Grasping

Chapter Four

Rennie was not in the mood for Hannah the next morning. Hannah came to the door in an oversized shirt with worn out sweatpants that looked like they belonged to a bedridden five-hundred pound woman whose husband had left her for her sister. “I’m starting to show,” Hannah whispered, as they headed out the door.

Hannah had never been a pixie. From the moment she hit puberty, she had been cursed with an extreme example of birth giving hips. Her bones were big, angled, and awkward and her figure simply carried too much bulk for anyone to take notice of her secondary sex characteristics.

It was no wonder Hannah hated Melina, Rennie thought, scooting into Hannah’s car. They typically went for similar men, and would do similar things to keep them. But though Melina wasn’t ever going to be prom queen or Miss America, she did have a fair number of attractive features. Though Melina admittedly better suited Rennie’s idea of a whore, at the least Melina wasn’t constantly coming up with ways in which the shadier aspects of her sex life were not her fault.

Rennie looked behind her to discover that the backseat was covered with papers. “Where can I put my backpack?” she asked.

“You can put it back there, just make sure nothing gets bent!” Hannah said sternly.

Rolling her eyes, Rennie kept her backpack on her lap. “You know what?” Rennie asked chirpily. “I’m totally going to clean out your backseat for your birthday.”

Hannah was not enthused. “I need everything that’s back there!” she snapped, slamming the car door shut. “I can’t just get rid my pamphlets for all the volunteering I’m doing!”

Rennie’s nose wrinkled. “Since when did you volunteer?”

“I work at a battered women’s shelter,” she spat. “And lately I’ve been doing a lot of work with rape victims.”

Rennie pretended to be searching for something in her backpack to avoid showing her face. “I’m only telling you this as a friend, but I’m seriously worried about you. I think you should go into counseling,” Rennie suggested. “I mean, your first sexual experience after your horribly abusive boyfriend gets you pregnant and you’re the counselor?”

Hannah exploded. “I don’t need any help!” she snapped. “All I need is for everyone to leave me the fuck alone so I can make my own goddamn decision about this!”

“I never said it wasn’t your decision,” Rennie breathed. “But you’re seventeen! There are people who can at least give you information on the different alternatives.”

“You know my family,” Hannah spat. “If I keep it, I’ll have to marry Trevor, and I don’t want to do that.”
“Wow…wow,” Rennie said. “Trevor isn’t even dating you! And I refuse to believe that the only option besides abortion is to marry a complete stranger.”

“If you judge me, I’m going to kick your ass,” Hannah spat. “I’m not keeping it.”

An ugly silence fell through the car for the rest of the trip. When they finally arrived at school, Rennie could not help but feel nauseous at the thought of speaking to her friend. Rennie had always considered herself pro-choice, and wouldn’t think of judging her friend in this situation. But in Rennie’s eyes, part of Hannah’s choice was not to do what she did. Now that Hannah had messed up, she shouldn’t just be able to pay someone to “fix” the problem, putting Hannah at liberty to take zero responsibility for what had happened. Rennie might have been aware that she wasn’t perfect herself, but her acceptance of this fact did nothing to make what Hannah was doing any less repulsive to Rennie. The way Hannah was behaving as if she was completely a victim, and insisting on making the situation as ugly as possible, dragging Trevor into it and shunning Rennie for even offering an opinion did not do much to increase Rennie’s sympathy for her.

She made a point of losing Hannah as quickly as possible, but found herself at a loss for things to do before class.

“Hey,” a voice whispered.

Startled, Rennie turned to face her secret lover. “You can’t keep sneaking up on me like that,” Rennie hissed.

“My,” Melina said, moving to walk alongside Rennie. “You seem awfully tense today.

“Look, Melina, I’m having a really bad morning and I really don’t want to talk,” she spat.

Melina sighed. “You seemed perfectly willing to talk last night,” she argued.

“Perhaps,” Rennie said. “But I stayed up pretty late last night thinking about what I’ve basically agreed to, and I’ve changed my mind.”

“Again?” Melina spat. “Rennie, I’m sorry, but you can’t whine about the fact that I won’t commit to you if you can’t even decide if you want me or not.”

“I want you,” Rennie said. “But that doesn’t mean we can be together.”

Melina looked confused, but started to lead their walk toward the cages where all the school’s clubs and organizations left junk they didn’t need 100% of the time. “This is about Hannah, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Rennie said. “But not in the way you mean.”

“English?” Melina pleaded.

“I set my alarm for five o’clock to be ready by the time Hannah comes to pick me up in the morning. Most of the time, I get bitched at for a full half hour before we arrive at school. Then I run into you, and you either pester me for information on whether I want you or not, or you’re busy with friends you’re not ashamed to be seen with, and you can’t even acknowledge me as a friend. No one wants to join me at lunch because they can’t stand Hannah, and then I have to watch you make out with your boyfriend before Physics and still am expected to be your mess around buddy when he’s not looking. That’s why I’m in a bad mood today, okay?” Rennie asked.

Her heart was racing by the time she finished her tirade. She hated the way people like Melina and Hannah could be shouted at or snapped at without losing the slightest bit of composure.

Melina smiled viciously. “I’ll bet it would really suck for you if everyone knew where you were for so long at that party.”

Rennie jumped. “They wouldn’t believe you,” she said sharply.

Melina nodded. “You’re right, sweetie. They wouldn’t. But eventually at least one person would get curious and ask. And I know from experience just how good you are at lying.”

Rennie gasped. “You can’t tell anyone,” she spat. “How’s that going to reflect on you?”

Melina considered this. “They’d expect this sort of thing from me,” she mused. “But not from a sweet little prude like you.”

“Don’t call me that,” Rennie warned.

“I’m sure that mother of yours would be fascinated with a story like this as well,” Melina said.

“Don’t,” Rennie pleaded. “Please, Melina."

“Don’t make me, and I won’t,” Melina said softly. “Deal?”

Rennie knew that she didn’t really have a choice. Sighing, she followed the older girl into the darkest, least romantic portion of the school and prayed that she would at least have a say in how much happened, if not in the mere fact of their awkward coexistence.