The Six Rules of Maybe

bad for the baby,” I said.
    “Thank you, doctor,” she said.
    We sat there for a while. You could feel the fight there sitting between us. I hated conflict, but conflict with my sister was allowed. Conflict was part of our personal, forever playground. She would fight with me in a moment, but I never forgot that she’d fight for me too. “You know, I just don’t get the whole pregnancy thing,” I said. I picked at the polish on my toenails. I hoped Jitter couldn’t hear this. It was nothing personal. This was something between me and Juliet.
    “What’s there to get? We had sex; there was an accident; we’re having a baby.”
    “Jesus, Juliet.”
    “Oh come, on, Scarlet. Don’t be such a prude.”
    “I’m not being a prude. You’re just so flip about it. Accident .”
    “Those things happen.”
    “Not when you’re being careful .”
    “I thought I was . Believe me, Hayden in bed can make you forget just about anything. It’s one of his finest qualities.”
    “ Jesus! ” I wished I’d never said a word. God. “Never mind .”
    “You brought it up.”
    “You were on the pill ,” I said.
    “What are you implying? Are you accusing me of something? For God’s sake.”
    “There are other options here.”
    “Neither one of us wanted that, all right? Satisfied? It’s not like I trapped the guy, if that’s what you’re saying.”
    “I’m saying it’s a little hard to understand. I’m saying you hugely disappointed Mom.”
    “Oh, you’re kidding, right? What, I’m going to live my whole life for Mom?” She blew air out her nose, a huff that said what an idiot I was. She sounded like she was in middle school. “I’ve got to make my own decisions. Am I not allowed to grow up ?”
    Grow up. The words sounded childish. You don’t fight for your right to grow up if you already have. “You’ve wrecked everything you said you wanted.” I said.
    I remembered when she got the job at the Grosvenor Hotel, how we’d popped open a bottle of cider, clinked our glasses; how Mom had grasped Juliet’s hands and told her the world was hers, how she needed to follow her dreams, even if we all knew how much Mom wanted her to go to college. I remembered, too, how Juliet had packed up and left her room nearly empty, tiny holes in the walls where her posters had hung. We’d tacked up all of the postcards she’d sent us to cover those holes—postcards of the Grosvenor Hotel at night which were in every desk drawer in every room there, next to the free pens and stationery that no one used.
    “I didn’t wreck; I reordered,” she said.
    I stopped picking my polish and looked at her then. Reordered —the word Derek had just used not twenty minutes before, half hour tops, about why people blew things up. I listened to signs like that—a song heard twice when you turned the radio station, a line in a bookread at just the right moment. Little clues given by the universe. The word was suddenly important. It seemed like maybe it was a sign that I should do some reordering of my own. They’d argued about Buddy Wilkes the night before. Buddy Wilkes was her unfinished business. Business I could finish up right then and there.
    “I saw Buddy Wilkes at school today,” I said.
    Juliet sat up then. “You saw Buddy? What was he doing at school?”
    “Picking up Alicia Worthen. They looked pretty serious. Really serious.”
    “Alicia Worthen ? She hasn’t even graduated. ”
    “You’re so lucky you didn’t stay with him. He just sat in his car and shouted at her.” I was making up some of it as I went along. I guess reordering wasn’t always a precisely planned thing. “Hayden would never act like that.”
    “What’d he say?”
    “He didn’t exactly yell at her, more for her. Just, ‘Alicia, get over here.’ Something like that. Like she was his dog or something. No, Hayden wouldn’t even treat Zeus like that. You wouldn’t believe it. He’s such an ass.”
    “Alicia Worthen . God.” Juliet didn’t look well. I felt the alarming sense of things all at once going wrong—that slipping feeling, the movement in an unintended direction. The way the ground starts to roll under the flat surface of your shoes just before you fall. Maybe the reordering had been a bad idea. Maybe I had opened a door when I’d tried to shut one. Maybe the truthful part of me knew I wanted to hurt her and had.
    The smugness I had seen Juliet wear every day since she had arrived seemed to melt, as if she had