"Hola, chica!" she shouted into the cool morning air. Kids loved trying out their Spanish with me. Their accents pained me, but I went along with it to get extra credit in French class.
"Hola, cómo estás, Jessica?" I asked her back. I already knew what her answer was going to be. It was the same every day.
"Así así," she told me. The students at my school had been taught that that phrase means "so so." I suppose it did, technically, but no one really uses it. It got on my nerves, almost as much as the bad accents, but I had to smile and go along with it if I wanted my extra credit, which I desperately needed to keep my grades afloat.
Once on the bus I plugged my headphones into my iPod and drifted off into my own little world. In that world, I didn't have to worry about anything. I closed my eyes, letting the music surround me. Even when the bus arrived at school, I left my headphones in as I walked to the school building. My eyes were open, and I could see, but I didn't have to hear what was happening around me. I didn't have to worry about it for a minute.
That didn't last long, though, because I soon ran into my French teacher. At first when I had started taking French, most of the words were so similar to Spanish that I didn't need to study at all. But as I got older, the words got harder and harder, the grammar became less similar than that of Spanish, and my grades started going steadily down. It had gotten to the point where I hated going to class, and I had zero motivation to do my homework or study. However, my teacher still remembered when I was the best student in the class and refused to give up hope on me.
"Bonjour," she said once I had taken out my headphones. I nodded back at her and tried to walk away, but she followed me, jabbering in French about something I didn't care about and couldn't understand.
"Lexi, il y a un quiz aujourd'hui et tu as besoin de prendre bonne note, o tu ne réussirais pas le classe." I didn't understand all of what she was saying, but I think it had to do with the quiz that I was unprepared for. I nodded again at her, pretending to understand, before working myself away from her and heading to my locker.
I spun my combination into my locker, but then it didn't open. I kicked it a couple of times, like I had learned in middle school, and tried it again. When it still didn't work, I walked into my English teacher's room to ask him for the locker key.
The room was big and filled with students' artwork and poems. A poem I had written the year before hung in the corner, next to an open window. As I made my way over to his desk, on the opposite side of the room from the door, I noticed the drawing on the whiteboard. Kids always came in to Mr. Peters' room after school, and sometimes practiced drawing on the whiteboards. The image today was a cartoon version of Jesus Christ hanging from the cross. It had been outlined in black marker, but the student had used red as a highlight. My stomach turned, and I started feeling guilty, so I turned away and faced Mr. Peters.
"Hey, Mr. Peters," I started. "Would you mind if I borrowed your—" but before I could finish asking my question, he cut me off.
"My locker key?" he asked, smiling. "That's gotta be, what, the fifth time this month?" He laughed when I nodded. "Here, let me find these for you," he said as he rummaged around in his big bottom desk drawer. I peered into the drawer and saw nothing but a huge mess, although that didn't terribly surprise me. Everything about Mr. Peters screamed mess. Although I loved the student artwork and poems, over the years it had grown to be a bit much. Things were cluttered everywhere, and sometimes the papers would fall off the walls during class, the stickiness of their tape having worn off after all those years.
Some of the kids didn't like Mr. Peters because he often skipped from topic to topic, but I didn't mind so long as he didn't assign too much homework. He was a nice guy; he always let me borrow his locker key, and over the years he had lent me money for lunch when I hadn't had time to make anything for myself, and never bothered me about paying him back. He kept an eye out for me, and I appreciated it. In return, whenever I noticed that a kid was saying something rude about him, I made sure to stop it.
He tossed me the keys, and I walked out to my locker. I pushed in the key, and with great force was finally able to open the locker. I gathered my books for the day, put them in my backpack, and went back to Mr. Peters' room. I deposited the keys on his desk silently and took my seat in the front row right next to the door. I folded my arms on the desk and laid my head on top of them, trying to make myself comfortable. I had a while before class was going to start and thought that I might as well try to figure out how I would talk to my parents. Although I was deep in thought, I couldn't help my eyelids from drooping closed after a few minutes.
The next thing I knew, Mr. Peters was standing over me, tapping me on the shoulder. "Wake up, buttercup!" he chimed. "Long night?" he asked. When I nodded, my eyes still closed, he continued. "Who assigned you so much homework? Need me to beat them up for you?" I giggled and repositioned myself in my chair in a more upright manner.
"Just a lot on my mind," I told him. "Although now that you mention it, Mr. Sled, the pre calc teacher is killing me with these quizzes. Maybe you could—"
"Nope!" He shouted. "I only pound on people when they give too much homework. I have to be fair about who I take out," he said, striking a pose flexing his biceps. I laughed again, imaging this calm little man ripping off the sleeves of his pressed white button-down shirt to reveal hulking muscles and then using those hulking muscles to beat up my math teacher.
"In all seriousness," he said, beginning a lecture he'd given me every other week since freshman year. "You're a teenager. You need more sleep than you get, and probably more sleep than you know. You should be getting at least nine and a quarter hours, according to the health teacher. I'm sure if you explain to teachers that you have too much work then they'll understand and let you hand it in some other time."
