Our Year of Maybe

“We’re good,” she says. “Josh and I have disagreements. That’s normal. But having a baby makes those about a hundred times more intense.”

“Why did you decide to do your GED online?”

“Honestly? I knew it would be weird at school. It was bad enough when I was pregnant. Everyone knew, I mean, obviously. It was the worst from the teachers, though. They’d give me these judgmental looks, like they thought I’d ruined my life.” She shakes her head. “But did Josh get any of that? Nope. He didn’t get lingering stares or subtly offensive comments. Some people didn’t even know he was the father or that we were dating. But for me, it was impossible to hide. It’s hard having total strangers know something so private about you.”

“I guess that’s sort of what pregnancy is. Like carrying around a sign that says I HAD SEX.”

Tabby snort-laughs at this. “I never thought of it that way.”

“You have your friends, though.”

“My high school friends?” She raises her faint auburn brows, which are the same shape as mine. “Soph, I haven’t seen any of them in months. It feels like I don’t have anything in common with them anymore, and it’s hard to make mom friends because most of them are so much older. . . .”

“I had no idea. I’m sorry.”

“I lost a lot. My classes and my friends and a good chunk of my independence. It was a sacrifice. I knew that going into it. But we also felt like we could raise a baby, with help, of course. I just never want it to feel like ‘mother’ or ‘teen mom’ is the only piece of my identity.”

“That makes sense. You’re my annoying little sister before you’re a teen mom, that’s for sure,” I say, and she laughs again. I’m learning that laughing with my sister is one of the very best things. “What I don’t get is how Mom and Dad were so against the transplant but so on board with your pregnancy.”

“Sophie. You have selective memory or something. They were furious at first. I was fifteen. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Telling them I was pregnant was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But . . . we got through it. They love Luna. I’m sure they wish this were happening ten years from now, but this is our life. And I think we’re dealing with it okay.” She tows a fry through ketchup, drawing a red heart on her plate. “I’m not naive enough to assume Josh and I will get married. I love Josh an absolutely ridiculous amount, even when it’s hard. We’ll see how we feel after college. We don’t want to feel pressured to rush into it, even though we have a kid.”

Tabby’s more mature than I could have imagined. “That’s good.”

“Maybe it’s my maternal instinct, but God, I feel so weirdly protective of you now. Like, I want to go fight Peter!”

“Please don’t. And we’re only a year apart. Maybe we’re supposed to protect each other.”

“I like that.”

“Sometimes I feel like you’ve left me behind. You’re growing up, and I’m stunted. Like, you and Josh started having sex when you were fifteen.”

“We’d been together for a while at that point, and we’d discussed it, and we felt ready.”

“Do you guys still . . . ?”

“Yeah. We’re super careful. Obviously. After I got pregnant, I was anxious about it, but Josh has always been the sweetest.”

I can hear the love in her voice.

“He’s a good one,” I say, and she smiles.

“I want us to be able to talk like this,” she says. “You and me. It’s a total waste of a sister if we don’t.”

“I—I know,” I admit. “I want to.”

And then we fight over the last French fry.

When we pull into the driveway at home, my phone buzzes. I’ve spent so much time this year waiting on messages from Peter that for a moment I think it must be him.

But when I unlock my phone, it’s not a text. It’s an e-mail.

It starts with “Congratulations.”

Which might be even better.

It takes me the entire weekend to go through my room and get rid of anything that reminds me of Peter. Scraps of sheet music from our Terrible Twosome days, which are almost assuredly over now. A used Philosophy for Dummies book he gave me as a joke for my sixteenth birthday. I never told him, but I actually read the whole book because I wanted so badly to understand the thing he loved so much, even though it took me forever and I loathed every minute of it. Into a trash bag it goes. Notes we sent back and forth in elementary school, most of them making zero sense to me now. Homemade cards, from his calligraphy phase in middle school, for various Jewish holidays. All of them go into the trash, even the one that just says, HAPPY DAY! He gave it to me on a completely random day, one that meant nothing to either of us.

Then I reach down to the medical ID bracelet, with the charms I thought were so sweet. I thought they meant Peter understood me on some deep level, but it’s no big revelation that I love to dance.