The Pact Read online

  PERHAPS IT WOULD HAVE gone well, but the physician scheduled the day of Emily's abortion was a man. She lay on the gurney, her legs bent up and revealing, Stephanie beside her. She watched the doctor enter and turn to the sink to wash. The soap slipped between his fingers, greasy and white, exaggerating the size and shape of him. He turned around and smiled at Emily. "Well," he said, "what have we got here?"

  Well. What have we got here?

  Then he reached under the gown, just like the other had, after saying that same awful thing, and slid his fingers into her. Emily began to kick, her ankles knocking aside the stirrups, her foot striking the doctor on the side of the head as he cautiously backed away.

  "Don't touch me," she yelled, trying to sit up, curling her hands between her legs and tucking the gown beneath her thighs. She felt Stephanie's hand on her shoulder and turned her face into the counselor's arm. "Don't let him touch me," she whispered, even after the physician left the room.

  Stephanie waited until Emily stopped crying, then sat down on the doctor's stool. "Maybe," she suggested, "it's time to tell the father."

  SHE WOULD NOT TELL CHRIS, especially not now. Because as soon as she did, she would have to tell him about this horrible abortion and the doctor and why she couldn't stand to have the man touching her. And why she couldn't stand to have Chris touch her. And why she was not the girl Chris thought she was. As soon as she told him, she'd have made her own bed, and she would have to lie in it--with him.

  Eventually, too, she would have to tell her parents. And they'd stare at her in shock--their little girl? Her fault, because she was having sex now, when she shouldn't. Her fault, because she attracted that disgusting man's attention when she was still so young.

  Everyone would find out soon enough, anyway. She was well and neatly trapped, with only one small and hidden exit, so dark and buried that most people never even considered breaching its hatch.

  Emily listened to Stephanie, her options counselor, talking and talking for over an hour. Amazing, considering there really were no options at all.

  "CAN YOU PASS the butter?" Melanie asked, and Michael handed it to her.

  "This is good," Michael said, pointing to his dinner. "Em, honey, you ought to try the chicken."

  Emily pressed her fingers to her temples. "I'm not that hungry," she said.

  Melanie and Michael exchanged a glance. "You haven't eaten anything all day," Melanie said.

  "How do you know?" Emily shot back. "I could have polished off a whole banquet at school. You weren't there." She bowed her head. "I need Tylenol," she murmured.

  "Did you see the application from the Sorbonne?" Melanie said. "It came with today's mail."

  Emily's fork clattered against her plate. "I'm not going."

  "What's the harm in applying?" Melanie said. She smiled at Emily across the table, clearly misreading her reluctance. "Chris will be just where you left him, when you get home," she teased.

  Emily shook her head, her hair flying. "Is that what you think this is? That I can't live without him?" She tamped down the question that burned at the base of her throat: Could she? Throwing her napkin on top of her plate, she stood. "Just leave me alone!" she cried, running out of the room.

  Melanie and Michael stared at each other. Then Michael cut a slice of chicken and placed it in his mouth, chewed it. "Well," he said.

  "It's the age," Melanie agreed, and reached for her knife.

  THERE WAS A CLEARING down the Class IV road that ran behind the Harte and Gold properties where people left off old stoves and refrigerators, bags of thick glass bottles and rusted tin cans. For lack of a better word, it was known in Bainbridge as the Dump, and had served for years as a field for target practice. Chris four-wheeled into the clearing and left Emily sitting on the hood of the Jeep while he set up a gallery of bottles and cans thirty yards away. He loaded the Colt revolver, batting away the flies that buzzed in the sweet, tall grass around the Jeep's tires. Chris snapped the chamber back into place as Emily leaned down to pluck one green stalk and threaded it between her front teeth. He took a Kleenex from his pocket and wadded small balls of it into his ears, then handed it to Emily. "Plugs," he said, pointing, urging her to do the same.

  He had just lifted the revolver, braced in both his hands, when he heard Emily's shout. "Wait! You can't just shoot," she said. "You have to tell me what you're aiming for."

  Chris grinned. "Oh, right. So that I can look bad when I miss." He squinted, shutting one eye, and raised the Colt again. "Blue label, I think it's an apple juice jug."

  The first shot was deafeningly loud, and in spite of the tissue Emily clapped her hands over her ears. She didn't see where it went, exactly, but the trees behind the targets rustled. The second shot hit the blue-labeled bottle dead on, the glass exploding against the rough bark of the trees.

  Emily hopped off the hood of the car. "I want to try," she said.

  Chris pulled the Kleenex from his ear. "What?"

  "I want to try."

  "You what?" He shook his head. "You hate guns. You tell me all the time you don't want me to hunt."

  "You use a rifle, and they're too big," Emily pointed out, staring at the revolver curiously, her eyes slightly narrowed. "This looks different." She sidled closer and touched her hand to Chris's. "So can I?"

  Chris nodded, wrapping her hands around the gun. She was surprised at how heavy it was, for such a little thing, and how unnatural her palms felt molded to its sleek, cool curves. "Like this," Chris said, coming up behind her. He showed her the bead on the barrel, explained sighting a target.

  She would not let him know she was sweating. Her hands slipped a bit on the metal as Chris raised them, still covered by his, to the level at which she should brace herself to shoot.

  "Wait," Emily cried, pivoting out of Chris's embrace so that she faced him with the gun. "How do I--"

  His face had gone white. Gingerly he raised a finger and pushed aside the short barrel. "You don't ever wave a pistol at someone like that," he said in a strangled voice. "It could have just gone off."

  Emily flushed. "But I didn't cock it yet."

  "Did I know that?" He sank down on the ground, his head on his knees, a puddle of limbs and muscle. "Holy Christ," he breathed.

  Chagrined, Emily lifted the revolver again, braced her legs, pulled back the hammer, and fired.

  A tin can sang and spun, lifting into the air and hanging there for a moment before tumbling to the ground.

  Emily herself had jerked backward with the recoil, and would have fallen if Chris hadn't scrambled to his feet to steady her.

  "Wow," he said, genuinely impressed. "I'm in love with Annie Oakley."

  "Beginner's luck," she said, but she was smiling, and her cheeks were red with pleasure. Emily looked down at her fingers, still clasped around the gun, now as comfortably warm as the hand of an old friend.

  IT WAS DAMP IN the Jeep, the heater fogging the windows and creating a sticky, tropical humidity. "What would you do," Emily said softly, sitting back against Chris, "if things didn't work out the way you planned?"

  She felt him frown. "You mean like if I didn't get into a good college?"

  "Like if you didn't even go to college. If your parents died in a car accident, and you had to take care of Kate all of a sudden."

  He exhaled softly, stirring her hair. "I don't know. I guess I'd try to make the best of it. Maybe go to college later on. Why?"

  "You think your parents would be disappointed in you, for not becoming what they thought you'd be?"

  Chris smiled. "My parents would be dead," he reminded her. "So the shock of it couldn't hurt them too badly." He shifted, so that he faced her, propped on an elbow. "And I don't really care what anyone else thinks. Except you, of course. Would you be disappointed?"

  She took a deep breath. "What if I was? What if I didn't want to be ... to be with you anymore?"

  "Well, then," Chris said lightly, "I'd probably kill myself." He kissed her forehead, smoothing a creas