"Let me think about it," said Grace.

"Just remember what's important. Now is the time for you to think about what's best for you and the baby. Try not to stress about the details. That's why I'm here." Janet stood. "I'll get the paperwork together, and I look forward to hearing from you."

"Thank you, Mrs. Olson," Grace said.

"It's been a pleasure, Grace, Mrs. Teitelbaum. You're going through a difficult time, but in that book is the light at the end of your tunnel. I know it." Shaking both their hands, she showed them out through a door at the back of her office that led directly into the hallway. "We like to give our clients as much privacy as possible," she explained.

"We'll be in touch after Grace has had a chance to look through your notebook. You've been a great help. Those worry wrinkles in Grace's forehead are starting to go away already."

Helen had been concerned that having had no mothering experience herself, she couldn't do much for Grace other than providing nutritious meals and a warm bed. But helping Grace find a safe, loving home for this baby was no small thing, and Helen was sure Grace had made the right decision. The process promised to be a little th.o.r.n.y, but it would all be over in April.

"Why don't you take that upstairs and have a look on your own. When you're ready, if you want to talk, come find me." Unable to imagine being pregnant, let alone being pregnant and knowing that you weren't going to make a life with the child growing inside you, Helen was treading lightly. Giving Grace plenty of s.p.a.ce and no unsolicited advice seemed the best course. Clearly this girl had a good head on her shoulders, and if she wanted to discuss anything, she knew Helen was waiting.

Flipping through a few pages, Grace felt like she was looking at an L. L. Bean catalog, except they weren't selling flannel shirts and corduroy pants with ducks on them - they were selling the couples wearing them. She didn't know how she was going to figure out who would love her baby more than anything in the world, who could give it the best life. Maybe an artsy couple living in Seattle who owned a coffee roasting company and painted murals on the sides of old buildings in their free time, or a nuclear physicist and his novelist wife who lived outside Boston. The only thing Grace knew for sure was that she didn't want the doctor and the lawyer living in Chicago. Grace's mother had worked throughout her childhood, even though they didn't need the money. As Betsy had explained to Grace when she was three, an unfulfilled woman made for an unhappy mother, and Grace didn't want an unhappy mother, did she? Fulfillment, for Betsy at least, could not be found in endless visits to the playground, afternoons baking cookies, and reading The Cat in the Hat for the hundredth time. Not that Grace had any clue what Betsy was talking about at the time, other than the fact that her mother apparently didn't want to spend time with her. Grace decided only to consider couples with wives who stayed at home. If these women wanted her baby, they had better be willing to change diapers and push a stroller, all day long. Superwomen who wanted to have it all need not apply.

In order to do this search properly, Grace knew she needed to be systematic, so she turned back to the very beginning. Couple Number One: Rebecca and Michael Miller lived in suburban Philadelphia. Photographed standing in front of what must be their house, a large brick colonial, the Millers could have been models posing for a magazine shoot. Tiny, with huge green eyes and long black hair, Rebecca looked like a doll next to her husband, who, according to the bio, was six foot four. What a waste of DNA that these two specimens couldn't reproduce. They had met at Princeton as undergraduates and went on to get matching MBAs at Wharton. Working mothers were off limits, but no, Rebecca had worked for five years, then given up the fast lane to pursue baby-making full time, and even when that venture failed to yield any results, she had decided not to return to the workplace. Michael was a successful investment banker, and Rebecca volunteered as a reading and math tutor in the neighborhood public school. These two were so perfect, there had to be some fatal flaw lurking beneath the surface - a drinking problem, a family history of insanity. But Grace didn't know how she would ever be able to find out. Running her fingers over the photograph, Grace stared into the picture, trying to imagine what it would be like to turn the bean over to these two overachievers.

Couple Number Two:. Two plastic surgeons who were active volunteers with Doctors Without Borders. What were they going to do with a baby? Stick it in a carry-on and drag it along on their life-saving missions all over the world? Admirable, Grace thought, but unacceptable.

