by Alice Carina
"What if I'm not there?" I wondered into the phone. "What if she's all alone?"
"She won't be..."
"What if she is?"
"How about this, if for some reason you're busy or not around and I am, I'll take care of her."
My mom and dad weren't being there for me, but Chad was. If my daughter ended up in some trouble and Chad was there for her, or somebody like him, I knew she would be taken care of, or at least feel taken care of, and that's what we all needed.
"You know what's weird?"
"What?"
"I'm already so in love with her," I smiled. "Even if right now someone was to swear that she was going to grow up and get pregnant and really not know who the father was, I wouldn't care. I love her so much, just the way she is, and I wouldn't trade her for a boy or any other girl in the world. I love her just the way she is. I already love her just because she's my girl."
The next day, when I opened my locker, I found the tiniest pink shoes over my books. I'd seen key-chains bigger than they were. They were so cute I actually started to cry that I almost missed the note under them.
I already love her just because she's your girl.
*
I had to tell Kyle.
It wasn't just a random baby anymore, it was a baby girl. It wasn't just a possibility, or a fifty-fifty shot. She was healthy and she was a girl. She would come into this world with her own real features and colors, she would have her own talents and ambitions, we would have to choose a real name for her that she would carry with her for the rest of her real life because she was real. Ever since I found out that she was going to be okay and that she was a girl, I couldn't stop thinking about her.
Would she look like me or like him? Would she have my eyes or his? Would she be into music or art or science? Would she be shy or popular? What would her hobbies be? What would she want to be when she grew up? What would make her happy? What would be her favorite color, food, subject, place, show, movie, book, song, language, season? Would she like to do stuff with me and maybe let me be her friend?
I couldn't wait to get to know her and I thought that Kyle would want to know her too, if he only knew about her, he was her father after all.
I saw him by his locker alone and I felt her move inside me. She'd only started doing that recently, and I wasn't sure how I felt about it. It always jolted me and made me scared of getting sick or of hurting her somehow, but that time she gave me a little courage, a little nudge to let her be known.
"Hey," I approached him and he turned to me with wide eyes on my stomach, on our baby. "Can we talk?"
"What?"
"Can we talk?" I asked him, my voice lower because his expression slightly scared me.
"Here?" He looked around, "Look, Joss said I have to be nice to you, but I can't do that here."
"What?" I blinked at him.
"Never talk to me where someone can see us again." He hissed and almost ran away.
I saw him at our house that day, but he avoided looking at me. He just sat with Josslyn and laughed and smiled at her and hugged and kissed her, so irresponsibly, so blissfully unaware of the little human he'd created, and I just wished that he could get sick once, feel another person moving inside his body once, lose his mind with stress over what he'd done once.
Things were cooling off at school; I was no longer the main target of gossip, but I was still some kids' insecurities' punch bag. Those kids were mostly Kyle's friends. They weren't motivated like Emmet to go out of their way to hurt me, but they seemed to really enjoy the harmless jabs whenever I happened to be in their way on my own.
While Kyle never directly participated in abusing me, he seemed to enjoy and approve his friends' sense of humor, and his slighting and laughter at the situation he'd put me through was the most insulting.
The more he ignored me and laughed at me behind my back and to my face, the more Josslyn pretended not to notice and ignored me herself, the more pregnant and tired and sleepless I got, the less I cared about their undeserved happiness and just wanted to put them through the same discomfort and awkwardness and pain they were knowingly and unknowingly putting me through, even if just a fraction of it. I fantasized about screaming the truth in front of the entire school and breaking their hearts and their lives just like mine had been broken so many times it scared me, so I started avoiding them altogether, which was easy because they were just as keen on avoiding me.
We were having dinner one night and the dining room was eerily quiet, as had become the usual. I took a deep breath, my eyes never leaving my barely touched plate.
"I-I had an ultrasound... the other day." Mom dropped her fork with surprise at the noise. I felt dad and Josslyn freeze with their cutleries mid-action and hold their breaths.
"Every-ehm-thing alr-ight?" My mom asked.
I couldn't look at her face, but I wondered if her face gave away that she was hoping everything wasn't, that I would just lose my baby girl so that we could go back to our previous life and pretend that nothing had interrupted its peace and normality.
"It's a girl," I whispered.
Dad slammed his hands on the table, shaking it. He quickly got up, coughing on the mouthful he never got to swallow as he grabbed his keys off the counter and left the house.
"That's..." Both mom and Josslyn started at the same time and instantly stopped, each hoping that the other would say something appropriate, but eventually neither continued her thought.
I got up and went to my room, feeling utterly exhausted.
"I love you, even if nobody else in the world does, I love you enough to fill up the whole world ten times over." I whispered to my baby as I rubbed my stomach and quickly fell asleep.
I woke up in a sour mood. I refused to fake a smile back at my mother or to eat with my sister or to try to avoid my father so that he wouldn't be in an awful mood for the rest of his day. They weren't worth it and I couldn't care anymore. They didn't deserve my going out of my way to make things easier for them when they couldn't see beyond their selfishness that things were so much harder for me and try to make just one day a little bit less terrible.
