Chosen by Chandra Hoffman Page B

them. By the time he gets out, they’ll be gone.”
    There are so many things Chloe wants to know about Eric and Heather, how these kids are attempting something that has the bones, the weight, of an adult relationship. When she was Heather’s age, she was worried about the math score of her PSATs and whether she should lose her virginity to the senior lacrosse player who sort of liked her.
    “So,” Chloe says to fill the silence, “is this your first ultrasound?”
    “No, I had one at twenty weeks, you know, where we found out itwas a boy, but then he was really small. So Dr. Wilde wants me to come back every two weeks until my due date so he can be sure the baby is growing and everything.”
    Chloe is opening her mouth to lecture Heather on nutrition, ask if they need to go grocery shopping on the way home, when the door opens.
    The doctor is a fatherly type, and he ignores Chloe, but she is used to this from medical professionals. He has a smooth, deep voice, and he talks to Heather constantly as he performs a pelvic exam, keeping one hand cupped over her bony knee.
    “Normally, we wouldn’t start pelvics until thirty-six weeks, but since your first baby was early, we like to make sure that your cervix is nice and long and closed, which it is. I’m very pleased with that.”
    Heather nods, trying to close her knees with her legs still in the stirrups.
    “Okay, then, now for the good part. We get to have a look at the little fellow. You can sit up a little, here, I’ll pull the table out and put these away….” He folds the stirrups into the table. “Now, let’s see how our little guy is growing here.”
    The doctor pulls down the blinds, though it is hardly necessary with the sky storming outside, and flips on the ultrasound machine. He squirts some pale green jelly, like aloe vera for sunburn, on Heather’s tight mound of a belly. The screen flickers, snowy, and he moves the wand around until the baby’s face appears, a perfect profile, and Chloe inhales—he looks just like Michael. A miniature snub nose and a square chin, a smooth round forehead.
    Heather laughs softly and says, “I know, total spitting image, right?”
    When he is done taking his measurements and pronounces the baby in the fifth percentile, but growing well, he pops a tape out of the VCR under the sonogram machine, extends it to Heather.
    “Oh, thanks.” Heather blushes again. “But we don’t have a VCR or anything.”
    Before Chloe can say anything, and before she even thinks of it, Heather says, “Do you think Gina and Nate would like to have it?”
    Actually, Chloe realizes as they walk back toward the waiting room with the tape sticking out of her purse, her first thought had been how to justify buying Heather a VCR.

6
Encounter
JASON
    “T he way I see it, it’s like a puzzle,” Jason tells Brandi, his brother’s girlfriend. They’re sucking off smokes outside, ’cause Penny’s trying to quit.
    Brandi stares bug-eyed up at the sky, scratching at her arms. The rain’s on a break, steel-colored clouds blowing past. They’ve been here a week, and Jason can’t figure out if she’s constantly high, or just stupid. Jason stretches his legs out in front, trying to ease the pain in his back, so bad sometimes it travels down to his heel even.
    “Every piece is a fact; I store them up here,” he goes on, taps his freshly shaved head. “Fact: Dried-up rich lady wants to buy our baby so bad you can smell it on her, Eager Beaver, stink of desperation. Fact: Social worker wants it to happen, probably gets a fat piece of the action.”
    Fact (he thinks to himself): They have sixteen dollars to get them to the end of the month, and Penny’s making him nervous, talking too much about the baby.
    “Smoke outside!” she’d yelled, waving the carton warning in his face. “It’s no good for Buddy.”
    Fact: He has no idea how to pull this off. Doesn’t even know what he’s trying to do, only to make it right. Penny’s the