Bumped Read online

  Bumped

  Megan McCafferty

  For Caitlyn, Carly, Cailey, and Zoë—

  when you’re old enough

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  First

  melody

  harmony

  melody

  harmony

  melody

  harmony

  melody

  harmony

  melody

  harmony

  Second

  harmony

  melody

  harmony

  melody

  harmony

  melody

  harmony

  melody

  harmony

  melody

  harmony

  melody

  harmony

  melody

  harmony

  melody

  harmony

  melody

  Third

  melody

  harmony

  melody

  harmony

  melody

  harmony

  melody

  harmony

  Rebirth

  harmony

  melody

  harmony

  melody

  harmony

  melody

  harmony

  melody

  harmony

  melody

  harmony

  melody

  harmony

  melody

  harmony

  melody

  harmony

  melody

  harmony

  melody

  harmony

  melody

  harmony

  melody

  harmony

  melody

  harmony

  melody

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  FIRST

  The United States of America once ranked above all industrialized nations in the realm of teen pregnancy. We were the undisputed queens of precocious procreation! We were number one before, and we can be number one again!

  —President’s State of the Union Address

  I’M SIXTEEN. PREGNANT. AND THE MOST IMPORTANT PERSON on the planet.

  According to the Babiez R U ad, anyway.

  “You’re knocked up,” sings the girlie chorus. “Ready to pop. Due to drop.” The sixty-second jingle loops continuously in the dressing room.

  I check the MiNet to make sure no one I know is shopping in this wing of the Meadowlands Mallplex. Most of my friends are still in bed sleeping off last night’s Tocin hangovers. I’m safe.

  “Do the deed. Born to breed.”

  Free from neggy eyes, I could act just like the fat and happy models in the commercials. I could shout, I could shimmy, I could show off every pound of my, um, abundant awesomeness. Such gushing doesn’t come as naturally to me as it does to other girls. I have to work harder at it, the way my friends struggle to solve calculus equations that are easy for me. Preparing to pregg is a full-time job with no days off—but I don’t have a choice. Not when there’s so much at stake.

  Rubbing my spectacularly distended belly, I want to try out an expression just to hear how it sounds coming out of my mouth.

  “I’m . . .”

  Egging. Preggiiing . . .

  “Fertilicious?”

  My whole body sags under the weight of my sigh. I’m supposed to own my pregnancy because my extra sixty is oh so sexy, but I’d die of embarrassment if anyone I know caught me striking poses like this—especially Zen. So I guess it’s a good thing that my best friend has made no effort to see me lately.

  “Went forth and multiplied. Fightin’ the omnicide . . .”

  I check once more for anyone I know, then blind my MiNet with a blink-left-right-left-wink-double-blink. The song is wrapping up—“You’re the most important person on the plaaaanet. . . . Babiez R U!”—when I’m startled out of my reverie by the sound of my own voice.

  “Well!”

  I jump.

  I’ve been so focused on my own expectant spectacle, I forgot that I’m not alone in the dressing room. Standing directly behind me is Harmony. Until a few weeks ago, we had never spoken. And until a few hours ago, we had never met in person.

  She’s my identical twin.

  I LOVE THE MEADOWLANDS MALLPLEX!

  It’s fast and loud and bright and buzzing with temptation but that’s why I love it. I love it because there’s no better place for me to do the work I was born to do: to spread the Word. Everyone in Goodside is already on message, but here there’s an endless supply of sinners going down the wrong path. It’s dizzying trying to decide who to witness to first. Or rather, next. After Melody.

  I’m here because I lost my best veil. It was so silly, really. I didn’t tell Melody the whole story because I was afraid she’d laugh at me, or compare me to a happy puppy as Angel did after she calmed down when she saw that my stunt on the bridge hadn’t done anyone any harm.

  Angel is the driver I called to take me to Otherside. I don’t know if that’s her name or not, but I like to think that it is. I had seen the billboard on Route 381 a few months ago, the last time it was my turn to leave Goodside

  to sell my fruit preserves at the Fayatte County Farmers’ Market.

  Angel Cab Company

  1-800-GOD-TRIP

  The LORD will watch over your coming and going. Psalm 121

  A pair of wings sprouted from the shoulders of the A in “Angel.” It wasn’t difficult to commit the ad to memory, though I’m not sure why I did. At the time, I didn’t know about Melody and had nowhere else to go.

  Angel isn’t in the Church but she does have God, which is as blessed as you can get in Otherside. She pulled up promptly at four a.m. and was full of the spirit despite the short notice, early hour, and her advanced age. Her white hair was cropped like a newly shorn lamb’s, her skin the warm brown of a biscuit ready to be taken out of the oven. With her crinkling eyes and ready smile, I trusted her immediately. Even more so when she asked, “Are you ready to let go and let God?”

  I liked that. It reminded me that I wasn’t leaving my faith behind, it’s always here with me.

