Scar Girl Read Free Page A

our friendship was real. But it wasn’t perfect. Nothing ever is.
    Even though Johnny wasn’t mad at me anymore, I still felt responsible for him getting into the accident. I had driven him away from the band. I had pushed him to leave Georgia and go home to New York. And I was in love with his girlfriend. I may as well have held him down while that car rammed into his leg.
    My shrink, Dr. Kenny, and I worked on the guilt, but I’m not sure it helped. The only thing that ever really seems to help me is playing music, so that’s what I did.
    CHEYENNE BELLE
    Believe it or not, I went to confession.
    I went to an all-girls Catholic high school where they force students to go to confession once a week. Most of the girls just made stuff up. “Forgive me, Father, for I had impure thoughts about this boy or that boy.” Never “Forgive me, Father, for I went down on this boy and that boy,” which was true a lot of the time.
    Anyway, I hadn’t been since I’d graduated a couple of months before, but I couldn’t think of anywhere else to turn.
    If you’ve never gone to confession, it’s kind of weird. You sit in this dark little room that’s like two phone booths smushed together; there’s a wall dividing them down the middle and there’s this little hole you talk into. The priest sits on the other side so he can’t see you. I guess the idea is that he isn’t supposed to know who’s giving confession. But don’t you think he peeks when people are coming and going? I know I would.
    One time, in the tenth grade, I brought a flashlight with me and shone it through the hole so I could get a good look at the priest. He didn’t appreciate it.
    They called my mom down to the school. She didn’t appreciate it either.
    Anyway, I told the priest a friend of mine was pregnant. (No way was I going to tell him the truth).
    He said exactly what you’d expect a priest to say. “This is very serious. Has your friend told her parents?”
    â€œNo,” I answered. “She doesn’t have parents.”
    â€œEveryone has parents, my child.” I never liked that, priests saying things like my child . I can’t possibly be his child because he can’t possibly have children, right? Though I suppose if I really believed that I wouldn’t have been calling him Father, which I was.
    â€œI mean, they’re dead, Father.”
    â€œI see. Does she go to school here?”
    â€œI’d rather not say.”
    â€œI understand that you want to protect your friend, but she needs help. She needs counseling.”
    I was quiet for a moment. I knew what I wanted to say but was having trouble working up the nerve. I have to give the man credit because he broke the silence with the question I needed to ask.
    â€œIs this friend of yours considering having an abortion?”
    â€œYes, Father.” I whispered my answer and wasn’t even sure if he’d heard me.
    â€œAbortion seems like an easy way out,” he said, “but in life there are no easy ways out, my child.”
    I was surprised at how gentle he was being. I went in expecting him to shove a photo of a fetus or something through that little hole, but instead he was sort of comforting.
    â€œBut isn’t she too young to have children?” I asked.
    There was a long pause before he answered. I don’t know if I was lucky or cursed to get the most thoughtful priest in the whole tristate area.
    â€œYes, yes, she is.”
    â€œThen shouldn’t she end her pregnancy?”
    â€œI think you know that abortion is a sin.”
    â€œWhy?”
    I could almost hear him wringing his hands. I felt sorry for the guy. He showed up at work expecting to hear the inane gossip of little girls and instead wound up with a real whopper of a problem dumped in his lap.
    â€œIt’s murder.”
    â€œDo you really believe that?”
    â€œI do.”
    â€œBut