Leap of Faith (2 page)

“Yeah, I’ll grab my stuff.”

When I get outside to Brian’s car, they’re staring at each other with googly eyes. I want to puke. His big football-grabbing hand is wrapped around her thigh. Her hand’s on his cheek. Hope has no issues with sex. That’s something else she managed to escape.

I open the back door of the Honda coupe and slide in after my backpack. “Please stop groping until I’m out of the car, ’kay? Thanks.”

Brian laughs and looks over his shoulder at me. “What’s up, Faith? How’s work?”

Brian and I have zero to talk about, but I have to give him props for trying. “Good. How’s football?”

For the next fifteen minutes, until we pull into North High School’s parking lot, Brian fills me in on every detail of their summer practices, and how they’re going to kick Central’s asses all over the field next Friday night—the first game of the season.

I know Hope’s heard all of it already, probably more than once, but she listens, riveted. God, that has to be love, because I’m bored out of my skull and want to kick my own ass for asking him about football.

After we park, I lug my bag out of Brian’s car and wave. “See ya.”

“Need a ride home?” Brian asks, closing his car door.

“No. Thanks for asking, though.”

Hope darts out of the car and grabs my arm. “I have track after school, and then Brian and I are eating at his house. I won’t be home until late.” She bites the inside of her cheek.

“Don’t worry. Mom isn’t going to actually
kill
me, you know.” I pat her on the head like a little kid and chuckle. “See ya tonight.”

Even though I try to appear like it doesn’t bother me, like I’m not terrified of Mom’s wrath, my insides are a twisted knot. I shouldn’t have flushed her weed. She loves it more than she loves me. It’s possible that she
will
kill me.

It takes until lunch. A student assistant finds me in the back corner of the lunchroom. “Your mom’s in the office,” she says.

My stomach lurches, threatening to heave up the chocolate Ho Hos I just ate.

“Shit.”

chapter

two

I can’t breathe. Maybe my lungs have collapsed. It feels like my chest is pressed flat against my back. I’m light-headed as I follow the student assistant through the office door.

Mom’s leaning against the counter with her back to me, wearing beat-up jeans and a paint-splattered blue sweatshirt. She turns when the door closes. Her sunken, black-ringed eyes drill into me. I try not to cringe. “We almost forgot your doctor’s appointment,” she says.

She’s going to make me leave with her. I blurt the first thing that comes to mind. “Maybe we should reschedule it. I have a test in algebra today.”

“Today is your first day. You have a test already?” Her eyebrows shoot skyward.

Dumb—that was dumb to say. “It’s, like, a skills test. To see how much we know already.”

“Well, then, you’re fine. Everyone knows you don’t know shit.”

The secretary gasps and swivels her chair, not wanting any part of our conversation.

This is why I don’t have friends.

I know how much my life sucks.

I don’t need to see it in another person’s appalled expression.

I can’t imagine why Hope would subject herself to that, but whatever.

I sigh. “Let me get my bag. I’ll meet you at the car.”

I’m so fucking dead, I’m so fucking dead,
I chant in my head all the way to my locker on the second floor. Why must I do stupid shit that I regret later? It’s like I can’t get in deep enough and have to keep digging myself down into a hole. Then I stand at the bottom, look up, and realize I’m fucked and have no way back out.

My fingers twist the locker combination, and I frantically brainstorm a way out of this. The only thing I can do is work the baby angle. Pretend I actually give a shit about the future tweaker she’s carrying.

Play it up.

Maybe even cry a little.

It’s my only shot.

I shove the school doors open and shuffle out into the parking lot, momentarily blinded by the sun. My feet move forward with resolve. I can do this. She can’t be mad at me for protecting the kid, right? I mean, she doesn’t get the big cash until she actually has it. I’m just looking out for her best interest.
Yes
—there’s the angle.

I nod to myself, believing the line of bull surging through my mind. Her fifteen-year-old black and rusty Oldsmobile pulls up beside me, almost running over my foot, and lunges to a halt. My teeth grind together, and a pang of anxiety squeezes through my chest as I reach for the handle and open the car door.

She’s screaming before my ass hits the seat.

“Who the
fuck
do you think you are? You didn’t pay for that! You owe me two hundred bucks!”

