

The Book of

BEINGS

Beginnings:

Episode One

Liz Seach

Published by Summit Ranch Press at Smashwords

Copyright 2013 by Liz Seach

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for my mother

#  Table of Contents

Episode One

prologue

I

Episode Two

Volume One

For more information

Acknowledgements

About the Author

#  Episode One

(Annunciation)

Nothing in the world is single

All things by a law divine

In one another's being mingle—

Why not I with thine?

—Percy Bysshe Shelley

# prologue

There I was, flailing in the dark, not knowing if I'd get anywhere, as I ran each of the twenty-three strands through my mind in turn, pressing against each place where there seemed to be something, rather than nothing.

I was like the novice who grasps each smooth wooden prayer bead, over and over, entreating one of them to open, to reveal the gates of heaven. I had no more hope than that.

*

My task was nearly impossible. Before I could understand the questions, I had to learn the words out of which they were formed—only, at first, I could not even discriminate where one of the three billion letters of that alphabet ended and the next began.

How could I tell sense from nonsense—let alone antisense?

*

And yet, gradually, I could feel how the helix twisted, could begin to trace the geometry of its pattern. In time, I could distinguish one nucleotide from another, one base pair from another, a series of introns from exons.

Given enough attention, they seemed not unwilling to speak. Perhaps, I should say, to whisper.

*

When—after years of contemplation—that solitary gene improbably unfurled, demanding another allele in response, it was a glorious day.

*

It was also a desolate one.

*

The way of the flesh had opened, but it would not simply give itself to me—though it is given to every infant ever born. I was no less a Being, no more Human than I had been. The freedom that had always burdened me troubled me still.

*

I would have to choose the color of my eyes.

*

How could I find my way into concrete form except by consulting she who drew me there—my Manon?

*

I copied her irises—that most beautiful amalgam—exactly, then mixed in other hues little by little, just as a painter mixes pigments on the palette.

I noted her response to each variation whenever she glanced my direction. Oh how unobtrusive I was—how patient.

I learned how to tell when she looked away because I had failed to capture her attention and when she turned away in order to pretend indifference because—at last—I had captured it completely.

*

She did not want to see her own slate-blue eyes in my face—she wanted the darkest shade from the inner lining of a Pinon cone. In my hair—the color of raw cacao in the sun.

And so it went—everything from the hue of my skin to the exact slant of my cheek—each decision belonged to her, though she had no idea there were choices to be made.

*

As for my height—I could calculate it easily enough. I only had to find a chance to stand beside her and take her measure...

#

The uterus sat on a big metal tray at the front of the classroom, glistening like an enormous pink jellybean, the little not-yet-a-cow thingy still hidden inside. Based on the smell, I was guessing Mr. Sturgeon had put it in the microwave to defrost for too long.

I was a junior in high school. I was sitting in Honors bio, staring at a bovine reproductive tract and waiting for the dissection to begin.

*

(That's the moment that comes to me, while I'm sitting here with my hands on the keyboard. I've tried to remember the last time my world still seemed to make sense, the way your world probably makes sense to you right now.

I know that if you're reading this, it's because you need to know what happened, and maybe you're in a hurry, and you want me to get to the point. But if you're reading this, you need to believe what happened to me. If I tell you straight out, in 250 words or less, there's no way you're going to believe me.

There just isn't.

I have to start when things were normal—well, as normal as they ever got. I have to show you how they slowly unraveled. I have to tell you all the strange little details and what it was like for me to be confused half the time so you will know that this really is true.

And if you're saying to yourself that I need to get to the part about the magic, then you need to pay better attention. Because sometimes this is what magic looks like in the beginning.)

*

"All right, ladies and gents, please assemble in front for this afternoon's show," the Sturge called out.

Whatever we were doing, it clearly wasn't going to be as much fun as what we'd done the week before with syringes and marshmallows. But normally, being a fairly obedient dork, I still would've gotten right out of my seat and found an inconspicuous spot to stand in.

For one thing, I didn't want to end up anywhere near the Sturge himself. He sometimes stood too close to me and said embarrassing stuff, like "Feeling _biological_ today, Ms. Blau?"

I did want to be able to watch the demo, though, and also sneak peeks at Elias Zimmer.

*

Elias wasn't all gorgeous and blonde, like Troy Donovan. A whole bunch of girls didn't have crushes on him the way they did on Troy. That sort of thing totally turned me off. I could've never been a groupie.

But there was something about Elias' face. It was like I already knew him before I'd ever seen him. Or like the portraits we'd studied in Art, where the person didn't seem handsome, but the picture still made their face seem exactly right, like it couldn't have been any other way than how it was. Which was different from being handsome. Actually, it was better.

*

At that particular moment, though, standing up seemed slightly dangerous, like I might end up knocking over several lab stools before doing a face-plant on one of the black, fire-resistant counters. _Maybe I'm just too warm_ , I thought. I took off my navy hoodie, which bought me some time.

It was assigned seating, so my best friend, Amanda, sat on the other side of the room. I tried to catch her eye, but she was busy rummaging through her bag. All I could see was the top of her dark, frizzy head.

I tried to breathe calmly and hoped the sensation would pass.

When the Sturge repeated his request, though, and people grabbed their notebooks and started getting up, I still wasn't feeling any better. I considered staying in my seat and putting my head down on the desk.

But the thing was, I'd learned not to call attention to myself.

It had seemed to me for a while that a lot of strange stuff happened to me all the time. You know, like when you get this sudden, tight sensation underneath your skull that's so intense, it's painful, but in one very small random spot? And you think, _Oh my god, I'm having an aneurysm_. Except you're not having an aneurysm (whatever an aneurysm is anyway). So it's best to keep your mouth shut and move on.

I'm not saying I could stop people from thinking I was weird. But I was trying for just-really-super-shy, not maybe-she-needs-some-serious-meds-too-bad-her-mom-doesn't-believe-in-them.

I knew that if I stayed put while everyone else got up, my dizziness would turn out to be nothing. I would be Manon Blau, that weird, overreacting girl, all over again.

A bunch more people had gotten out of their seats. The Sturge was starting to issue personal invitations. I didn't want him to call my name, so I reminded myself that I'd been lightheaded a lot lately, and I hadn't actually ever passed out.

I stood up as best I could and took a few wobbly steps. I found my balance. _Okay, I can do this_ , I thought.

But then I paused to wait for the person in front of me, and suddenly it was like I wasn't in regular space anymore. It was like what used to be regular space was getting narrower and narrower as I moved through it, even though I was standing still.

For a moment there, my vision got all gray and kind of spotty. That was the same time everything started sounding _way_ far away, like I'd just been plunged under water.

#

Which is how I found myself on the way to the nurse's office after fainting in Bio.

The Sturge had sent Elias, of all people, to escort me. I had recovered somewhat, and despite all the other, more important thoughts I probably should've been having, I was contemplating his outfit.

He was wearing a rugby shirt with pale blue and beige stripes, which was normal enough for anybody. But it was, surreally enough, tucked in to a pair of perfectly matching Dockers and a web belt with bands that were exactly the same colors as the shirt. It was like he'd ordered the whole ensemble straight out of a catalog, like he was from Mars or something, and he was trying to fit in.

*

I had found his clothes odd at first, when he'd moved to Santa Fe the year before. But then, after a while, they started to seem intriguing. Because the thing was, they told you that he didn't care what anybody thought of him.

And it wasn't just the clothes. He kept his head up and looked right at people, with this very open expression, even though he never interacted with them. It was like he was living in a world where it didn't matter if he quietly waited in line at the cafeteria and then sat and ate lunch by himself. He seemed completely content. It made me feel calm just to look at him.

There had been a rumor in the beginning that he was developmentally delayed, but he got perfectly good grades and always knew the answer when he was called on in class. His vocabulary was actually better than some of the teachers.

I noticed, the few times people tried to rile him, he gazed back at them and sort of cocked his head. It was hard to tell what he was thinking in those moments. Was he confused? Did he feel sorry for the kids who were trying to taunt him? Eventually people gave up. They left him alone.

*

It occurred to me, there in the hall on the way to the Nurse, that since we were walking side-by-side, I had a chance to figure out exactly how tall he was. I'd never stood that close to him before, but once it occurred to me, I stood up straight and tried to gauge his height out of the corner of my eye. He had this beautiful, silky, dark-chocolate colored hair, which distracted me there for a moment. In the end, I had to discreetly turn my head to tell how tall he was, to see that he was several inches taller than me. I would say, actually, that he was pretty much the perfect height.

This was a crucial detail. A guy being shorter than me was a total deal-killer—at least in my imagination, which was pretty much the only place anything with a guy had ever happened to me anyway.

It felt good to walk next to him. And it felt good to imagine him turning towards me, or maybe reaching out his hand and—

I pulled myself back out of my head. I'm hardly one to start a conversation. But given how he kept to himself, this was likely to be the only opportunity I'd have for another very long time. I had to maintain my focus and grab my chance while I could.

"That was disgusting," I said, shakily making a face. "I bet at least one girl faints during that lab every year." I said it like it was an explanation for me passing out and winced as soon as I heard the words coming out of my mouth. I really wasn't grossed-out by dead animal parts. Did I have to play the squeamish female?

Besides, this wasn't exactly the conversation I'd imagined having with Elias, and I'd imagined us having many different conversations. Leave it to me to start in with something idiotic.

Obviously, Elias thought it was idiotic. Because when I said the thing about it being disgusting, he turned toward me, his dark hair framing his open, delicate face. He stared at me with those warm brown eyes, like he knew I was full of shit. He seemed to be searching my face, trying to figure out if I believed my own nonsense.

I jerked my head away, hoping he hadn't gotten a good read. We continued walking, him looking pensively at the gray linoleum tile floor. Me wishing I could turn and run the other way.

Then he looked back at me again. His brows were furrowed, his cheeks flushed.

His gaze lingered on my stomach, like he was scoping it. Like he had x-ray vision. It was kind of creepy. Then he looked up at my face, questioning.

Later, when I tried to remember his expression, I couldn't be sure. Was it confusion? Pity? Disgust? At the time, what I thought his look said, without him speaking a word, was, _Does this girl really not know what's wrong with her?_

End of conversation.

*

Well, end of _attempted_ conversation with Elias.

Beginning of extended conversation inside my own head.

When I had pulled myself off the floor after I'd regained consciousness in Bio, TJ Malone, who was this total infantile idiot, had started doing that thing guys do where they fake cough, but they make it come out so it sounds like a word. And the word that TJ was coughing was _preggo_. It was stupid and embarrassing, but I didn't think too much about it. Nobody ever took TJ seriously.

When Elias copped that look at my gut, though, I figured he thought I was preggers for real.

But then I assumed I was mistaken. Probably, my overactive imagination was coming up with the most preposterous, paranoid thing possible yet again.

I knew very well that just because I'd fainted, it didn't mean I was "with child." There were all kinds of reasons I could've fainted. Of course, I wasn't anorexic, bulimic, or a druggie, and I didn't have an iron deficiency—I didn't think. Maybe I should start worrying that something terrible was wrong with me.

