Page 14 of You Weren't Meant to Be Human
Crane closes his eyes.
If Birdie has one flaw—and sure, she has a few, she’s nervous to a fault and insecure and a bit of a pushover—but if she has one, it’s that she’s obvious.
Stay. You don’t have to go back.
He can’t blame her for trying. As far as either of them knows, Crane is an old classmate who moved to a small town for a shit job and a shittier boyfriend. They’ve seen the bruises, read between the lines, asked questions he wasn’t sharp enough to catch the true meaning behind. They’re following the handbook.What to do when your friend is in an abusive relationship; what to do when your friend is in a cult.Bullet point number one: no matter what they’re going through, don’t let them go through it alone.
If they’re pushier than the handbook says they should be, it’s only because they’re scared for him.
And yes. Sometimes Crane wakes up on their pullout couch and thinks about not going back. Sometimes he opens Aspen’s yearbook and finds the picture of him and his parents on freshman orientation night and he considers it: breaking his phone. Dumping the car in a ditch. Hiding in this little townhouse for the rest of his life.
But.
This world was not made for ones like you.
Even if he survived defecting, even if this house would not be hunted and devoured for abetting it, it wouldn’t be worth it. Seventeen years as Sophie, as a person, out there? It broke him. Might have killed him if he’d messed up that night in the car, if he’d ever gotten what he’d prayed for.
The hive saved him. The hive gave him permission to cut his hair and change his name and shut the fuck up. It’s the hive that gives him a reason to exist, and it’s the hive that puts a hand on the back of his neck and tells him what to do and god,god, please tell him what to do. Please take all his higher thinking from him. He doesn’t want it. Sometimes when he feeds the worms and the flies, he mouthsthank you, because they’re the only things that have ever understood.
Nothing Birdie and Aspen do can change that.
Besides. If they knew everything he’s done, they’d hate him.
When Crane shakes his head, Birdie doesn’t seem surprised by the answer, but that doesn’t mean she likes it. She stares off through the rickety back fence, where some kids are attempting a game of soccer. They keep calling for breaks, sucking down water, lying in the grass under a tall, tall tree shriveling in the heat.
He is vaguely aware that he is using the both of them for their kindness. If he was a better person, he’d ghost them already.
For what it’s worth, the rest of the day is nice. When it’s time for Luna’s nap, she insists Crane tucks her in, which works fine since he immediately falls asleep on the floor beside her. Dinner is pasta, with sauce on the side because tomato sauce is a textural nightmare for half the table, and Luna picks the evening movie. Crane can’t keep his eyes open. He realizes it’s over only when Aspen nudges him awake, motioning that it’s time to make up the couch.
Crane turns the tablet over and tries to decide whether he wants to say this.
“Can I sleep in your bed?”
The bed isn’t built for three people, but they make it work. Crane curls up between them—Birdie on one side, Aspen on the other—and Birdie splays her warm hands across the tattoos under his shirt, the way she soothes her daughter on a bad day. The two-headed lamb on his shoulder. The black line down his spine. The clusters of snakes, roses, bugs across his hips and arms. The lines are thin and wobbly, but he likes it that way. He wants to get some on his hands soon.
Once this is done, he’ll reach out to that artist in Shepherdstown. Drop fifty dollars on a flash piece. That’d be nice.
Seven
Crane gets sick again that night, which is why he hears the back door open.
He’d always been under the impression that morning sickness wasn’t, like, actually athing.A bit of nausea during pregnancy makes sense, sure—there’s a lot of reorganizing going on down there, none of which could possibly feel good. But it had taken on such a mythic level of cultural shorthand that he’d become skeptical. Getting sick is movie shorthand for pregnancy, like coughing blood is for dying. There was no way it was legit.
Morning sickness is in fact a thing, he decides, sitting on the cooltile of the en suite bathroom and pressing his forehead against the ceramic of the toilet. He dry-heaves twice and coughs saliva into the bowl. Spits. Wipes his lip with a square of toilet paper.
Only a few more hours left. This will be inside him for only a few more hours.
He scrubs his face, grateful that Aspen took a makeup wipe to his smeared eyeliner the same way they scrub crumbs from Luna’s mouth, and he taps his palm to his chest to calm down. He knows the drill. Sophie spent her senior year on the verge of vomiting. Keep moving to distract the gag reflex, but don’t touch the neck or turn the head. Keep the jaw locked. Breathe through grit teeth.
A few more hours.
He doesn’t want to, but for the first time since the positive test, he touches his stomach. He digs his fingers into the fat that’s gathered on his belly since starting testosterone. It doesn’t feel any different under there. No hard knotting under the skin where a swelling uterus would be. On the floor, he cradles his phone and looks up the cutoff for a medical abortion. Nine weeks. A little over two months. That should be fine. He caught this early—he thinks. Without a period, there’s no way to tell, to count backward or know for sure. But nine weeks? It can’t have been longer than that.
After this, Levi has to go back to wearing condoms. Or, at least, he can’t cum inside him anymore until they figure out what’s going on. Does birth control mess up hormones? He’ll look that up later.
When the wave of nausea passes, Crane hauls himself up to the sink and drinks from the faucet. Water splutters from his chin and catches in his pubescent facial hair, a gift from his father’s side of the family tree.
Downstairs, the back door grumbles open on its track.
