Amy Inspired - Bethany Pierce [53]
“Come on, Bartleby.” She threw my shoes on the bed. “Michael’s meeting us in ten minutes. He hates it when people are late.”
“Us?”
“I’m coming with you.”
Michael was outside the student union checking his watch when we pulled into the parking lot.
“Ready to go?” He stood with his legs spread wide, his arms extended. Swiveling his hips, he stretched this way, then that.
“I don’t think I’m up for it today,” I said.
“You’ll feel better once your blood gets flowing.” He pecked Zoë on the cheek, then gave her a spank. “Let’s go, baby.”
It was a long, hard run. When Michael and Zoë got ahead of me I didn’t try to keep up. Michael had taught me how to pace myself, how to breathe correctly and how to keep my mind focused. When I ran I tried to visualize the work my body was doing, the pumping of the heart and the oxidation of cells, the contraction of muscle, puppeteer of bone. When a sharp jab of pain stabbed my side I pretended I was carrying a baby that felt the need to announce itself with a swift kick to the ribs.
Only a month without cable and I’d fallen off the wagon. After Valerie’s shower I’d spent five hours watching a marathon of A Baby Story: Xena Princess Warrior meets Alien. It made me want to scream and push, to be a part of a miracle. It provoked cravings for the sweet powder smell of a baby’s hair. I told myself this was a biological phase on par with the hormonal revolution that made prepubescent boys ache at the sight of breasts and bucks chase doe tails right into oncoming semis. But still.
I’d tried praying about these feelings, but had a bad habit of praying tangentially so as not to appear too shallow in my desires. (As ministers were fond of reminding me, God is not concerned with your happiness but your character.) All the years I’d wanted a husband, I prayed God would make me content as a celibate, confident that if He saw my willingness to remain forever His chaste servant, He would see fit to send me an unexpected blessing of a very handsome man who would make love to me the way Daniel Day-Lewis made love to Madeleine Stowe in The Last of the Mohicans. And now whenever the desire for a family of my own began to gnaw at my heart, I prayed for my students and thanked God for the brood He’d already given me.
Meanwhile,Valerie, who had never waited on God for a blessing in her life, was in the third trimester of her pregnancy and looked positively Rubenesque. Her rounded figure made me hate my flat stomach and my empty breasts, parts of my body I’d mistaken for ornaments.
Zoë’s shriek broke my train of thought. She’d baited Michael. He was chasing her into the forest. I hurried to catch up with them. At the tree line, the trail narrowed to a thin, meandering path of dust mottled with stones and roots. For fifty feet it ran parallel to a steep drop-off before winding down the hill, turning sharply to realign itself with the creek, and heading back up to the forest in the opposite direction. Zoë and Michael were just to my left yet some twenty feet down and running the other way. They stopped when they saw me.
“What are you doing way up there?” Michael called.
“Get your boo-tay down here,” Zoë commanded.
I raced to join them. Some strange freedom had come over us. They whooped and cheered, uncivilized and dirt-splattered as kids at summer camp, and halfway down the hill I threw my hands out and hollered along with them. I shouted in frustration and hope and desire. For two and a half seconds I felt entirely alive.
Then my foot stopped and my body kept going. There was a loud pop and a searing heat shot up my right leg to my eyes in a quick flash of white. I think I cried out but it didn’t much matter, Zoë and Michael were raising such a ruckus. I fell to my knees, rolled, and landed on my side.
Zoë was dancing with her knees locked so she wouldn’t pee her pants. “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she gasped. “Oh, it’s not funny.”
I squeezed my eyes shut as a wave of pain overwhelmed me. Somewhere Michael was talking: “Zoë, stop. I think she’s really hurt.”
“Michael,