But sometimes people fainted completely randomly—didn't they? Did Elias think I was the kind of girl who went around getting knocked up? Why else would he have given me that oh-you-poor-thing, this-is-all-very-bad look?

Maybe in old movies when the heroine fainted, it was because she was in a "delicate condition." But I wasn't a heroine, and this wasn't a movie. I was just a girl walking down a hallway in a mildly altered state. I was considering the nicks and scratches in the industrial beige lockers, how each lock hung at a slightly different angle. I was working hard not to be overcome by the growing buzzing in my ears.

*

Besides, I knew I wasn't pregnant. There was no way I was pregnant.

#

I started walking faster as we got closer to Mrs. Costello's office.

"Hi Mrs. C," I said as I stepped inside the door and collided with the smell of antiseptic fumes. Mrs. C was actually Rachel Binder's mom. They only had different last names because Mrs. C had remarried. But you could tell they were related. They both had that bulldog physique, and like Rachel, Mrs. C was extremely pushy and easily alarmed. Not a good way for a school nurse to be, unless you were a student who wanted an early release.

I was definitely angling for one. I hadn't ever needed one before, but I didn't want to walk around all day with people staring at me. I knew that word of my fainting would spread as soon as the next bell rang.

"Good Lord, girl," she said after she turned around. "What happened? You don't have any color in your face."

"I guess I fainted in Bio," I said. "Mr. Sturgeon sent me down."

"Well, if you fainted, he had better send you down." She gave Elias a look, but he didn't budge. "Come lie over here."

I didn't want to lie down in front of Elias, but I found myself drifting toward the cot anyway. I still felt really weak.

"Did you hit your head?" She continued. She was starting to get worked up. "We may need to get x-rays."

"She didn't hit her head."

Mrs. C and I both turned and stared.

It wasn't just that Elias had never spoken to me. He'd never spoken to any of the other kids, as far as I knew, and he didn't even speak to adults unless they had asked him a direct question. But there he was, volunteering information. Staring straight back at us, an intense, anxious look in his eyes.

"How d'you know that?" Mrs. C seemed reluctant to give up a potential drama. "Quite often people who faint do hit their heads."

Elias hesitated, pressing his lips together before he spoke. "Someone caught her."

This was news to me. I'd woken up lying on the floor with a bunch of people looking down at me in horror and pity, like I'd just been dragged out of a sewer.

"Who?" Mrs. C demanded, like she didn't believe him.

Elias looked away, then back. He seemed like your average kid who's uncomfortable being put on the spot by a grown-up. But for Elias, this was a very perturbed state. He ran his hand through his hair, then replied.

"I did."

*

If I hadn't already fainted, that would've made me faint all over again. I decided I'd better lie down.

I saw it suddenly, like we were that famous marble sculpture you see in posters sometimes. Me swooning in his arms, my form making a beautiful curve across the composition, his profile inches from mine, his anxious eyes searching my face for any sign of life.

Probably it hadn't been anything like that. Probably I'd gone down like a tottering bowling pin. Or he'd accidentally been in the way and couldn't help it, or was even trying to get out of the way and had caught me by reflex.

Maybe, once he caught me, I'd drooled. Maybe my eyes had rolled back in my head. Thank God I hadn't peed my pants. I was going to have to pump Amanda for details.

Elias catching me at least explained why Mr. Sturgeon had him walk me down to Mrs. C's. The Sturge must've thought I was in danger of passing out again and needed a big, strong escort. Although Elias wasn't exactly hulking. More like gracefully well-built.

*

"How long was she out?" Mrs. C probed.

"Not long." He was trying to look reassuring. "Less than 30 seconds."

"Did she have a seizure?"

Elias shook his head and made a dismissive face, almost too confident, "No."

"All right, Elias. Thank you. Manon and I need to be able to talk privately now." Did she _have_ to emphasize that? "You can go back to class."

He didn't look like he wanted to leave, but he didn't have much choice. He allowed himself to glance at me, but only for a split second. He set his jaw firmly and turned to go.

It was odd. I couldn't begin to guess what was bothering him.

#

Once Elias was gone, Mrs. C closed the door. She was being all mom-ish. She gave me this we-both-know-what's-wrong-with-you look. _Her too?_ I thought. The whole thing was getting completely bizarre.

"Honey, when was your last period?"

I really hated it when they asked you that.

The thing was, I didn't keep track. I got the impression that I should, that all normal females did. I'd started a couple of times trying to put it on my calendar, but somehow it was beyond me. So I never knew what to say. Sometimes I admitted that I didn't know. Sometimes I made something up.

But I was flustered enough that I couldn't effectively lie off the top of my head. I tried thinking back, and it did seem like it had been a while. The months flowed together in my mind. It was almost the end of October. Had I gotten it since school started?

As I realized that I couldn't remember, Mrs. C got this satisfied look on her face like that-confirms-that. She reached in a drawer and pulled out a packet with one of those sticks you pee on.

"I'm not pregnant," I said. "I can't be pregnant."

She wasn't convinced. "Lots of girls say that, but then they are." She was already feeling sorry for me. "I've been doing this job a long time, and I can always tell."

"The thing is," I said, grateful the door was closed, "I haven't ever..." I waved my hand vaguely and grimaced to try to show how the sentence should end.

I got another penetrating look for that. She was caught between trying to figure out if I really was a virgin and how I could possibly still be a virgin.

But the humiliation wasn't over. "Are you sure you know how—"

"Of course!" I propped myself up so I could look at her. "I aced Health in eighth grade. I get the biology."

"So you understand that if an ejaculation occurs anywhere near the—"

"Look!" I was practically screaming, and my head was about to explode. Then I realized that probably everybody in the office next door could hear me and I toned it down. "I haven't even kissed anybody since I was twelve!"

It had happened when we were paired off at summer camp and I wound up with Barry Lichtenstein, the kid who thought kissing was a form of mouth gymnastics. I'd walked off the end of the dock—at night, into the freezing cold water—just to get away from his tongue. It didn't exactly help my attempts at not being the weird girl at camp that summer.

Mrs. C looked taken aback, to say the least, though I couldn't tell if that was because of what I'd told her or the violence of my response.

After a moment, she managed to pull herself together and kind of sighed. "Wouldn't you like to take the test, just to be sure?"

"No," I said forcefully. I couldn't take the test. If I took the test, it would be admitting that maybe somehow I _could_ be pregnant. I lay back down, crossed my arms, and looked at the ceiling. I just wanted the conversation to be over.

"Manon, you have to promise me you'll go to Planned Parenthood and have this checked out." Mrs. C had lowered her voice. "Otherwise, when I call your mom, I'm going to have to tell her what I think is going on."

Now for some kids, that might've been a threat, but I happened to know that, since my mom pretty much lived at the Maitreya Buddha Monastery, Mrs. C would only ever get the answering machine at our house. And then a follow-up note supposedly signed by my mom, but actually forged by yours truly.

So I lay there considering. The humiliation factor in going to PP—and then being told I wasn't really knocked up, especially since I knew I wasn't knocked up—seemed extraordinarily high.

Mrs. C could tell I wasn't going to go for it. She tried another tack. "Maybe there's something else wrong with you, if you're not getting your periods. You should get checked out."

This was an approach that was more likely to get to me. I wondered if she had guessed that I was a little bit of a hypochondriac.

"Okay," I agreed. "I'm overdue for a check-up anyway."

That was a stretch on my part. I'd actually never had one.

#

Apparently, in order to get an early release, you need to have an actual parent show up at school and sign you out. I could fake a lot of things, but I couldn't fake that.

So I had to lie there in Mrs. C's office, while students came in every once in a while for meds and Band-Aids and stuff. I sat up a couple of times, as if I thought I was feeling fine and could go back to class, but then I acted woozy when I stood up so Mrs. C would insist that I lie down again.

Not that _that_ wasn't completely excruciating. Fortunately, Bio was the second to last class.

I "recovered" so miraculously during the final twenty minutes of the last period that Mrs. C let me go on my own just before the final bell, after plying me with Lorna Doones and apple juice left over from the blood drive.

I scooted out the front door and almost ran as the bell went off. I didn't dare go back to my locker for my homework or my jacket.

I walked to work, past a bunch of suburban ramblers like the one we lived in, on my way to the area outside of town where the monastery was. I tried not to fixate on the thought that it would be impossible for me to prove that I'd never been pregnant. Because it was pretty common for girls to get pregnant in my upper-middle class private school (which I could only attend because I was on a full scholarship), but it was just as common for them to have abortions. Which meant that everyone would just assume I'd gone and gotten one too. It was completely unfair.

I actually got so whiney and worked up, there in my own mind, that I started comparing myself to Hester Prynne, from _The Scarlet Letter_ , which we had to read in tenth grade. At least she chose not to reveal the father of her child, whereas I was never going to have the choice not to reveal him because there was no father and no child.

When I got to remembering how she had to stand up on that scaffold, though, I managed to reel myself back in.

*

Still, by the time I got to Ignacio's, which was a regular stop on my route, I was definitely glad to be distracted from all my other paranoid, melodramatic, but non-literary thoughts.

Ignacio's was this little hole-in-the-wall convenience store. Like what a 7-Eleven would be like if it was in Mexico and things were way nicer in Mexico than they actually are.

The unusual thing about Ignacio's was that they had these plastic statues. A whole aisle of them. Jesus and Mary with her heart glowing out of her chest and all kinds of embarrassing stuff. The faces of the Virgin Marys looked like Marilyn Monroe done up by a drunk make-up artist.

I wasn't a religious person at all. My mom being a member of the religion-of-the-month-club when I was younger and my dad being the original scumbag televangelist who wouldn't even acknowledge my existence had pretty much turned me off all religion.

And I wasn't attracted by the glitter or the angels with babies and unicorns. Me personally, I kept my hair pulled back and wore bulky clothes in dark colors, with little or no jewelry and definitely no make-up. You know, the uniform of the person who is trying to blend in with the background.

You have to understand, my eyes were this totally bleah dark bluish-gray, and my hair had always been no particular color. I figured there was no point in trying to make something out of nothing.

My fascination with the stuff at Ignacio's was more like the fascination of a rubber-necker at an accident. The stuff was just _so_ awful. At least that's what I told myself.

That fall, I'd been going in there and looking at the statues every day on my way to work. I couldn't stop. They knew me after a while, and I guess they figured the weird _gringa_ was harmless, cause they didn't give me a hard time, even though I never bought anything.

I mean, what would I've done with one of those things? Put it in my room? How humiliating. Maybe some people can get away with something like that as an ironic gesture. I wasn't one of those people. I didn't have enough attitude.

Except that, being freaked out from having fainted and all, I suddenly had the feeling that either I was going to leave the store with one of those hunks of bad plastic or else my brain was literally going to melt.

I realized that I had been unconsciously fighting the bizarre urge to buy one of them ever since I had started going into the store. Only that particular day, I didn't have the strength anymore to fight.

So I hung out for an extra-long time, hovering over the Virgins. One of them was standing on an upside down moon, which was funny because she had this fancy blue cloak sticking straight out around her that made her look like a rocket ship, and there were these clouds down below like she was taking off.

Another one was, I think, a copy of a Madonna in a painting. There was plastic drapery flying everywhere around her, like she had been caught in a tornado.

