CHAPTER 1

Life is tough, my darling, but so are you.
- Stephanie Bennett-Henry

•••

I had half a summer and at least a dozen inspirational talks from Rita, most of which were comprised of Bible verses, to prepare for this dreaded day and yet, when it finally came, I found myself cowering in the last slot of the student parking lot, elbow resting against the window, chewing mindlessly on my knuckle, with Elvis Presley crooning Love Me Tender in the background. The sun's low, just barely over the tree line, illuminating the sleepy little community in a golden haze. Despite it being just after seven o'clock in the morning, the soupy heat of the South Carolina summer is already slowly seeping into the cool air of my car.

My stomach feels funny.

My rustic Jeep rumbles nosily, creating a stir of toxins from the exhaust. I swallow. I breathe. I imagine all of the possible ways that this day could go terribly, terribly wrong. Which was a lot, I came to realize. There was a granola bar, still in it's wrapper, on the passenger seat. Rita insisted that I at least take it after I refused to eat her made-from-scratch banana pancakes, citing lateness. I certainly did not feel up to eating it, though. I've been muddled with nausea since I woke up this morning.

Nerves and all.

Only when Presley's smooth ballad turns into the upbeat Jailhouse Rock is when I decide to turn the key in the ignition, silencing the King of Rock'n'Roll and promptly starting my first day of junior year. The muggy air greets me unkindly as I slip out of the car, scandals scraping the gravel, slinging my turquoise Jansport over my shoulder. Birds are chirping. I start towards the school looming in a distance, and for the first time I think about how it resembles a prison more than an institute of learning. There are a few other students in the parking lot, holding onto the last few precious moments of summer. I recognize a few of them, but hardly know any of their names. What I do know about them, however, is that they're the misfits. One girl is wearing a beanie, with neon green hair cropped short beneath it. Another boy has a sleeve of tattoos and piercings dotted all over his face. Maybe it's fitting that I'm here now. With them.

I can't help it - my eyes scan the groups of other students, looking for the familiar honey curls, the way one cautiously searches for a snake in a rainforest canopy, but come up empty. Of course she wouldn't be here with them, with us. Mackenzie Beaumont was probably inside right now, flirting with her boyfriend and already campaigning for Class President. At one time, we did everything together. How could one night have changed everything?

Last year, on this very same day, everything was so utterly, vastly different. Rita dropped Kenzie and I off, as neither of us had our licenses yet, but we made her park a distance away so we could pretend that we drove here ourselves. Like always, she was bouncing with excitement, telling Rita during the whole car ride there about how that year was going to be the best year for the volleyball team.

I remember glancing back, watching her apply pink lipgloss clumsily in the backseat, holding a small, compact mirror to her face. "I just know that we're all going to do so good this year. I think we finally have a chance at beating Rock Hill. Whaddya think, Mais?" she asked, eyes shifting up to look at me, smacking her lips together.

Suddenly I was conscious of my too-chapped lips.

"I mean, I guess," I shrug. Rock Hill was always our biggest competitor in any sport. It was the small city about twenty minutes away, separated from Tega Cay by the expansive Lake Wylie. "As long as Coach actually gets his head out of his a-"

"Maisie Huntley," Rita scolded and would have probably given me the scary "don't you dare say it" look that she mastered years ago, had it not been for her concentration on safely guiding us through the traffic circle, a glorious fountain in the center of it with yellow and blue petunias all around. But she smirks, just the tiniest bit, knowing full well that I didn't like Coach Richards, a fifty year old man who knew next to nothing about volleyball and instead spent all of practice showing us YouTube videos on the proper way to serve a ball and I swear I saw Coaching Volleyball for Dummies once in his bag. "Be nice."

"I am being nice," I retort, glancing in my bag, double checking that I have all of my necessary notebooks and an extra package of pencils. "I'm just saying. We're going to get absolutely nowhere with a nonsense coach."

"Oh, my dear," Rita shook her head, as she made the left turn into Tega Cay Area High School, slipping in-between traffic consisting of crowded school buses and teachers in SUVs lazily sipping coffee, still lost in summer mode.

"Actually," Kenzie piped up, using her charming voice that I heard her use on teachers whenever she forgets a homework assignment. "Can you drop us off here? We can walk. Right, Maisie?"

"Um, yeah, if you don't mind, Rita..." I bit my lip, nervous to see how she would react. Rita always said that we were acting too old for our ages. Which, in a way, I agreed. She nearly had an aneurysm when I wore a skirt that fell a few inches too short once. My father promptly told me to go change and I donated that skirt to some charity shortly afterwards.