"No," I told him firmly. "Teachers don't do that. Teachers don't care if you're dying, they would still expect your homework to be in on time. Believe me."
"Well," he said, sighing. "I'm just a stupid teacher, after all. I guess I don't know anything about what a teacher would or wouldn't do. But hey, if you need to get some rest, it's ok if you go to the nurse's office and sleep for part of class today. Just don't make a habit out of it, okay?"
I smiled at him appreciatively. "Thank you, I really need that," I told him as I got up and slung my overstuffed backpack over my aching shoulders and back. He patted me on the back as I made my way over to the door and then waved goodbye as I left the room and turned down the hallway to the nurse's office. I felt guilty missing a class, especially one that I actually enjoyed, but I appreciated that he was being so understanding. On top of that, I knew that in class we would read and discuss the use of literary terms and techniques of a book that I had already read twice. I didn't feel like I was going to be missing much.
As I walked down the halls and found my way to the nurse's office, I decided to plug my headphones back in. The music was coming, but even more than that, blocking out the noise of the busy morning helped me relax a little. Once there, I took a seat in the waiting room and pulled out my phone. I shot a quick text to Emily, asking where she was, because I hadn't seen her yet that morning, and I usually ran into her before class. I kept my phone out, staring at the screen and waiting for reply, but after a few minutes I decided that I wouldn't get one anytime soon, so I elected to shut off my phone and put it away in my bag.
After waiting for a minute, the nurse called me into her room to find out why I was there. "Hi sweetie, what's up?" she asked me. I looked around uneasily and thought about lying to her and telling her that I was exhausted and that I needed to take a nap. Instead, I dived right in.
"I think I'm pregnant," I blurted out. "I mean, I took a test. It, it came back positive. Now I don't know what to do." I shifted my gaze to the floor, not wanting to see the look on her face, probably a mix of disappointment, fear, sadness. The same things I felt. Then, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked up, and the nurse pulle
d me into a big hug.
"It's ok," she said reassuring me. "Why don't you go talk to the guidance counselor for now, and once you've talked to her for a little while, you should come back here. Tell my secretary when you're ready and you can skip the line, and then we can talk through all of this and figure out a plan." I nodded, completely unsure if I had made the right decision in telling her. "I'll see you soon," she promised me with a hopeful voice as she squeezed my hand. I once again threw my backpack over my shoulders and walked slowly out the door with my head hung low in shame. Then I walked to the guidance counselor's office. By the time I had gotten there the nurse had apparently called my counselor and told her everything, because she quickly ushered me in and shut the door the moment she saw me.
"Lexi," my guidance counselor said, placing a hand reassuringly on my arm. "You are not alone in this." I practically busted out laughing. This was the same scene from every movie about a teenage pregnancy ever. I wondered if all guidance counselors had the same opening line. She continued. "First of all, I have to ask you, how far along are you?"
I thought about it for a minute before resounding "Two months, around there, I don't really know. It was mid-August I guess." She nodded and jotted something down on a notepad.
"Have you talked to anyone else about this before you spoke with the nurse? Do your parents know?" I didn't want to mention Emily, so I shook my head no. Again she nodded and wrote down some more notes onto that page. "How long have you known?" She asked me. I felt guilty for not having known sooner.
"Last night was when I took the test," I admitted. She smiled and took my hand in hers.
"Good," she said, squeezing my hand. "It's good that you came to us—that is, the nurse and I—so that we can help you before you make any decisions. For all we know, it could have been a false positive, so the nurse will probably have you take another. Now, assuming that you really are pregnant, have you thought about your options?" she asked me. She meant abortion. This was going to be a repeat of last night, I could feel it.
"I'm not getting an abortion," I informed her. Again, she wrote something in her notes.
"It's okay," she said, holding out her hands in front of her chest defensively. "That's one choice that you can make, but it's definitely not the only option. I want you know what's out there so that you can keep an open mind about all of this and do what's right for you, okay? No one will make you do anything you don't want to do. I'm not here to push some agenda; I'm here to talk to you and help you decide." I nodded so she continued. "There's always adoption, have you put any thought into that?" I shook my head. I didn't want to put any thought into it. I just wanted to have my baby and take care of her.
"Adoption is an excellent option for teen mothers," she said. "But on the other hand, I understand that it can be very hard to carry a baby to term only to have someone else take it from there, so to speak. I won't lie to you, whatever you choose isn't going to be easy. Any decision you make will change the rest of your life, and you might not always look back on it and think you made the right call. So, we should talk all of this through. Figure out what to say to your parents, what to say to the other kids, anything you might need. I'm here for you. We all are." Even though I knew that it was part of her job to say things like that, it really made me feel better to hear.
"Thank you," I whispered as my eyes filled with tears.