The least offensive was a Virgin of Guadalupe, which was big with the locals, so you'd see it all the time. It was pretty simple. Her dress was red and her cloak was dark blue and behind her were the orange and yellow rays of her holiness, or whatever. Except that since the rays were made out of plastic and all merged together, they made this oblong saucer that seemed to be stuck to her back.

I grabbed one and headed up the aisle. After I paid for it, the guy at the counter put it in a plastic bag, which I realized was a good thing. I didn't usually take plastic bags in stores (even though this was back before they started outlawing them), but I didn't have my backpack, and I didn't want to have to walk around holding the thing.

Unfortunately, the bag was so thin, it was almost see-through. So on my way to the monastery, I tried wrapping it around the figure in a bunch of different ways in order to hide her, but nothing worked.

I couldn't take it into the kitchen. My mom, who worked in there with me, would spot it in a minute. We'd have to have a Big Discussion. She was always trying to have these embarrassing talks with me about my spirituality the way some parents try to talk to their kids about drugs or the facts of life.

And my boss, Coco, who was partly crazy, had this whole big thing about the Virgin Mary for some reason. Every Christmas you would hear her muttering things like, "Virgin birth, virgin birth. Happen all the time." Or, "You heard of Krishna? You heard of Kabir? Zoroaster? Quetzalcoatl? Happen all the time!"

Which was why I decided to stash the thing in the garden.

#

When I say monastery, I don't mean some classy European place with paved courtyards and old stone arches. With this particular brand of Buddhism, it was really more run-down-former-boy's-camp-meets-the-third-world-with-weird-new-age-touches.

Since the monk's garden was on the way to the women's hamlet, where I worked, I figured I could stash my package there and pick it up on the way back. Or on another day, if I hid it well enough. It seemed like a good place because there was almost never anyone in there.

Technically, I wasn't supposed to go into the monk's garden. I wasn't supposed to go into the monk's hamlet at all. None of the women were. In fact, the men's and women's hamlets were about a half-a-mile apart, and the monks and the nuns didn't hang out together except during public days. They were surprisingly uptight about that stuff.

Plus, you've got to understand that all the monastics, both the men and the women, shaved their heads completely bald and only wore these boring brown pajama outfits. None of which was exactly sexy. I guess it made it easier for them to live their celibate lives.

I found this all highly ironic. I couldn't even get myself to talk to a guy, but I worked for a bunch of people who had to go to an enormous effort to make sure they didn't have sex.

*

On that day, I figured my plan to hide the statue was a good one since, as far as I could tell, the monks were all distracted. I had noticed a Mercedes parked out front on my way past the monastery office. It wasn't just any Mercedes. It was a big gold Mercedes SUV and the license plate read DEVELOP.

It belonged to Mrs. Delaney, Lilli's mom. I hadn't seen it at the monastery before, but I recognized it from seeing her pick Lilli up at school. You weren't supposed to take the word "develop" as a suggestion to become a better person through self-actualization. It meant develop as in "developer," as in they made their money buying and selling land and putting deals together.

Lilli wasn't just rich and gorgeous. She was also used to getting her own way and therefore dangerous to others. I steered clear of most people, but I went out of my way to steer way, way clear of her. It didn't matter that she'd never even looked at me. With some people, you just know.

Mrs. Delaney and Lilli were a lot alike, so I figured that if Mrs. Delaney was there, everyone would be distracted. All the more reason to assume I could make it in and out of the garden unnoticed.

Because of the deer, the garden was entirely enclosed by a fence. Like the rest of the place, the gate was falling apart, so it didn't hang straight, but I didn't have too hard a time getting it open and shutting it behind me. I made my way cautiously to the back corner, behind the compost pile and some bushes.

I managed to survive the smell of putrefying vegetables back there and had gotten my Virgin stashed in a spot where I was sure no one would ever find her, when I heard voices out in the garden. Since I was hidden from view, I stayed where I was and prayed—non-religiously, of course—that whoever it was wouldn't notice me.

As they got closer, I realized it was only a single female voice, but that she wasn't talking to herself. The first words I could make out clearly were, "Come on. You've had a woman, I know you've had a woman." It was Lilli. She went on, almost purring, "You remember what it's like."

Now, I had no reason to expect to see Lilli there. I hadn't ever seen her there before. But if anyone was going to amuse herself by slipping off into areas she wasn't supposed to be in and torturing celibate men, it would've been her.

Lilli's hair changed color. A lot. On this particular day, as she stalked her male prey down the garden path, it was sort of brassy and glinted like mad in the sunlight.

My heart sank when I saw who she was talking to. It was brother Phap Hoa. They all had Vietnamese names, and most of them were Vietnamese, but brother Phap Hoa was one of the white people who had joined the group, like my mom.

Unlike my mom, he had not settled in contentedly. He'd taken a vow of silence, even though he didn't have to, and he was always bleary-eyed and disheveled, as if he'd spent the whole night, and probably part of the morning, battling his own private demons.

He was really young, maybe only five years older than me, but he was the hairiest guy ever. He had hair _every_ where, and although he shaved every morning, he had serious stubble by noon. I don't know why that made him seem more tortured, but it did.

He was backing up, sort of flinching as he went, and I soon got a good enough glimpse to see why. He was evading Lilli's hand, as she kept teasingly trying to put it on his shoulder, his chest, or his face.

He wasn't supposed to touch a woman, and he was trying hard to avoid it, even as he kept silent. She, for her part, had a look on her face like she was a cat playing with a mouse. Neither took their eyes off the other.

Finally, she had him backed up against the fence, and she reached her hand out again. Just as it would've come in contact with his cheek, his hand shot up and grabbed her arm firmly by the wrist.

She looked surprised, then defiant. She reached up with the other hand, but he caught that one too before it got anywhere near him. For a moment, they stood staring at each other, less than a foot apart, both of her wrists grasped in his hands. I couldn't, for the life of me, have told you what was going to happen next.

*

If I had thought about it, I don't know what I would've done, but I didn't think. It was like when I was 15, and my dog, Lacey, who I'd had since I was little, fell into the river after a storm. I just dove right in to the current after her.

In that moment in the garden, it was like brother Phap Hoa was my dog and Lilli was the river.

I stood up out of the bushes.

#

"Oh, um, hi..." I stammered. I tried to look like I was surprised to find them there. "I...uh...Coco sent me out to pick some greens." I looked at the weeds at my feet. I had no idea if Lilli knew what greens looked like. It didn't help that my hands were empty. Obviously, I wasn't great lying off the top of my head. I wondered if she knew that I wasn't even in the right hamlet.

Lilli stepped back from Phap Hoa. He collapsed, turned away, and put his head in his arms, leaning against the fence. He was breathing like he'd just run very fast. It was hard to tell, but he might've even been sobbing. Lilli shot daggers at me with her eyes.

"You were hiding back there!" She was angry. She'd been thwarted.

"I, uh...no." I wasn't doing a very good job of pretending to be innocent, even if the only thing I was guilty of was trying to hide some stupid plastic sculpture. Lilli looked back and forth between Phap Hoa and me, her eyes narrowed.

"You were waiting for him!"

"No, really, I have to get back to..." I made a move like I was going to leave, but she was right in the middle of the path, and she wasn't going anywhere. Since I wasn't about to push past her, I was trapped.

I couldn't imagine how things could be headed in a worse direction. I started cursing myself for not having stayed where I was.

Lilli looked at Phap Hoa in disgust. " _This_ is what you were saving yourself for?" She gestured at me. "You prefer _this_ to me?" She shifted into a fake sugary voice. "I suppose you two are in _luv_." She tossed her head at me. "Well, you can have him," she threw out as she spun on her heel and flounced towards the parking lot.

Once she was gone, Phap Hoa started making this sound. I don't know if you've ever seen a film where someone dies in a Third World country and all the women start making this wailing noise? I think it's called keening. Anyway, that's the noise he was making. It's not the kind of thing you'd want to stick around and listen to, so I got out as fast as I could.

I was guessing he wanted to be alone.

#

I know I wanted to be alone. I stumbled as best as I could to the kitchen in the women's hamlet, and I was glad that no one else was in there. I suspected it was Coco's nap time. I sat down on a stool in front of a counter and put my head in my hands, shaking. Then I collapsed and started to sob.

I didn't even know what I was crying about, but it seemed I had a lot to choose from. My mind jumped from one horrendous thing to the next. The very smallest, stupidest part of me cried because I knew Lilli was right, and that no one would ever want someone like me when girls like her were around. But the other parts of my brain had plenty to occupy themselves with. I just cried and cried.

*

I must've fallen asleep, because the thing that woke me up was this funny little old lady voice saying, "Guess world is over. No need vegetables today."

This was exactly the sort of thing you would expect Coco to say. If someone tried to hurt me, I knew Coco would cut out their guts with a kitchen knife. But she wasn't exactly warm or cuddly. Coco was very into sarcasm.

I opened my eyes and there she was, trying to look tough as she took in my tear-stained face. Most of the nuns wore hats or kerchiefs, but not Coco. She was always perfectly bald and her ears stuck way out. She was super short like the other older nuns who'd lived through the Vietnam War and she spoke English in this baby talk with her crazy accent. I thought she must've been the inspiration for Yoda.

Technically, Coco was the head cook, although my mom said she was more in charge of the place than the abbess.

Her name wasn't really Coco. I couldn't pronounce her real name. And she thought Manon was a weird name, so she called me Mei Mei.

I sat up and wiped off my face.

Coco narrowed her eyes. "Phap Hoa cry like baby in his room. Maybe you catch crying disease from him?" I should've known. There were no secrets in that place. Fortunately, I had learned not to be afraid of Coco.

"Gimme a break," I said, getting up off the stool.

"Oh, world not over," she said. "We need veggies after all."

*

I was the one who chopped the vegetables. They claimed they didn't believe in using food processors, so it took several hours every day. Once you get good at chopping, though, you can do it without thinking about it at all. It's like walking or riding a bike. Then you can spend the rest of the time thinking about other things. That's one of the things I liked about the job.

Also, it was one of the few times I got to see my mom. She was the assistant cook. She usually came in an hour after I got started at the cutting board, which was after the afternoon meditation was over.

When I began working for the nuns when I was fourteen or so, they all got together and decided that I was going to go to Occidental College in Los Angeles. One of Coco's nephews went there. It was a really good school, but also really expensive.

So they calculated how much it would cost for me to go there, and then they calculated how many hours I was going to spend in the next four years chopping vegetables, and based on that, they calculated how much to pay me per hour so that I could afford school. Needless to say, I was the best paid vegetable chopper in the world.

I tried to explain to the abbess that it was crazy to pay me so much. There was a whole bunch of stuff they could barely afford as it was. But the abbess told me not to worry. She said they had a private donor. Yeah, right.

I figured those impoverished women were saving their pennies and nickels behind my back. They wouldn't actually give me the money I earned, so I couldn't give it back to them by stuffing it in the donation box, but I did have a plan for what I was going to do with it when I got my hands on it. So on top of me already being a dork, this had given me a huge incentive to study and get a scholarship.