Surprisingly, however, Rita pulls over to the curb. The white cross hanging from the review mirror swings side to side, then slowly comes to a stop as Rita puts the car in park. "Have a good day, girls. Stay out of trouble. Call me when you need me to pick you up after practice." She leans over and kisses my temple and I feel her sticky lipstick on my skin.

"Bye, Rita." I say, getting out of the car.

"Thanks for the ride, Rita!" Kenzie says cheerfully, getting out and standing next to me. I'm a whole head taller than her, but she tries making up for it by wearing clunky sandals with a big wedge. She waves to Rita and Rita waves back, as she slowly pulls out of the spot. She drives away from view in the ugly forest green van, which has multiple dents on the rear from that time my father backed into a pole. It's at least as old as I am and it still has vomit stains in the interior.

"Can you believe it?" Kenzie nudges me as we walk towards the school, running a hand through her messy, frizzy, corkscrew curls when her rose pearl bracelet - a gift given to her by her grand-mére, which she bought in some fancy store in the heart of Paris - got caught on a curl. "We're finally-" She tugged it free with a wince, "-sophomores."

"It's just another year," I shrug, squinting my eyes from the sun. Over the summer, I had cut my hair into a short bob that fell a couple centimeters above my shoulders and I loved it. Kenzie wasn't as enthusiastic about it as I was, so I found myself playing with the ends of it self-consciously, like maybe no one else would notice it if I did. "Really, it's just the same as being freshman."

Kenzie and I had a system. She was the loud, outspoken one, and I was quiet one, the one that kind of hung out in the background. We had a few other friends, of course, all of the them with us on the volleyball team, but no one, and I mean no one, could ever come between us. She was my sister - the girl who taught me how to use tampons and apply mascara and whose shoulder I cried on every year on Mother's Day, craving my real mom, the one who died years ago. She was the only person that didn't laugh at my insane fear of dogs. She always came on vacations to Myrtle Beach with my father, Rita, and me. In everything that she lacked, I made up for and vice versa.

There were plenty of other students joining us on the sidewalk, walking the short distance to the doors of the school, where the principal stands, a jolly man with a round belly who resembled Santa Clause without a beard. Kenzie and I talk about the potential of this year and what it would bring, when I notice that she's not looking me as we talk, instead her eyes are darting in front of us. She twirled her hair around her finger which meant she was nervous. It's something I realized after spending every day of most of my life with her.

I frown. "What? What's wrong?" I look in the direction she is and there, of course, is Asher Kinsley. Asher Kinsley was somewhat of a local legend. His father served as mayor of Tega Cay but before that he was some big time football star at Duke years ago, only to get an injury to the knee his junior year and never played again. Thus, all of that football skill was passed onto his only son, Asher. He was ridiculously good-looking too, all dimples and straight teeth. His brown hair was a perpetual artful mess.

I liked his hair.

But that was it. He and I never really had a conversation. I only ever heard him talk when Kenzie cornered him into conversations and I stood awkwardly next to her, suddenly feeling out of my comfort zone. He was the type of guy that mothers pushed their teenage daughters towards while saying, "He looks like a nice boy now, doesn't he?" and old men fussed about his freshman year football stats, "That Kinsley boy is going somewhere!" they would all say.

I recognized that he was attractive, but that's where it ended. He was always off-limits, reserved strictly for Kenzie, though he never seemed to notice her. He never dated any other girls though. Too focused on his football, I guessed.

It's no secret that Kenzie loved Asher since they were in kindergarten together and, as she told the story that it was, in her words, "just totally meant to be because he offered to share his crayons with me" and that was literally the only reason she started crushing on him. It was cute, I guess, in a kiddie kind way.

I start to laugh. "Really? You're still not over him? It's been, what, ten years now?"

Kenzie rolls her pretty little brown eyes. "Oh, come on, Maisie, I know you're like totally against dating, but-"

"I am not!" I scowl at her because she always brought up this topic. Kenzie was practically a little hooker in elementary school, kissing boys behind the playground at recess time in elementary school so that the teacher's wouldn't see, and texted me a very long, very detailed paragraph the time she had her first real make-out session with Toby McGuire in the seventh grade. "There's just no one that I really want to date."

I had my first kiss during freshman year, in the auditorium when I was auditioning for the role of Martha Corey in The Crucible, after Kenzie insisted that we at least try out because it would be fun (she got the role of Betty Parris, I didn't get the part and instead watched the play from the audience). Patrick Matthews was a junior and was seriously dedicated to theater. We were looking for old scripts backstage when he kissed me and it was terrible, too teethy and full of spit and certainly not the type that you see in movies or anything. I think he knew that it was bad too because afterwards he just mumbled, "Ah, here they are," and scooped up the cardboard box of scripts and walked away.

