Free Thumped by Megan McCafferty Page B

I’m, like, already dilating and about to deliver the world’s most anticipated twins any day now .
    I doubt I’d be any less prepared for the occasion than Harmony is.
    Gaaah. This is crazy talk. I just need to finish up here in the shower and go to sleep because I’m beyond exhausted from all of the drama. Harmony and Jondoe. Ram and Zeke. The Jaydens. Lib. Ventura.
    Zen.
    “Hey, Mel.”
    ZEN!

harmony
     
     
    I LIE ON TOP OF THE COVERS, IN THE DARK, EVERY FLESHY inch of me achingly awake and alive. It’s impossible to sleep, knowing that Jondoe is just down the hall. Melody made Jondoe promise not to bother me.
    But I didn’t promise not to bother him.
    I’m overcome by the urge to head to the kitchen to make the noisiest cup of tea ever. This isn’t so hard to do. I open and close every cabinet to find a tea bag, then reopen and shut every cabinet to find a mug, and a third time to find the kettle. Not all this opening and shutting is entirely necessary.
    And yet it is.
    I’m at the sink filling the kettle with water when the hair on the back of my neck prickles. It’s both chilling and thrilling, a whole new sensation without the braid.
    I take a deep breath, turn around.
    “Would you like a mug of tea?”
    Jondoe nods dumbly, looking as awed by me as I am by him.
    I open up the cabinet, take out a mug. My hand is shaking so much, I’m afraid I might drop it.
    “You’re glowing!” he says all at once, taking me by surprise.
    “What?”
    Jondoe blushes deep red, like a winterberry.
    “You’re more than glowing. You’re . . . you’re . . .”
    “Fat?” I suggest.
    “No!” He blinks a few times and his eyes flicker back and forth as he scans the MiNet for the right word. “Luminous! Radiant! Incandescent!”
    I try not to yield to such flatteries so quickly. But the truth is, I’m unused to hearing them. Ram has never been one to wax poetic about my loveliness. And though Melody says I’ve been ranked on the MiNet as one of the all-time most beautiful mothers-to-be, the Church Council has forbidden me from reading any of my own media, lest I succumb to the sin of pride.
    Jondoe braces himself on the countertop, keeping himself at a distance.
    “Are you gonna catch hell from Melody for talking to me?”
    Catch hell. That’s an interesting way to put it. I know it’s just an ordinary expression, and he only means it as such. And yet there was a time in both of our lives that we believed hell was contagious, that it really was something you could catch in the literal sense, like the very Virus that threatens to end us all. Or rather, there was a time in my life I believed that. I don’t know what Jondoe’s religious beliefs really were before he met me; I only know what he claimed to believe. And I don’t know what he believes now either. Melody keeps saying that he wants to be on the right path and is only pretending to be her boyfriend because he wants to do right by me. His pursuit of this “serious relationship” with my sister was also the only reasonable explanation he could give the media for his early retirement as a RePro.
    “Since your night together, his heart just isn’t into his job,” Melody said when she asked permission to peruse her fake relationship with Jondoe. “He can’t perform anymore because he can’t stop thinking about you . He’d tell you this himself, and apologize for hurting you, if only you’d let him.”
    That’s an apology I vowed to never allow myself to hear.
    As a trained RePro herself, Melody should’ve already known that the heart doesn’t have anything to do with the mechanics of his profession. (Then again, she’s still a virgin, so I suppose that makes me more of an expert in such matters.) I told her that she and Jondoe could do whatever they liked, they could even start a real relationship for all I cared because I was a married woman who was only looking to build a promising future for her family-in-the-making. She didn’t