In fact, I had memorized all one thousand vocabulary words on the SAT study list. I could even use them in their proper contexts. I sometimes accidentally used them in actual sentences. Dorkification complete.

*

When my mom came in that day, she gave me a kiss, like usual, but she kind of looked at me for a moment, which she didn't typically do. My mom wasn't real tuned into the things or people around her. She said, "How you doing today, honey?" she said, trying to sound casual, like she wasn't worried, even though I could tell she maybe was. My mom almost never had to worry about me.

"Fine, Mom," I said. I was a good way through the cucumber, slicing them extra thin for the salad and feeling relaxed. I had been reliving my interaction with Elias on the way to the Nurse. I had been going over his various expressions in my mind and relishing the fact that he seemed to care what had happened to me. Even if he was horrified, at least he seemed to care.

I was fantasizing about what I would say to him the next day regarding his catching me when I had fainted. In my pretend conversation with him, I was able to be genuinely grateful, witty, and yet off-handed somehow about the whole incident. I visualized his eyes dancing with mirth as we talked. It was definitely making me feel better. I was imagining that he and I would end up bonding over the mishap.

Maybe I'm not that good at having conversations with actual people, but I'm really, really good at making up imaginary dialogue.

My mom smiled at my response and fastened her apron. Coco wasn't convinced, though. I could hear her grumbling.

I just kept slicing cucumber and moved on to another of my favorite fantasies. I liked to imagine that someday when I was older and not such a dork, Elias and I would meet again. Like we'd both be living in San Francisco or someplace like that, and I'd be able to speak to people like a normal person and also have my own business, and we'd run into each other getting coffee, and we'd recognize each other, and we'd laugh about what things were like for us in high school. Our relationship would progress from there. Or something like that.

It was always a little different every time I imagined it.

#

I left the monastery after dinner, the way I did every night. I had finally braced myself and was ready to text Amanda so I could get the scoop about what had actually happened after Bio. I slipped my cell phone out of my pocket as soon as I got to the gate. I flipped my phone open (this was back when they still had phones that you had to flip open) and went to push the call button when something caught my eye.

There was a big stone Buddha statue that sat outside the gate. One of its hands rested on its knee facing down and the other hand rested on its other knee, facing up. There was something in the open hand. I noticed it even in the dusk because the thing was brightly colored. Red and blue and orange-ish yellow. I stepped closer.

On the Buddha's outstretched palm stood my Virgin.

#

"OMG," Amanda texted back after I'd texted her first. "I'm gunA B an auntie!" I was walking along carrying my Virgin.

"w@?" I texted back. I didn't even have a keyboard on my phone. This was in the dark ages.

"u n Tony, u finly got 2gtha last summer."

"w@?" I texted again. Tony, Amanda's brother, had been home from college for a couple of weeks in August. We had not gotten together.

*

But the year before when Tony was a senior, he came up to me in the cafeteria and said, "Have you noticed that you intimidate most guys?"

Even if you were a good conversationalist, what are you supposed to say to that?

Mind you, although Amanda and I had been best friends since like third grade, Tony had gone through a very long girls-are-beneath-my-notice phase, so this was the first time he'd spoken to me in years.

I tried to figure out what was intimidating about me. The way I was always stammering? Or ducking into the girls' bathroom? Then I realized. When he said intimidating, he meant tall.

I fell back on my usual response, "Uh..."

"But look, I think you'd be a great prom date. What d'you say?" Tony, who, by some freak of nature, did happen to be taller than me, and who had one of those who-me?-I'm-not-half-Asian haircuts, was looking off over the heads of the kids seated in the farthest row and absentmindedly fingering the cellphone clipped to his belt.

Now, fortunately, I already knew from Amanda that Tony had just gotten accepted at Cal Tech, where there was approximately one girl for every four or five guys. He wasn't all that hot on prom, but he needed to get laid before graduation because he had absolutely no chance in college.

I also knew that Tony's familiarity with sex was limited to playing certain video games, a fact that was, disturbingly enough, later confirmed by Rachel Binder, who did agree to go to prom with him. I guess he actually recited lines from _Mass Effect_ before lunging at her. Luckily, she'd watched her brother play, or she would've thought Tony'd gone psychotic.

"I don't really..." I managed.

And he was gone.

*

Amanda's next text snapped me back to the issue at hand. "Rachel's bn callN evrybdy. She sed u wr prego."

We'd always suspected that, even though Mrs. Costello was supposed to keep confidentiality and all, she still told Rachel stuff. Rachel always seemed to know a lot about other people's medically related business. Which was totally illegal, of course. But what were we going to do about it? We were just a bunch of kids.

Amanda continued, "It's gotta B Tony, I mean, who else would you...?" Even my best friend couldn't picture me with anyone.

But I was not above having a little fun with her. "well, there was that one time..."

"I KNEW IT!" Amanda texted back.

"Tony was in the bathroom and I had to pee. So I said, hey Tony, I need to pee.'"

"+?"

"So then he came out and I went in and peed."

"w@?"

"I must've gotten prego off the toilet seat."

"shut up!"

"no, u shut ^!"

"no, u shut ^!" We went on like that for a while. Amanda and I could be very juvenile, I admit. It felt good to laugh after the day I'd had.

#

So instead of going home, I went over to Amanda's house so she could take charge of the situation. Also because she had my homework.

I hadn't been to Amanda's for a while. I'd been feeling exhausted after work and falling asleep when I got home, which made me nervous. I'd spent six months being exhausted and taking naps after school when I was 13, and it had turned out to be a growth spurt. I didn't feel like I could afford another one. It was hard enough not to draw attention with my height as it was.

Anyway, since I'd had that nap in the kitchen, I felt like I might actually be able to stay awake.

*

Every single object in Amanda's room was Hello Kitty. Well, it had been Hello Kitty. Then they came out with this Goth version of Hello Kitty, so she got all the items from that collection too. Amanda said the new version—I don't remember what it was called—was perfect because she was thinking she needed an edgier image.

That gives you an idea of Amanda. She was a wonderful person. But there were certain things she just didn't understand. Like there's no such thing as edgy Hello Kitty. Like whatever kind of Hello Kitty it is, it's still embarrassing if you're almost 17, which Amanda was at the time.

*

As far as Amanda could tell, everyone at school already believed I was pregnant. It seemed to have gotten around extremely fast.

"Look, Man," she said, lying on her bed, gazing thoughtfully up at the ceiling, with two ginormous sets of printed Hello Kitty whiskers sticking out on the bedspread on either side of her, "there may be other reasons that people faint, but those reasons are boring. People don't want to believe something boring, even if it's true."

She had a point. Our school was deadly dull, but students there loved to gossip. "Besides," she continued, "you have to admit that _you_ being pregnant is especially fascinating. I mean, if you had a boyfriend, it would seem normal. But the way things are, everyone is going to be trying to figure out who schtupped you at least until winter break."

This was not what I wanted to hear, but you've got to love the word _schtupp_. Amanda's dad was Korean, but her mom was Jewish, so Amanda was very into Yiddish. Not that her mom spoke Yiddish. Amanda had taught it to herself online. Which also tells you something about Amanda. Unlike me, she didn't mind being weird. She actually seemed enthusiastic about it.

Amanda was convinced that the whole incident was going to be good for my social life. According to her, I should invent some guy from out of town, who I'd quietly been dating, and tell everyone that was how I'd gotten pregnant. Suddenly, I'd be a woman of experience and mystery.

Her theory was that maybe grown-up guys are obsessed with popping girls' cherries, but younger guys were intimidated by it, particularly if they were virgins themselves. She thought I had a much better chance of getting asked out if everyone assumed I'd already done it.

"So I would go out with someone, and get him to do it with me based on him thinking that I had already done it with someone else?" That didn't sound all that appealing.

I was sitting on her floor, copying her drawing of the cow fetus into my lab notebook. It had these little yellow hooves, strangely long legs, and a nub-shaped head. Something told me it wasn't actually as cute as she had made it look, but then, I didn't have anything else to go by.

"Sometimes, love needs to be helped along by a little deception," Amanda replied. I should mention that, although she had no firsthand experience, Amanda considered herself the world's biggest expert on love. She was planning on becoming a romance novelist.

"I dunno, Man," I said, "that doesn't really sound like love to me."

Amanda rolled her eyes and started humming "I Wanna Be With You" in a super schmaltzy way.

I grabbed something and threw it at her. Lucky for her, Hello Kitty doesn't make anything hard or pointed.

*

I knew that maybe she was right. Maybe the rumor could've been the next step to a more normal life for me, if I were capable of such a thing.

But I was thinking about Elias. As far-fetched as it was, I wasn't ready to give up this fantasy that I'd been having for a while that he was going to be The One. You know, the one I'd lose my virginity to.

And if I did manage to lose it to him, I didn't want it to be based on some lie. I wanted it to mean something. Elias seemed like the kind of guy it could mean something with. But how could it be my special first time for both of us if he thought I'd already done it with someone else?

*

Amanda guessed what was going on in my head. "You're worried about Elias!"

"Am not!"

"Well, he's too short for you anyway," she said dismissively after a few seconds.

"He is not too short," I replied huffily. "He's quite a bit taller than I am."

"He is _so_ short!" Amanda seemed sure of herself. Turns out she'd had to dance with him in PE a couple of weeks before that, and she had the impression Elias was an inch taller than she was, if that.

But Amanda wasn't even five feet tall, so if that were true, then he'd grown almost a foot in less than a month. Kids do grow fast in high school, but even that rate of growth seemed improbable. I figured Amanda hadn't really been paying attention.

"If he were that short, he wouldn't have been able to catch me when I fainted," I pointed out. I would've toppled him over. Amanda had to agree with that, even though she hadn't seen much of what was going on when I'd passed out.

She said it wasn't me fainting or Elias catching me that attracted her attention, but how the kids around us started freaking out and saying things like, "Oh, my god!" and "What's happening to her?"

By the time Amanda got a view of the situation, Elias was gently laying me down on the floor, cradling my head in his hand so it wouldn't bang on the tile.

You have to admit, that's a pretty sweet detail. I replayed the image over and over in my head during the next few months. It always made me feel better.

Amanda also confirmed that I hadn't gone into convulsions or drooled. So I was super lucky.

Or else Amanda was a good enough friend that she knew to lie about it.

Amanda was definitely the kind of person who, even if she didn't agree with you, would still help you out. Since I still wasn't ready to give in and pretend I'd been pregnant, we came up with a plan where she'd go to Planned Parenthood with me. I would make sure I didn't have brain cancer or whatever—if they could even tell you that. Probably, they would force me to take a pregnancy test, but Amanda would be the witness that I had resisted mightily and spread it around at school when the test came back officially negative.

*

Amanda and I had this thing we did when we weren't sure about a decision that we were trying to make. It was a more sophisticated version of the Magic Eight Ball. We called it iPod Tarot.

The way we played it was, we would get a music player, and we set it to play all the songs, but in shuffle mode. Then we asked it a question, pressed play and took the next song that came on randomly as the answer. It didn't always work, but more often than not, it was frighteningly accurate.

Since I was unsure about PP, we got out Amanda's iPod and asked it if we should go, and the song it played was "Yes _."_ So we assumed we didn't even have to listen to the lyrics or try to figure them out like we sometimes did, because we thought it was pretty clear what the answer was.

