Thumped (11 page)

EVERYONE SMILES AT ME AS I CLIMB ABOARD. TO THESE GIRLS,
pros and amateurs alike, I really can do no wrong.

“I’m sorry for making you wait, everyone,” I say, heading down the aisle to my seat. “I overslept.”

Throughout most of my fake pregnancy, I was perfectly capable of riding my bike to school as usual. Even when I wasn’t showing, I had to take the Bumpmobile because
not
taking it to school would have provoked elitist accusations. These days, however, with forty pounds’ worth of fake babies sinking deep into my breedy bits, a mile would feel like a marathon. So I’m relieved to have the ride, even if it means I have to feign enthusiasm for all things preggy for five minutes every morning and afternoon. On the upside, it’s one place I’m guaranteed not to run into Ventura Vida, which is especially vital for my sanity after last night.

Being by greeted by a busload of knocked up Cheerclones is only marginally better.

“Oh. My. Behbeh,” squeaks Dea Lan, the squeakiest of the bunch. “I was totally there at your launch party last night! Don’t believe me? Just take a whiff!” She shoves her wrist under my nose. “It’s You: The Fragrance! So yummy! But are you, like, okay?”

As she asks this, she’s already scrambling her own hair with her fingers and twisting it into a mangy ponytail that sticks out from the side of her head.

Dea bumped with a Baller named Asif at a masSEXtinction orgy only a few days before I got mocked up, so she’s been obsessively comparing herself to me, and copying everything I do along the way. Never mind that I’m supposed to be carrying twins and she’s only got one ovenbunny wrecking havoc with her waistline.

Imitation comes naturally to Dea and all Cheerclones because they are experts in losing their individuality for the benefit of the collective. Each member is contractually obligated to adjust her weight and dye her hair, eye, and skin color to duplicate the average for the group as a whole. While on their “gestational hiatus” from cheering, it’s not surprising that Dea and the rest of the squad have redirected those talents toward morphing into me. Within thirty seconds nearly
every
girl on the Bumpmobile has copied my bedheadish look. And thanks to the MiFotos these girls snapped of me when I climbed aboard, I know this unattractive trend is already going viral on the MiNet. This morning busloads of girls all across the world will disembark from their vehicles with deranged side ponytails.

Celine Lichtblau is about the only one on the bus who hasn’t adopted my hairstyle. She’s too stoned to notice I’ve taken the seat across the aisle from her.

“Hey, Celine,” I say, wincing at her waistline. “I’m surprised to see you here.”

Celine, it should be noted, is practically ten months pregnant. I thought for sure she was supposed to be induced over the weekend.

She responds in slow motion. “Ohhhh . . . what?” Her eyes are red and glassy. “Weren’t you supposed to go for a pop and drop on Saturday?”

She stares at me blankly for at least ten seconds. Then she covers her mouth and starts giggling uncontrollably.

“Ohhhh . . . yeah . . . I think I missed it,” she says airily.

Every pregger gets prescribed AntiTocin so we don’t bond with our bumps. But for the first trimester Celine was prescribed too much and it was like a nonstop crazy-bitchfest. For serious. We all just kind of quietly put up with her moods because we were afraid of her. Then one day she got an unfavorable grade on an essay titled, “Babies: What’s the Big Fucking Deal?” and she flew into an epic hormonal rage and threatened to impregnate the entire Princeton Day Academy faculty with her fist. The made no sense but terrified our teachers and administrators nonetheless. After that incident, her OB kept her on the AntiTocin but hoped to lessen its psychotic effects by writing her a scrip for Mellonin, which she tokes via a smokeless vaporizer pipe. The combination of these two meds has certainly worked because she’s pretty much down to just one mood: munchie.

“Heeeey . . . Do you have any . . . like . . . snickity-snacks? I haven’t eaten . . . like . . . all morning and I’m
starving
.”

There’s a crumpled bag of Cheezy Chipz on the floor at her feet. Her mouth and fingers are tinged orange, and crumbs have settled on her coat and seat.

“All morning?” I ask.

“
All morning
,” she replies with such dumb sincerity that I’m starting to believe that
she
believes she’s telling the truth.