I glared at my mother's fake half-smile and she instantly dropped it, I walked past my sister as she mumbled a greeting she never would at school, and I purposely bumped into my father as I marched towards the door and slammed it behind me.
I instantly felt bad about what I'd done. They didn't understand what I was going through because they'd never been through it, but I understood what was happening to them; I knew how harsh it was when strangers judged you to your face like our neighbors did, I knew how unsettling it was to see an unusually round stomach on an otherwise thin body like I did every morning, and I already knew what it meant to worry about your baby and feel like you've lost her and not know what to do.
I was on an emotional rollercoaster, rising up to sympathy and guilt then sliding down to anger and resentment in a heartbeat. Every heartbeat provided a new emotion. Within an hour, I'd experienced sadness, regret, shame, pride, irritation, rage, happiness – when I saw Chad, regret – when I thought about what life would've been like had I given him a chance before and we were actually together regrets free, guilt – when I realized I'd wished my baby away, love, fear, itchiness, hunger, nostalgia, exhaustion, and then back to sadness.
By Lunch, I was tired of feeling; I just wanted to fall asleep and never feel anything again.
I walked out of my class to find Kyle and Josslyn by his locker, kissing. We both created our baby, how was it that he got out of it innocent and happy and carefree while I was branded forever with the evidence he placed on me? He was so untroubled after he'd gotten me in the worst trouble there was and was too irresponsible to even consider his involvement. I envied his cheerfulness and complete lack of responsibility. Any other guy would've panicked a little bit, done some math, asked some questions, stressed a little, but not Kyle. Kyle always got what he wanted and got away with it, he was so used to living irresponsibly tha
t the idea of responsibility for anything never registered in his brain.
I looked at him, still able to have a loving relationship when he'd taken that from me forever and I wished our situations were reversed. If I'd been the guy, evidence-free and just free, I wouldn't have neglected my responsibility, but I would've been free to, and I would've been free to sleep on my stomach and walk down any street and laugh with people and eat wherever I wanted and talk to people about it and fall in love with someone else... And Kyle was doing just that...
I looked at him kissing my sister one last time, and I wondered if he would take responsibility if he got her pregnant. Josslyn was strong enough to demand it herself, but I wondered if he would want to, if he would like the idea of taking care of a little girl and picking a name for her and shopping for her first clothes and teaching her to walk and talk and getting to know her if it was with someone he actually cared about. But then my baby girl and her baby girl would be both cousins and sisters and the thought was so disturbing I shook my head and shoved it away, but it was replaced with the very clear image of me standing alone in the hall, with no one to ever hold me or kiss me or want to know my baby as badly as I wanted to.
It was that feeling of helpless loneliness that had gotten me into that mess in the first place, and because I chose – or rather didn't choose – to get over it in the quickest and easiest and shortest way possible, I was doomed into it forever. Had I waited for someone to chat me out of my loneliness, to get to know me so that I would become a part of somebody else's thoughts and never alone, to make some memories with me that I could fall back on in my loneliest days even if we didn't make it, to know what it was like to not be lonely, even if just for one real second, but to have it be real and really not lonely...
My wide collection of emotions huddled together in my head, giving me a really bad headache that eased itself out of my eyes.
I didn't want anyone to see me cry, so I ducked my head and tried to move as fast as I could to the girls' restroom. I bumped into Chad who'd been on his way to my class so we could walk together to the cafeteria like we'd gotten used to, but I couldn't look at him.
"What's wrong?" He asked me. I shook my head, trying to appear strong, but a sob broke through the façade and broke me. "Come here," he took my hand in his and led me to an empty classroom. I collapsed on the first desk.
"Katie?" He tried again. "What happened?" I couldn't talk. "Did Emmet talk to you?" I shook my head. "Did somebody else say or do something?" I shook my head again. "Is the baby okay?" I nodded. "Are you feeling sick?" I shook my head and started crying harder. He moved closer to me and placed a hand on my back awkwardly. "Talk to me, baby. Just tell me what's wrong?"
"I'm fat," I blurted. Of all the things that had been bothering me, why did that have to come out?
Chad laughed, he actually laughed, but quickly coughed back into composure when he saw me glaring at him through my tears.
"You're not fat," he smiled, unable to suppress his humor as he moved closer to wipe away my tears, "you're beautiful."
"It's not just that," I shook my head and moved it away from his hands. "I want to sleep on my stomach. I know this sounds ridiculous but I'd never slept on my back before and I just want to sleep like I used to one more night. I want people to stop looking at me like I'd done this to myself on purpose, I want the stupid rumors to stop, I want people to stop looking at me or talking about me, I want to go back to being invisible, I don't want to wake up hungry in the middle of the night, I want to stop having nightmares about Seth, I want to finish high school and go to college and get a job and get married like a normal person, I want my parents to love me, or to at least help me through this because they've been through this before but I have no idea what I'm doing or what to do with my baby, I want my sister to talk to me, I want Kyle to take some responsibility for-" I stopped breathing.
I don't think Chad would've noticed had I just kept going on with my rambling, but I stopped and his face crunched as he tried to replay my words to figure out why I stopped.