Her foot slams the gas pedal. My head hits the back of the seat, and I struggle with the seat belt. “Okay. I was just looking out for the baby. And you. I mean, you don’t get paid until it’s born, right? What if it comes out with two heads or something? You want your money, don’t you?”

“You weren’t looking out for the baby or me. You were being an asshole. That’s what you are, Faith, an asshole.” Her hand pounds the steering wheel to punctuate her point.

“Seriously, Mom, you have to keep that kid safe. You want the cash, right?” I dig my fingernails into my palm, trying to make my eyes water. “I don’t want anything to happen to the baby,” I say in a choked-up voice. “Please, Mom, think of the baby.”

Her foot lets up on the gas, and her head slowly turns in my direction. Her eyes focus on mine, like she’s seeing me for the first time ever. “Who the hell
are
you? You never cry. What’s all this baby bullshit anyway? You know it’s not ours, right? Don’t go getting attached to it.”

I roll my eyes. “
Puh-lease.
These are tears of joy for getting to give you shit for forty weeks.” I yank my sleeve down over my hand and wipe at my eyes.

She snaps her head back toward the window. “You do know that I’m the mom, right? No matter what you might think of my parenting skills.”

I choke again, fighting back a laugh.

“You have no say in anything relating to me or this ten-thousand-dollar kid inside me.”

“Right.” For the first time, I look around us. “Where are we going?”

“The bank. You’re taking out two hundred bucks to pay me back for the weed you flushed.”

I burst out laughing. “Seriously? You think I’m paying you back so you can go buy more? Not a chance.”

Her arm shoots out like lightning. The back of her hand connects with my mouth. “You want to be a smart-ass? Huh? Keep it up, and I’ll knock every tooth you have right out of your head!”

The salty taste of warm blood fills my mouth. I probe around with my tongue until a searing pain shoots through my lip where my top tooth made a gash.

She pulls up to the ATM, rolls down her window, and holds out her hand. “Give me your card.”

Everything inside me clenches in anger. My fingers rip the zipper on my backpack open and yank out my wallet. I shove the card into her hand without looking at her and recite the pin. “Four seven six five.”

My lip throbs as she punches the numbers into the keypad. A minute later, I hear the whirr of the machine spitting out cash.

My cash.

My meager means of escaping.

I hate her.

I hate her with an all-encompassing passion that I thrive on more than food. I
will
make her sorry.

She stuffs my money and my bank card into her purse and puts the car in drive.

I want my card, but I don’t want her to backhand me again. It sets off a tug-of-war in my brain. She knows I want to ask for it. By not asking, I’m making her think I’m afraid of her.

I’m not afraid of her.

“I want my card back.” I suck my lip in, preparing for another blow.

Instead, she laughs. “I’m keeping it in case you pull another stunt like you did this morning. Next time I won’t have to come haul your ass out of school and waste my gas. I’ll just go right to the bank.” Her eyebrows shoot up as she smiles at me, a
How do you like that?
smile.

I don’t like it.

But she’s a drunk and a junkie. She’ll get baked, and I’ll take my card back. No big deal.

She lights a cigarette, cracks the window, and runs her long fingernails through her hair. At the next street, she makes a right. “Gotta make a stop,” she says.

Of course we do. All those twenties are burning a hole through her purse.

The car lurches to a stop in front of a run-down duplex with a saggy roof. “Stay here,” she says.

I watch her stick-figure frame head up the walkway and onto the porch. Dave—Baby Daddy—answers the door and lets her inside.

Ten minutes go by and a car as rusty and beat as my mom’s pulls into the driveway. A woman with long black hair gets out and carries two plastic grocery bags across the bare dirt yard and takes them into Dave’s place. It must be his girlfriend, Angel—Baby Mama.

I try to picture a red and white tricycle on the sidewalk and struggle to form the image in my mind. It’s just not right. This isn’t a swing-set-and-baby-pool kind of place. The entire neighborhood is a drug-infested hole.

No kid can grow up here.

Mom comes out pinching the bridge of her nose and shoving baggies into her purse. She sniffs and snuffles all the way home. When we get inside, she cracks open a can of beer and throws herself onto the couch.

In my room, I toss my backpack on my bed and hear the TV come on. The clock reads ten till two. I should be in school for another twenty-five minutes. I don’t have to be at work until five. Three hours to kill, wanting to be anywhere but here.

