Stay Right There

LEDA SAT ON THE BENCH in the girls’ bathroom counting money for a pregnancy test. The tests cost fourteen dollars and seventy cents plus tax at the drug store across from the high school. All the money she had found in her backpack was spread out on her lap: a five, three singles, a dollar sixty in change.

“Hey Alisha,” she said. “Can I borrow five bucks?”

“I’ve only got what I need to buy food,” Alisha said from the stall. “What’s it for?”

Leda didn’t answer. Her money was also supposed to be for food. This afternoon was Spring Fling, the day the school let everyone out of class early for games and music on the lawn. You were supposed to wear pink, which Leda hated, and she especially hated how funny everyone thought it was when the guys wore pink. She did like the food trucks, usually one with burritos and one with veggie eggrolls—but she was going to have to go hungry. Her period was six days late. Her face was breaking out, her hips and belly were puffy, her boobs felt like overinflated balloons. She couldn’t take the stress for one more day.

It was true that Leda hadn’t technically had sex with Matt, but he had ejaculated on her hand. A bunch of times actually, but there was one particular time she was worried about. The time when, without thinking, she’d used the bathroom at his house and then wiped herself with her unwashed fingers.

She realized the second she did it. Ran to the sink, propped one leg up on the long counter, covered in electric toothbrushes and Costco-sized bottles of mouthwash, tried to wash herself with water and a wad of toilet paper.

Matt banged on the door: “You okay in there?”

She pulled up her jeans, smoothed her hair down, opened the door.

“Yeah, of course.” Like everything was cool. She was pretty new at hooking up with guys, but one thing she knew without question was you couldn’t go freaking out at them about pregnancy stuff or disease stuff.

Later that night she had typed it into Squeal, which was an online site to ask anonymous questions.

Can you get pregnant from sperm on your hand?

She had gotten five answers: one saying it was unlikely but possible, one saying it was definitely possible, two people calling her a giant slut, and one girl who said she was currently pregnant and this was how it happened.

She’d counted the days to when her period should be. Nine more days, eight more days, one week.  No point freaking out until it was late.

A stall door opened, but it wasn’t Alisha. It was in fact Chelsea Kim, which made Leda extra glad she hadn’t started blabbing about pregnancy tests. Chelsea was part of Matt’s group of friends, seniors who hung out at the senior wall. Sometimes Matt made jokes about wanting to have sex with Chelsea. I mean, her ass, he would say, grabbing an invisible version of it. It was one way Leda could tell that Matt was just a guy she was hooking up with, not her boyfriend.

Chelsea didn’t say anything, just squinted at Leda’s lap full of money on her way to the mirror. Leda shoved the bills and coins into the pocket of her jeans.

Who could she borrow five dollars from?

Leda watched Chelsea fixing her makeup in the mirror. This was the smallest bathroom at the school, a tiny afterthought out by the applied arts building, but it had the best mirror. She redid the gloss on her plump lips, rubbed rosy cream on her cheeks. Fluffed the front of her hair, which hung in glossy curler ringlets down the back of her Spring Fling pink sweater.

Leda was in black jeans and a gray sweatshirt. Her only makeup was the eyeliner she put on every morning, and her hair was exactly how it had been when she got out of bed.

“Sorry,” Alisha said, coming out of her stall. She was wearing a tunic dress in a shade of purple that could pass for pink. “Lady problems.”

“Lucky,” Leda muttered.

Chelsea turned around to look at her. Her well-shaped eyebrows were raised, and it looked like she was about to say something.

Then the beeping started.

Three of them, loud: BEEP BEEP BEEP.

Leda, Alisha and Chelsea all froze and waited. The light was flashing on the wall, the speaker that was in every room, even the bathroom, the little square box that you never noticed until it starting going off like a time bomb.

BEEP BEEP BEEP.

In a second, Vice Principal Deevers would get on the intercom and tell them what to do. Hopefully a fire. They were usually small—someone had been playing with matches in a classroom or tipped over a Bunsen burner or whatever—but sometimes they sent you home anyway.

Attention, VP Deevers’ voice said from the intercom. This is a code red. Lock and secure all doors and windows. If you are outside, go inside immediately and…

The voice slowed, a little strange and distracted.

Stay—

Right—

There. 

Then it sped up back to regular, like VP Deevers had gotten off his script for just a second.

Until further notice.

The girls in the bathroom stood frozen, looking at each other: Alisha by the stall door, Chelsea by the mirror holding a mascara wand, Leda on the bench.

BEEP BEEP BEEP, went the alarm.

Attention, the voice said. It was cold and tinny, echoing too loud through the tiny bathroom. This is a code red. Lock and secure all doors and windows. If you are outside, go inside immediately and stay—right—there. Until further notice.

“Not again,” Alisha said.

They’d already had two code yellows this year—once for a police standoff in the shopping center across the street, and another time when someone had called in a bomb threat. Code red meant the attacker was inside the school. They’d had one last year. Someone had reported gunfire, but it turned out it was just some kids behind the gym setting off firecrackers.

