Joel's girlfriend, Sarah, was bearing his child. She was due any day. It hadn't been planned, but they were intensely excited. They'd decided on the name Gabriel Roy for a boy but hadn't yet chosen a girl's name; he said that his sister Taleia was hounding him to pass on her name if he had a daughter. I heard them discussing their plans to move into Sarah's one-bedroom loft. I overheard all these talks while sick with despair and jealousy. This was, after all, another first I could have shared with him, had I not stupidly let him go—now just another first he was sharing with somebody else, to no longer be available to me ever again.

Once, catching Joel alone briefly, I snapped, "You DO realize that next week, all of this"—I waved my arm around, attempting to include all the positive aspects of his single life, his life before children, being free to be with his friends at will . . . and, perhaps, myself—"will be gone, and you will be a father forever, right?" He hadn't been looking at me. He didn't still. I stared hard at his profile, his very light blue eyes looking off into the distance, lost. He didn't smile. He said, after a pause, "Yes."

One day, the happy couple, my mother and I were in my yard in Keswick. They three were planning a speed-boating trip; the boat was already hitched to a station wagon, and they were about to depart. They got to chatting about the baby again, and I couldn't handle it anymore. I screamed at Sarah that I hoped the baby was born dead, and ran off. Now alone, I lay in the grass crying hard for several minutes, then began to feel obligated to apologize. I felt this way not because I didn't wish for what I'd said, but because I didn't want a rift in my relationship with Joel. The damage was done, though. When I came out of hiding, the three of them were up in a tree-house, discussing how awful I'd been. Sarah was crying, black eye makeup running down her face.

I waited until they came down. I cried that I was sorry. I was met only by Sarah's tearful face and a look from Joel, surprisingly lacking in anger or sternness; mostly it teemed with disappointment and pity, a "How could you?" look crossed with a "Look at what you've become; look what you've sunk to. I should have known" look. My mother got into the car; the parents-to-be boarded the boat. I cried after them that I was sorry, pleaded that they let me explain, but their backs turned to me, and the car towed them out of my line of sight.