Go To Class.

You slowly pull up your pants and slid the book back into the bag slipping from the stall and out of the bathroom. Unlike when you first entered the bathroom where the halls outside were a choked mass of moving students, the hall now was practically deserted allowing you to make quick work of moving. School was on a block schedule system which meant you had to get through three one hundred- and five-minute classes, a forty-five-minute lunch period and a ninety-minute homeroom. While your classes varied from day to day, the schedule on Monday, Wednesday and Friday were your favorite, because it started with Mister Jeromy. Mister Jeromy was only twenty-six and to hear your sister tell it, “So Hot!”, but to you he was more than that. He was everything you thought you wanted in a guy. He was smart, witty, seemed to love many of the same books you did, and even seemed to notice you in class from time to time. The fact that you found out you were pregnant just before the school year began, made you scream inside your own mind every time he seemed to brush against you. You carefully made your way into his classroom and took your customary seat in the back of the room. You smiled as you saw Carol Engbei sitting back there as well.

Carol was one of your sisters’ friends, and the only one of the girls from that night that you actually found yourself feeling sorry for. Like your sister and her friends, she too had gotten pregnant and while your sister had gotten to flaunt her pregnancy, Carol was the only one to seem truly embarrassed by getting pregnant. Moreover, she felt sorry for what your sister had done to get you out of the way. You would dare say, as you watched this girl move through her day, she was unlike your sister and her other friends. You further found out how much when you began talking to her. Unlike your sister, you, or many of those people at the parties, Carol was the product of a single mother who had had her when she was just eighteen. For the first ten years of her life, she lived in deep poverty with her mother until her mom managed to date a man who had a better background. Since then, Carol was just like the rest of them, but she never forgot her childhood amid the fun of having money. So, when she became pregnant, she didn’t feel like it was anything fun, and because of this, your sister left her to deal with her pregnancy by her lonesome.

Slowly you slid into the desk next to her careful to not let the attached desk rub to hard on your aching belly. You were about to turn and say hi to Carol and ask how she was doing when you suddenly see her teeth clench as her nails suddenly dug into the wood of the desk. Was she also having contractions? Should you ask her about it? Would she even want to talk about it?