“Maybe it’s a drill,” Leda said.

Chelsea was already at the door, flipping the bolt lock that had been installed on all doors last year, turning off the light switch. Light still came in from the high transom above the door that they couldn’t reach to block it, and, Leda was surprised to discover, a skylight.

“They don’t do surprise drills, only announced ones,” Chelsea said. “So they don’t traumatize us.”

Her tone was official, like she had decided to be the grown-up to the two sophomores trapped in the bathroom with her.

“Let’s use the bench,” she said. “Just to be safe.”

Leda got off the bench, and they both carried it to block the door. It didn’t feel too heavy, not enough heft to secure the door against somebody strong enough to break the bolt lock, but at least it would slow him down a bit. And then what, Leda wondered, looking back and forth between the uselessly high transom and the even higher skylight.

Attention, Vice Principal Deevers’s voice said. This is a code red. Lock and secure all doors and windows. If you are outside, go inside immediately and stay—right—there. Until further notice.

“He sounds stressed out,” Alisha said. “I mean, more than he usually does.”

Leda tried to imagine him recording the announcement in the front office. She wondered if he was surrounded by chaos, secretaries running from room to room, Principal Garcia on the phone with the police. Or was it more calm, like in the bathroom. Another day, another lockdown.

It could be the real thing this time, Leda thought, holding her hand against the puffiness of her belly. No reason to think it wouldn’t happen to us.

At first, Leda and Alisha sat on the two toilets. There was no place else to sit—not the grimy bathroom floor, damp cement with a drain in it. Definitely not the bench, in case the theoretical shooter shot through the door. By the stalls was safest, set back from the path outside, walls thick with plumbing. Leda and Alisha each offered their toilet to Chelsea, but she had insisted, in a voice just above a whisper: no, you guys sit. She was leaned against the wall outside Leda’s stall, trying to get her phone to work. No one’s phone was working in the weak signal of the bathroom fortress. It was probably better. If her parents were sending her separate texts freaking out, she didn’t want to know.

“Who do you think it is?” Chelsea smiled kind of wicked like she was trying to lighten the mood. “Who’s most likely to shoot up the school?”

Leda ran through people in her head.

There was that one skinny kid with the rat-tail who only showed up to school like twice a year. She thought his name was something like Wainus but that couldn’t be a name. The only reason to suspect him was that he looked exactly like someone you’d see on the news after a school shooting. She tried to think of less obvious people. Mild-mannered guys whose blank faces might be disguising secret obsessive grudges. Heavy metal guys who had joined Satanic death-cults. Blond dudes who looked like white supremacists.

Alisha came over from her stall.

“I think it’s Trevor Hagopian,” she said. “That guy is such an asshole.”  

Leda thought of Matt. Alisha always called him an asshole, too. She hoped it wasn’t him, the shooter or the shot. Neither one seemed exactly impossible.

Deep male voices were shouting, somewhere past the walls.

“This is a lockdown! Get inside, now!”

It had to be security guards. Or the police, or maybe a SWAT team.

Leda stepped further into the stall, resting one foot on the toilet seat so Alisha and Chelsea could fit inside. At least if there was some kind of shootout, they’d all be out of the path of the door. Chelsea was wearing sweet perfume that made Leda want to cough, but she held it back.

They listened for any more screaming, signs of danger, gunfire. Nothing. Just the beeping every ten seconds, VP Deevers’s droning voice.  Stay—right—there.  

“You guys didn’t hear any shots, right?” Alisha whispered.

Chelsea shook her head. “If there was a shooting, it was on the other side of the school.”

“You don’t think we would have heard it?” Leda asked. “I mean, how loud are guns?”

No one knew how loud guns were.

“But I think,” Chelsea said, “We’d know if it were something like a mass shooting. I think we’d hear that many shots, and like, people screaming, before the code red even started.”

Leda imagined those scenes from the news, kids screaming, running down the halls.  

“The one at Lincoln was a false alarm,” Alisha said. “Someone reported gunfire but it was just a car backfiring.”

“The one in Castro Valley was real,” Chelsea said. “But no one was hurt. The guy only fired once, and he missed.”

“I really hope no one’s dead,” Leda said.

She thought of the baby in her belly. She felt sure now—it was definitely in there. Maybe Leda would die, and the baby would die with her, and no one would ever know.

“So, this is a weird time to ask this,” Chelsea whispered. “But what’s up with you and Matt?”

Leda shook her head and turned to Alisha, whose face was about a foot from Leda’s face. Her eyes were giant wide circles. Leda couldn’t tell if it was because of the lockdown or because of Chelsea’s question.

“Nothing,” Leda said.

“I mean, you guys are dating? I know you’re hooking up. Is he your boyfriend?”

Even considering the unusually intimate context of being three people locked in the same toilet stall, it was a rude question. Leda studied Chelsea’s face as well as she could in the dim light. She didn’t see any warning signs in it, nothing malicious behind the painted pinks and contours on her cheeks.

“I don’t think so,” Leda said. “I’m not really sure what he is.”

