“I n-need to d-come by and t-talk. Are you f-f-free, Jordan?”
“Yeah. I got off work an hour ago. Come over whenever you’re ready.”
“Thanks.” The other end of the line went dead, and Jordan looked at his phone before locking it and setting it down on the bed.
At that moment, his mom walked in the room. “Is Savannah okay, honey?”
He stared hard at the floor.
“You were on the phone for forty minutes. That’s a long conversation for her.”
“It took me thirty minutes to get her to stop crying long enough to tell me what she needed.” At this, he glanced up to see his mother jerk her hand up to cover her mouth. “I know. She’ll be over any minute, so can you make some PB&J’s?”
Jordan’s mother quickly left the room, headed for the kitchen. Savannah’s comfort food was PB&J, and coincidentally, the only outward sign of her being upset is when she’s eating PB&J’s, except now. For as long as Jordan could remember knowing Savannah, which has been since they were three, she never showed being upset. Even as a little kid, she would act like nothing ever bothered her. So, now, at the age of seventeen, for her to be crying, and not just crying, but wracking sobbing, was evidence of something clearly extremely disconcerting.
A few minutes later, the door swung open and Savannah walked in. Her cheeks and nose were red, and she sniffled three times before she got the door shut, and four more before she made it to Jordan’s room, just down the hallway from the entrance.
She pushed the door to Jordan’s room fully open, walked in, and closed it behind her before lunging towards Jordan and grabbing him in a tight hug and full on crying again. Jordan froze for a moment before reaching around and rubbing her back in slow circles. They stood, wrapped up in the hug for many minutes before a knock reverberated from the door through the room.
Jordan pulled back a little and said, “Mom made some PB&J’s. You want some?”
Savannah let go of him and reached up, wiping her eyes with her sleeves and mumbled a choked off “yes.”
He walked across the room and opened the door. His mom handed him a tray of sandwiches, then backed out and closed it again, leaving the two alone to talk it out. They sat in silence for a time, until Savannah finished all three sandwiches and then they climbed on to Jordan’s bed and lay down side by side, arms behind their heads, elbows brushing against each other, and so began a tradition that they had kept for the last eight years. Savannah said, “I don’t know what to do, Jordan.”
“About what, Savannah?”
“These problems I’m having.”
“What are these problems?”
“Cody. Cody’s my problem, and the cause of my other problems.”
“Why?”
“Because Cody is an idiot and a coward and I can’t believe I dated him.”
“What did he do?”
“He stealthed me.”
“What is that?”
“When we were having sex, he took off the condom without telling me.”
“And what happened because of that?”
At this point, the tradition broke. When they came up with this tradition, it was to make it easy to get things off their chests. It took the hard task of telling troubling stories and made it a simple question and answer prompt, and there was no judgment involved, so it was easy to feel safer than even two absolute best friends could feel in each other’s company.
Savannah rolled on top of Jordan and buried her face in his chest, sobbing again. “I’m pregnant, Jordan. I’m pregnant and I don’t know what to do!”
The thoughts running through Jordan’s brain were strong enough that his body almost became too confused to respond to Savannah, but his knee jerk reaction took over, and he wrapped his arms around her. Then, his face began contorting through the many emotions running through his head. First was confusion, morphing his pleasant features into a strange array. Next was fear for what Savannah would do, but that was quickly overridden with anger at her for doing something so dumb as having sex with the stupid jock she decided to date. His features morphed into a grotesque image as he turned that hate on to the useless jerk, Cody, who put his best friend, and the only girl he had ever loved into this situation.
After several minutes of this train of thought, Savannah’s crying finally began to stop, and Jordan began to reign in his emotions so he could put on the mask of the loyal friend Savannah had always seen him as.
“Well, I have an idea of what to do, or more, I know a place where we can go.” He slid out from under her. “Come on, get up. Put your shoes on and follow me.” He pulled her up so she was sitting on the edge of the bed, grabbed her shoes where they had been haphazardly thrown in the floor, and slid them on her feet, then pulled her up. He took her by the hand and led her out the door, down the hall, outside, and around the back of the house.
“Where are we going, Jordan?” She sniffed out.
He pointed at the hill in front of them. “Down.”