Her pregg is now just one of the many things in life she just can’t be bothered with anymore, a list that includes just about everything but a) getting her next hit, and b) getting snickity-snacks. She’s failing all of her classes, and the only reason she hasn’t been bounced out is because of the recent passage of the Maternal Anti-Discrimination Education Act, which basically says that preggers (according to the quikiwiki) “cannot be punished academically for their invaluable role in the repopulation of our great nation.” So it doesn’t matter if a pregger is experiencing hormonally induced stupidity, is artificially dosed into stupidity, or is just naturally stupid with or without the human squatting in her uterus; she can get her diploma without testing proficiently in
any
of the subjects she’s taken in four years of high school. And this policy will stop us from slipping into second-world status
how
exactly?

Sigh. That’s a talking point straight from the Mission.

Fortunately, I get a MiNet message just in time to stop me from thinking about what I don’t want to think about. I’m beyond amped when see that it’s my friend Shoko calling me from college!

“Your hair is for seriously janked. You know that, right?”

That’s why I love Shoko. She’s the only one who doesn’t treat me any differently since I got branded. I take my hair out of its sloppy side ponytail and smooth it over my shoulders. I try to ignore the fact that Dea and the rest of the Cheerclones are silently copying me.

“And you, Miss Weiss, are looking as diva as ever.”

It’s almost impossible to believe that this teeny pixie chick with the big mouth could have carried another human being inside her. Twice. Shoko just started her second semester at Rutgers and has recently pledged Eta Omicron Tau, the sorority with the reputation for having the hottest girls who “snapped back” after their deliveries. All of this was made possible with the money Shoko earned by providing two kids for a couple she never even met.

That’s
exactly
the way Pro transactions are supposed to go down.

Well, minus the part when she almost died.

Shoko nearly bled out after her second delivery and had to get an emergency hysterectomy. She was so high on Humerall that she was more concerned about the ragged state of her cuticles than her near-death delivery. To be honest, she acted almost exactly like Celine does now. Shoko doesn’t remember anything that happened in the OR and never caught sight of the human being she brought into the world that day.

“So did you and Jondoe break up or what?” she asks, getting straight to the point. “Because there’s a nubie-pubie all over the MiNet saying that you did. And disgracing our PDA team jersey while doing it, I might add!”

Quailey. Gah.

“I thought I was your best friend! You promised not to lie to me anymore!”

Though she doesn’t know the sketchy extent of our scamming, Shoko is the only outsider who has so much as a clue that The Hotties are not what we appear to be. Way back when this all started, I told Shoko that it wasn’t
me
making major media with Jondoe, but Harmony pretending to be me. So she thinks Jondoe has bumped
both
of us, a position in keeping with her opinion that he is (in her words) “the stiffiest RePro in the business.”

“We didn’t break up,” I say, which isn’t a lie because you can’t break up if you were never together in the first place. “I swear. She’s just fame-gaming that’s all.”

Skoko wrinkles her nose the way she does when she detects bullshit.

“You swear there isn’t something you’re not telling me?”

There have been times that I’ve been so weighed down by this secret that I’ve come close to confessing to Shoko all about the B$B. She’s always been brutally honest, and I know she would have given me a colorfully candid assessment of our scam:

“Did you get cock-knocked in the head? You’re never going to get away with this!”

Yeah, that’s
exactly
why I haven’t confided in her. I don’t want a confirmation of what I already know.

“I swear.”

I’ve lied about a billion times in the past eight and a half months, and I swear it hasn’t gotten any easier. But I don’t get to see Shoko’s response because my MiNet reception goes blind when the Bumpmobile pulls into the school parking lot.

These mornings are when I miss Shoko the most.

Malia too.

Malia is being treated for postpartum psychosis at the Shields Center. She’s been there since last spring, when she tried to kill herself after she was told that she couldn’t keep her “baby” (yes, she used the b-word) because it had already been picked up by the couple who paid for it. Surely she should be cured by now, right? She used to message me all the time about how it wasn’t too late to save myself from preggsploitation, but I haven’t had any contact with her since I went public with The Hotties. She probably thinks I’m the ultimate sellout and has lost all respect for me. I hope she’ll forgive me when I reveal the whole truth.

I hope
everyone
forgives me. Even if they don’t agree with me.