Couple Number Three: John Pell was a history professor, and his wife taught French literature at a small college in a little town in Vermont. The picture of the Pell's house covered with snow and Christmas lights was a picture postcard of an idyllic life. There was a nursery school on campus for faculty children, and the Pells were active in an organic food cooperative. Without a doubt, the baby would be well cared for and well fed. But while the setting sounded like paradise, and Sara Pell only taught one cla.s.s, she was working on a book and was a regular contributor to a literary magazine. It sounded time-consuming, despite the fact that she was able to work out of her house most of the time. While Grace didn't begrudge a woman's need to follow her own dreams, and she knew it was perhaps too much to expect a mother to be satisfied solely with her mothering duties, she wanted an adoptive mother who was at least a little less busy than Sara Pell seemed to be. On top of that, Thomas Pell's mother lived with them, and while Grace had nothing against senior citizens or extended family, there was something about the elder Mrs. Pell, who appeared in the photo sitting between her son and daughter-in-law, hand protectively resting on her son's knee, that made Grace uncomfortable.

Couple Number Four lived in Miami. Carlos Perez had been born in Cuba but escaped to Florida with his family as a child. He had met Margaret, his wife of ten years, when she was a senior at the University of Florida and he was a dental student. They had married immediately after she graduated from college, and although Margaret worked as a copywriter at an advertising agency, she planned on quitting as soon as she had a child. Margaret had majored in child psychology and minored in English, so she would know how to deal with temper tantrums and separation anxiety, and someday she would be able to help the bean with his college essays. They lived in a sprawling Mediterranean house surrounded by orange trees, and there was already a playset with swings and a slide set up in the backyard. This pair had possibilities, and the bean would have perfect teeth.

A dozen couples later, Grace's head swirled with images of devoted spouses with perfect lives, except for their inability to make a baby. How sad that all these women in their thirties with doting husbands, large bank accounts, and too many extra bedrooms were unable to carry a child, but teenagers having random s.e.x in back seats and on beaches seemed to be so ridiculously fertile. Life was definitely not fair, at either end of the spectrum.

In spite of the glowing resumes and magazine-perfect photographs of each and every couple, Grace couldn't stop thinking about Couple Number One. There was something about the Millers that was both familiar and comforting. Was it because Rebecca's dark hair and green eyes unconsciously reminded Grace of herself, or that Michael looked so solid and grownup, yet gentle and kind the way he stood in the photo, his arm protectively around his wife's shoulders? Would they ever tell their daughter that she was stupid or that they regretted having her? Would they kick the bean out of the house if she broke the rules or threatened the family's honor? There was no way to know, but Grace had a feeling these two people wouldn't be capable of such malice. At least she hoped they wouldn't be.

CHAPTER 11.

Dear Baby, Today was one of the worst days of my life, and I probably shouldn't even be telling you that, because it's not your fault, it's mine, and I should be way stronger already, considering everything that's happened and all that's yet to come. The thing is, sweet Baby, they know about you. My baggy sweatshirt isn't baggy enough to hide you anymore, and you're no longer my little secret. I've never been so humiliated in my life, and I'm not sure which part is worse, that everybody knows I had s.e.x with someone (I should probably blab that Nick is the father - at least that would distract those mean girls while they try to figure out why the handsome prince decided to throw a bone to the slimy frog) or that I was dumb enough to get pregnant. It's probably the second part, because all those girls who were talking about me have probably done it, way more than once. They were just smarter about it than I was. I don't know how I'm going to go back tomorrow.

I love you so much, Grace After eighteen weeks and no whispers, Grace had almost forgotten to worry about the s.h.i.t hitting the fan when her baby b.u.mp b.u.mped. Wearing sweatpants and oversized sweatshirts Charlie had given her, collected from exotic universities all over the world, Grace was playing the role of hardcore senior who was too busy writing college essays and studying for her AP cla.s.ses to waste time on grooming. So far she'd done a good job camouflaging her slowly ballooning figure, because no one had uttered a word - not a single comment from anyone about one too many Hershey bars, or too much reading and not enough running - and thankfully seniors didn't have to take gym cla.s.s. Either her disguise was working, or Jennifer and the entire student body were being incredibly diplomatic. Not a likely scenario.