I could almost hear the words replaying in his head.
Say something! I screamed to myself. Say anything. Distract him. Keep talking and he'll just ignore it. He can't find out. Nobody can. But he already did.
"You want Kyle to take responsibility for what?" His eyes were wide as they went between my petrified face and protruding stomach. "No," his voice was a whisper as he got up to his feet, his eyes zeroed on my stomach with horror. "He's the father?" I tried to shake my head, but it wouldn't move. It was like I'd floated out of my body and no longer had any control over it, and it was petrified before him, soulless and motionless. "Kyle's the father?" His eyes flashed to mine with a look that had me gasping, but he was already out of the classroom before I could respond.
"Chad!" I called after him. I didn't know where he was going, but the look in his eyes scared me.
I walked after him as quickly as I could, and I never would've made it to his side had he not paused at the cafeteria doors, his scary eyes searching the tables.
"Chad," I whispered when I was close enough, but he strode straight ahead, ignoring me.
He walked into the middle of the cafeteria, stood in front of Kyle who greeted him with a nod, then punched him off his seat.
The cafeteria fell entirely silent. I could hear Chad panting from across the room. Everyone stared at the boy with the clenched fists by his sides who had his eyes closed as he tried to calm down and the other one on the floor with a bloody nose looking up with stupefied confusion.
Kyle began to slowly get up, and I rushed towards them.
"What in the world is wrong with you?" He wiped his nose with his sleeve and I knew that he was going to move in to push Chad or punch him back and I knew that Chad was waiting for exactly that.
They were carefully moving towards each other. Kyle pushed Chad back, and Chad bounced back closer to him, his fist ready for another punch. It was insanely stupid and reckless, but I slid myself in between them, flattening a palm on Chad's chest and the other on Kyle's to keep them apart.
"Katie?" Kyle looked at me with annoyance, "Back off."
I didn't, but I turned my face Chad. "Please,"
"He doesn't know, does he?" He whispered back so only I could hear. I shook my head. He mirrored my movement by shaking his own then backing away from my palm and leaving the cafeteria.
"What's going on?" Kyle demanded. I quickly dropped my hand away from him.
I looked up and found all eyes on me. I lowered my face to the ground and tried to walk out of the cafeteria as quickly as my pregnancy allowed. Everyone was too stunned for further demands or to follow.
Chad was waiting for me outside the cafeteria doors, leaning against the wall to the side with a look of defeat.
"How could you?" He asked without looking at me. "Your own sister's boyfriend, how could you do that to her?"
"I..."
"It wasn't some friend's ex. They'd been dating for months before that party, Katie, and she's your sister."
"I thought they broke up that night..."
"You thought your own twin sister had just broken up with the guy she'd been seeing for months so you just jumped into bed with him?" I winced at his words.
"It wasn't like that..." He already knew that it wasn't like that; I'd already explained everything to him.
"Your own sister," he mumbled more to himself than to me, trying to wrap his mind around the new truth. "How could you be so... so...?" Before he could decide on a word, the bell rang, and I walked away before Kyle or Josslyn or Chelsea would think to come find me for answers.
I walked away in tears, and he didn't call after me or follow me.
His Best
Chad didn't talk to me the day after.
When Josslyn and Chelsea asked me about him punching Kyle, I denied any knowledge of his motive and changed the subject.
Chad and I had the same first class in the morning. He always walked to the end o
f the classroom to greet me, but he stopped by his desk that day and didn't look back.
I couldn't walk into the cafeteria without him. I'd learned to associate safety and support with him. He treated me like my old self and, with him, I truly felt like my old self, like the girl who had every right to be amongst everybody else without anybody having any right to protest or cause me any discomfort. He was the courage I needed to face everyone else; I couldn't stand their judgment – even if silent - without him.
I would've gone without eating that day, but my baby couldn't seem to understand that sometimes grownups were too upset for food. I ate in the restroom, like I used to before him, all the while straining to hear his voice calling out for me, telling me that no one should eat alone, that he still wanted to be my friend, that a name to the story he already knew didn't change anything, but it did...
Maybe that was for the best. A rumor had started that he was the father, but too many girls liked him too much to spread that one around and denied it. While many insisted that he was genuinely kind to everyone and that he'd been my friend before and was too loyal to ditch me like everybody else, some couldn't hide their suspicions at a guy being so nice to a girl pregnant with another guy's baby.
It was better if he got out now before they voiced their suspicions too loudly, before they forced him into my own mess, before I got too used to him, before I became the reason for his misery, before I actively did something to make him hate me.
"Two more days," Josslyn squealed while we were sitting around for dinner.
"Till what?" Dad asked, looking at her. I wished he would look at me.
"Till our birthday," she beamed at me.
"Do you girls have anything planned?" Mom asked.
"No, not really," Josslyn shrugged, but her legs were shaking excitedly under the table and I knew that she did.
No one looked at me to see if I had any plans.
"Maybe we'll go out for dinner, then." Mom offered.
Dad nodded but didn't say anything.
"Guess what?" Josslyn came into my room after dinner.