  “I am!” I said, buckling myself into the backseat.

  If paying someone to take me from Goodside to Princeton sounds indulgent, you’re right. But I don’t know how to drive and have no access to mass transit maps and schedules and once I decided to leave I really didn’t have any time to waste on figuring it all out. I made the right choice because Angel said it would’ve taken me sixteen hours and four transfers (bus, bus, train, train, shuttle bus) to travel three hundred miles. I might have made it past the Goodside gates, but probably not much farther than that before someone took notice of the Church girl traveling all by herself. Angel Cab traveled the same distance in just over three. I was halfway to Princeton before first light, and arrived on my sister’s doorstep in time for a breakfast prayer! The one-way fare cost all the money I had in the world, but that’s just one of many worries I’m choosing not to bother myself with right now.

  I’ve taken missionary trips to other mallplexes with my prayerclique, but I’ve always had a chaperone and traveled on the Church bus. I suppose I could have asked Melody to MiBuy me a veil—it isn’t quite as important to try them on as I led her to believe—but I want to make the most of my time with her. I want to go out and see the world beyond Goodside. I want to reach as many people as possible. If I serve well, this could be a life-changing experience for both of us.

  It has to be.

  When Melody suggested we browse at Babiez R U, I got nervous. I knew it wasn’t a place of righteousness. Stores like this make a mocker
y out of Heaven’s greatest gifts and my housesisters testify all the time about how bad company ruins good habits, which is why I’m so lucky to have them in my life. But I have complete faith in my faith. There’s no reason to be afraid of anything I see here.

  I pray that by joining Melody in this store, we will finally twinbond. It’s been a month since our miraculous reunion and she has yet to call me sister. In fact, she has yet to say much to me at all, unless I ask her directly. Melody has been open about herself but uncurious about me, answering ten times the number of questions that she has asked, a tally that stands at three: “What are you doing here?”; “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”; and “I don’t think you’ll need another veil while you’re here but if it’s that important to you then I guess we can go to the Mallplex, okay?”

  Despite her reticence, just standing next to my sister is as exhilarating as cruising across the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, over the Delaware River, the cab taking me out of one state and into the next just as the sun crowned the horizon. . . .

  That’s how I lost my best veil.

  I longed to merge with this glorious landscape! I longed to unite with the majestic skyline! I longed to revel in His goodness at a hundred miles per hour. I lowered the window and stuck out my head, and shouted out.

  “Halllllleeeeeellllluuuuuujaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

  Angel screamed, swerved, screeched the breaks, and screamed some more. We were blessed that there aren’t too many cars on the road at sunrise.

  Once I was safe back inside the car, she prayed about my recklessness before saying she was surprised to see such behavior out of a Church girl like me.

  “You don’t need to return to His kingdom right now, do you, love?”

  She was right. I didn’t need to meet my Maker today. Especially after I’d gone through so much trouble to get here.

  I’ll never forget the sight of my veil in the split seconds after it freed itself from my tangled hair, soaring, up, up, upward, closer to Heaven, a dazzling flash of white against the pink and blue sky.

  I CAN’T GET A CLEAR LOOK AT HARMONY’S FACE. IT’S THAT veil.

  I tried to talk her out of wearing it in public but she’s not having it. In her defense, I guess it makes sense because why would she wear her veil in private? Harmony managed to lose her “best” veil during the ride to my house—this one is her backup—and she begged me to take her to Plain & Simple (“Modest Clothing for Modest Youth”) to shop for a replacement. The veil is the official excuse for why we hauled all the way out to the Meadowlands Mallplex; the unofficial excuse is that I couldn’t handle another minute trapped in the house with her as she went into raptures (not to be confused with the Rapture, which is one of her favorite topics) over the miracle of me. Of us.

  I detoured at Babiez R U because I thought she would be a good audience for rehearsing the enthusiasm I need to pull off if I have any chance of taking over as president of the Pro/Am Pregg Alliance when my other best friend, Shoko Weiss, goes on birthleave.

  The vice president and would-be successor, Malia Arroyo, is on what they call an indefinite leave of absence.

  Speaking as her friend, I miss her.

  But as her peer birthcoach, that’s all I’m legally permitted to say on the subject.

  Ventura Vida is running against me. She’s new, so I’ve got seniority, but she’s flaunting a twenty-four-week bump that is just too perfect and adorable not to vote for. Her family put her in private school when the public districts starting making all preggers drop out of regular high school to attend a special school where they’re all brainwashed into keeping their deliveries. Gah. It’s not quite as bad as Harmony having to get married, but can you imagine? Ventura aspires to be the first Southeast Asian–American woman elected president of the United States and views tomorrow’s vote as the first of many on the path to the White House. All of this should make her an interesting person that I would otherwise want to get to know if it weren’t for the unfortunate circumstance of her being a total powertrippy bitch.