But in the third day of her nineteenth week, Grace was in the bathroom before school, where she was spending an inordinate amount of time these days, when her big fat ship hit the iceberg. A break-off herd of girls from Nick's popular planet ambled in. The school day hadn't yet begun, but it was time to reapply their eyeliner and lip gloss before first period. Crowding each other in front of the mirror, each certain that she was by far the hottest girl in school, they pretended that they actually liked each other.

Awesome Girl A: "So did you hear the news?"

Awesome Girl B: "What news?"

Awesome Girl A: "Grace Warren is up the duff."

In a panic, Grace lifted her feet off the tile floor and held her breath. If they discovered she was in the bathroom, they might strip her down to see if it was just gossip or she was in fact packing a little person. The single blessing of obscurity in this whole unblessed event had just blown up in her face.

Awesome Girl C: "What? That's impossible. Straight-A, so-perfect-her-s.h.i.t-doesn't-stink Grace Warren?"

Awesome Girl A: "That's the one."

Awesome Girl C: "No way. Her mother practically runs our church. She's the parent adviser for this cla.s.s the pastor runs teaching kids how to keep it in their pants. Grace won't be spreading her legs until her wedding night, if then."

Awesome Girl D: "So who's the babydaddy?"

Awesome Girl A: "I heard it was some guy she met at church camp. He popped her cherry during Bible study."

Awesome Girl B: "Someone's definitely yanking your chain."

Awesome Girl A: "Maybe. Either way, we'll know soon enough. It's not like she'll be able to suck it in for nine months."

Awesome Girl D: "She has been dressing like a chunky rug muncher lately. I thought maybe she was practicing for one of those women's colleges."

Awesome Girl A: "Why don't you just ask her?"

Awesome Girl D: "Why don't you?"

Awesome Girl A: "Because I don't give a s.h.i.t if she f.u.c.ked every member of the chess club and is hauling around triplets."

Awesome Girl B: "If she's got a kid in there, it had to be an immaculate conception. No one but G.o.d could be porking Warren."

Awesome Girl C: "Whatever."

Awesome Girl C didn't give a rat's a.s.s what a charter member of the geek squad was up to when she wasn't changing the batteries in her calculator. In her thousand-friend Facebook universe, high school was for looking good, getting hammered, and hooking up, not gossiping about losers who sat at the front of the cla.s.s with their lips permanently attached to some teacher's fat a.s.s.

When Grace didn't think she could hold it in a second longer, the bell rang and the demons posing as high school girls left. Burying her face in Charlie's sweatshirt, she didn't move. The graffiti-decorated stall - it was only a matter of days until her life story figured prominently in the scribbles on the metal walls surrounding her - felt like the only safe place in the building. Sitting on the toilet, Grace wept bitter tears for the loss of her dignity, the loss of her family, the loss of her flat stomach, and most of all, for the loss of the person she used to be and knew she could never be again.

The late bell rang, and Grace sat up, blowing her nose on a piece of toilet paper. Who had ratted her out? Jennifer had a big mouth, but Grace knew she would sooner cut out her own tongue than sell out her best friend. Nick? No way. His name hadn't come up once in the bathroom conversation, and except for Mrs. T., the doctors, and her parents (who would deny she was pregnant if she gave birth on the altar during Sunday services), n.o.body else was in the loop. It had to be the sweats. Stupidly believing that miles of cotton fleece would be the perfect smokescreen, Grace had unwittingly outed herself. Coming out of the stall, she examined herself in the lipstick-streaked mirror hanging on the tile wall. That was definitely it. She started to laugh at her reflection, this person she hardly recognized anymore, wondering why Jennifer or Charlie or Mrs. T. hadn't said anything. Unlike her parents, who had no qualms about telling her exactly what they thought of her, those three people loved her so much that either they didn't see the Jabba the Hutt she had become, or if they did, they had the good sense to know that pointing out a blemish that couldn't be covered with Maybelline Cover Stick would be at best a worthless exercise, and at worst, cruel. But she couldn't figure out where the Bible camp f.u.c.k buddy had come from.

Not sure what to do next, Grace stared at the floor, as if the answer could be found in the grimy gray tiles. Spending the day in the girls' bathroom wouldn't solve any of her problems, and she couldn't hide out in a stall until the baby was born. Retrieving her backpack from the hook behind the door, Grace took one last look in the mirror and went off to cla.s.s, or war, or whatever the day would bring.

