The Consequences of Forever (Lainey)

by Kaitlyn Oruska

  “Why are you avoiding me?” Adam asked, stepping into my bedroom. I nearly jumped out of my skin, placing my hand over my heart and turning to face him.

  “You’re not supposed to be in here,” I told him. It was possibly Nora’s number one rule; no boys in bedrooms, no exceptions, ever.

  Adam took another step in. “I don’t care. Why are you avoiding me?”

  I shook my head, the panicky feeling growing more intense. “I’m not avoiding you. I didn’t even see you down there.” Another lie, but why stop now?

  “You haven’t answered a single one of my phone calls or texts,” he pointed out.

  “I know, I’m sorry. I’ve just been really busy.”

  “Cleaning up your bedroom when there’s a party going on downstairs?”

  “No, I just –” I stopped, realizing I had no idea what I was going to say. He stepped in even more, and closed the door behind him.

  “I’m not leaving until you tell me what’s going on.”

  “Nothing is going on, Adam.”

  “Is it Scott?” He demanded.

  I blinked in surprise. “Scott?” I repeated, as though I’d never met someone with that name.

  “Yeah, Scott. You cancel our plans last night because you need to help Nora with stuff, so I stop by, and he’s here. We go outside for a few minutes and you suddenly get sick, and then run in the house without any explanation, and then refuse to answer when I call. Now I’m here, trying to talk to you, and you’re running up the steps and hiding in your bedroom.”

  “Scott has nothing to do with it,” I insisted, placing a hand on my forehead and squeezing my eyes shut.

  “So there is something going on.”

  “I didn’t say that. Just drop it, okay?”

  “Nope.” He sat stubbornly on the edge of my bed. “I’m not budging until you start explaining.”

  “There’s nothing to explain,”

  “Should I tell Nora I’ll be spending the night, or are you?”

  “You’re being ridiculous.”

  “Oh well.” Ours eyes met in a silent battle, something that reminded me all too much of the way my dad and Nora’s fights had been lately. Adam won.

  “Do you really want to know what’s going on?” I asked, suddenly filled with anger I couldn’t explain.

  “That’s what I’ve been saying,” he replied calmly. Something in the tone of his voice set me off, and I flung my dresser door open, pulling out the pregnancy test and throwing it at him.

  “Then there you go,” I snapped. Now it was Adam’s turn to blink and look surprised.

  He picked the test up carefully and stared at it for a second, his eyebrows furrowing. I stood before him, rigid with anger and some other emotion I didn’t have a name for, waiting for his reaction.

  His face turned pale, and he looked up at me.

  “I’m going to guess this isn’t Hannah’s,” he said slowly.

  “Nope,” I said, grabbing some more clothes off the ground and throwing them into the hamper, whether they were actually dirty or not.

  “Is it, um, positive?” He asked. His voice sounded shaky, something I had never heard from him before. If I weren’t so overcome with emotion, I might even feel effected by it.

  “That’s what a plus sign usually stands for, yes,” I answered angrily.

  “When did you take it?”

  I sighed, suddenly feeling exhausted. I sat down on the bed next to him, resting my head in my hands.

  “Thursday,” I said to the floor.

  “You’ve known for two days and you didn’t tell me?” There was a little bit of anger in his voice.

  I looked up at him. “What was I supposed to do, mention it casually in passing?”

  “No, but you could have said something. Why would you keep this to yourself? Why didn’t you tell me you were even thinking about taking a test? I could have been there with you when you did this.” He waved the test at me and I grabbed it from him, walking back over to the dresser and shoving it back into its hiding place.

  “I didn’t want you there with me,” I replied. He looked hurt, but I forced myself not to care. This was his fault, I decided.

  “Why?”

  “Because what good would it have done? You’d just be upset, and make me more upset, and the whole thing would have been a disaster.” I let out a sarcastic laugh. “Not that it isn’t already a disaster, of course.”

  Adam stood up and began pacing. “What are we going to do?” He asked.

  “We are not going to do anything,” I replied.

  “What?”

  “Well, five seconds ago you thought I was cheating on you with Scott, did you not? I’m surprised you aren’t asking if it’s his.”

  He shook his head adamantly. “I would never ask you that, Lainey. God. I was jealous, okay? I can’t help that. But I know it’s mine and I know you love me.” He stepped towards me and I instinctively stepped back.

  “Either way, I’m not talking about it right now.”

  “How far along are you?”

  “I don’t know. Not far.” I continued gathering clothes until he grabbed my arm, stopping me.

  “Please just stop for a second. We need to talk about this.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I insisted, throwing the clothes back on the ground. “I don’t want to talk about it; I don’t want to think about it, I don’t want to worry about it. I don’t want it to be real, Adam, don’t you get that? I am fifteen years old. This is too much.” I burst into tears. Mortified that I was crying in front of Adam, I ran into the bathroom and closed and locked the door behind me.

  “Lainey,” he pleaded through the door. “Talk to me. Please? I need to know what’s going on.”

  “I think we’ve already established what’s going on,” I retorted, grabbing some tissues and dabbing at my face frantically. I hated crying. I hated the weakness that it portrayed, and the way it made your entire head feel stuffy.