In retrospect, I realize we definitely should've listened to the lyrics. If we had, we might've come up with a completely different conclusion.

#

Even if iPod Tarot said yes, though, I still wasn't all that excited about going to PP. As encouragement, I kept trying to convince myself that Elias cared about me being pregnant, the way he'd seemed to care that afternoon on the way to Mrs. C's.

I imagined him overhearing some people telling each other that I'd really never been pregnant. I pictured a pensive look coming over his face, the thoughtful glint in his eye when he heard that apparently my blood pressure had just momentarily plummeted, or whatever. I wondered if, when he found out the truth, he'd feel bad for that weird look he gave me in the hall.

*

And yet, I never managed to talk to the real Elias in school that week, not even to thank him for catching me when I fainted. I did linger for about thirty seconds near his locker when he was getting stuff out of it the next day. That alone was hard for me to do. Lingering may be a key social skill, but it always made me feel panicky.

In order to give myself courage, I tried focusing—in a non-obvious way, mind you—on how fabulously tall he was.

This seemed to work. When he finished in his locker, I actually stepped up to say something to him. I had it all planned out. I was going to say, "I suppose you catch fainting girls all the time." I was going to try to deliver it in a casual, witty manner, although given my nerves, I don't think it would've come off.

I'll never know, though, because before I got a word out, he turned the other way, not even glancing in my direction. I couldn't begin to stammer out a sound, but, frustrated, inside my mind, I thought, _Hey, don't walk away!_

The extra-strange thing was, he paused then. I remember, because I got caught up for a moment in the comforting stretch of his shoulders, and the fit of his jeans, which distracted me from the task at hand. But then he cocked his head, as if listening. It almost seemed as if he were going to turn back around. I could just see that graceful edge of his cheek from the side.

Afterward, I reassured myself that probably he'd just imagined that he'd forgotten something in his locker for a second and then realized that he hadn't. To a paranoid person like me, though, at the time it felt like I might've accidentally whispered, "Hey, don't walk away," out loud, and then I really started to panic. Especially because in my mind I'd said it pretty bitchily.

If I hadn't been frozen in fear, I think I would've turned and sprinted off. But then he moved away, without turning around, and I was finally able to exhale before I started turning blue.

After that, I wasn't up for trying to talk to him. And he didn't act any different than he had before.

#

Planned Parenthood, when Amanda and I arrived there a few days later, seemed somehow more real than real. Some of it you could've predicted. The same ancient linoleum and acoustic ceiling tiles that they had at school, the same bad fluorescent lights. Dingy chairs with the finish rubbed off the wooden arms and stained pink upholstery that had once had flecks of blue in it. Bad pastel-colored art prints with Southwest pottery images.

But then there were details you couldn't have imagined. Like the fact that the door that went back to the examining rooms was locked, and you had to be buzzed in to get back there. Also, when you leaned a little bit over the counter, you could see that the receptionist had taped up pictures of her newborn baby daughter. Somehow, that just didn't seem appropriate.

The other weird thing about being at Planned Parenthood was that you kind of knew why everyone was there. And it was hard not to look at the people in the waiting room in a different way.

The thing was, they were all having sex. You've got to figure that they were either there to get birth control, or because they didn't use birth control when they should have. Which meant that they were actually having or planning on having sex.

Even this pudgy girl in a faded black Madonna t-shirt who looked like she was maybe thirteen, if that, who was there with a woman who might've been her grandmother. They both looked like they'd come in from one of the ranches outside of town. It was disturbing to think about, but apparently even the girl was having sex. Once again, I was the odd person out.

Of course, I didn't give them my real name or phone number or anything. I couldn't leave an official record of being there because of the whole complication with my mom. So I made stuff up and mixed up the numbers.

While we were waiting, I sat and looked at the different things that were pinned to the wall, like the piece of paper telling you to show your Medicare card and so forth.

One of the posters showed a picture of a guy's face close up. He was the kind of guy I guess most people would say is really good-looking, as good-looking as Troy. He had stubble, like he was all sexy, or whatever. On the top of the poster, the words said, "He was the perfect guy..." And then on the bottom, it said, "...Until you were two weeks late."

I had a pretty good laugh about that. Sure, I had problems. But at least having been jilted wasn't one of them.

*

Eventually the woman came out and called my not-real name. She weighed me (okay, so I'd gained a few pounds) and took my blood pressure (yeah, it was low).

Then I had to pee in a cup, even though I told them there was no point. They wouldn't listen to me any more than anyone else, so once I felt like I'd made enough of an effort at resisting, I finally gave in. I knew it would save me in the end.

When I gave the sample, I wiped with those pre-moistened foil-wrapped towelettes first, from front to back, just the way they tell you to on the sign that's posted over the toilet. I followed the steps in order. I was paranoid about doing it wrong.

Then the woman showed us into the examining room and gave me the whole spiel about taking off my clothes and putting on the paper gown and the drape. She emphasized that I needed to remove my underwear. Duh!

I sat on the edge of the table with the paper bunched around me, feeling stupid. Amanda sat in a chair that was nearby and read the STD brochures in funny voices to make me laugh. It wasn't hard. I was so nervous, I think I would've laughed at almost anything.

*

Finally the nurse came in. She was black, with a short 'fro and dark skin. She seemed very tired, like she'd been doing her job for a long time. I was betting she didn't get to tell people that they weren't pregnant very often. I was glad that she'd at least get to say it to me.

She said hello and took us both in with a glance that lasted less than a second. She set her clipboard down.

"Well," she said, "I'm guessing you already know the results of your test." I did. I was relieved.

Then she continued, "You are most definitely pregnant."

#

At that point, I started fixating on her nametag, which said "Gabrielle Malaika, R.N." For some reason, I was particularly fascinated by the dots after the R and the N.

But I did manage to find my voice. "There's some mistake," I said. "I know I'm not pregnant."

The nurse looked even wearier, if that were possible. I think it was an effort for her not to roll her eyes.

"So what are you doing here getting the test?" she wanted to know.

"Well," I replied, "my school nurse..." I trailed off. I didn't see how that was going to help me.

But what she'd said gave me hope. Maybe they assumed everyone who came in was pregnant. Maybe they almost always were. Maybe, to save money, they didn't actually do the tests.

I tried again, struggling to sound reasonable, though it came off more like pleading. "Is there any chance my test was mixed up with someone else's?"

She shook her head. "You're the only pregnancy test we've done since lunch." This news kind of shocked me.

"Really?" I said. What was that pudgy girl here for, anyway?

"Yes," the nurse replied, pointedly, and looking at me like she was annoyed. "We provide many different health services here for women."

Amanda piped up, "What about a false positive?" Thank God for Amanda. I knew about false positives, but at that moment I couldn't have remembered what they were called to save my life. I was hoping it would make us seem less like stupid high school kids.

Gabrielle shook her head again. "Very rarely, if we do a test too early, we get a false negative, but there's no such thing as a false positive." She consulted the clipboard. "And definitely not with you. You're swimming in hCG."

"What about a hormone imbalance?" I knew I was grasping. But my mom was sure everything was due to hormone imbalances.

"The only thing that makes this hormone is a placenta. Unless you're on fertility drugs? Or being treated for cancer?"

"No." I barely managed to choke it out. I had the feeling that I was going to break down and start crying from frustration. I was trying to keep it together, hoping I wouldn't fall apart right away.

"The thing is," my voice was quiet and kind of shaky, "I haven't ever had sex." Then, in case she was thinking along the same lines as Mrs. C, I added, "I haven't fooled around at all. Not even kissed anybody."

Gabrielle sighed. You could see her whole body soften. She sat down on the stool with the wheels on the bottom and pulled it up close to where I was sitting. She looked up at me. Her face was sad.

"Oh, sweetie." She paused. "I'm so sorry. We see this in here every once in a while. Maybe you think you've never had intercourse, but sometimes, girls are at parties, and there are these drugs, like rohypnol—"

"I haven't been roofied." I sniffed and blinked. "I don't go to parties. I can't hold my alcohol." This was true. When my mom had moved to the monastery, she'd left me alone with a large and varied liquor cabinet. Amanda and I had experimented more than once, and I always ended up crashed out on the couch in a near coma within a half hour. I had a hard enough time with people while I was awake. I wasn't going to pass out around them on purpose.

"Well," her voice was even gentler now, "other things happen. If it's something traumatic, your mind will block it out. For perfectly good reason. Probably, after we get done with the pelvic exam, you should make an appointment to talk to a counselor."

She pulled back and gestured towards the end of the table where there were these metal things sticking out. "Now, put your feet in the stirrups and we'll have you lie down so we can gauge the size of your uterus. That will tell us how far along you are."

Hope sprang back up inside me. I'd never had a pelvic exam, and I was dreading it. But at least I thought that she'd be able to tell that I wasn't pregnant, and we could get the whole thing over with.

She helped me put my feet in the stirrups and got me to scoot my bottom way farther down than you would think a person would have to. I lay down. I'm not that modest, but still, it's unnerving to have what my mom would call your "yoni" in someone else's face.

When Gabrielle started snapping on her plastic gloves, Amanda came over and stood next to me and held my hand. She gave me a sympathetic look. I was glad she was there. I was shaking and tears were silently running down my face from the nerves.

"I'm going to put my finger on your outer lips." Gabrielle started to narrate her every move. "This shouldn't hurt." The clamp thingy was being warmed up under a hot lamp. I was trying not to look at it. Fortunately, Gabrielle's hands weren't that cold. I didn't even flinch.

And then she paused for a couple of seconds. Enough so that me and Amanda looked down at her. She seemed perplexed. When she saw us looking, though, she changed her expression.

"I'm just going to touch some tissue in between the lips," she continued. "This part may be very sensitive." I was about to think _Duh!_ again to myself when I almost jumped off the table. It didn't hurt, but sensitive didn't even begin to cover it.

"I'm sorry," she continued, "but I need to closely examine this tissue." So I clenched my teeth, and we made it through. "Do you get periods?" she asked, looking at my chart.

"Yes," I replied. "I just don't keep very good track of them."

"And you use tampons?" I was afraid I knew where she was going.

"Uh, no," I admitted. "I tried, but I couldn't get them in. It hurt too much." I had tried more than once. And I had followed all the suggestions on this website. Thin tampons, lubricating jelly, correct angle of insertion.

I'd even tried getting drunk once in case my reaction was due to frigidity, and I needed to loosen up. Even that hadn't worked. So I continued to endure the humiliation of having to sit on the bench next to the pool every once in a while when we had swimming in PE.

This was my dreaded, horrible secret. This was why I'd never been to a gynecologist. Why I was worried about having sex. I suspected there was something seriously wrong with me.

"It's okay," Gabrielle reassured, as if she could read my mind. "Nothing is wrong with you. But I do need to go get the doctor." I knew she was trying to make me feel better, but somehow, those two sentences didn't really seem like they belonged together.

*

The doctor was a skinny geezer who looked even more exhausted than Gabrielle. His accent was from Texas or somewhere.

