by Alice Carina
My 'forgetting' only lasted until the second day when a familiar honk sounded while we were having breakfast.
"Let's go," Josslyn bounced from her seat, grabbing an apple for the way.
I couldn't move or breathe.
"You coming?" She walked back from the door.
"I thought you and Kyle broke up." I hid my trembling hands below the table.
"No, we didn't." She shook her head. "Where'd you hear that?"
"I...I-I..." Kyle honked again.
"Come on, we're going to be late."
"Chelsea's coming for me." I lied and she left.
Chelsea had recently gotten her driver's license and she loved driving around smugly almost as much as she loved complaining about people asking her for rides everywhere, but I didn't call her, I just walked to school and ended up missing the first period while I circled the same block several times too deep in my thoughts.
Whenever Josslyn and our friends were hanging out and joking about my non-existent love-life, Josslyn always offered her exes as candidates. There were three sets of guys at our school; guys who'd dated Josslyn, guys who'd wanted at one point or another to date her, and guys whom she wanted to date. There wasn't a boy in our school who Josslyn didn't know and had at least once talked to, so it was impossible to find a Josslyn-free guy, which was why she always assured me that dating or liking my sister's ex-boyfriend was not against any rules in our case.
Kyle was an ex, wasn't he?
She'd been flirting with several other guys that night, including one whom she had a massive crush on and ended up going into a room with and kissing. He was the one who approached me and kissed me. They'd both made it clear that they'd broken up, hadn't they?
What had I done?
Nobody knew and nobody was going to know. No one had seen us and there was no proof that that night had ever happened, perhaps it truly was the nightmare I'd been praying it was. Maybe there was something in the juice or the smoke in that party that had gotten into my head that night. It couldn't have been true, I couldn't have...
I walked into the school when I felt like I had my emotions under control and my mind convinced of the error of its memory. Students were crowding the halls as they shuffled to their classes and it was then that I realized how much my very true experiment had failed. I met Kyle's gaze and he gave me a curtly nod like he always did. I didn't feel more confident like I thought I would, I felt more self-conscious than I ever had that I just wanted to wrap my body in a thick blanket that wouldn't hint at anything under it and hide my body in it forever. I saw Josslyn and Bernetta walking up to him. I didn't feel more entitled and valid, I felt like a little girl who'd been playing make-believe and trying on her mother's makeup embarrassingly and heels that didn't fit her until she fell and got severely hurt.
I walked away from them all, backing away, looking at everyone as if they knew my secret and were judging me for it, for what I had done and for how stupid and scared I still was after it. I bumped into Chad and he greeted me with a smile. I couldn't answer him or even attempt a smile back. I felt too ashamed to look at him, as if I had wrecked the image he had of me and betrayed him somehow when in fact I'd only wrecked the image I'd had of myself and betrayed myself.
I ran to the restroom and cried. I cried for the disappointment of the whole ordeal, for letting something that had been so important to me become a passing night that only I remembered and wished that I didn't, for turning back on all that I had ever believed in and paying a price too high for an access into a world that I still couldn't access, for becoming just another one of those girls when I'd foolishly thought myself to be different. I cried like the little scared girl that I still was and I cried more because I was scared that I'd always be that little and scared.
*
Kyle didn't seem to remember anything; he treated me as Josslyn's twin sister like he always had. To him, I was just a hazy night with his girlfriend, and while that was an insult to my first time, I took it for the blessing that it was.
Kyle and I were the only participants and only I knew, so I pretended not to know. I refused to think about that night again and went on as if nothing had happened, and truly nothing changed. I still blushed whenever someone mentioned the idea of me with a guy, I still couldn't talk to any guys, and I was just as invisible as ever, I was still the same shy, little girl I'd always been, so there was nothing for anyone – not even myself – to notice.
The fact that nothing was different helped me get over my guilt and regret faster. It even got to a point where I honestly believed my own lies and couldn't think of anything to feel guilty for or regret – nothing had happened. But, apparently, I'd been unknowingly repressing feelings that I didn't know of until I started getting physically sick. I was dizzy most of the time and could hardly stomach anything for more than two hours.
As much as I wanted to deny it, something had truly changed within me, I was no longer the good girl everyone thought me to be, I was the girl who'd slept with her sister's boyfriend and that was so bad my body demanded I felt how bad I was on the inside by pushing it outside where I'd been living a lie.
It got so bad once that mom insisted I stay in bed all day so that she could figure out if I needed medical attention or just some rest because I'd been stressed about the upcoming exams.
"Feeling better?" Josslyn came to check on me in the evening.
I shrugged, not trusting my body with much movement in case I got sick again.
"I won't bother you," she assured me. "Just came to borrow some pads, I don't have any left and mom forgot to go to the store today."
It was then that it hit me. I jolted straight up in my bed. How long had it been since my last period?
"Are you okay?" Josslyn asked with worry, but I was already running to the bathroom and I heard her yelling to mom that I was throwing up again.
*
It couldn't be true. It just couldn't. It wasn't possible. It just wasn't.