"Come in, Grace. You're late. Where's your pa.s.s?" Miss Hawkins stood in front of the whiteboard, marker poised.

She had been late to cla.s.s before, and no one had ever asked her for a pa.s.s. If a student like Grace was tardy, there had to be a good reason, so a note from the office would be a waste of paperwork. "I'm sorry, Miss Hawkins, I don't have one. I was in the restroom." Twenty-three snickers combined into a single deafening guffaw.

"Whatever. Take your seat, and next time try to take care of your business at home."

Resuming her lecture, Miss Hawkins droned on about Skinner boxes and operant conditioning. Collapsing into her seat accompanied by a second round of sn.i.g.g.e.ring, Grace dug out her notebook and pen and pretended to listen to her teacher. If her not-so-delicate condition was obvious to her cla.s.smates, didn't that mean that the teachers, who were certainly smarter and less self-absorbed than their students, must also have solved the whodunit ... or whodidher? That would explain the unprecedented request for a late pa.s.s and the snide comment.

The bell finally rang, ending Miss Hawkins's attack on video games as modern examples of Skinner boxes, destroying America's youth and threatening to become the one-way ticket to last place for the United States. "For your sake, for the sake of this country, you people need to rethink your priorities. Our futures depend on it. Check the syllabus for your homework. Cla.s.s dismissed."

Miss Hawkins turned to erase her whiteboard in preparation for the next round of fertile young minds. It was only 8:30 A.M., and she didn't know how she was going to make it through the morning, let alone the five years she had to endure until she could retire with a pension.

"Boooo!"

"You just haven't found the right joystick, Miss Hawkins."

"Don't be such a noob!"

"If you'd ever fragged someone, you wouldn't be saying that."

"This cla.s.s is a total w.a.n.kfest!"

Slamming her hand down hard on her desk, Miss Hawkins turned to face the cla.s.s and spoke through gritted teeth. "That's exactly what I'm talking about. Such disrespect didn't exist twenty-five years ago. You're a bunch of animals. Not worth my time. Get out of my cla.s.sroom."

Too curious to leave it alone, and also wanting to apologize to Miss Hawkins for being late - she was still the good girl, no matter what her uterus said - Grace stopped in front of Miss Hawkins's desk. "I'm sorry I was late this morning. I had the start of a migraine or something. It won't happen again."

"I hope not. You and your a.s.sociates need to get your collective acts together. You're seniors, not a bunch of wide-eyed freshmen who don't know up from down. It's so disappointing for us as teachers to see young people throwing their lives away like empty soda cans. Squandering one's gifts is an unforgivable sin. Do you understand that, Grace?" Miss Hawkins stared not at Grace's face, but at her stomach. Maybe she was reading Moscow Inst.i.tute of Physics and Technology, or maybe she was trying to decide if Grace looked any fatter than she'd looked a few weeks earlier.

Close to melting down, Grace just nodded. Second period students began trickling in, and Grace blinked back her tears. Another bell rang, but instead of going to her next cla.s.s, Grace lumbered towards the office. Having inadvertently mutated into one of those disappointing young people the teachers were wasting their precious time on, Grace knew she would need a late pa.s.s to get into AP English.

CHAPTER 12.

School had become a walking, talking bad dream. Based on how Grace felt every day since she'd come out of the closet, or the bathroom stall, she would gladly stick pins in her eyes if it meant she could stay home. But what was the alternative? Dropping out like those girls on TV, taking cla.s.ses online so she could get her GED. After all that had happened, Grace still wasn't ready to give up on the dream of going to a first-rate college, and dropping out of high school in the middle of her senior year because she couldn't take the whispers and smirks was beyond chickens.h.i.t. At some point they had to get bored with her, had to get tired of smiling hypocritically, asking where the father was, suggesting names for the baby - "Loser" worked for a boy or a girl.

Within a week, everyone from the night janitor to the Chinese transfer student who only spoke three words of English knew about the Girl Scout who'd gotten storked at church camp. Rumors spread faster than the flu at Silver Lake High School, and the moral demise of a member of the National Honor Society and an AP Scholar was far more interesting than someone in the vocational training program getting knocked up. That would be business as usual; this was news. Grace used to feel like she was the only one who hadn't done it, but now she felt like she was the only one who had. Her slowly expanding stomach advertised her moral depravity and was reflected in the condescending stares and snickers of those either smarter or luckier than she had been. Even girls she thought were her friends were blowing her off.

