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very…complicated.”
    Complicated . What a totally unsatisfying word. It was a politician’s word.
    “There were your exams, your senior paper. Then graduation crept up on us,” Christina continued, holding up her hands plaintively. “I didn’t want any of your special things to get overshadowed by this news.”
    “Were you going to tell me before it was born?”
    Reasonably, Christina looked hurt. “I was going to tell you this weekend.”
    “Do you know what kind it is?”
    “You mean a boy or a girl?”
    Carmen nodded.
    “No. We want to wait to find out when the baby is born.”
    Carmen nodded again, knowing as she did that this baby would be a girl. It just had to be.
    “So I guess it’s due around…” Carmen had already calculated the baby would have to be born near her own birthday, but she left the space open for her mother to fill.
    “Around the end of September,” Christina supplied slowly, the look of dread intensifying.
    Carmen knew, intellectually, that this was happy news on a lot of levels. Christina had a whole new life ahead of her. From about seventh grade onward, Carmen had feared the day she’d leave for college. She imagined she’d be leaving her single mother alone to defrost food and eat by herself night after night. Instead, this September, she’d be leaving a happy couple bursting with a new baby.
    And besides, Carmen was finally getting the sibling she had always professed to want. If she were a big and good person, she would be able to feel and appreciate this happiness. She would be able to congratulate and even hug her mother. But she wasn’t a big or good person. She’d dashed too many such opportunities not to know the truth about herself.
    “It’s kind of convenient, in a way,” Carmen stated, sounding robotic, like she didn’t much care. “Because you can just use my room for the nursery, right? I’ll be going just before the baby comes. Good planning.”
    The corners of Christina’s mouth quivered. “It wasn’t good planning. It wasn’t planned like this.”
    “And you can even combine birthday parties. What a funny coincidence.”
    “Carmen, I don’t think it’s funny.” Christina’s gaze was earnest and unwavering. “I think it’s serious, and I know you must have a lot of complicated feelings about it.”
    Carmen looked away. She knew she was being spooky. She could tell by the worry in her mother’s eyes. Carmen was well known to whine and complain and lash out destructively. Christina’s posture, much like that of a person girded for the arrival of a hurricane, indicated that she was ready for just such a lashing.
    Carmen didn’t want to give her mother anything, not even that.
    Yes, Carmen did have feelings, and they were damming up behind her face, generating a mammoth pressure somewhere around the back of her eyes. Carmen was afraid her face might explode if she had too many more of those feelings just now.
    Silently she handed her mother her vitamins and stood to leave. Earlier she’d debated telling her mother that they’d fallen in the toilet, but as she strode out of the room she figured she would just let her mother go ahead and eat them.
    Carmen hated herself right now, but she hated her mother a little bit more.
     
    Oh, Carma,
    I, of all people, won’t dare congratulate you or anything. I swear I won’t remind you how you always said you wanted a brother or sister, like all those *%&#$-all people did to me. I feel your pain. I mean, couldn’t they have just gotten a dog?
    I hope the Oreos provide comfort for at least an hour—just eat the box and think later. I got the kind with extra stuff in the middle, because I love you extra.
    Tibby
     
    The air in the dining hall of the Prynne Valley Soccer Academy was charged in a peculiar way. Bridget felt goose-bumpy and alert. She had an idea, but she didn’t want to have that idea—to give it words or a picture. Or maybe she did want to have that idea but didn’t want to want the