Charmed Thirds_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [48]
“Yeah,” I replied. “It's a laugh riot. I'm in stitches. My gut, it's busting.”
“Seriously, maybe Manda is on to something,” he said.
“How so?”
“Maybe we're in the wrong relationships,” he said, laughing.
He meant it as a joke. And I even admired how secure he was in his love for Bridget to make it at all. But again, as before, my relationship with Marcus wasn't something I found humorous in any way.
And now, as I'm lying alone in my own bed, I keep thinking about writhing against him last night, naked and vulnerable. Even after we'd both risen and fallen, peaked and plummeted, even after Marcus was physically shrinking from inside me, I couldn't stop clutching, crying, trying. Trying to pull him deeper, deeper, deeper within.
Trying to make him more a part of me than I am myself.
* * *
December 15th
Dear Hope,
I'm on the bus home for winter break. Consider this letter a Christmas miracle. I apologize for being so distant last semester. You've heard my excuses before and I don't know what else I can say, except maybe this:
Flash back ten years to Christmas 1993, and my first TV appearance in the Pineville Elementary School winter concert. This was during my short-lived career as a clarinet player, and I actually had a solo in the Beauty and the Beast part of the Disney medley. The show was only broadcast on the local cable station, but my family captured this legendary moment on video. It wasn't my performance that was so noteworthy—oh no!—but the appearance of my very first pimple. Not a bashful blemish, the scarlet starlet on my chin had so much personality that it practically upstaged me. My family dubbed our act “Notso & Friend,” my solo made into a duet.
Throughout adolescence, other humiliations followed, including The First Day of School Furuncle, The Maid-of-Honor Nodule, and The Senior Portrait Pustule. My dermatologist prescribed an array of antibiotics and topical treatments, including a sulfur-based ointment that smelled like rotten eggs and gave my skin an Oompa Loompa hue. As each one failed to work, I learned to adapt to my acne. Like you'd mix paints on a palette, I taught myself to combine half a dozen shades of foundation to achieve the perfect camouflaging color. But no matter how much makeup I used or how often I reapplied it, my zits would inevitably shine through, being the attention-starved abscesses that they were (and still are).
And finally, after nearly a decade, I was prescribed Accutane.
On the back of each Accutane pill compartment there's a tiny drawing of a woman who appears to be at least eighteen months pregnant. A red JUST SAY NO diagonal slashes her distended belly. When I punch through the perforations to get to the pills, the little oval pictures come off in my hand. The pregnant-lady petals always end up on the carpet, often surrounding my bed. An offering to the goddess of Anti-Fertility. As if such measures were necessary. It's Dr. Rosen's duty to ask whether I'm using birth control, and I assume asking me about my sex life must be the highlight of a day primarily occupied by lancing boils. I disappoint him every month: “My method is abstinence.” The next time I see him, I hope to give him a thrill. “CONDOMS! I USE CONDOMS!”
The red JUST SAY NO warning is what I thought about when I sat in a stall three months ago, searching for any sign of my period on the toilet paper. It soothed me as I stood barefoot on the cold, damp bathroom tiles on a late September morning, waiting for the white stick to give me a sign: plus or minus. Positive or negative. Yes or no. I braced myself on the sink, forehead pressed to the mirror, my breath fogging up my frightened reflection. I told myself, “I have to get rid of it. I have no choice.” But I knew that even if I wasn't on Accutane and the baby was twenty-digits