"Hi, Kim," Grace said to the girl standing at the locker next to hers. They had been lab partners in biology, teammates on the mathletes, and had known each other since elementary school.

Kim didn't answer, just put her books away and zipped up her backpack.

"Kim, what's the matter?" Grace pleaded. Without a word, Kim, who wasn't even part of the cool crowd, who Grace had always thought was a sweet, compa.s.sionate person, turned and walked away. Even her fellow geeks were abandoning ship.

Every night Jennifer spent an hour on the phone with Grace, trying to convince her to give up Nick. "Why are you protecting him? He's a first-cla.s.s douchebag. He'd stab you in the back without a second thought. You get that, don't you?"

"I do, but ...."

"But what? You're not still into him, are you? d.i.c.k can't be that powerful. Besides, you said it wasn't even any good." s.e.x was still a mystery to Jennifer, but she couldn't imagine anything on earth could command that kind of authority over a brain with an IQ of 145.

Grace cringed. Tact, subtlety, and sensitivity were not part of Jennifer's makeup. "It has nothing to do with that. I hate him. I hate every part of him, including that part of him." As Jennifer had so succinctly pointed out, if she could allow his junk inside her, she should be able to say the word for it out loud, but it still stuck in her throat.

"Well, that's good news. So what's the problem? If you tag him as your sperm donor, I guarantee you there will be significant heat transfer to his sorry a.s.s. Can you imagine? No one has any idea that the biggest man on campus is the one who stole your v-card and planted his seed. People will be talking about it for years, like where you were when you found out Michael Jackson died."

"But that's exactly my point. If I tell the world that Nick is the father, that'll just add fuel to the fire. Instead of jokes about Bible study and virgin births, they'll be laughing about how Nick had to f.u.c.k me for community service or how he was trying to win a bet about whether or not my encyclopedia was stapled shut. The possibilities are endless, and horrible."

"It would be so worth it, though, to see Nick get dragged through the mud. He deserves to suffer." Jennifer rubbed her hands together gleefully at the thought of Nick being burned in effigy at the homecoming game.

"You just don't get it. No matter what, I'm going to be the villain in this story, and Nick's always going to be the hero - it's simple genetics. The only thing that'll bring an end to this nightmare is getting away from here, but I've got no place to go. So I'll just have to suffer through it." At the thought of at least twenty more weeks of taunts and whispers, Grace's stomach dropped. It was going to feel like twenty years.

"You're giving up too easily. You can't be sure that's how it would play out."

"This from the person who didn't think that we, co-captains of the math team with matching 4.9 averages, were geeks. Shows you how in touch with reality you are."

Shouting into the phone, Jennifer was determined to straighten Grace out. "I love you, Grace, like a sister, but you need to pull your head out of your a.s.s and realize that high school isn't the f.u.c.king Academy Awards, and those small-minded a.s.sholes you're so afraid of aren't the Oscar winners you think they are. They're not even extras in the movie that is our life. They're losers who just haven't gotten the memo yet. But they will, and when they do, you and I will be collecting our diplomas from Princeton and deciding which six-figure job we should take. So, Grace, you're the one who needs to get in touch with reality."

"I want you to be right," Grace whispered. "I need you to be right."

"Don't worry, I am," Jennifer said with her unshakable confidence. "Now that we've got that misconception cleared up, let's talk about what you need to do today."

"I'm still not outing Nick, no matter what you say. I don't want to have anything to do with him ever again. It's too upsetting."

"Fine, whatever. But you still need to deal with him at least one more time. If he doesn't sign off on that doc.u.ment, you're going to have to find a new adoption agency or practice your diapering skills."

"I know. I will."