CHAPTER SIX
Emily
I passed out from sheer exhaustion shortly after I went back to my bedroom. I laid down on my bed and was soon fast asleep and into the realms of dreamless darkness. When I woke up it felt as though I had awoken from a nap in the middle of the day, the kind that makes you disoriented and gives you a headache. I looked at my cellphone to see the time and noticed that I had gotten a text message from Lexi a couple of hours ago.
The message read, "Where are you?" Since she'd sent it so early, I assumed that she was at school and wondering where I was. I decided not to respond for two reasons: one, it was the school day and so she probably had her phone off and two, she probably could figure out that I was staying home since she hadn't seen me all day.
I walked down stairs and let myself fall onto one of the couches. I flipped on the television and was mildly amused when it came onto the MTV channel and Sixteen and Pregnant was playing. I decided to watch it for a minute and see if I could come up with any more convincing arguments for Lexi. In the first episode that I watched, a young girl from the Midwest had gotten pregnant and, without her parents' support, ended up homeless for a while. She was forced into the foster care system, thrown around from house to house, and then once the baby was born, the baby became a ward the state and a foster child herself. The story broke my heart, but I knew it could help me convince Lexi to make the right choice, so I made a mental note of it for the next time Lexi called or texted. I hadn't even considered that Lexi or her baby could be put in foster care. I didn't know a lot about foster care, but I knew that it wasn't great and was especially bad for older kids.
While I thought about this, the next episode began playing. It was about a girl whose mother was helping her care for the baby. She told the audience that even though she knew that it wouldn't be perfect, she knew it was better for both her daughter and her grandchild to be in a loving home being taken care of than by themselves. Apparently, she had also been a teen mom, but she didn't really go into her story. By the end of the episode I was in tears, especially when the mother delivered the line, "If I didn't show my daughter the love I know she needs, there's no hope that she'll love my grandchild the way they need to be loved."
This gave me pause. If this girl could manage, maybe Lexi could too... it was hard to consider that she could be a mom. She was so young and so immature, yet she had so much love, and I knew it would break her heart if she couldn't have this baby. Lexi was the kind of girl who loved with positively all her heart. If she already loved this child, like she said she did, then maybe it would be worse for her to not have this baby than to have this baby.
All of my conflicting thoughts swirled around in my head and gave me a pretty bad headache. It was hard to know what was best when it wasn't you going through something. Maybe I had to keep that in mind throughout this whole thing. Lexi was her own person. She had different thoughts, different goals, different everything. Maybe it only seemed like she wasn't thinking clearly last night because that wasn't how I would think. Then again, maybe I was thinking more clearly because I was more removed from the situation than last night so I had a better view.
The competing ideas flew back and forth in my mind all morning like a charged ping pong ball. I felt like I was arguing with myself. I would raise a point, then immediately think of another point that contradicted the first, and then on and on and over again.
I drifted in and out of anxious fits all afternoon, completely unsure of anything going on in my mind. I wanted to have all the answers, I wanted to have the power to convince Lexi to do the right thing. In order to do that, though, I would have to know what the right thing was, which I surely didn't. And who knew, maybe what seemed right in the moment wasn't going to work in the long run; god, there were too many variables.
In my frustration I began to cry. I picked up my phone and began to dial Lexi's number when I remembered with a shock that we didn't have our special bond anymore. She wasn't the person I could call any time of day or night if I needed someone. She was no longer the person I could sit with for hours, not saying a word, just so happy to be together. She wasn't there for me because I had decided I didn't want to be there for her anymore. I had broken up with her because I thought it would take up too much time and energy, and it took me until that moment, with my phone in my hand and her number already typed in to really realize what a huge mistake I had made.
I had been so selfish by cutting her out. Everyone needs a person, and not only had I been taking away hers, but I had also been robbing myself at the same time. Slow-burning tears of anger and humiliation dripped d
own my cheeks, falling eventually onto my phone, which was still positioned in my trembling hand. The phone began to blur under my tears until I could no longer recognize Lexi's contact information. I had tried so hard for a clean break, but I suppose there could never really be such a thing as a clean break. Not totally, anyway. Either you have a messy one where you talk it all out and yell at each other and cry or you do it quickly, like pulling off a Band-Aid. I had thought that that way was better, but I realized then that it wasn't. In my way, you never knew exactly what the other person was thinking, if there was anything you could do to change their mind, and the crying was all done in private. Although, maybe that would be considered an advantage to some people. Who was to say what was right.
I collected myself and figured that I was crying partially from low blood sugar, as it was one-thirty in the afternoon and I hadn't eaten anything since early the night before. I made myself some scrambled eggs and watched my favorite tv show while I prepared my food. For my birthday that year, my mom had gotten me the box set of my favorite show, How I Met Your Mother. I liked other, more serious shows, but this I could always rely on to take my mind off, well, anything. The first time I failed a test How I Met Your Mother had been there for me. When I broke it off with Lexi, How I Met Your Mother had been there for me.
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