Jordan guided them down the hill by a path that was nearly overgrown by grass and small plants, under hanging tree branches, and around giant rocks. As they walked, Savannah began to walk more and be pulled along less. When they had made it halfway down, a subtle roar began to fill their ears, growing louder moment by moment.
Jordan led her around one last bend in the path, and it finally came into view. “The river,” Savannah gasped.
“Do you remember when we used to come down here all the time? That path was so worn out that we thought nothing was ever going to grow on it.”
“The pool. It’s still here?”
“I came down every few weeks and kept it built up, in case you decided you ever wanted to come back.”
The pool in question was just a circle of rocks all stacked up on the side of the river, creating a pool of much slower water about two feet deep. They had built it when they were 12, and came down almost every evening for four years to sit in the pool, let the cool water wash past them, and talk.
As if in a trance, she walked towards the pool and stepped in the water. It was still somewhat warm from the hot summer day, and she sank into it sighing. Jordan joined her, and she said, “I know I shouldn’t have done it, but I wanted to so bad. I wanted to experience it. What do I do?”
“Pray. That’s what we always came down to the river for.”
“But, I’ve messed up. Bad. What do I say?”
“Say what you feel. God knows what you’re thinking and feeling anyway. Just talk to him like you do me.”
So, Savannah bowed her head and prayed. She poured out her heart in that pool, and later, when the sun had fully set and the moon had started to slide up over the trees, she stopped and rose from the water. She glanced down at Jordan who had sat there the whole time, silently praying for her.
He stood up, too. “You may not know what to do now, but God always has a plan for you. And I’ll always be here for you, too.
Savannah nodded. “I missed this. I never should’ve stopped coming, but let’s do it again tomorrow.”
They stepped back and stared at the river, standing beside each other. Jordan reached over and grabbed Savannah’s hand, holding it comfortingly as they stood, dripping, and staring over the moonlit water.
The next day, Savannah and Jordan returned to the pool, and the next day, and the following week, and the next month. Finally, at five months into her pregnancy, Savannah’s mother no longer felt it safe for her to continue making the arduous trek to the river, and so Jordan began visiting her instead.
“Savannah, you in there?” Jordan knocked on her bedroom door again. “Your mom said you need to come eat.”
“No! I don’t want to eat! Leave me alone!”
“You need to eat! You have to stay healthy, and you haven’t touched anything since your doctor’s appointment yesterday morning.”
“I don’t care!”
“Fine.” Jordan walked away from the door and into Savannah’s kitchen. He grabbed a plate, loaded it with food, and made his way back to her door before pushing it open, and freezing in the doorway at the sight of the mess in the room. It looked like a child’s temper tantrum if the child had been hopped up on sugar. Clothes, books, and various accessories were strewn everywhere. Her bed was on its side, and her chair had been flipped over, with her laying on the floor, curled into a ball, and not moving.
“Holy… Savannah, what happened?”
She looked up at me, eyes bloodshot and puffy. The second time I had ever seen that look. “She’s gone. Jordan. She’s gone.”
“What do you mean, ‘she’s gone?’”
“I mean my baby. The doctor, he… It’s a miscarriage. She died before she was ever born.”
Jordan didn’t know what to think. He knew what he should be thinking: sadness, sorrow, mourning, for Savannah’s loss of her unborn child, but he couldn’t help but feel a mix of other emotions: vindication, lucky, and while happiness most certainly wasn’t the right word, it was as close as he could get to describing the feeling that bounced around his head because Savannah had been freed from the trouble that would have changed everything about her life. However, he reacted on none of these. Instead, he said, “I’m sorry, Savannah.”
Then, he flipped the bed back down and picked her up, laid her on it, and slipped the covers over her shoulders. He lay down beside her and asked, “What did you pray for, that first day at the river?”
“What?”
“What did you pray for?”
“I asked God to forgive me, and to take care of me, to set me back on the path he wanted me to go.”
“What did you think would happen?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t want the baby. I hoped it would be taken away.”
“What changed?”
“I got attached. She was growing, and I could feel her alive and moving inside me. Is God punishing me for having sex? For running away?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Then why did this happen?”
“I don’t really know, Savannah. Maybe because God didn’t want you to have a baby yet. I can’t tell you for sure, but I know he does everything for a reason.”
“How do you know that?”
“That’s what the Bible says. The same way you know it. I’m not going to pretend to know any more than that, but you know that I’m always here if you need me.”