Page 113 of Intermission

“Noah.” I can’t say goodbye again. I don’t have the strength. But I can say something else. Something Noah will understand, but she—this monster, my mother—will not.

“Noah,” I whisper his name again. “Break a leg.”

“You, too.” His voice is resigned, but I know he heard theI love youin that benediction. “You, too, my Madeleine Faith. Break a leg. Always.”

“Break a leg.” Mom scoffs. “I’ll break more than that if he dares to show his face around here.”

With a grunt, Mom pushes my restraining hand away, but I hang up and toss the phone at her. It drops to the floor and comes apart.

“Are you satisfied?” I ask, putting my hands on my hips. “It’s over. He’s leaving for London tomorrow.Tomorrow!”

“I suppose that’s what tonight was about, then. He wanted something to remember you by.”

“You’re wrong. But you’ve made up your mind to believe the worst. Fine. So be it. We’re done.”

I turn my back on my mother and head for the door.

“Don’t you dare turn your back on me, Faith Prescott!”

A red flush of anger accompanies the sudden onset of a deep achethat pulls from the base of my skull and traces skid marks across my scalp. Clenching the door handle with one hand, I meet her seething gaze with my own.

“My name,” I say, clenching my teeth, “isMadeleine.”

I take the stairs two at a time and slam—and lock—my bedroom door. I turn around, letting the door take my weight as my legs give out. I slide down to the floor, where I curl into a ball around my drowning heart.

While Noah Spencer travels to the Moline International Airport, I read the instructions on the home pregnancy test my mother purchased at a 24-hour pharmacy in Sommerton sometime after I went to my room last night.

I examine my reflection in the mirror, hoping there’s evidence that my mother hit me, but there’s none. There is a little scrape on my cheek from where I fell against the side table, but even that little abrasion is gone after I wash my face, exfoliated off by the washcloth.

While Noah checks his bags at the airport, Mom lectures that even though this test was negative, and even if the one I will be taking at the clinic is negative, I’ll need to take another in three or four weeks, just to be sure.

When Noah’s first flight of the day takes off for Chicago, I’m sitting in my mother’s car, headed toward a women’s clinic over two hours away.

I stare out the window, barely seeing the small towns or noticing the miles of corn and soybean fields. Every once in a while, I blink, but that’s the only change to the view.

Occasionally, Mom interrupts the news radio drone to name a new restriction she’s been inspired to add to her list of ways to cripple my social life.

No phone. No computer. No car keys. Mom vows to do whatever it takes to make sure I have no means of contacting, or of being contacted by, Noah Spencer.

Not that it matters, of course. Noah and I agreed. No contact for two years.

Eight, nine. Eight-seventeen.

“When we get home, I’m going to call the school,” Mom says, “tosee if I can put specific restrictions in place for your computer usage there.”

I don’t care.

“I know you don’t understand this now, but I’m doing this for your good. For your protection. Your future,” she says. Adding, “God willing, you’re not pregnant, of course,” under her breath.

“The test was negative.” And I’m a virgin, which makes the whole pregnancy thing a non-issue, not that she cares.

“Yes, but you were together last night. It takes what? Two, three weeks for a positive test? Besides, you can’t always trust those things you buy at the pharmacy.”

Then why did she bother?

I tune out. I’m well beyond the need to argue. My heart is thirty thousand feet up and several hundred miles away. Each moment takes it—and Noah, who’s holding it—further from my reach. Why should I care about computer restrictions at school or having to pee on another stick or whatever?

At the clinic, my mother waits in the lobby, as instructed by the staff. I sit in the doctor’s private office, fully clothed, for a “chat.” It’s supposed to be a “safe place” for me to divulge the truth about my sexual history.