People didn't get pregnant from the first time. They tried many, many times to have a baby and often still failed. It couldn't possibly be true, it wasn't.
But what if it was?
I kept turning in my bed that night, hoping that a twist or another to my insides would have my belated period rushing out, but nothing happened.
Could it really be true?
Of course, it wasn't.
Even if it was, I could... What could I do?
I couldn't get pregnant for months and go through labor and have a baby – a living, crying, demanding, helpless, diapered, actual baby. I didn't know the first thing there was to know about babies or how to take care of them. I was still a baby myself; I always bought the cereal with the cutest drawing on it and my mom still went with me to all of my doctors' appointments. Josslyn and I once tried babysitting for extra money. It was the two of us against three toddlers. By the time the parents came back, the five of us were crying in a mess of spilled food and broken glass.
I couldn't be pregnant. Even if I was, I could simply get rid of it and continue going on as if nothing had happened. Nobody would ever know but me and the doctor, and the doctor probably had several cases like mine each day and wouldn't remember me after an hour. I would just be another one of those endless girls who got reckless and erased their mistake before they could be held accountable for it by anybody else.
But could I really do that? I knew even less about getting un-pregnant. Would the baby feel anything? Would I be in too much pain? Would I still be able to have kids in the future when I was ready? Would I be haunted with nightmares about the baby that I eliminated for the rest of my life? Would I regret my choice?
I remembered once when Bernetta had a pregnancy scare. She came to our house and started crying in Josslyn's arms while she waited for some stick to reveal her destiny. Josslyn and Bernetta quickly agreed that it wasn't that big of a deal, that the baby could easily be rid of and would never have to be spoken of again. The test was negative, but I rem
embered how I'd rolled my eyes at them and even left the room with disgust when they talked so easily about killing a baby. I thought that if she was mature enough to act like an adult with a guy, she had to be mature enough for the consequences and handle them like an adult, it was a full-package kind of deal, she couldn't decide she was old enough for whatever she liked and too young for what she didn't. Back then, I had it so firmly in my mind that if the parents did a mistake, then they deserved to be punished by having the baby, not be allowed to exert their mercilessness and kill a helpless, faultless baby. The baby hadn't done anything to the world yet to be given the death penalty without being able to defend itself of a crime it never committed, and it seemed even more heartless that those who decided its fate were those who'd brought it into existence, like it was all just some game or adult try-outs.
But decisions were so much easier to make when they didn't actually have to be made.
If I kept it, everybody would know. Kyle, Josslyn, my parents, Chelsea, Bernetta, Chad, Emmet, my whole family, everyone at school, and I would no longer be able to deny it to myself. I doubted I would find a sympathetic heart if everyone also found out my real relationship to the father. My heart skipped a beat with utter horror at the thought, but it was my fault, not the baby's, I was the bad person, not the innocent baby who never asked for a stupid parent like me.
What if the baby was meant to be? What if all that had happened was so that the baby could be? I'd never planned on attending that party, I wasn't the one who initiated anything, and for Kyle to be the only guy I could ever talk to and for him to appear so done with Josslyn that night and approach me on the one night I'd ever gone out to a party... It was all too unusual and organized to be a mistake, what if it had been destiny? What if the baby was going to be a great person? What if that baby was going to change the world? What if having that baby was the only right thing I would've ever done? What if that baby wanted to come? Did I have the right to kill it simply because I changed my mind about wanting to grow up?
I couldn't kill the baby, but I couldn't keep it either.
I'm not pregnant! I wanted to yell at myself. There was still a chance that my period was simply late due to stress or natural sickness, or maybe just to teach me a lesson and scare me away from guys until I was truly ready, but I had to find out for sure.
I trembled outside the hospital the following day. I'd never been to see a doctor or even to a pharmacy without my mom, but that was something that I wanted to keep from her for as long as possible, hopefully even forever if the results were negative. I didn't know how to ask for home tests and I didn't want to try them in case they weren't completely accurate. I wanted to know for sure once and for all.
"Katie," Patty smiled at me when I walked into her office. "How are you?"
Patricia was my mom's best friend since high school and Chelsea's mom. She'd been our pediatrician since we were born and we just kept coming to her as we grew older; she knew our medical history by heart and knew what doctors to recommend when things were beyond her domain. Even so, I'd never been there to see her professionally without mom or Chelsea.
"What's wrong?" If the elevator lights hadn't been exaggeratory, my skin looked like a jelly-fish, pale and almost transparent. I would've screamed with surprise at my own reflection had I any energy to scream. "Katie? You're scaring me. Did something happen?"
I didn't know what to tell her. Patty was like a second mother to me. She knew everything there was to know about me and had really high expectation for me just like my parents did. How could I disappoint her like that? If I tested negative, she would still know, and it would no longer be my secret, could I really risk losing her respect for a scare? Could I really confess the words out loud and accept what I'd done as real?
"Katelyn?" She stood up from her desk and tried to approach me, but something about my voice when I finally opened my mouth halted her.