Celine pokes my arm and gives me another one of her unreadable stares.

“For serious . . . Do you have any . . . like . . . snickity-snacks?”

I offer my PregGo Bar and she declines because they taste like sweaty shin guards. I’m only carrying it around with me because I’m paid to do so. No one seems to notice or care that I’ve never been seen actually eating one.

It’s just another prop in this elaborate scam that has become my life.

I’M PANTING LIKE A DOG IN A DROUGHT.

“Another contraction!” Jondoe says excitedly. “That’s only five minutes after the last round! We should call an air taxi now!”

“No!” I insist, gripping the wall as I inch myself forward. “Not yet!”

“But you said yourself you don’t want to deliver the twins here.”

I don’t want to deliver the twins here.

Or anywhere.

“It’s too soon! I’m five weeks early!”

“Preterm labor is not uncommon with twins,” Jondoe says assertively.

“How can you be sure I’m in labor?” I ask, panic rising in my voice. “How do you know I’m not having those, um, Brixton Hacks—”

“Braxton Hicks,” he corrects.

“WHATEVER!” I roar. “YOU ARE NOT A DOCTOR.”

I’ve never raised my voice like that in my life. If I yelled at Ram like that, he’d scurry away with his puppy tail between his legs. But Jondoe doesn’t back away. He stops and gingerly places his hand on the curve of my back.

“Exactly,” he says softly. “Which is why we should go to a hospital.”

I ignore his words, though his soothing touch is harder to resist. I’m determined to do a few more laps up and down this hall.

“The twins will settle down,” I say unconvincingly, “this is a false alarm and—”

I stop midsentence.

Something has just happened inside me.

A pop. A pulling apart. A loosening. And releasing . . . releasing . . . releasing . . .

Within a minute, I’m soaked from the waist down.

“Ack! Gack! Ack! Gack!” I’m flapping around the hall like a goose with a broken wing. “The twins can’t come now! I’ve got five weeks to go! It isn’t time!”

“They can and they are,” Jondoe replies, taking deep breaths to remain calm.

He offers his hands to me, but I take a step backward. I’m scared to let him touch me. Afraid of what else might come apart.

He looks me directly in the eyes before speaking.

“Your water’s already broken,” he says gently. “There’s nothing else I can break.”

Oh, Jondoe. How I wish that were true.

I NEVER THOUGHT I’D BE SUPPORTIVE OF THE CAMPUS-WIDE
MiNet blind, but the seven hours I’m in school are the only part of my private life that stays private. No one can foto me while I’m wearing my ugly protective goggles for my biochem lab. No one can video me eating vitamin-deficient snack products I am not being paid to eat. No one can follow me into the bathroom and MiChat to all my followers about how long and how often I pee.

But today I’m dreading a run-in with Ventura. I mean, even more than the usual dread based on her usual annoyingness. And I have no idea what I’ll do when I see Zen.

I wish I could just sprint down the hall and hide out in homeroom. But in my current state of maximum density, I can’t get anywhere nearly as fast as I need to. I don’t know how Harmony does it. She can still milk a cow or shovel manure, for Darwin’s sake. My fake deliveries are making my whole body ache worse than the hardest, longest soccer practice I’ve ever had. Plus it doesn’t help my progress when someone stops me every few steps to make one comment or another on the state of my uterus.

“You’re bigger and better than ever!”

“Can I rub your belly for luck?”

“Work it! Flaunt it! You’ve got fattitude!”

I’m about halfway to my locker when I’m stopped by major gridlock.

“I’m trapped!”

“I’m staaaaaarving!”

Celine somehow jammed the steering mechanism on her Preggway and has pinned a defenseless pre-pubie freshboy against the vending machine. Preggways only go, like, a half-mile an hour, but Celine can’t get through a day without a low-speed wreck. And we can’t keep track of how many times she’s lost her way, motored into an empty classroom, and was later discovered marveling at the pretty unicorns and rainbows projected from her hallucinogenic mind and onto the blank wall.

I’ll say this about Celine: She’s way more entertaining now than she was before she was dosing Mellonin.