While Jennifer had generously, and a little too enthusiastically, offered to track down Nick and explain to him about giving up his parental rights, Grace decided it was a task that she needed to do herself. Every time she saw him at school, her heart jumped into her throat, even as Nick quickly turned away, not even acknowledging her presence, as difficult as she was to miss as the bean grew into a melon. After several attempts to catch him in the hallway at school, in which he fled like a pickpocket through a crowd in Times Square, Grace decided to catch him when he wasn't expecting it. One morning she stationed herself behind a tree, a hunter tracking her prey, and waited until he pulled into the parking lot, still driving the scene of the crime. After he shut off the engine - less danger of him driving away or running her over - she dashed, more like plodded, over to the car. His deer-in-the-headlights look told her that she'd succeeded in surprising him.

Looking around to make sure no one was watching, he rolled down the window and said, "What do you want now?"

There was no point in pretending anymore: she was way past the point of no return. This baby was already a baby. But then his brain caught up with his emotions, and he realized that now, more than ever, he needed to keep his cool. As promised, Grace hadn't revealed his role in her problem, and except for Jennifer, who even though she had a big mouth had proved she knew how to keep a secret, n.o.body knew he was the father. He had no idea why Grace had chosen to take the high road. Even he could see that he was being a total d.i.c.k, from start to finish, if you were looking at it solely from her point of view.

"I need to talk to you about something," Grace replied, trying to slow her pulse, which was banging so loudly in her ears that she could hardly hear her own voice.

"Then get in the car, in the back," he hissed, worried that if anyone saw them talking, they would easily put the pieces together, and the entire school would be calling him Daddy before first lunch block.

When Grace slid into the back seat, the smell brought everything back, crashing down on her like a tsunami, and she stifled a scream. Turning around, Nick asked, "What the f.u.c.k's the matter with you?"

"The smell of your car, it's making me sick." Gagging, hardly able to talk through her panic attack, Grace breathed through her mouth so she wouldn't have to smell it.

"Nice." If she threw up on the leather, he'd kill her.

Not that she owed him an explanation, but she wanted so much for him to understand how she felt, to exhibit even the slightest bit of interest in her. "Your car smells the same as it did the night we ...."

"You still need money?" he interrupted, eager to get this conversation over with. "You didn't listen to me before, so what do you want now?" Nick wished she would just handle this on her own and leave him out of it.

"No, I don't need your money." Although she didn't care about him as a person anymore, he still had the power to disappoint her. Grace was still hoping to hear some compa.s.sion, regret even, for what had happened between them. Not expecting actual empathy, or even an apology, she just wanted him to prove that he was at least human, if not for her sake, then for the sake of the baby, who would be inheriting not only his cheekbones, but possibly his cold, dead heart. She trembled involuntarily.

"So what do you want from me? Jennifer says you're giving it away. You should have just gotten rid of it, but I guess this is better than keeping it." Sometimes Nick had nightmares that Grace decided to keep the baby and he was working at a gas station to make money to buy diapers, because his parents had kicked him out and he'd had to turn down the college scholarships so he could support his accidental family. He would wake up in a sweat to the sound of a baby screaming, but it was his own cries that had woken him.

"That's kind of what this is about. In order to give the baby up for adoption, we both have to sign away our parental rights," Grace said, trying to maintain a neutral tone.

She couldn't shame him into being a good person, and she needed to stay calm if she was going to get through this conversation without losing it. Trying to a.s.sure herself that his stony indifference to the baby, to her, was a product of some failure on his part, not her own inadequacy, she waited for the next selfish, childish rant to spill from his perfect lips.

"Why do I need to do that if no one even knows I'm the father? I'm not signing my name anywhere. If I admit to being the father, then I could be on the hook. I could lose everything." I, I, I ... even Nick heard what a self-absorbed a.s.shole he sounded like, but that didn't change how he felt. There was no way he was going to throw himself under the bus now, when Michigan had pretty much promised a full scholarship, preferential athlete housing, the whole works.

"The woman at the adoption agency said no one would ever see the doc.u.ment you sign. It's just legal stuff. Otherwise she won't help me, won't help us with our problem, and then we might have to keep the baby." Nick needed to be reminded that though he had remained anonymous so far, she could throw him to the wolves at any time. It was only because Grace had mercifully spared him that his future wasn't in ruins. A single telephone call to his parents could change everything. "Besides, even if you never sign anything, never admit to anything, a simple DNA test will accomplish the same thing."