“See, that’s what I thought,” Chelsea said. “You shouldn’t let him just use you like that. He’s such an asshole.”

“I thought you guys were friends,” Leda said.

“You don’t have friends who are assholes?”

Leda looked over at Alisha. She was pretty sure she didn’t have friends who were assholes, actually. It was kind of a nice accomplishment to realize, on the odd chance they were all about to die.

“I keep telling her he’s an asshole,” Alisha said.

For a minute they were all quiet, listening to VP Deevers on the intercom, the beeps of the alarm, the vague sounds of some kind of shouting, somewhere far off.

“I think I’m pregnant,” Leda said. “I mean, I’m pretty sure I’m pregnant.”

Alisha gasped.

“How do you know?” Chelsea asked. “Did you do a test?”

“No,” Leda said.

“But you had unprotected sex?” Chelsea said.

“You had sex?” Alisha said.

“Not exactly,” Leda said. “But he came on my hand, and like.” She didn’t usually get so explicit with her friends, especially not Alisha who was kind of a prude. But talking to Chelsea felt like kind of like talking to a doctor. “Some of it, like, got on me.”

“Oh my god, you dumb-ass,” Alisha said. “You can’t get pregnant from that.”

“No, I think you can,” Leda said. “I mean, that’s what I read online.”

“I mean you could,” Chelsea said. “But you probably wouldn’t.”

Alisha started to say something—something sarcastic, Leda could tell—but a noise stopped her. A loud buzzing sound from the intercom that made all of the crouch closer together in the stall for a second, until they could tell it wasn’t a gun. Just a glitchy noise, the kind that sounded like some kind of announcement was about to be made. They waited, straining their necks to see the intercom box, like there was anything to see there.

When the intercom started up again, it could have been anything: more details about the lockdown, an all-clear to come out of hiding. The voice of the shooter, holding someone hostage in the front office. The police, telling everyone to remain calm and come outside only when individually instructed by the swat team.

But it wasn’t any of those. Just VP Deevers again.

Attention. This is a code red. Lock and secure all doors and windows. If you are outside, go inside immediately and stay—right—there. Until further notice.

“Oh, fuck,” Alisha said. She sounded like she was gonna snap in a minute.

“The thing that makes me mad about getting pregnant,” Chelsea said, “is it’s a way to keep girls scared. Like a threat, always hanging over us. It’s not really fair that guys don’t even have to think about it.”

She slid her hand a few inches over to Leda’s hand, gave it a cool, steady squeeze. The fuzz of her sweater was soft on Leda’s wrist.

Attention, VP Deevers’s voice said on the intercom. The threat has been cleared. You may resume normal activities.

“Resume what?” Alisha said.

They didn’t quite believe it until the message repeated a second time.

The threat has been cleared. You may resume normal activities.

They freed themselves from the stall, Chelsea first, then Alisha, and finally Leda, whose leg was asleep from being propped up on the toilet seat for so long. Leda and Alisha moved the bench away from the door. The bathroom stank, Leda realized as the fresh air poured in, a mix of sweat and fear and the sugary smell Chelsea’s perfume.

Outside, the lawn was filling up with students in pink clothing. Little clumps of them, some upset, some laughing, hugging each other or punching each other in the arm. Something about all that pink made Leda think of Pepto Bismol. In her throat, a metallic taste like vomit.

“It was a nerf gun,” said Trevor Hagopian, walking past them, his buddy Omar hanging on his arm like they were drunk. “Some fuckhead brought it for Spring Fling.”

Trevor usually didn’t talk to Leda and Alisha. This must be part of the suspended social order for times of crisis, or maybe he had a crush on Chelsea or something.

Leda turned to look at Chelsea, but she wasn’t with them.

“She’s still in there fixing her hair,” Alisha said.

Spring Fling didn’t get cancelled. The deposit on the food carts was non-refundable, VP Deevers said in the announcement, and anyway everyone had their pink on, so might as well. Leda left school, walked under the BART tracks until she got to downtown. She hadn’t noticed herself being scared, at least not particularly, when they were in the bathroom, but now her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. She had a deep craving for hot chocolate, something with cinnamon and whipped cream, something to warm the chill through her limbs and make her feel like a child.

She passed Matt on the way out of school. He was wearing a pink polo shirt and matching eighties-style headband.

“I thought for sure it was you,” he said, winking. “I was all like, Leda Levine finally snapped.”

He stopped to give her a little shoulder pat, somewhere between a rub and a grab, like he did sometimes when he saw her at school. Like she was his buddy, except there was a heaviness to it, a fierceness like he was claiming her as his own.

Usually she liked it. Today, she flung his hand away.

“I’m pregnant,” she said. “It might be yours.”

His jaw dropped. Literally, like in a cartoon: mouth gaping open, eyes confused and a little angry, forehead wrapped in pink terry cloth.

She didn’t wait for him to say anything, just kept walking.

It probably wasn’t true, just a way to guarantee he’d never hook up with her again—no matter what bad decisions her future self wanted to make—and that made her feel a little better.  

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