“What did you tell them?” Vivi asks. She has tried to ignore that she is messing with more than just Brett’s fate. Wayne and Roy have been left to twist in the wind.
Brett grins. “I told them I was looking at rings.”
These words don’t produce the kind of elation Vivi would have predicted.
The second thing that happens is a packet from Duke arrives in the mail. Inside is Vivi’s class schedule, a timeline for freshman orientation, and her dorm assignment: Craven Quad on West Campus. Her move-in date is August 31. Suddenly, Vivi can see the future like a bright doorway in front of her. All she has to do is step through. But first, she has to fix things. She can’t believe how impetuous, how shortsighted, and, most of all, how selfish it was to lie. Her mother brought a self-help book home from the Cuyahoga Library called When Good People Do Bad Things. Vivi knows her mother is still struggling with her father’s suicide, but the title of the book speaks to Vivi. She is the good person who has done a bad thing. It’s her.
The next morning at seven thirty, Vivi heads over to Brett’s house because she knows that Brett’s parents leave for work at a quarter to seven. She also knows Brett is asleep, so she sneaks inside the house, creeps up the stairs, climbs into bed with him, and presses her face between his shoulder blades. He’s so warm and he smells like himself. Vivi loves him in a way she knows she’ll never love anyone else.
“Brett,” she whispers.
He startles awake and flips over, and when he understands that it’s her, he gathers her up in his arms. “What are you doing here, Viv? Did my parents leave for work?”
“Yes,” she says, and she starts to cry. “I lost the baby.”
“What?” Brett says. He sits up and clutches his head. “What? No! No, Vivi, no!” His torso starts to shake; it’s awful to witness. He is really upset, as upset as she’s ever seen him, all because she was insecure and foolish and cruel. This makes Vivi cry harder. Her guilt is so overwhelming that she almost comes clean. But no, that will make things worse.
She says, “I’m sorry, Brett. I feel like I failed. I feel like this is all my fault.”
He asks if she’s sure the baby is gone; he thinks they should see a doctor. She says yes, she’s sure. She also says she can’t afford a doctor, and she can’t see a doctor using her family’s insurance. He asks if she should take a pregnancy test. With a deep sigh, she says yes.
They head out into the summer morning and buy a pregnancy test at a pharmacy in Middleburg Heights, not Parma, so they won’t see anyone they know. The pharmacy is near the Perkins, and Brett asks Vivi if she wants to go for breakfast.
Vivi is starving but she can’t bear to enter that Perkins or any other—she hasn’t been inside one since her father died—and she doesn’t want to risk seeing Cindy. She thinks about how disappointed her father and Cindy would be if they knew what she’d done. She was such a good kid, ordering French toast and hash browns and crispy bacon, drinking coffee, reading the movie reviews in the Plain Dealer, then checking her horoscope.
She remembers the hope with which she used to unfurl those tiny, tight scrolls and read what was in store for her as a Capricorn. Nothing in them ever led her to believe that she would create a tumultuous situation like this one.
“I just want to go home,” Vivi says. “Your home.”
Back at Brett’s, Vivi takes the test—negative.
Brett and Vivi climb back into Brett’s bed for a nap. Brett kisses the top of Vivi’s head and says, “We can still get married.”
The next few days are tense. Vivi wants Brett to fly back to LA—she even offers to pay for his ticket out of what she’s saved waiting tables—but Brett says he doesn’t want to leave until she’s “one hundred percent recovered.” She assures him she’s recovered.
“You need to go back,” Vivi says. “Wayne and Roy are waiting for you.”
“Come with me,” he says. “You’re my muse.” He runs his hands over her face like he’s trying to read Braille. “I can’t write songs without you. I tried and I can’t, Vivi.”
“But I have college,” she says.
“You said you might want to go to college in LA. There’s UCLA, USC.”
She did say that—and at the time, she’d meant it. She can’t believe how different she feels now; it’s like she and Brett have switched places. “I’m going to Duke.” She hugs him. “I’m sorry, I just think I should stick to my plan.”