"Well, now then, what do we have here?" he asked, sitting on the stool between my legs and putting on the gloves. He went through the whole thing, just like Gabrielle had. I tried to hold still. Gabrielle was hovering over his shoulder.

"I was thinking it was imperforate," she was speaking in a low voice, "but she gets her menses, and I'm fairly sure I saw some perforation." I had no idea what she was talking about.

"Young lady," commented the doctor, poking while I winced. "You have got a hymen made of steel." I understood that slightly better. I was pretty sure he didn't mean it literally, though.

"What he means," explained Gabrielle, "is that your hymen is thicker than usual, and it doesn't have an opening in it, the way most do. That's why you can't get a tampon in. It only has a few tiny holes that are hard to see, where the blood comes out. It's unusual, but it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you."

Then she frowned and spoke low again, just to the doctor. "The problem is, she's tested positive for hCG."

He blustered in response, snapping off his gloves and tossing them in the biohazard disposal.

"That's a lot of hooey. Check her again."

#

For a moment there, it was like the clouds over the desert had parted and you could see the rays of light streaking down between them. _Finally_ , I thought, _someone is getting the picture_. I had been starting to feel a little crazy there.

Amanda rubbed my back while I sat on the table and waited for the results of the second test. I imagined that we were going to have some good laughs later. I even felt bad for Gabrielle for being wrong this one time.

*

But when they came back in, Gabrielle and the doctor both had very serious, uncomfortable looks on their faces. My stomach started sinking.

Apparently, Gabrielle had been picked to explain the situation to me. "I'm sorry, but this test came back positive too. We need to examine you further." She looked at the floor. "The problem is, we can't do a pelvic exam with your hymen in place. We'd like to do a simple procedure to remove it."

The room was spinning. I looked down at the random pattern of the blue tile, trying to clear my head. "H-h-how...?" I managed to stammer.

Gabrielle tried to reply like it was a procedure they did all the time. "We just need to make a simple incision with a scalpel."

Amanda sucked her breath in really fast. She must've been trying not to gasp.

Gabrielle continued, "We can use a local anesthetic. It shouldn't hurt—"

"No." I found my voice. It was surprisingly forceful. "I'm not ready for..." My knees felt locked together.

The doctor sighed. "All right," he said, "then we'll just have to get out the alien probe."

Gabrielle quickly shot him a look. "He means the sonogram."

At that moment, nobody appreciated his weird sense of humor.

*

The only reason I was willing to lie back down was because they assured me that I didn't have to spread my legs.

A lady came in to set up the sonogram. She was very nice and wearing patterned scrubs, which I started fixating on. The shirt had these colorful little teddy-bear angels and clouds and hearts all over it.

While she pulled in the cart and got the computer running, Gabrielle and the doctor debated. At first I could only catch bits of their conversation. A lot of it sounded straight out of science class. "Can capillary action do that?" Gabrielle didn't sound convinced.

"Maybe if it were transmitted through sufficient mucus?" The doctor didn't sound convinced either. They tried to keep the conversation down. They didn't want me to hear.

"With a hypodermic?" Gabrielle was asking later.

"Sure," the doctor replied, "semen can be introduced through a regular 21 gauge." I shivered. I _hate_ needles. I couldn't hear the next bit, something about mandatory reporting, but then Gabrielle was arguing that the sonogram screen should be positioned away from me so I couldn't see it.

"Look," she was speaking in a murmur, "she has absolutely no memory of conception. You can't imagine that she's going to want to continue the pregnancy?"

The doctor turned to me and raised his voice. "What do you want, young lady? Do you want to see the fetus?"

I thought about it for a minute. I still didn't believe there was one. "If anything really is in there," I said, "you had better let me see it."

*

So there we were, five people crammed into this dark room, all staring at the glowing screen, holding our breaths while the sonogram lady rubbed my belly with gel, and then this thing that, to be fair, did look an awful lot like a probe.

In the movies, when you see a sonogram, they manage to make it look like something that might actually be a baby. In real life, the picture isn't that clear. But you _can_ see this flicker.

It's the heart, beating way faster than you'd think.

#

Of course I lost it and started blubbering uncontrollably. Amanda did her best to comfort me while the sonogram was still happening. But then the sonogram lady and the doctor and Gabrielle cleared out and I had a good cry.

The funny thing was, I wasn't crying because I was upset. If it had just been a matter of trying to wrap my mind around the fact that I was pregnant, I think I would've mostly felt numb.

I was actually crying from relief. There had been so many things I couldn't even hardly acknowledge, not even to myself. I hadn't had any morning sickness yet, but for weeks I'd been fighting the tiredness, and the weird twinges, the lightheadedness, the tenderness in my breasts, and just this, well, this feeling I had.

I'd spent all this energy trying to ignore it, and now it all came crashing down on me. I wasn't crazy. I didn't have to deny that something was happening to my body.

I might go insane trying to figure out how I'd gotten pregnant, but in a way I felt saner finally knowing that I was.

*

Once I pulled myself together and got dressed, Gabrielle came back in the room. They had figured that the fetus was ten weeks along, so I didn't qualify for the abortion pill, and if I wanted to "do anything about it," I needed to do it soon.

It was Thursday, and there was a huge retreat at the monastery that weekend. It was a fund-raiser, and I really felt like I had to do anything I could to help them raise funds. So it needed to wait until the following week.

I scheduled the procedure for Monday. It might've been more convenient to wait until closer to the next weekend, but once I knew what I was going to do, I wanted it to be over with. Gabrielle said it would be fine to do the hymenectomy right before the procedure.

I knew it was my choice what to do at that point. I didn't have to have an abortion, but the other options seemed pretty much unthinkable.

For one thing, I didn't know any girls who'd ever actually stayed pregnant and had a baby. I knew there were girls who did that, but they were either on reality television or went to the high school on the other side of town.

For another thing, I had no idea who the father of the thing that would become the baby was. It was definitely creepy.

I just wanted the whole weird nightmare to end. It wasn't something I wanted to keep dealing with.

Looking back later, I realized that Gabrielle was especially focused on making sure I would be there on Monday. She kept making sure I understood what the address was, and what time I was supposed to be there. She wanted to make sure I had transportation. All this seemed somehow like more concern than she would've normally shown.

But at the time, it didn't really register.

# I

After that August afternoon, I learned just how many emotions a body could bear.

*

Elation, first. Delirious elation. She was mine! She loved me! Though she had not said so, how could it be doubted? All my work, everything I had braved, all my doubts—they were as nothing.

*

And then? Loss. It was almost before I left her that I began to feel it. I began to feel her coming absence, the dark cold shadow cast beyond her incandescent presence. I became anxious for her to call me back again before I was gone.

How could that body live without her arms around it, without her lips on its mouth? I asked myself this, though she had never touched them. That's how disoriented I was.

She will beckon me once I am home, I thought. She will bid me come when it is time for her to sleep. She will Call to me in the morning, to lie with her when she wakes.

*

Agony when she did not. Days went by, and weeks. I could not linger near her dwelling, not since I had taken on that form. I tried once in the dark, lying next to the wall where I imagined her bed. But the neighbors came and went at strange hours. The threat of detection was too high.

Had she forgotten how to summon me? Was she shy of me without a storm? Why did the rest of that summer have to be so clear?

*

I waited then for September, when I knew that I in my form would find her in hers. Surely she would remember then? Surely she would be overcome as I was, and rush to greet me. There were times I thought, Oh, what will the bystanders think, to find us so embraced?

*

What is beyond agony? She did not greet me. She did not even brighten at the sight of me; there was no hint of a smile. Disbelief, it must have been. The sight of me brought anxiety to her face! She looked away!

*

And then. Horror. Doubt. Self-Loathing. What had I done? Was I a monster? Had I forced myself upon her? Were the impulses of that body more than I could harness?

I searched my memories. I was sure she had invited me. The pull had been so strong. I could remember her smiles and her sighs as I lay over her. Had I invented them to fool myself? Had I misunderstood her moans? Did she shudder now, at the thought of me?

Had I been struck by the family curse? Was I no longer a Being? Had I followed the two who had Turned before me, even without knowing?

How could our every caress have felt so pure?

*

And then, when the child cried out within her? The child to whose presence she was so obviously innocent? What was my terror then? Had I behaved like an incubus? Who was I, if I had fathered a nephel?

Had I, impassioned beyond reason, forced apart that lone round ovum and defiled it? Had I torn it so violently that it tore its own self in response, and kept on, inside her, tearing and tearing? No wonder her anatomy found my touch all but lethal. Thank God I had not killed her.

*

I needed counsel. I needed a wise one to look into my soul—if I still had one—and tell me the truth of what I was.

*

If I failed the test, if I had become one of them, I had no choice. I would have to destroy myself.

#

After PP Amanda and I took the rest of the day off and hung out until I had to go to work. We went for a walk at the reservoir, and then we went back to her house, which we had to ourselves. Both of her parents had these high-powered jobs: her dad was a professor, and her mom was a lawyer.

Amanda asked me did I want to play iPod Tarot, but I wasn't in the mood. She said, come on, we'll ask it if Lilli Delaney's had her nose done again. Although you never saw any scars, Lilli's face did have a strangely plastic quality.

I didn't want to play, though, 'cause I knew I couldn't ask it the question that mattered. I couldn't ask whether or not I was doing the right thing because I couldn't handle getting any other answer than the one I'd already come up with.

So Amanda did my nails while we watched _Persuasion_ for probably the millionth time. Amanda liked those movies because of the costumes. I liked _Persuasion_ because it was so dang depressing for so long that it came as an enormous relief when it was finally happy at the very end.

I usually went for something dark on my nails, you know, something that looked like it should be called Clotted Blood, but Amanda insisted on pale pink to "cheer me up." She even put a Hello Kitty decoration on my thumb until I noticed that, with its big head and all, it kind of looked like a baby. I made her take it off.

*

At work I stood in front of the chopping board and watched my hands and the knife. The green beans would start in a pile on the left side. They'd meet the knife in the middle. The little stem nubs that were cut off would go to the right. The trimmed beans went in a bowl on the upper edge. The pile of untrimmed beans got smaller. The pile of trimmings got bigger. The bowl got fuller.

Then I moved on to the mushrooms, and something similar happened. I watched the vegetables move across the board because I couldn't really form a thought. I was still pretty much in shock.

*

The event that weekend was going to be huge, much bigger than most events we had at the monastery. The reason it was going to be huge was that Thay was going to be there. "Thay," which was pronounced "Tie," like as in neck-tie, is what everyone called him, but that wasn't his name. It was just the Vietnamese word for teacher.

When Buddhists say someone is their teacher, it's not like your teacher in high school. More like your guru.

His real name was super hard to say and to spell. You couldn't even tell which part was his first name and which was his last name. So I called him Thay too, even though I didn't consider him my teacher. In any sense of the word.

Thay was this little old man, more than eighty years old, although you would've never guessed he was so ancient. A lot of people thought he was like a saint. For one thing, he had won a Nobel Peace Prize.

Technically, you're not supposed to worship anything or anyone in Buddhism, but people did seem to worship Thay.

In the meditation hall, the visitors fought to sit in the spots closest to the platform that he gave the talks from, as if he were the source of some kind of energy, and the closer you sat to it, the more enlightened you'd become. Even though, of course, fighting with other people to get a good seat is not a very enlightened thing to do.

