Left for Garbage

Don’t be jealous. You know you’re the only one I’m looking at.”
    The one really strange thing Linda told me was that Denise claimed to be pregnant by one guy or another at least a dozen times in high school. Linda said she didn’t even think Denise was having sex with some of the guys she accused of being daddies to babies th at always seemed to disappear before her second trimester.
    But that sex was at the top of what Denise liked to talk about - maybe not sex, but being pregnant from sex. She had an eye for what she called ‘good man meat’. Linda thought maybe it was to compensate for something lacking at home, but as a guy, I don’t really understand why a girl in high school would want to be pregnant, especially not Denise who was so unhappy when she finally got pregnant for real, she didn’t tell me until she was like five months along, and didn’t tell her parents until she practically delivered Deeley.
    Not only that , I know for a fact Denise tried to talk another friend of hers, Lupe Garcia, into adopting the baby, although I didn’t know about that little stunt till after I had a paternity test. Denise was crying and she said that it was only because she had been worried about losing me if the baby wasn’t mine, so she had briefly considered adoption. I guess her mom said no, at least that’s what she told me, which doesn’t really make much sense since Denise was a legal adult, but then again, Mrs. Brown is a pretty scary woman and I know Denise has this bizarre relationship with her. She wants her approval. She hates her, she says she never wants to see or hear her mother again, but she never once tried to move out on her own. I don’t know, I don’t know if Denise wanted to keep Deeley or not. At the time I bought what she said about the adoption. I know now I bought it because it’s what I wanted to hear. It made me feel like I was the most important person in Denise’s life. She’s good at that. The last thing Linda told me was that Denise never graduated from high school, so she said she had always wondered how Denise had landed such a big job at Universal Studios.
    I felt kind of funny when Linda said that. I mean, I thought everybody in the world knew Denise had not been working for Universal in any kind of job, and when I asked her if she hadn’t heard about Denise lying about her job, she just stared at me with her big eyes and said, “Oh, so like she got fired?”
    I don’t want to judge anyone , it’s not my place as a Christian, and maybe our Lord in his wisdom doesn’t want to create an unfair world, so if a girl is really beautiful she can’t be very smart. I don’t know, I still would have gone out with her if she’d said yes, which again she didn’t.
    I’ve learned other stuff too from talking to Marco , another of Denise’s exes, a guy I’m sure she didn’t start seeing until after she stopped seeing me, even though she never really stopped seeing me … but, well it’s not important. I’ve been talking to him and Emily, his roommate, in a platonic way, I mean. Emily is the girl who got close to Denise and ended up having her checkbook stolen while they were friends and now, like me, she is probably going to be a witness. She’s really pretty too and doesn’t seem bothered at all about me being a Christian guy.
    Together the three of us have made a list of what we know, sort of putting our heads together.
    By keeping Denise’s MySpace and Photo Bucket account open on my computer twenty-four/seven I was able to see it when she deleted two hundred pictures she had up, ones of her and Deeley, and the other ones, shocking ones in my opinion, where she was hardly dressed and touching other women, and hanging all over that fake gangsta of hers, Aaron.
    Emily told me that the night s he went to find Denise at Aaron’s place with Mrs. Brown, Mrs. Brown said all Deeley’s little things were still in Denise’s car, the one that got towed. Her car seat, her diaper bag, and the thing which made me saddest, Emily said Mrs. Brown cried when she said Deeley’s little doll, the one she called ‘Mama’, was sitting in her empty car seat. Deeley loved that doll, I never saw her without it. It’s funny, I always thought it was kind of sad she called her dolly Mama, like the doll was a softer version of Denise, one she didn’t have to work hard to get attention from.
    I don’t know. I saw her , you know, during that time a couple times. Once she showed up at