  “Do you think the test could be wrong?” He asked.

  “Nope.” I stared hard at myself in the mirror, trying to figure out how it could have ended up like this. The answers were obvious, and at the same time, I couldn’t connect the dots.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, Adam, I’m sure. I don’t think completely skipping a period and feeling sick every second of the day is a coincidence.”

  “You never told me any of that,” he protested, as if my lack of informing him about my symptoms meant there was no way I could actually be pregnant.

  I opened the door suddenly, and he nearly fell forward into me.

  “Can you just leave?” I asked, brushing past him, and getting right back to cleaning up the clothes.

  “No.” He came up behind me and wrapped his arms around me, forcing my arms to the side. “Calm down, please.”

  I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths, but nothing I did made me feel any calmer. “I’ve never felt this out of control in my life,” I whispered, finally turning to face him. He brushed my hair from my face and smiled softly.

  “Me neither,” he agreed, kissing the tip of my nose. “But we’ll figure it out, okay?” I nodded and allowed him to lead me back to my bed, where we sat side by side, his arm wrapped around my shoulders.

  “When did you get the test, anyway?” He asked after a few minutes of silence.

  “Wednesday, after school. It took me a day to get the nerve to actually use it.”

  “I thought you walked home with Hannah after school on Wednesday.”

  “I did.”

  “She knows?”

  I shook my head. If Hannah knew, then the rest of the world would. I loved her to death, but I knew better than the trust her with a secret this size.

  “Then how did you buy a test with her there?”

  I smiled ruefully. “I didn’t,” I admitted. “I kind of, um, stole it.”

  Adam raised his eyebrows, looking surprised and maybe even a little impressed. “You sto
le a pregnancy test?”

  I nodded. I had to admit; it would be funny if the situation didn’t feel so dire. From straight A report cards to pregnancy test theft, overnight. At least I hadn’t gotten caught. That would have been fun, trying to explain to Nora and my dad.

  “What was I supposed to do?” I asked when the shock on his face refused to disappear. “I couldn’t exactly walk up to the cash register and announce that I’m buying a pregnancy test. Everyone in this town knows everyone else; Nora would have found out before I even had the guts to take it.”

  He grinned slowly. “That’s true,” he agreed, pulling me closer to him. I rested my head on his shoulder and closed my eyes.

  “What are we going to do, Adam?” I asked softly.

  I felt him shake his head slightly before kissing the top of mine. “I have no idea, Lainey. I have no idea.”

  I felt my heart sink. I didn’t know what I’d been expecting Adam to say, but it hadn’t been that. Somehow, I’d hoped he would have all the answers, because there was no way I ever would.

  Chapter Four

  I continued to avoid Adam all of Sunday and most of Monday. I was almost home-free when he cornered me at my locker at the end of the day, leaning against it before I had a chance to open it.

  “You’re avoiding me again,” he stated, his arms crossed over his chest. I hated the way he looked at me sometimes, like he could see straight into my soul, and past any excuses I might have.

  “I know,” I replied, already tiring of the lies and misleading I had been doing lately. Avoiding Adam all day Sunday meant spending most of the day with Hannah, and that had been exhausting all on its own. She’d asked at least half a million times why I wasn’t with Adam, and when I refused to give her a direct answer, she’d come up with some for herself.

  “Why?” He asked, and I knew I didn’t really have an answer. The worst part was over; at least I’d thought telling him was going to be the worst part. But the fact was, after I’d told him, we hadn’t really discussed it at all. He’d just stayed in my room with me, holding me until we decided our absence had probably been noticed.

  “I just don’t want to deal with this right now,” I said. He shifted slightly and I took the opportunity to unlock the locker, but only got it open slightly before he slammed it shut. A few people mingling in the hallway turned and promptly started staring at us.

  “Do you mind?” I asked, feeling annoyed. I’d felt sick all day, and avoiding Adam, mixed with the anxiety of everything I was going through, made it worse. I could only remember throwing up three times in my life, the incident Friday night being the third, and wanted to keep the number as close to that as possible.

  “You’re not leaving until you talk to me,” he declared, leaning against it even more, so that his back was covering the entire locker.

  I glared at him. “You want to discuss it here, at school, with everyone around to listen?”

  He glanced around the hallway and shrugged. “There’s not that many people around,” he replied. “I’m not worried.”

  “Well, I am. Move or I’ll just leave without my books.” We stared at each other for a few moments, and finally he moved away, giving in.

  “I hope you don’t have any plans,” he remarked. “You’re coming with me and we’re figuring this out, now.”

  “Fine,” I reopened the locker and shoved some books in, taking a few others and my book bag out. I was sick of the avoidance and the not-knowing. If Adam wanted to talk about this now, then we’d talk about it. We’d get it over with. Maybe then I could relax for more than a few seconds at a time.

  I closed my locker and turned to him expectantly. Wordlessly, he took my book bag and then my hand, leading me out the nearest exist. His car was parked right by the door, and I said nothing while he held the door open for me and threw my book bag into the backseat.