  Harmony is almost a welcome distraction from what I have to look forward to at school tomorrow. Just thinking about all the drama gets my tubes in a twist.

  Harmony takes a deep breath, the veil sucking up her nose, then murmurs something to herself—a go-to inspirational verse, probably—before making a go at talking.

  “Well!” Harmony repeats brightly. “How many weeks is . . . ?” She points in the general direction of my belly.

  “Forty. And twins.”

  “Twins! Like us!”

  “It makes a bold statement,” I say, rotating in front of the mirrors. “A twin having twins.”

  Harmony sucks in another lungful of air. “So true, sister!”

  I cringe from the inside out whenever she says that word. I can’t change the fact that Harmony is my identical twin, but I don’t know if I’ll ever call this stranger my sister. Special emphasis on the strange part. I know Churchies are expected to fill their conversion quotas and all, but it was still a shock when Harmony asked if I had God within ten seconds of me answering the door.

  “Do I have Him, like, in my pocket?” I had laughed, still stunned by her unannounced arrival.

  “No, sister,” she had said without a trace of irony. “In your heart.”

  I had gotten used to MiChatting with her a few times a week. Though she had extended countless invitations for me to visit her in Goodside—a trip I just wasn’t ready to make—she had made no mention of crossing into Otherside to see me.

  So this was just too much. I mean, how do you think you’d feel if you opened the door at seven o’clock in the morning to see your exact double standing on your front porch, dressed all in white, clutching a shiny Bible in one hand and a banged-up suitcase in the other? I’m lucky I didn’t terminate right then and there. For serious.

  It wasn’t until she hugged me (“Sister!”) that I realized I wasn’t hallucinating from a secondhand dose of Tocin. It really was Harmony on my doorstep. I wouldn’t have been so neggy if Harmony had asked to visit me. I don’t know the protocol for long-lost twin reunions or anything but at the very least she could have warned me.

  All things considered, I think I’ve been handling things pretty well. I’ve come a long way since our first MiChat, when I barely managed to ask, “Harmony who? I’m your what?” I immediately quikiwikied the birth certificates that proved it wasn’t a phishy scam and she really was my identical twin named Harmony who had set out to find her bioparents but found me instead. It’s not like I never wanted to meet her in person, I’m just not up for making major media right now, and being a monozygotic twin always attracts attention even when they’re not nearly as reproaesthetical as I am. (I mean, we are.)

  I’m not being braggy. It’s fact. I’m everything I’m supposed to be—attractive and intelligent, athletic and artistic, social and so on—only better. Ash and Ty, my parents, can’t take credit for my natural-born assets but they do deserve recognition for all the time, money, energy, and effort they put into perfecting them. Even their surname—Mayflower—boosts my brand. And yet, these pluses can only go so far. What a relief it was when the results of my YDNA test confirmed that I am indeed the dying breed of a dying breed, rare and highly valued in certain Eurosnobby circles.

  Harmony too.

  That’s another reason I was so put off this morning. It was one thing to hear her (my!) voice, but it was an entirely different thing to experience Harmony face-to-face. I eyeballed her blond hair and blue eyes, full lips and wide eyes, pert nose and high cheekbones, and panicked.

  She’s counterfeiting me!

  Then I took in her white veil and neck-to-ankle gown and unclenched. The Church is extreme even by ordinary God-having standards, so Harmony is off market. I wanted to make sure.

  “So you’re set up,” I said, “like, to be a wife and mother.”

  Harmony looked down at her gloved hands before answering. “Yes.”

  “That’s great news,�
� I answered, because it was—for me.

  I could be living a totally different life right now. Harmony and I could—and probably should—have been raised together. We don’t have many details, but from what we do know, it’s pretty clear our biomom was damaged goods by the time she dropped us off. The musical names she picked out for us are proof enough of her pharmaceutically addled mind. We were born addicted to whatever junk she was on, and came out such sickly, shrieky preemies that the counselors from Good Shepherd Child Placement Services thought we had a better chance of being snapped up as singletons than as a janky twosome. Harmony was in worse shape than I was, and was taken in by the Church several weeks after I was placed with Ash and Ty.

  My parents are beyond intense, but Harmony’s off-grid upbringing has made me so thankful that mine adopted me and hers adopted her. With its ancient ivy-covered buildings, Princeton may not be the moddest hub on the Northeast Corridor but at least it just opened up an Underground All-Sports Arena and an Avatarcade. Harmony has spent her whole life in Goodside, Pennsylvania. She shares 6,500 square feet with three other families in one of the Starter Castles for Christ, those half-built McMansions in the never-finished gated enclaves bought dirt cheap by the Church in the late ’00s. Harmony claims it’s the largest settlement of its kind, which really isn’t saying much when there’s only a dozen or so in existence. The Church refers to the world beyond the Goodside gates as Otherside because it’s subtle like that.