Reel: NEEVAH’S PROLOGUE – AT 18 YEARS OLD

I should have known this day would suck.

At breakfast, I knocked over the salt. Late for school, I paused long enough to scoop up a handful and toss it over my shoulder to counter the bad luck, but the damage had already been done.

First period, Mr. Kaminsky called on me just when I realized I’d left my AP English assignment at home. At lunch, I dropped my tray, spilling chocolate milk, mashed potatoes and my fruit cup all over the cafeteria floor. And the worst part of this day? I dropped a line in rehearsal for the final school play, Our Town. I had that monologue down. How did I forget?

“Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?” I recite my character Emily’s words under my breath and pull Mama’s old Camry into our driveway. “Every, every minute?”

I scoured my brain for those words, but for the life of me couldn’t find them anywhere when I needed them. I even knew the line that came next, the stage manager’s response, his answer to the question I couldn’t come up with.

“Saints and poets maybe.”

The theater department is the best thing about our little high school. I wouldn’t have a full scholarship offer to Rutgers’ drama program without everything the drama club and classes have taught me.

I put the car in park and bang my head against the steering wheel, still mad about forgetting those lines today. “Damn salt.”

When I look up, Brandon’s F150 is parked up ahead under our car porch. My boyfriend—correction, my fiancé since we got engaged over Christmas—always seems to come right when I need him. He’s not thrilled about the Rutgers offer, even though I haven’t decided if I’ll go or not. He hopes I’ll attend a school closer to home, though none of them have offered to pay my way. Despite our recent tension over my future plans, this bad day just got better knowing he’s inside waiting, even though I didn’t expect him.

I love it when he comes over after his shift at Olson’s, his daddy’s garage, where he’s a mechanic. Brand’s got a knack for cars—always has. When no football scholarships came through, he took it in stride and started working at Olson’s without complaint. He always smells like Irish Spring, the soap he uses to wash up after work. No matter how hard he scrubs, stubborn traces of grease usually stick under his nails and in the creases of his hands. I don’t mind as long as his hands are on me.

Brand was my first. My only. Secretly, I’ve been leaning toward staying, maybe studying drama at our community college instead of going up north because I can’t stand the thought of being away from him four years.

I hop out and head for our ranch-style brick house.

“I’m home!” I pocket my keys and close the front door behind me.

Brandon always waits in the living room. Mama would skin us alive if she ever found us in my bedroom, though we’ve gotten away with it a time or two.

I head up the hall, stopping short when I see my sister Terry seated beside him on the couch. They were both juniors when I started high school. Terry is so beautiful, everyone tries at least once with her, but as far as I know, Brandon never has. I couldn’t believe it when he asked me, a freshman, out.

“Hey, guys.” I walk in and flop onto the couch since they’re squeezed onto the love seat. Brandon holds himself stiffly beside her, sitting straight as a pole, fists clenched in his lap. Terry, with her quick smile and that fat ass, is the life of every party, but right now her brows pinch, her face twisted with what looks like misery.

“Who died up in here?” I blow out a laugh, which fades when Terry’s eyes drop to her lap, and Brandon looks away altogether. My father died of a heart attack when I was twelve. I’ve been paranoid about losing someone else ever since.

“Did somebody die?” I sit up straight, fear thinning my voice. “Mama? Aunt Alberta?”

“No,” Terry cuts in. “Ain’t nothing like that. We, uh . . .” She shakes her head, presses her lips together and closes her eyes.

“We have something to tell you.” Brandon’s voice is gravelly, grave. “We . . . well, Terry—”

“I’m pregnant.”

Her words drop like a stone into the small living room, and I blink at her stupidly. For a second, even though I know this must be the last thing Terry wants since she just finished cosmetology school, I feel joy. I’m going to be an auntie! Terry and I have laid on my bed dreaming on Saturday afternoons about my wedding to Brandon, and how I’d probably have babies before she did because she’d take forever to settle down. We’d laugh, me on the floor between her knees while she braided my hair.

The joy, short-lived, evaporates like steam exposed to air.

We have something to tell you, Brandon said.

We.

They are not a we. Brandon and I are a we. Terry and I are a we, but they’ve never been joined by anything but me.