I should’ve just screwed Jason. He would’ve picked me up. He’s twenty-two and has his own place. Hell, I could probably live with him. Mom doesn’t give a shit.

For a minute, I contemplate calling him and telling him I want to have sex with him. I wonder if he’d even be interested, if he’d come get me, since we’ve been apart for six months. I doubt he’d believe I’d suddenly be willing to give up my virginity to him. He’s tried enough times to know I won’t do it. He may be a low-life pizza delivery guy with no ambition, but he’s not dumb.

I lie on my mattress and stare out the window, up into the trees. I hate my life. I want out of it so bad, sometimes I think I might die.

My thoughts wander back to Baby Daddy’s apartment with the dirt yard, peeling paint, and hookers at the end of the street—and my mom coming out after snorting something and buying more weed.

A baby can’t live there. Its life would suck more than mine.

chapter

three

I come home from work to find Mom’s bedroom door closed. The murmur of a male voice tells me she’s not alone.

She has more than just a small baby bump now, and some guy is in there—ugh, the thought of it repulses me.

I turn the TV up louder to drown out their voices. “Happy fucking New Year to me.”

The ball drops, and I have another shitty year to look forward to. Hope leaves home this year. The baby’s born this year and is taken away, along with my excuse for harassing my mom to stop doing drugs.

I flip open the pizza box that I brought home from work and grab a slice. The cheese is hot and stringy and oozes down the sides onto my fingers.

Just as I’m about to take my first bite, there’s a knock at the door. I toss my slice back into the box, wipe my hands on my jeans, and make my way across the room to the door. I tug it open, and a woman with long, dark hair is standing there.

“Is Dave here?” she asks.

Baby Mama. I thought she looked familiar. “No.”

She narrows her eyes. “His truck just appeared on the street outside your house?”

I stick my head out the door. Damn, she’s right. His truck is out there. “Oh. I just got home from work a little while ago. Guess he is here.” Banging my mom.

“Tell him to get his ass home, okay? I’ve got a house full of people with money wanting to party.”

I nod. “Sure.”

She looks like she’s about to say something else but spins around and jogs down the steps. I watch her get into her rust-bucket car and back out of the driveway, hitting every rut along the way.

“Who was that?”

I jump about ten feet into the air at Mom’s voice behind me. “You scared the hell out of me!” I turn and lean into the door. My butt pushes it closed. She’s outside her bedroom in her skanky pink bathrobe with Dave beside her smoothing his greasy hair. “Dave’s woman. She wants his ass home. Something about people partying and money . . . I don’t know.”

Both of their faces fall.

“How did she know you were here?” Mom asks him, pushing up her sleeve and rubbing her fingers over the tracks on her arm.

He shakes his head. “Shit.” He yanks his T-shirt on and pulls his brown work boots onto his feet. “I’ll call you.” He dashes out the door and slams it behind him.

“Whatever.” Mom runs her fingers through the back of her hair, where its typical, postsex, matted, Irish-Setter-butt style is happening.

I sit back on the couch and pick up my pizza again. “Tell me he’s not dumb enough to believe you suddenly gained ten pounds in just your gut. He does know you’re pregnant, right?”

She smirks. “Of course he knows.”

“So . . .” I raise my eyebrows.

“We were just having fun, okay? God. I don’t know why I’d expect you to know anything about that. Here you are, New Year’s Eve, sitting home alone eating pizza on Mommy’s couch.”

“My life’s not exactly conducive to relationships.”

“Hope’s is. She has no problem with friends and a boyfriend. Looks like it’s just you, sweetie. You’re the one who’s got the problem.” She stalks into the bathroom and closes the door. The shower comes on and the pipes start banging.

• • •

A week into the new year, I’m sitting in the obstetrician’s office with Mom. I called and made the appointment and threatened to tell Angel that she was screwing Dave if she didn’t come.

“Ms. Kurtz,” the doctor says after Mom’s exam, “at or around twenty weeks, we do an ultrasound to make sure the baby’s developing. After you’re dressed, a nurse will be in to take you to the ultrasound room.” The doctor hands Mom a couple of packets of prenatal vitamins, makes a few notes in Mom’s chart, and leaves the room.