"I-I..." I stammered and prayed that I was just having a nightmare, that that wasn't truly happening and I wasn't really about to say what I'd come to say, that if I just got the dreaded words out, I would wake up in my room before that party had ever happened. "I think I need a pregnancy test."
I didn't wake up in my room, the party had happened, that night had happened, and I was in Patty's office breaking reality down to the both of us.
At first, Patty didn't believe me, she thought that I was pranking her, then she thought I was Josslyn pretending to be Katie to get out of trouble. I didn't say anything, just stood there and let her jump from one conclusion to the other by reading my face until she collapsed back on her chair with a sob.
She took my blood herself without saying a word to me. Then, she instructed a nurse to have it tested and brought back as soon as possible, which still required a few hours. When another nurse came in to inform her that her three-o'clock appointment was ready, Patty rubbed her temples and I wordlessly left the room. I waited outside her door as families walked in and out for their appointments. The parents gave me weird looks, worried that I'd infect their children with whatever it was that I had that made me look like a ghost, but I didn't leave. I wasn't even thinking about what I would do when the results came back like I'd been worried the night before, it was as if a choice had already been made for me. I just kept looking at the clueless kids playing with toys they didn't understand and their parents fussing worriedly over them, not sure in which category I fit.
Patty's nurse eventually approached me and ushered me back into her office. Patty was sitting behind her desk with a face as pale as the envelope in front of her. She didn't say anything, and I didn't look at her as I reached for it with trembling hands that didn't feel my own. It was still closed, which meant that she didn't know the result either. I stared at the closed envelope till it started to blur, then I blinked, turned around, and left the office that had scared me since my first needle.
"Where are you going?" Patty demanded after me, but I just kept going.
I walked as quickly as my numb legs would go until I found an empty room and hid inside. I had to know sooner or later, stalling was not going to change the result; the result was already printed out as a fact of the world that I could only know and never change.
I struggled with my heavy fingers until it finally opened and my eyes didn't hesitate, quickly skimming for the result. There it was in black and white; Positive. I was pregnant. I was positively pregnant. I was positively pregnant by my sister's boyfriend.
I chose not to choose. I hadn't chosen to get pregnant, so I didn't choose to continue with the pregnancy or to end it, I didn't make any conscious choice, and that, in itself, was a choice.
I felt like I was hovering outside my body,seeing the letters before me through a screen and watching my body exit thehospital and walk home in a daze. I wasn't feeling scared or worried or sad oranything at all. I couldn't feel my legs moving or my heart beating anydifferently. I couldn't feel anything. I got home, threw up, took a shower,went to bed and quickly fell asleep.
Confrontation
I wasn't sure how long I could keep my pregnancy a secret, or how I was going to tell anyone, or how my parents and sister and friends were going to react, or if I was going to confess the identity of the father to anyone, or if I was going to get to finish school, or if any part of my life was going to stay the same. The only thing I was sure of was that I couldn't do it alone and I couldn't be the one making these decisions.
Whether I liked it or not, I hadn't been the only participant that night. Kyle was there and he had as much say in what had to be done as I did, even more so if he could manage to think rationally without the mind-numbing terror of an actual human being growing inside of him. I needed someone to help me understand and better cope with what was happening, and who better than the person who had made it happen?
He'd become a regular at our house and he dropped by that very same day I'd decided to tell him. I opened the door for him for the first time since that night, there were a few se
conds when we were completely alone, he smiled at me and asked how I was and I could've said anything to him – I could've told him the truth and nobody else would've heard, but I didn't say anything.
I couldn't tell him. The words just wouldn't come out; there were no words to come out. I knew that the confrontation was inevitable, but what was I supposed to tell him? How was I supposed to convince him of his responsibility of a night that never happened to him? How was I supposed to remind him of that night and then convince him – if he could remember – that it had been me and not my twin sister whom he had spent it with and that it had resulted in my getting pregnant? It sounded like the kind of prank Josslyn would put me up to but I would never actually dare carry through because the mere thought mortified me.
It was very reckless and foolish and the most childish reaction I could've had to the most adult predicament, but I somehow convinced myself that if nobody else knew about it or had to deal with it, then I didn't either. It wasn't that I decided to do nothing, but I just couldn't think of anything to actually do, so I didn't do anything as long as I had the leisure not to. I just idiotically ignored my situation until nobody else could anymore. I hid my sickness as best as I could and tried to maintain a healthy diet, but my stomach eventually started to show, round and hard like a rock, solidifying the truth I was still struggling to accept and that I knew I couldn't carry alone.
I concealed my stomach with larger T-shirts, but I knew that it was only a matter of time before my little bump became too prominent for suppression or before the baby came along and cried the truth all night.
Once, I came down from my room and saw Kyle and Josslyn cuddling on the couch and watching TV. I sat on the chair next to them. I had to tell him, but I couldn't find the words or the opportunity. I always hung around him when he came over, hoping for a moment alone and not doing anything with it when it chanced. I didn't expect that night to be any different when a commercial came on and Joss excused herself to the bathroom, leaving me alone with her boyfriend.