“W-what’s going on?” I sputter. “Why are you . . . what do you mean . . .”

That’s all I can manage before my voice gives up. My insides turn to rock, bracing for something my brain hasn’t caught up to yet.

“It’s mine,” Brandon chokes out. Jaw flexing, he reaches up to massage the back of his neck and stands, pacing in front of the fireplace. I catch sight of the gold frames lining the mantel, some so old they’re tarnished, all displaying photos of my family. Several of me and Terry. From snaggle-toothed and pigtailed to celebrating and sullen. A parade of stages and years and emotions we’ve experienced together. Sisters.

My sister is pregnant by my fiancé.

We.

A landslide of fury and confusion and hurt crush my insides to rubble.

“No.” I shake my head, stand, and back away a few feet, putting space between me and these traitors. These selfish traitors who were supposed to be mine, not each other’s. “When?”

“The first time,” Terry says. “We—”

“The first time?” I hurl the words at her, outrage and pain wrestling for dominance in my heart. “How many . . . how long . . . What have you done, Terry?”

I turn wet eyes, blurred with tears and burning with anger, to Brandon. “What have you done?” I ask him, too, unsure who I hate most right now. Who has hurt me the most.

“You weren’t ready,” Brandon’s voice is defensive and laced with blame. “I told you it’s hard for a guy to wait, but you . . . you weren’t ready.”

He was older and all his friends were having sex with their girls, but I wouldn’t be rushed. He begged, telling me how tough it was for guys to go without. I felt guilty and he felt frustrated, but we got through it. He waited until I was ready, and it was worth it. It was good—at least, I’d thought so. I never suspected he cheated. And with my sister?

“That was almost two years ago, Brand,” I shout. “You’ve been fucking Terry since my junior year?”

Terry’s eyes, widened with panic, shoot to the living room entrance. “Shhhh! Jesus, Neev. You want the whole neighborhood to hear?”

“Really, T? That’s your main concern? I’m pretty sure everybody’ll know soon enough. Unless you plan to—”

“It was one time,” Brandon interrupts, eyes pleading. “The summer before we . . . before you and me started doing it. It was an accident. I told her it could never happen again, and it didn’t.”

“I’m not great at science,” I say, sarcasm pushing its way through the pain. “But it must have happened again if she’s just now turning up pregnant two years later.”

Their guilty quiet following my words suffocates even the faintest hope for a miracle. For the impossibility that it had only been once, which is bad enough, but to think they would do it again. That he’d do it when I thought we were happy. That she’d do it when she’s my sister and she knew. She knew how much I loved Brandon. How could she not have known, and how could she do this to me?

“It’s only been the last few weeks,” Terry admits, tears slipping from the corners of her eyes. “You gotta believe that I never—”

“I ain’t gotta believe nothing,” I spit at her.

“You’ve been rehearsing so much for the play,” Brandon says.

“So again it’s my fault?” A derisive laugh leaps out. “I have to rehearse after school for a play a few days a week and you can’t keep your dick away from my sister?”

“Neev, damn!” Terry shoots to her feet, a scowl marring the smooth prettiness of her face. “Keep your voice down.”

We’re all standing now, the tension triangulating between the three of us. I’ve wrapped myself in anger, but the protective layers are fraying, and pain, sharper and heavier than I think I can take, pounds in my temples and thunders behind my ribs. My knees wobble and my head spins.

I could faint.

I rack my brain for a play where a character faints, and all I can come up with is Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and that’s such a bad example. This is the last thing I should be thinking about while my life burns to the ground in my living room, but somehow it refocuses me.

I still have the stage.

Here I was considering staying, giving up my scholarship, possibly my dream of performing someday on Broadway, for him. For this. There’s an acceptance letter in my desk drawer to a great theater program. My ticket out of here. My passport out of what has become hell. Rutgers can pay for a fresh start, far away from here; from them. From this wicked we staring at me with lying, tear-drenched eyes.

It feels like they’ve taken everything, but they haven’t. I have a lot.

I have opportunity.

A weird calm falls over me. It doesn’t dull the throbbing, pulsing pain in my chest, or ease the churning nausea in my stomach—I’ll throw up when I make it to my room—but it does give me the strength to do what needs to be done.

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