman-style with my stomach bumping over the snow, sometimes in a long chain with Ava and Ava’s roommates. The sound was all muffled out there. Like if you brushed away the tiny sprinkling of voices and laughter, you could hear the sound of the earth itself. The more I climbed and slid and screamed, the louder the earth seemed to speak, until I could feel its voice all around me.
Loren had said there was an outdoor program at Northern that was founded in honor of Wilda. You spent half the year “in the field,” tracking wolves and taking tests of river water and learning about forest fires. Maybe I could do that. Maybe I could be another Wilda. As I hurtled down the hill on my sled, it didn’t seem unthinkable anymore.
On the way back to the dorm, Ava borrowed my phone to tell another one of her friends where we were. “Who’s the cutie?” she said, clicking the camera app shut to make the call.
“He’s just the campus tour guy. The museum lady wanted to take a picture.”
“Did you get his number?”