I never stayed and meditated after his talks like you were supposed to. I thought it was pretty clear that my mind didn't have a calming mechanism, so what was the point?

*

There was no way my mom and me and Coco could cook enough food for seven hundred visitors, so starting on Friday, they got a bunch of college students to come in and help too. Which was hilarious because they spent the whole time they were working talking and laughing and listening to loud Reggae music on a player they brought with them and generally having a great time. Which, since the nuns were theoretically meditating during every waking moment, was definitely not how we usually did things in the kitchen. This, along with the pressure of cooking for all those people, made Coco extra grumpy.

I was glad the students were there. It was a good distraction for me. Eventually things got so stressful for Coco, though, that she started itching to chop stuff. That's how she got out her frustration. Right in the middle of "One Love," she came up next to me and basically pushed me out of the way. "Mei Mei, you go fix cushions," she said, her hand on the knife practically before I had let go of it.

*

The meditation hall was the only nice building on campus. They really did have a private donor for that. It was a massive adobe, but real adobe, not the horrible fake stuff. And it was like a church, but not too much like a church. I think they probably didn't want to set off anyone who'd had traumatic church experiences. I could definitely sympathize.

I took my shoes off on the porch before I stepped inside the door, the way you were supposed to. The cushions had to be arranged so that there was absolutely no space in between the big flat mats, the zabutons. You had to cram them all in. They were to keep people's knees and ankles from falling asleep since the floor of the hall was these polished terracotta tiles that were as hard as rock.

Once the zabutons were arranged, then you put a zafu on top of each one. The zafus were the thicker cushions that people actually put under their butts. A junior nun from the group that was touring with Thay was already at work on the front part of the hall when I got there. I started helping her, working from the back.

There were a few people who had gotten there early and who were sitting in the hall, even though the registration sign-in hadn't started. It was dim and peaceful in there.

I got more and more relaxed and fell into a groove. There was a guy on one of the cushions, sitting by himself toward the back, who seemed to be deep in meditation, so I only just glanced at him as I went past, arranging the mats around him. Then I looked again.

It was Elias.

#

There he was, with his eyes closed, just a foot or so from my face. He had—I noticed, despite my alarm—the most amazing eyelashes. They were super dark and long, the kind most guys would not have been able to carry off.

If I hadn't been in such a calm place, I probably would've yelped and jumped back, but as it was, I managed to start breathing again after a second, crept quietly back from the zabuton I was on, and slowly moved to the back of the hall so he wouldn't see me in front of him when he opened his eyes.

I took another look from behind. He was wearing a powder blue button-down and chinos—with a belt, a woven leather belt. Total geekwear. Except that, because there was nothing else geekish about him, he ended up coming off like aristocracy. This was only enhanced by the way that his wavy brown hair was getting longer and beginning to curl around his ears and on his neck.

Normally, noticing that sort of thing would make me sigh and get all stupid, but instead I stood there panicking. It seemed so unfair. The person I was usually the most eager to run into was the last person I wanted to see.

Probably it was a sign that I wasn't capable of clear thinking, and probably it was a sign that I was a totally frivolous person, but one of the few things I'd been able to fixate on since we'd gone to PP was how my plan to repair my reputation in Elias' eyes had totally blown up in my face.

Never mind that I was about to have a major medical procedure and possibly take an innocent life. Never mind that I had apparently been impregnated without my knowledge or consent.

Nope. I was fixated on my fantasy boyfriend. Oh, and the fact that I'd finally be able to use tampons. In moments of stress, my brain tended to focus on the insignificant details. I wasn't proud of the fact.

But it was also weird to see someone from my school. No one, besides Amanda, knew that I worked at the monastery, and no one else had ever been there—well except Lilli, and she was focused on other things at the time. Seeing someone from school suddenly made the monastery seem strange to me all over again.

So for a moment after I saw him, I was worried that Elias would think I was a freak if he saw me there. And then, of course, I realized that he himself, technically, was the freak for being there and medi-friggi-tating and all.

He definitely seemed to know what he was doing. His spine was perfect. He could've been posing for a Buddha statue the way he sat with his legs folded. Go figure.

I wasn't going back to doing the cushions. He'd see me for sure. I slipped out of the building, noticing a pair of really classy loafers that I'd ignored earlier, right next to where I'd left my shoes. I made a beeline for the registration table, trying to look casual.

One of the brothers was putting out the lists of people who had signed up to come to the retreat. I looked through the one marked M-Z, but there was no Zimmer listed. Elias or otherwise. I relaxed.

I told myself it was just someone who looked like him. Probably stress, or maybe wishful thinking, had made me imagine I'd seen him in the hall.

#

At ten o'clock that night the kitchen was still ablaze with light and bustling with activity. The abbess had come over and made the students turn off the radio and keep the talking down, since there were a bunch of people trying to sleep in tents nearby, but there was still a lot going on. Some of the nuns were setting up breakfast for the next morning. Most of us were chopping like mad. It's amazing how many vegetables you need to make vegetarian meals.

It wasn't easy keeping my eyes open. That fall, what with being pregnant and all, I often ended up in bed by nine-thirty, so it was past my bedtime, and I was getting tired. Tired wasn't really even the word for it. Being tired when you're pregnant isn't the same as being normal tired. Normal tired is just something that happens to your body and you can usually pretty much handle it.

Pregnant tired feels like someone has injected a drug into your veins that makes you even more tired than you ever thought you could be, and then they just keep shooting more and more of it into your system until you have to give in and lie down. Really. It's almost scary.

I was cubing endless hunks of tofu and doing my best to hide my yawning, but Coco caught me and gave me this look that was both worried and suspicious. She came over to where I was working, her eyes boring into me.

"You bad teenager, Mei Mei," she said. Needless to say, that was not what I wanted to hear. "Regular teenager stay up all night and sleep all day. Now it dark and you fall asleep? What wrong with you?" While she was talking, I realized with relief that she was teasing me. That was Coco's sense of humor.

"Come on, Coco," I said. "I was up early this morning." Actually, I'd woken up at four and couldn't get back to sleep. It was a miracle I was on my feet, let alone that my eyes were open. Well, partly it was a miracle. Partly I had napped during a couple of my classes and snoozed through lunch.

"You go home." Coco replied. "You no good like this." That wasn't actually true. I could almost literally chop in my sleep. And I was so indebted to everyone that I was determined to do everything I could to help. On the other hand, I _was_ about to fall over...

"I'll just step out and get some air for a second," I said. It was fairly cool that night. I thought going outside might wake me up.

I went out into the women's garden, which was right next to the kitchen in the women's hamlet. I headed to the far end, where the bustle was farther away. There were these bales of straw along some of the rows of plants. Some kind of hippy gardening technique or something. I sat down and leaned back against one.

The monastery was tucked up against the Sangre De Cristo Mountains on one side, and at night the mountains made a large, absolutely black silhouette where it seemed like the sky should be, but the rest of the sky around there was huge. It was a very clear night, one of those nights where you could even see the Milky Way, all the stars looking closer than you could imagine, pressing down on you almost, and so lovely.

Of course, I fell asleep.

*

When I woke, I had the feeling that something had woken me, but I couldn't tell what. I was covered in straw. The smell of juniper hung in the cool night air.

I looked around. The kitchen was quiet and dark. They wouldn't have worried about me. They would've assumed I'd gone home. The moon had come out, and its light was making it harder to see the stars, but easier to see what was around me.

I thought I heard crunching on the gravel drive just outside the garden. I assumed it was an animal or something. There were a lot of mule deer that came down from the mountains at night.

But it wasn't a mule deer. It was someone walking slowly and quietly, coming back into the monastery from the path that led to the hiking trails. As they got closer, I could see that it was two people. One of them was Thay. The other was Elias. That is to say, the guy I had thought was Elias in the meditation hall. It was impossible to see if it really was him in the dark.

They were walking together like they were doing walking meditation, moving silently through the moonlight except for the sounds they made on the gravel. For a minute, I thought maybe I was dreaming.

Once Thay and possibly-Elias got to the path that led to Thay's hut, they stopped and faced one another. Thay put his hands together in front of him, and so did the other guy. They bowed to each other. Seeing them do that somehow made sense. It was like they were old friends. Then they put their hands down and stepped closer together. Both men put their arms around each other and hugged.

Now, it was a huge deal for someone to hug Thay. Buddhists are not against hugging. They even have this thing called hugging meditation. But because Thay is special, people don't just go hugging him.

And yet, this young man hugged him. Close and for a long time. Even though this other fellow was much taller than Thay, he seemed to lean on the older man. Thay patted the guy on the back, as if to comfort him. As if to say, "Everything will be all right."

Then Thay headed up the hill to his hut, and the other fellow walked on, disappearing into the dark. I sat there, weirded out, until I heard some rustling in the garden. It was an animal skittering around me like it wanted to approach, but it was shy. I figured it was one of the monastery cats, so I held out my hand to it. Until I saw in the moonlight that it was actually a fox. I had to shoo the thing away. Which definitely freaked me out even worse.

*

So I stumbled back to my house, which wasn't that far from the monastery. I scarfed down three bowls of cereal and milk standing in the kitchen by myself in the dark. It's not like I was trying to eat for two. I knew it was just going to be me in a couple of days. I had to eat all that stuff anyway because I was flat out starving.

Then I went to bed. Lying on my mattress and not wearing my clothes felt like a huge luxury after having fallen asleep against that bale of straw.

While I slept, I dreamt that it had been me and the actual Elias taking the walk, that we had bowed to each other, that he had held me, and that while he'd held me, he had patted me on the back.

I dreamt that he whispered as he held me, "Everything will be all right."

#

On my way back to the kitchen the next morning, I stopped in the dining hall and grabbed four muffins off the buffet. I snuck a glance around. No Elias. Nobody who looked anything like him.

In the kitchen I quickly chopped up my muffins and stuffed the pieces in my apron pockets, just pulling one piece out at a time, hoping no one would notice how much I was eating.

I shouldn't have worried. Everyone was completely pre-occupied. The lunch was prepped, and we were working on dinner, which was going to be a big production. Strangely enough, my mom wasn't anywhere in sight.

But I didn't have to wonder about her for long. After a few minutes, she came in looking seriously ecstatic, like she'd won the lottery. It occurred to me that this would be a good thing for all concerned, but I highly doubted she'd been buying any tickets, what with her not being allowed to handle money.

She came right over to my station. "Manon," she exclaimed, "we've been invited to have breakfast with Thay!" I tried to hide my disappointment.

"Wow," I said. "Uh, we?"

"You too, honey. You were specifically invited." My mom was gushing. "Oh, I'm so glad we get to be together for this!"

She'd been at the monastery for four years, and this was the first time she'd been invited for a personal audience. It was a huge deal for her. I couldn't exactly get out of it by arguing that there were a lot of people who would've been way more thrilled about it than me.

*

When we went out to go up to Thay's hut, there were about a half-a-dozen other people waiting to go up too. Coco was in charge of us. She got us up the hill, made us take off our shoes, and ushered us in. The hut was empty. Thay was still out doing his morning walking meditation, I guess.

