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as I drove around the neighborhood.  By the time I got back home, I felt more relaxed after having a few smokes and a couple of bottles of beer.  As I walked up to my room and passed hers, I held my ear to the door.  For the first time in a long time, I thought of myself as a jerk.  All I heard was her crying, and I avoided it by heading to my room and shutting the door, with a can of beer in my hand to help me sleep and ignore her pain.

14
    W e drove in silence as we went to the clinic.  It was a private one, twenty miles from home.  Kelly was supposed to be staying at Brenda’s so our parents wouldn’t question her whereabouts.  Shit, even that sounded completely fucked up. Our parents. I meant her mom and my dad.  Things had just happened so fast.  One minute they were telling us they were getting married.  Then they went and dropped another bombshell that they were getting married during the summer. Meanwhile, Kelly was practically having a nervous breakdown about the baby and I couldn’t handle it.
    I had to give her a reality check, and I did the shit thing of telling her that I was still going to college. I felt like a piece of shit doing it. I knew if I didn’t she would never go to the clinic.  We both had dreams and let’s face it, apart from fucking we had nothing in common.  Even that would come to an end.  It had to—we were stepbrother and sister.
    “You want some music?”
    “No,” she whispered without even looking at me.  I hated the silence and pulled out a joint.  I needed a smoke, and normally she would complain if I did it in the car.  This time she said nothing; it was as if she wasn’t in the car.  She looked pretty in white. It was ironic. She was wearing a white dress and heels.  Part of me wondered if she did it on purpose.  Everything was driving me fucking nuts. 
    Say something, Kelly. Anything.
    “Do you want some candy?” I opened the glove box and handed her a few when I stopped at the lights. I got a delayed reaction, but the same response I got when I asked if she wanted music.  I was glad when we arrived at the clinic.  The tension in the car was unbearable. I was seated next to a zombie.  Her eyes were red when we stopped and her shirt was soaked. This is when it hit me that the whole car ride she had been crying.
    I couldn’t comfort her anymore. I was being a jerk.  She had to get rid of this baby.  It was too complicated, and it wouldn’t work. We were too different.  As I got out of the car and turned to open hers, I noticed that she had already left the car and had started walking to the front door of the clinic.  I did a double take. I got her bag out of the trunk and called her name.  She ignored me.
    “Kelly, why did you leave me?”
    She turned and looked at me with hate in her eyes.  The lines in her face were distinct as she said, “I’m killing our baby. What, you want me to be nice now?”
    I froze as she sat down and waited for her name to be called.  She held her overnight bag.  Kelly didn´t look at me as if she knew me.  I gazed up, trying to avoid faces, but curiosity got the better of me. There were a couple of girls, reading magazines as if they were waiting at the beauty salon. They were in a woman’s health clinic, aka abortion clinic.  To keep the protestors at bay they changed it´s name. 
    There was a couple to the left, holding each other’s hand and reassuring each other it was the best decision.  I didn’t need to hear them speak.  It was obvious by him holding her and kissing her every minute, what was going on.  She looked timid, just like Kelly, and nodded repeatedly every time he kissed her.  I thought for a moment that maybe that was what I needed to do with Kelly.  But I just couldn’t fucking move.
    Everyone knew exactly what the clinic was for, and it dawned on me as they called her name that I needed to fucking move.  I should have been taking her hand, not holding her backpack like a frozen