"Maisie, you're gorgeous. You can literally have any guy you want. Except for Asher, of course. He's all mine," she says teasingly, her eyes twinkling with something.

I didn't think that I was ugly. But I was too tall for the most of the boys my age, and too skinny to have any clothes fit nicely on me. I hated my long, willowy body, my too twig-like legs and arms. My hair was thin and a reddish color, something that was a gift from my Irish mother. I knew that some boys liked me, but the truth of the matter was that I didn't really like boys. I had other things to dedicate my time to. Like volleyball and being involved in five hour long marathons of Criminal Minds with Rita.

"Trust me," I told her, looking back at Asher. "I would never." We walk two steps more in silence. Asher slips away, out of sight. "But seriously, why do you still like him so much?"

She sighs, the little hopeless romantic that she is. "Because you just don't give up on the people that you love."

Now, I'm standing between an ancient BMW and dented Honda when another black car swerves into the lot, narrowly missing the boy with piercings and tattoos, and swings into a spot that isn't technically a parking spot, behind me. Amber Adams emerges from the driver's seat. She moved here from Ohio back in eighth grade and Kenzie made fun of her behind her back relentlessly, laughing about her braces and how she was in all of the lower, dumb classes. Now, almost four years later, she had perfectly straight teeth and thick black hair and plays volleyball with us.

Then, I hear it. The moment arrives, the one that I've been dreading since that night. I texted Kenzie hundreds, thousands of times after that night, apologizing, only to receive nothing in reply. The car door slams and Kenzie's voice rings out, "I knew that sleeping over your house last night was a bad idea. We are so late."

I stand there still. My body is tense like a soldier preparing for the battle. The smart thing to do would be to go inside, avoid her as much as possible. But I missed her...

I'm looking at her before she notices me. Her trademark curls are no more and, instead, her hair is pin straight, a silky, yellow curtain that falls over her shoulder. She's wearing the same shade of pink lipgloss that she wore last year on the first day of school. My heart longs for the past.

She does, however, finally see me and she comes to a stop. Amber too. For the first time ever, I caught Mackenzie Beaumont by surprise. She stops. She stares. We breath. It feels like one of those old western movies, where two enemies come together and all that this town ain't big enough for the two of us crap.

For a second, just a teeny tiny second, I have hope that all is forgiven. All I want is for my best friend to come back to me. Maybe Kenzie realized that what happened was a terrible, tragic mistake. She has to forgive me sometime, right?

But, finally, Kenzie composes herself and, with all of the venom in the world, she hisses, "Bitch."

Of course. It was silly of me to think that I could be forgiven. You just don't forget something like your best friend sleeping with your boyfriend.

•••

Another wave of nausea hits me right as the late bell rings for fifth period. I steady myself against the wall, telling myself that right now is definitely not the best time to puke. I have American Literature with Mrs. Brett, a young, new teacher who isn't too skilled in discipline yet, so a few extra minutes coaching myself not to puke shouldn't do any harm.

I get all hot and sweaty. I lean against the cool, metal lockers. The rest of the hallway is deserted, fortunately.

The day wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. So far. I had only one class with Kenzie, gym - which was a miracle in itself considering we used to have nearly every class together. We were both overachievers, Kenzie and me. Except she was naturally a genius and I always said she should go on one of those talk shows to prove to everyone that she can do complex math problems in her head. Me, though, well, if I want to get an A in anything then I have to study for it. Which I do. I don't mind studying. We were both in the top ten of our class.

Which is why it doesn't make sense that Kenzie wasn't in any of my classes that morning - Advanced Trigonometry, AP World History, Honors Physics. Why wasn't Kenzie taking those classes too? As grateful as I was that we weren't in every class together and as horrible as we've been to each other, I'm concerned.

After a couple of minutes, I'm feeling better and I arrive at Brett's room. When I open the door, twenty-five pairs of eyes all look at me, including Mrs. Brett's pale blue ones as she stands in the front center of the room.

She looks a little disappointed. I had her last year for an elective called Contemporary Novels where we read books like The Lovely Bones and The Perks of Being a Wallflower. She liked me. "Late on the first day, Maisie?"

"I was sick," I tell her, feeling like a child who misbehaved.

She sighs, but puts up no real argument. "Go find a seat."

Being Honors American Literature and everything, the last person that I expected to see was Asher Kinsley. But there he was, the front row, looking down at some worn, tattered book. No one ever called Asher dumb, but no one called him smart either. Truthfully, he was the one to get an athletic scholarship, not an academic one. And yet, here he was, in an honors class. I had to learn to stop judging people.

