Kennedy Stern Christian Suspense Box Set (Books 1-3)

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 2

KENNEDY LOVED HER LITERATURE courses because all that reading gave her a perfect and acceptable reason to procrastinate from math and science for a while. After she got back to campus, she hurried through a round of calculus problems to prepare for a test next Tuesday, then she took her already worn copy of Crime and Punishment and headed to the student union. Since it was a Friday evening, the cafeteria was pretty empty, but Kennedy wouldn’t regret spending some time alone.

She picked at her vegetarian pasta while she read Dostoevsky’s scene about a crazed murderer giving alms to a drunkard’s destitute family. So far, she was enjoying her Russian literature class even more than she thought she would. There was something about the way the writers described the world, something that immediately engaged her emotions and her spirit. They didn’t shy away from depicting human suffering in all its awful hues, but there was an underlying hope and beauty, too. After living in Yanji and walking its alleys overrun by homeless vagabonds, after spending time with the North Korean refugees her parents sheltered from the Chinese police, Kennedy appreciated the depth she found in the Russian works she read.

She turned the page, accidentally smudging a little salad dressing on the corner, when someone plopped a beige tray across from her on the table. “Hey, you.”

She glanced up when she heard the familiar accent, her lips spreading in a ready smile.

“Is that all you’re eating today?” her lab partner asked, eyeing her plate. Reuben sat down in front of his rice and beans, two slices of pizza, a cup of Jell-O, a bag of chips, and two cans of Coke.

Kennedy still had at least three hours’ worth of reading to finish before her class next Monday, but she slipped a napkin between the pages and welcomed the intrusion. Her eyes were so scratchy she felt as though her eyelids were made of steel wool. With the late nights and excessive reading, her contacts were constantly dried out. She hadn’t found the time to call her dad to ask him for a refill prescription, either. The time difference combined with her dad’s long hours at his printing office made him tricky to contact. She blinked a few times and tried not to rub her eyes as she stared at Reuben’s plate.

“Hungry?” she teased.

His mouth was already full with his first bites of rice and beans. He and Kennedy had been in the same small group during their first-year orientation. He was from Kenya, and they quickly discovered they faced some of the same challenges adjusting to life in the States. When they saw each other on the first day of chemistry lab, they silently agreed to stick together and make sure neither became one of Harvard’s pre-med dropout statistics.

“Wichaeading?” Reuben mumbled through a mouthful of pizza. When Kennedy wrinkled her nose at him, he swallowed noisily and asked again, “What’re you reading?”

“Crime and Punishment,” she answered, showing him the cover. “It’s for my Russian lit class.” Reuben was already hacking at his Jell-O with a spork, and Kennedy guessed it would be her job to hold up the conversation for a while. “It’s about a young man who decides to kill this old lady ...”

“Pwnvroker,” he muttered.

Kennedy squinted while she tried to translate, and then she nodded. “The pawnbroker. Right. So, you’ve read it?”

Reuben held up two fingers. Kennedy was impressed. She enjoyed a spy or thriller novel as much as the classics she read for class, but even when she found a book she liked, she hardly re-read anything. There wasn’t enough time.

Reuben’s meal was half eaten in a matter of minutes, which allowed him to keep up a more regular conversation. He told Kennedy about the other books by Dostoevsky he had read, and they talked literature until both their plates were empty. After a quiet burp, Reuben leaned back in his chair with a grin.

“So, any exciting weekend plans?” Reuben sipped his Coke. He was always so easy to talk to, whether he was discussing acid-base reactions or telling her about growing up in Kenya in a family with seven sisters. He couldn’t even count all his nephews and nieces on his ten fingers anymore, but he gave Kennedy detailed reports about them and their activities nearly every time he saw her.

“Not really,” Kennedy answered. She wondered how he always remained so relaxed. He hadn’t stressed about anything yet, at least not that she had seen. Between sips of Coke, Reuben c****d his head to the side and grinned at her until she finally had to ask what he was thinking about.

“Just wondering what my sisters would say if they met you.”

She crossed her arms. “Oh, yeah?” she smirked. “And what would they say?”

Reuben kept a deadpan expression. “Stressed.”

They both laughed.

“So when are you meeting me to work on our lab?” he asked.

She thought about her schedule. “Tomorrow good?”

Reuben shook his head. “No, I’ll be busy.”