The doors were small, so they were hard to get through, like it had been built just for him. The wood was very weathered and there were cracks between the planks. I was thinking that it must get pretty cold in there at night. But it was also kind of beautiful, what with the wood being worn down to an almost pewter color.

There was a mat where Thay was going to sit. Coco was arranging us and she wanted me to sit next to him. She said Thay liked to see young people. I was definitely the youngest person in the group, but there was no way I could sit that close to him.

I'd spent all this time telling myself that he was just some old man like anybody else, but now, once I was in this tiny room and thinking how he was about to come through that door, I was having an attack of nerves.

Coco saw the stricken expression on my face, though, so she gave up and put my mom next to Thay and then me next to her. My mom thought I'd given up my spot for her. She whispered to me under her breath, "You didn't need to do that for me, honey." But I couldn't even get it together to whisper anything back.

Nothing in particular happened at the breakfast. I mean, nothing happened that you wouldn't have expected. We stood up when Thay came in. We sat down after he was seated. Coco brought around bowls of miso soup with a little bit of rice and egg. Even though the food was simple, Thay didn't actually eat. Somebody told me later he was having stomach problems.

I spent most of the visit staring at my soup, trying to get it down with one of those plastic decorated spoons like they use in Chinese restaurants. It was too much for me to even think about looking at Thay when he was sitting just a few feet away. I was embarrassed for myself for having thought that this wasn't going to be any big deal.

I do remember the woman sitting across from me. The thing I noticed was how beautiful she was. Not normal beautiful. She was probably in her fifties, and her hair was silver and waving all around her head, but it was the kind of silver that's so pretty, it made you think that if your hair goes gray you want it to look like that.

And even though she wasn't fat, her face had a quite round shape. It reminded me of the moon. Her skin was glowing, but also softly wrinkled. I thought to myself that I wanted to know what she put on her skin. She didn't look like she'd had work done, but she still looked incredible.

She was wearing a brown cotton kimono-type jacket, which meant that she was in the lay order, a sort-of club for everyone who wasn't a monk or nun but who was still really into the whole Buddhist thing. Every once in a while, when I looked at her, I noticed she was looking back at me, in a nice way, and smiling. I think she could tell I was nervous.

But otherwise, nothing special happened. No one said a word to me. And there certainly weren't any glowing lights or vibrations or even a low hum in the room. But still, when it was over, when we stood up and bowed to Thay as he was leaving, I started shaking uncontrollably. My vision got blurry as my eyes filled with tears. I knew I only had a minute or so until I completely fell apart.

Once Thay was gone, I filed out with everyone else. I found my shoes despite my tears, which weren't yet rolling down my cheeks. I made it down the hill and into a women's bathroom not far away. I stumbled into a stall and closed the door, leaning against it from the inside, sobbing silently.

#

I can't tell you when the thing happened. It wasn't in the room with Thay, or on the path, or even in that bathroom stall. The thing that happened didn't happen during time or in space. I know that sounds weird, but it wasn't dramatic. The heavens didn't open. The clouds didn't roll back. There wasn't any flash of light, or any dark void, or swirling galaxies, although I can see why that's what they show you in pictures when they try to show you what something like that is like.

There wasn't anything that the mind or senses can comprehend. I had seen what was on the other side of this thing we call life, though where it is, there is no seeing. The word we use for the thing on the other side of where there are no sides is Love.

That was the reason I was sobbing. I was mourning violently for every moment I had spent apart from Love.

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I suppose you think something like that happens and it changes everything. But it doesn't. Once you pull yourself together, you've still got to wipe the snot off your face. What are you going to do? Fling open the door of a women's bathroom stall, step out, and announce that you've just seen God? 'Cause you haven't, not really. And even if you have, what good does it do to go around telling everybody? No good really. Probably, it just creates trouble.

After something like that, though, everything does seem a little brighter for a while, a little more detailed. Maybe everything seems to sparkle, though it's not like you can see any extra rays of light.

It's a lot like coming out of a dark movie theater after you've seen a great movie. Only much more intense.

*

I went back to the kitchen, ready to keep chopping vegetables. What else could I do? I'd splashed with cold water, but my mom still saw that my face was puffy and she came over to ask if I was okay.

"Sure mom," I said. "I just got a little choked up after getting to meet Thay." You should've seen the look on her face. I had just made her decade.

"Oh, honey," she said, putting her hand on mine, "I'm so glad you understand."

I wasn't sure that what had happened had anything to do with Thay, or that she and I were really on the same page at all, but I was glad for her to think that we were. I just hoped she didn't expect me to go to any more of his talks any time soon. I definitely wasn't up for it.

*

But one thing had changed. I knew I was no longer going to have the procedure on Monday. Not on Monday, and not ever. I was—as bizarre as it seemed, even to me—going to stay pregnant.

I can't tell you how I knew that, or even how it came about as a result of my experience. I didn't hear a voice telling me what to do. And it wasn't that I suddenly saw that the thing growing inside of me was the same as the thing that was on the other side of life. Although I could see that it wasn't different from it either.

Don't get me wrong. I didn't decide that abortions were a bad thing. I didn't even decide that abortions were a bad thing for people who'd seen God, or rather the thing we call God that can't after all be seen. I hadn't suddenly fallen in love with my baby. I still didn't quite believe there was a baby.

I knew staying pregnant was going to make my life extremely surreal and that I had just, in some sense, stepped into an alternate universe, however much it looked like the one I had been living in all along. But that's how strong the feeling was. I knew I wasn't going to go ahead on Monday. I was absolutely certain.

*

That was the moment when I understood that I was always going to be the weird girl. In order to not be weird, you have to care what people think of you, and that has to be the most important thing to you, all of the time, no matter what.

But however much I cared what people thought, however much I obsessed about it, there were still times when whatever was going on inside of me was more powerful than whatever anyone else thought of me. This was one of those times.

I wasn't going to have an abortion.

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Strangely enough, the first thing I needed to do (once I realized the procedure was off) also seemed like the hardest. I had to tell Amanda.

I couldn't stand to put it off. So in order to make the call, I stepped out of the monastery kitchen during the first break I got after that breakfast with Thay.

Amanda had been a very good friend to me over the years, but I could see how maybe this decision was a little too far out there to expect her to come along with me on it.

And it _was_ terrible, that moment while I waited with the phone next to my ear, as I looked down the road leading away from the monastery and waited for her to say something, after I'd told her what I was going to do. But she just said I had better let her throw me a baby shower, and I said no bleeping way, and that was the end of that.

*

On Monday morning, I decided to make another call, to Planned Parenthood. I knew I didn't have to. I could just be another irresponsible teenager who didn't show up for an appointment. But Gabrielle had been pretty nice to me, and she had seemed concerned. I didn't want her to worry.

I thought of it when I was walking past what might've been the last pay phone in the city, and perhaps even the last one in the entire Southwest. It was outside of Ignacio's. I'd had a hard time getting up and was going to miss the first two periods anyway, and I figured PP must be open by then, so I might as well stop on my way to school. I was paranoid enough that I never would've done it with my own cell phone.

When the receptionist answered, I told her I was calling to cancel my procedure that afternoon. She asked me what time it was supposed to be, and I told her.

I was going to hang up, but she said, "Please hold on for a moment, I'm trying to find that on the computer." So I stood there listening to Muzak and playing with that button on the phone that you press to make the volume louder and softer. Just when I had decided to hang up for real, someone came back on.

"Mary?" It was Gabrielle. She sounded out of breath. For a second, I assumed she'd picked up the wrong line. Then I remembered that was the name I'd given at the clinic. Not real original, I know.

"Uh, yeah?" I said.

"This is Gabrielle," she said.

"Oh. Hi," I said. The whole thing was extremely awkward. I was getting a very bad feeling.

"So, you've decided not to terminate the pregnancy?"

"No," I replied. "Not right now, anyway." I realized that sounded really stupid once I said it, but for some reason I'd had the urge to be non-committal.

"You understand, if you don't do it before twelve weeks, things get much more complicated?"

"Yeah," I agreed. "I'm actually not going to terminate at all."

"Okay," she responded. I could tell she was keeping her voice calm and friendly. "Wouldn't you like to come in for counseling, though, or prenatal care? I mean, considering..."

"Maybe," I hedged. "Maybe some time."

"Would you like to make an appointment?"

"No," I answered. "I don't think so. Not right now."

"Okay," she responded again in that measured way. "The thing is, I need you to come back in to the clinic."

"Oh?" My voice kind of squeaked as I spoke. The world around me suddenly got very small. I began memorizing the pattern of the scratches on the Plexiglas next to me in the phone booth.

"The thing is," she started in again, "someone did something to you that made you pregnant without your knowledge."

"Well..." I was running what she had said through my mind. I'd been trying to avoid putting it that way when I was thinking about it, but clearly what she said was true.

"And you're under 18. You're under the age of consent." She said this like it made the next step obvious, but I wasn't following her. "We had to report this to Child Protection."

I hung up the phone. I stepped out of the booth. I walked away as fast as I could.

I ignored it when the phone started to ring behind me.

Beginnings,

Volume One (Episodes 1-4)

from The Book of Beings

is available now.

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# For more information

visit bookofbeings.com.

Follow _The Book of Beings_ on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr.

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# ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I want to thank my beta readers: David Taylor-Schott, who always read everything first, last, and most often; Amy K, reader and coach extraordinaire; Mark Schlenz and Jane Freeburg at Companion Press; the members of the Ecovillage at Ithaca Writing Group, including Monty Berman and Phebe Gustafson, but especially Valorie Rockney and Susan Wolf, who was unstintingly generous with her thoughtful and detailed criticism; Diane Goodman-Daniel; Amelia Sauter; the members of the Rancho Embarcadero Writer's Group, including Fred Soltysik, Sue Massanari, Brent Zepke, Skona Brittain, Lisa Conti, Tom Forester, Barbara Cunningham, and John Bowman; Hope Hernandez, my biggest fan; Martin Trujillo; Santa Barbara Write Away, including Gwen Dandridge, Yona Schulman, Nicole Archambeau, and Kerstine Johnson, with extra special mention of Sigrid Erro (who read the whole thing faithfully even though she does not like romance!), and the divine and fastidious Helene Gardner; Layla Musson, Vani Saccoccio Winick, and Tiffany Meier. Thanks also to my proofreader, Josh Brayer, to John Arnold for letting me steal a part of a plot from him, to Jeremy Taylor for advice on the forging of emails, to Michelle Detorie for endless conversations and support, and to the entire community at Ecovillage at Ithaca, where I wrote the first draft of this book. If I had not had its woods and fields to walk in when the plot became fuzzy in my mind, the story might never have been finished. I am grateful to everyone who has contributed to the book, and to the book itself for deepening relationships and bringing me friends and colleagues I might never otherwise have found.

If you'd like to volunteer to be a beta reader for future episodes of the book, please email us at bookofbeings@gmail.com.

# ABOUT THE AUTHOR

LIZ SEACH is the pen name used by a writer, educator, and mom who lives in the Santa Ynez mountains _. The_ _Book of Beings_ is her first work of fiction.

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You can reach Liz at bookofbeings@gmail.com.