Even with his face tilted downwards, he looks the same as he did that night. My heart constricts, I feel nauseous all over again. A long, oval face but with sharp features. Two dimples when he smiles. Messy, chocolate hair. A toned body. His voice sometimes gets scratchy when he talks.

I think back to that night in July. A crowded living room, empty bottles and cans strewn across the house, and, later, the red and blue lights in the living room window, the wail of the sirens.

"Can I get you a beer, Maisie?"

"'Maisie?" Mrs. Brett's sweet, gentle voice pulls me back into reality. She's looking at me funny. "Go sit down in an empty seat."

I nod once. Everyone is staring. Including Kenzie, who is siting faithfully next to Asher. She's watching me, a cat watching its prey. Now, whispers spread throughout the room, gossiping about the girl who slept with her best friend's boyfriend. I was the villain in this story.

"Quiet down, class," Mrs. Brett says, probably in the meanest tone that she's ever used, which still isn't all that mean.

I slip into the last open seat, next to a girl wearing a cherry red shirt with red lipstick to match and wild, messy hair. "Hi!" she says enthusiastically.

The only thing I do in return is smile just a bit.

I'm too aware of everyone gossiping about me. The looks that people give me, as if they know the whole story. There's no one looking at Asher like that, though. He still has his head down, reading over the book in his hands. Double standards are so gross.

I'm angry. I feel sick. I want to go home.

"Anyway, as I was saying, we'll be reading The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne during the month of September," Brett said, handing me a copy of the novel with yellowed pages, as everyone else already had a copy on their desk. She continues, walking back to the front of the class, "It's the story of Hester Prynne, who is banished from Puritan society after having an illegitimate child..."

But I tune her out. I can only concentrate on the boy whose nose is buried in the book, a few rows ahead of me. The boy that can't even look at me.

•••

Mentally, I've been preparing myself for lunch all day. I had the peanut butter, banana, and honey sandwich that Rita packed for me and was all ready to spend the lunch period sitting by myself. It would be fine, I reasoned. I could scroll through social media on my phone and all will be well.

In the past two years, I would sit with the volleyball team. All of us, crowded on one wooden table with chewed gum on the bottom. It was there that I had some of the best moments of high school. We joked, we laughed, we teased, me and Kenzie and the whole team. We bonded more there than we did on the court.

I try not to make eye contact with anyone else as I make my way towards the rear of the cafeteria, sitting next to the trash cans, recycling bins, and the poster that had the schedule of upcoming football games on it. And I especially do not even glance in the direction of the volleyball table.

The other girls on the team might not hate me like Kenzie does, but they certainly do not like me. Before that night, I talked to nearly everyone of them daily. But last weekend, when Rita dragged me to the mall to shop for candles and lavender soap, I saw Catherine Peters, strolling through the music store. I stopped. She looked up. We made eye contact for all of two seconds before she quickly whipped her head away, going back to flipping through all of The Beatles' old albums. Catherine Peters, the girl who always invited me to her birthday party celebration slumber party since the sixth grade when we toasted s'mores, slept in a tent in her backyard, and told each other ghost stories, couldn't even say "hello" to me.

Of course they would side with Kenzie. I'm the bad guy in all this.

I look at the football poster. The dates in such a fine print that I have trouble reading it. There's a couple professional photos of a few of the players on it. Most were now seniors, but there's Asher Kinsley's face, right in the middle. He's wearing his pads and jersey, eyeblack under his eyes, looking all tough and mean and ready to commit murder. His dimples are gone.

"Can I get you a beer, Maisie?"

I try not to think of the irony: me, sitting helplessly alone, eating a mushy sandwich, exiled from my team's table, and Asher staring at me coldly.

As I'm in the middle of debating which is worse: sitting here by myself or eating lunch in a bathroom stall, a lunch tray comes slamming down on the table. I jump, the sticky sandwich falling out of my hand and onto a napkin on the table.

The girl from Literature class, with her big hair, big eyes, and red, red lips sits across from me. For a moment, I'm nervous that she'll kick me out, claiming this table as her own. But instead, she looks at me, all irritated, "AP Art History is going to kill me this year, I swear to God."

I'm a little startled. Who is this girl? But I remember the way she smiled at me today, how she didn't join in with the gossiping as everyone else had so I chew and swallow and say, in a tiny voice, "Why?"

"Because how the hell am I supposed to 'analyze different works of art in a historical context, focusing on the political, economic, and social aspects that the particular painting displays in that specific time period'?" She huffs, digging into her mushy broccoli, courtesy of the school's disgusting cafeteria.

