Dana Ward

Kate was spending her night in Dana's room. Kate was dressed in her pajamas, though she was certain she wouldn't be wearing them for very long. Dana was without her shirt, dressed in a bra and pajama bottoms. Kate kissed the back of Dana's neck as her hands cupped and needed Dana's breasts through her bra. One hand snaked its way over her swollen stomach and into her pants.

Dana had discovered that she was pregnant and her boyfriend dropped out and moved back to Portland the second he found out. She considered having an abortion, but she wound up talking herself out of it, and eventually the whole school knew about it. She had to drop out of cheerleading squad, she stopped talking to her friends and she was still looking for someone who would adopt it when it was born. To say that she was not in a good place was putting it mildly.

There was a part of Kate -- the sweet, naive, innocent part of her that originally arrived in Blackwell -- that wanted to judge. After all, she'd been having sex almost every night with both men and women for the past month. But that wasn't Kate, even before. She didn't blame Dana for what happened and she didn't blame her for wanting a shoulder to cry on.

She told Kate about how she still missed Trevor, even after he put a baby in her belly and ran off without so much as an "I'm sorry". She hated how all of her "friends" would gossip and call her a slut behind her back. She hated how she always felt nauseous or how her whole body ached. She hated how tired she was and she was tired of hating herself.

While Kate didn't have much in the way of solutions, she at least offered to help alleviate her physical aches with a massage. She was an amateur, but Dana never complained.

That's how it started. That's how it started every time.

It started with a foot rub, or a back rub, or gently hands caressing her aching breasts, then next thing they knew Kate found her way in between Dana's legs.

Dana was only 4 months along and her belly had started to show.

The hormones were a real bitch.