Kennedy almost asked what he would be doing, but there was something in his closed posture that made her change her mind. That was the funny thing about Reuben. She figured it must be some kind of cultural thing she wasn’t used to yet. He was gregarious and outgoing, but he could close up like a clam without any provocation and then be right back to his charming self again a few seconds later.

“What about Sunday?” she suggested after the crease in his brow eased up. She glanced at her backpack. What was she forgetting? That’s right. Carl. “Oh, it would have to be in the afternoon. I told an old family friend I’d go to his church this Sunday.” She glanced at Reuben, trying to gauge his present mood. “Do you want to come with me?”

Never hurts to ask, right?

She didn’t know whether he would jump up and start singing like he did after they both aced their first chemistry test or if he would get sullen and silent as if she had intentionally offended him. Reuben’s face turned thoughtful, but at least he wasn’t scowling. “I’m not much of a church-goer,” he finally remarked.

“First time for everything,” she tried. “What about your family? Are they religious?”

Reuben let out a little chuckle. “Oh, we’re religious all right. Christians through and through. I’m just, well, I’m not one for churches, that’s all.”

Brahms’ Lullaby interrupted their conversation, and Kennedy held up her finger. “Sorry, I need to get that.” She felt Reuben staring at her while she pulled out the hotline phone. The call came from a blocked number. She turned her body away slightly so Reuben didn’t have to hear the entire conversation and pressed the green button. “Cambridge Pregnancy Center.” That was the right name, wasn’t it?

“Hello?” The voice was so quiet and mouse-like Kennedy could almost feel the hairs in her ear straining to grasp as much of the faint sound as they could. She stood up. Why hadn’t she let Carl explain to her what she was supposed to do when she got a call?

“Hi. You’ve reached the Cambridge Pregnancy Center.” Kennedy waited for a response. Did the caller hang up?

Nothing.

“Are you still there?” Kennedy winced and kicked herself for sounding rude. She was here to be a good listener, right? She looked at the screen to make sure the call was still connected.

“I’m here.” The voice was young. Feathery, like wispy little egg whites floating in a bowl of egg drop soup. When Kennedy offered to take the hotline calls, she pictured herself talking to college co-eds or frazzled single moms. Not little girls.

“Can I help you?” What else was she supposed to say? And why in the world had she taken the job before at least reading one of Carl’s silly training brochures?

“I just had a question.” She wasn’t exactly whispering. It sounded as if her body was so tiny and fragile she couldn’t spare an ounce more breath to make herself heard.

Kennedy held up her finger to tell Reuben she’d return in a minute and hurried to the corner of the student union. “Sure. What’s your name?”

There was a pause. Had Kennedy scared her away?

“Rose.”

“All right, Rose. Ask me anything.”

Kennedy waited for another silent eternity before the voice asked, “Do abortions hurt?”

Of course, that would be the first question. Not the clinic’s hours, although Kennedy didn’t even know that much. She tried to remember some of the arguments she heard her dad spout off when he went on one of his anti-abortion spiels.

“Well, the brain is fully functional very early on ...” Was it two months? Three months? She had never bothered to memorize the statistics. “And there are ultrasounds that lead us to believe that yes, babies can experience pain during an abortion.” Is that what Carl would want her to say? Was she getting any of her facts right? For a minute, she thought about looking up the phone number for Carl’s wife. Sandy would definitely be a better resource in this situation, but the phone model was so old she couldn’t pull up the number without disconnecting the call. Hadn’t Carl heard of modern technology?

The voice made a little gurgling sound that might have been a stifled cry or else a miniature cough. “No, I mean, does it hurt you.”

“Oh.” Kennedy had never thought about that before. All the pro-life arguments she heard growing up focused on the baby, not the mother. “Well, I know it’s a complicated procedure. There are probably risks involved ...” If she were back in her room, she could Google the question and have an answer in a second or two. Maybe she should head back there now. The thought of Willow, her feminist roommate, listening in to the call might have been amusing if Kennedy’s internal viscera weren’t quivering so much. She shut her eyes. She had to take charge of the conversation. “So, are you considering an abortion? Is that why you’re asking?”

Too direct.

“No. I’m calling for a friend. That’s all. She was just wondering.”

Nice job, Kennedy chided herself. “And how old is your friend?” She tried to make her tone sound trustworthy, inviting. She had no idea if she was succeeding or not because her pulse roared in her ear, making it nearly impossible to hear anything else.