"Seriously," she continues, her mouth full of the green vegetable. "I took Art History because I like painting and looking at paintings. Not to analyze stuff."

I blink. "Well, then you should have taken AP Art," I tell her dryly, wondering why she's telling me all of this.

"They have that?" She stares at me, all serious, like I just told her where a massive treasure was hidden.

"I mean, I think that there's an AP Drawing class or something. You should talk to the guidance counselor." What the hell is this girl's name? Is she new here or something? Why haven't I seen her around before?

A big grin replaces the frown on her face, giving me a glimpse of her white teeth. "I'll definitely do that! You're a literal lifesaver, Maisie. That is your name, right? I thought that's what Mrs. Brett said..."

"Yeah, I'm Maisie," I nod, pointing to myself as if I had to clarify that I am Maisie.

She nods. I watch as she takes a bit of pizza and, miraculously doesn't mess up her red lipstick in the process. That's some serious talent. I'm not sure what else to say. Back at the team table, whenever there was an awkward silence, usually one of the chatty girls broke it. Not me.

Thankfully, the girl continues after she swallows, "I'm Meredith. I just moved here over the summer from Seattle. So that explains why I'm so pale. Get it? Because it's always raining in Seattle? Which is so not true by the way."

Meredith. She looks like a Meredith. Really, she looks like she belongs in the 1950's with the lipstick and the pearl necklace she wears. "Seattle? That's a big adjustment to tiny Tega Cay. Do you like it here so far?"

She's new. That means she doesn't know what happened over the summer. Maybe all of Rita's prayers really did help in the long run. That not everyone will automatically hate me.

"I guess," she shrugs. "It kind of freaks me out though, the whole 'everyone knows everyone' kind of thing."

Huh, tell me about it. "Yeah, that's pretty annoying sometimes. But it's a great place to live." Not that I ever lived anywhere else.

"But it's nice. Everyone is really nice here." As she says this, she blinks quickly, like she's trying to force herself to believe it.

Another tray slams down and at least I recognize the other girl this time. Ally Jackson sits next to Meredith, scowling, "This is ridiculous. We should not be forced to eat this...this...revolting food. I'm pretty sure that's mold on the bread. Mold. And yet the school's leaders have the audacity to talk about how important good nutrition is."

Ally was number one in our grade. That girl was going to Harvard or Yale or some other fancy school. Still, even with her brains and all of her passion for change and empowerment, she as an outcast. She adjusted her thick frame glasses and flipped her short black hair over her shoulder, not paying an inkling of attention to me.

Meredith leaned over and looked at Ally's tray. "Mhmm, yep. There's definitely something growing on there." She scrunches her nose.

I wondered how they knew each other if Meredith was new to Tega Cay.

And that's when it hits me. The most pungent, repulsive smell you could ever imagine. I know the source immediately - the yellowy tuna that sits on Ally's tray. Embarrassing myself in the process, I started gagging.

It's only now that Ally seems to notice me. She arches a perfectly plucked eyebrow at me. "Are you okay? I know that the tuna smells bad, but you must have an extremely sensitive nose..."

No smell has ever effected me like this before. I jump up, make a mad dash to the girls' bathroom, and arrive just in time at the first stall to vomit up the contents of last night's dinner. This sends two squealing freshman girls out in the process. When I'm done, I puke up again, leaving my throat feeling like I just downed five shots of vodka.

Even after there's nothing left in my stomach, I'm dry heaving for a good minute. My throat hurts. I get dizzy, light-headed. When I finally think I'm done, I sit on the bathroom floor, trying not to think of all of the germs that I'm encountering. I lean my head against the cool tile walls.

And that was when I started to panic.

I think about how, for the past week, I had to stand with my back facing the stream of the water in the shower, as the liquid felt like bullets hitting the skin of my breasts. But when I brought the issue up to my father, he claimed that the water pressure felt fine to him.

I think of how I puked for nearly everyday the past week. Anxiety, I told myself, because of Kenzie. Or I just ate something rotten.

I think of how fuzzy my mind gets when I try to remember back to see if Asher wore a condom. I told myself that he did. He had to have worn one, right?

I think about how I was late for my period this month. Originally, I wrote it off as stress, that I was upset and confused and nervous about all of the issues going on with Kenzie.

And that was when I knew.

Some things you did just know. I didn't need a test or a doctor to confirm it. I felt it, deep in my bones. Instinct. A knowledge that comes to you without having to think about it.

I stand up, my legs wobbly. I walk to the mirror. I take myself in; my thin, strawberry blonde hair. The way my face is nearly the color of the ghostly wall.

I didn't cry. I wasn't angry. But I knew it. I just knew.

I'm pregnant.