  Adam started the car and began driving without offering a single hint as to where we were going. We headed in the opposite direction of his house and mine, and then finally, out of town. I felt my chest tighten as I realized where we were going.

  Our beach. Not the one we had met on, near Nolan’s house, but the one we had found a few days later. It was just outside of Haven, and almost always empty, except for a lone fishermen every once in a while. We’d spent so much time there over the summer, talking and kissing and getting to know each other in every way possible.

  Adam parked the car at the same small lot he always did, and for a minute we just sat there, still wrapped in silence. I wanted to tell him I was sorry, that I never meant for this to happen, that this isn’t what I wanted with my life and I wanted to find a way to just make it all go away. I wanted to tell him that I loved him, and wouldn’t stop, but I was scared he’d change his mind once he was away from me. I wanted to tell him that I was scared this had changed us, that we’d never be able to go back to what and who we were before. But I didn’t. I didn’t say anything.

  “Do you know what you want to do?” He asked finally. I looked down at my lap, surprised to find my hands clasped so tightly that my fingers were turning white. I pulled them apart and held my face for a few moments, forcing back tears. It wasn’t that I was sad, just exhausted. The days since Halloween felt more like decades.

  “No,” I answered truthfully. “I haven’t even really let myself think about it. It doesn’t feel real.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Adam nod slowly. He wasn’t looking at me; instead, he was focused on the ocean before him, the waves crashing gently against the shore.

  “Do you know when the first time I saw you was?” He asked. It seemed like such a bizarre question to ask, at a time like this. I shook my head.

  “The first day of school, last year. You were just outside the front door; I was still in Nolan’s car. You looked so scared, like you didn’t want to go inside because you didn’t know what to expect. I remember thinking that was funny, because if you’d gone to the middle school last year, you were right next to the high school all the time. And then Hannah walked up to you and you smiled, and it was just like, I don’t know, something inside of me clicked, changed. You were so beautiful and so natural and I wanted to know you, I wanted you to know me. But the one time I got to talk to you, that day in the hallway, you completely blew me off.” He paused to smile softly.

  “I think that only made me want you more, because I’d never really had that happen to me before. I watched you all school year, and that night on the beach, the night of Nolan’s party, I knew it was my chance. Probably my only one, to show you that I could be something to you, someone special. I knew you were with Scott, but I didn’t care because I knew there was no way you could really love him, because if there was anything certain in this world, it was that I was going to fall in love with you, and you were going to fall in love with me. I’ve never felt that before, Lainey.”

  “Neither have I,” I whispered. He turned in his seat, facing me, and took both of my hands from my lap, holding them securely in his.

  “Look at me,” he pleaded. I did, blinking back the tears that were always threatening to flow lately. He looked on the verge of tears himself, leaving me feeling unsettled. I needed Adam to be strong, because this was the one situation in which I couldn’t be strong enough for myself.

  “I love you. I think maybe I always have, since that first day I saw you. You’re the only girl in the world I ever want to love. This isn’t ideal, this isn’t what either of us could have possibly wanted, but it happened, and maybe it happened for a reason, I don’t know. But I do know that I love you, and that isn’t going to change.”

  “What are you saying?” I asked, removing one of my hands from his grasp and wiping at my face.

  “I’m saying that I want to keep it; the baby. Our baby.” His words ripped through me, stealing my breath. He wanted to keep the baby. I didn’t know if I’d expected him to say that or not, but it felt shocking, nonetheless. He wanted this.

  I looked away from him, out on the bea
ch that had become ours. It was here that Adam told me he loved me for the first time. We’d only been together for three weeks, not nearly long enough for something that big, but I’d believed him. Me, the girl that never believed anything anyone said, believed that this boy that had just appeared in her life from out of nowhere, loved her.

  “I don’t know if I can do that,” I said softly.

  Adam squeezed the one hand he still held in his. “Why not?”

  “Because I’m not even sixteen yet? Because I’m not ready? God, Adam, I don’t even know if I want kids.” I refused to look at him, knowing that he would look hurt, and that I couldn’t handle that.

  “You don’t mean that,” he insisted.

  “How am I supposed to be a mom?” I asked. “I’ve never even had one.”

  “You have Nora,” he pointed out. “Maybe she’s only been around for a few years, but she’s been your mom in those years, hasn’t she? And it doesn’t matter, anyway. You don’t need to have had a mom to know how to be one.”

  “Well, that coupled with the fact that I’m not even halfway through high school, I’m not sure I’d be a very good one.”

  “Lainey, girls get pregnant at sixteen all the time. Maybe that’s not right, but it happens, and people manage. I’m not going anywhere. I’ll get a job and we can get our own place. We can even get married if you want; that’s all up to you. But we can do this, I know we can.”

  I pulled my hand away from him and got out of the car, hurrying away from it and onto the beach. We’d been here enough times for me to know there was nowhere to go, no houses or stores nearby, just endless beach, but I didn’t care. I needed to get away. From Adam, and from everything he was saying. He couldn’t mean all of this, but I knew he did.

  Adam followed close behind. “Just think about it. What other options do we have?”