“She’s thirteen.” It felt like Kennedy’s whole abdominal floor dropped several feet to the ground at terminal velocity. “I mean eighteen,” the voice corrected. “She’s eighteen and already out of school.”

Kennedy’s heart accelerated so fast her pulse felt like a long, continuous flutter. Thirteen? “And so your friend is thinking about an abortion?”

“Well, she just wanted some information, really. Like if it hurts a lot or not.”

“I see.” Kennedy shot up a wordless prayer to heaven, a silent plea for help that rose from her spirit before she had time to translate it into human language. “Well, if your friend wants to stop by the pregnancy center, we’re open again on Monday ...”

“I don’t know if her parents will let her come in.”

“Well, you certainly can’t make her. But if you talk to her, let her know there are nice people there who really do want to help. They can answer all the questions she has and give her the information she needs.”

“You guys are Christians, right?”

Kennedy was pacing now, because the more she moved her legs, the less her abdominal muscles quivered. “Yes, the pregnancy center is run by Christians. But you don’t have to be a Christian to get help there,” she added quickly.

There was silence for such a long time Kennedy wondered if there was a problem with Carl’s antique cell phone. Finally, Rose asked, “And so what happens if you get pregnant, and you’re too young to actually have a baby?”

Defying all laws of inertia, the acceleration of Kennedy’s heart rate crashed to a halt like a car plowing into a brick wall. “What do you mean?”

“Like, what if you’re too young but you still get pregnant?”

“How young?” Kennedy spoke both words clearly and slowly, as if rushing might drive the timid voice away for good.

“Like thirteen.”

Kennedy paused. She was pretty sure Carl’s training would have some sort of method, some sort of guidelines for a situation like this. But she had nothing to go on but intuition. Intuition that at this point was sending ripples of foreboding creeping up her spine until they wormed in and settled at the base of her neck. “Are you asking because you might be pregnant?” The question itself made her dizzy, as if speaking the words aloud could send her head into some kind of tailspin.

“Yeah.”

The adrenaline that had flooded Kennedy’s entire nervous system seeped out of her body in a single moment, dissipating out of each pore. She leaned against the wall and reminded herself that her job was to help and encourage the caller, not have some sort of fainting dizzy spell in the middle of the student union.

“And you’re how old?” She braced herself for the answer she knew was coming.

“Thirteen.”

Now what? Instinct demanded Kennedy find out where the girl lived, who her parents were. Compassion welled up in her core, urging her to find this child and ... and what? What could she do?

“Do you know about how long ago you might have gotten pregnant?” Kennedy scolded herself. Wasn’t there a more discreet way to ask something like that?

“Five months.”

Kennedy felt her eyes grow wide. “Does your family know?” She thought about what she had been like at thirteen. Obsessed with horses, daydreaming about NASA, content to giggle with her girlfriends about which boys at school were the cutest. But pregnant?

“I can’t tell them,” Rose whispered.

Kennedy wished she had written down Sandy’s phone number. What did Kennedy know about pregnancy? Nothing. In fact Reuben with his seven sisters probably knew more about childbearing than she did.

Think, Kennedy. Thirteen-year-old tells you she’s five months pregnant. What do you do?

“Have you been to a doctor yet?”

“No. I just took one of those tests you pee on.” Rose’s voice was too small to hold so much fear.

Nervous energy raced up and down Kennedy’s limbs. She had to find something to do. “Maybe we should make you an appointment at the pregnancy center. Would that be ok?”

“I don’t have any way to get there.” Another brick wall. What would Carl do?

“All right, what about your school counselor? Could you make an appointment with them?”

“I’m homeschooled.”

A roar of frustration crept up to the base of Kennedy’s larynx, where she cut it off by clenching her throat muscles. “What about your boyfriend?” she finally asked. “Could his family maybe help you out? Could they give you a ride to the center? We really want to help you.”

Did Rose understand? Did she guess that Kennedy’s leg muscles were poised, ready to run out the door the moment she discovered something she could do, some way she could assist?

“I don’t have a boyfriend.”

A horrible, nagging dread nibbled the inside of Kennedy’s gut. She asked her next inevitable question slowly, almost against her will. “How are you pregnant, then?”

A little sharp breath, the sound a startled animal might make when it notices its prey. A fear-drenched whisper. “I think it’s my dad ... I gotta go.”

“No, wait!” Kennedy nearly shouted into the phone, but Rose had already hung up.