Anyway, I always looked down on all the lazy bumpers who get their doctors to diagnose them with metatarsal edema (swollen ankles) just so they can get permission to motor through the halls. But by the time I reach my locker I’m seriously considering getting a Preggway too because I’m ready to terminate myself. Especially when I see Zen has gotten there before me.

So. Yeah. I handled things pretty suckily last night.

But if there was a better strategy than locking myself in my bathroom and telling Zen I wasn’t coming out until I knew he was gone, I still don’t know what it is. Zen complied more quickly than I thought he would, and I can hardly blame him if he decided to head straight for Ventura’s bedroom. I doubt he did though. Ventura is not discreet and news of their hookup would be all over the MiNet this morning.

Zen is leaning against my locker with his arms folded across his chest and one leg crossed over the other, the unnatural pose of someone straining very hard to look totally at ease. It’s a relief, really, knowing that he feels as awkward about what happened—or
didn’t
happen—as I do.

“Hey.” His voice cracks. “Hey,” he repeats in a baritone that I think is supposed to be sexy but has the opposite of its intended effect on me.

“Hey,” I say back.

He runs a hand through his hair. I shift all my weight onto my right hip, trying to get comfortable.

“I kinda went about it all wrong last night, didn’t I?”

“Kinda? It was a total fustercluck.”

This makes him smile.

“You’re right,” he says. “And I’m sorry.”

“I accept your apology.”

Whew. That wasn’t so awkward, was it?

Without anything to add, I punch the code to open the door.

Oh no.

“Surprise!” he says with a goofy flourish.

Inside my locker are a six-pack of Coke ’99 and a box of chocolate chip energy bars.

“What’s wrong? These are your favorites!” And then he proceeds to reach in, grab a bar, tear off the wrapper, and eat the whole bar in one big bite. “Mmm! Deeelicious.”

“You’re right. These are my favorites. And yours too, apparently.”

Zen chews for a few seconds, then swallows. “Sorry, I didn’t have time for breakfast,” he mumbles.

“That’s fine,” I say, eyeing a smear of chocolate in the corner of his mouth.

“Then why are you making The Fuggy?”

He’s right. I’m frowning and my forehead is furrowed. I make The Fuggy whenever I get too tired of hiding my true feelings, which is happening more and more the longer I’m mocked up.

I turn to him slowly, not to be dramatic but because that’s the only speed I’m capable of achieving right now.

“Harmony told me that when Jondoe first came to my house, and he thought she was me, he tried to woo her—meaning
me
—by presenting her with the exact same gifts.”

Zen’s face falls. “What’s your point?”

“My point is that
anyone
who takes a moment’s glance at my file could know me just as well as you think you do. I’ve got a million MiNet followers who know me as well as you do.”

And now, as an added measure of his distress, Zen pulls on his hair spikes.

“We’ve been naive to believe our relationship is any deeper than it really is.”

Zen is shaking his head at me. “Don’t do this, Mel.”

“Do what? This is good news for both of us! It’s so liberating!” I point to my ubiquitous face in an ad on the wall right behind Zen. “The National Association for Procreation didn’t select me as their spokesteen without good reason! Why open our hearts and minds when we can open our files and legs!”

“Yeah, what she says!” says Asif, the Baller who pregged Dea. His locker is right next to mine and he’s been graciously offering to bump hump me all year.

“Gah,” I say to the Baller. “Delete yourself already.”

Zen smiles uneasily. “Well, it’s nice to know that you’re rejecting
all
comers, not just me.”

But Zen is the only one I struggle to resist.

He’s licking his lips, not at all in a humpy way, but it’s still having that effect on me anyway. As much as I want press my thumb to the corner of his mouth to wipe away that stubborn smudge of chocolate, I feel like I shouldn’t touch him in that or any other way if he’s so conflicted about what—who—he wants.

“Look,” Zen says, quietly now, so we won’t be overheard. “I don’t know what you think
has
happened or
is
happening with me and—”

He stops himself before he says her name. I follow his wandering eyes behind me just in time to catch none other than Ventura herself hovering nearby. She unsuccessfully tries to escape detection by dashing into the boys’ bathroom.

This, to me, is all the evidence I need that something has and is happening.

Mercifully, the last bell rings, putting an end to this conversation.

“I have to go now,” I say. “Because I’m already too late.”