Two months later...

The long, hot summer shows no sign of letting up, but the start of the college year is approaching fast. It is clear that you have no hope of completing your first year of studies, with your due date in early February. After much soul-searching, you decided to formally withdraw from the college place you had been registered for. Alex, on the other hand, is going to proceed as planned and try his goddam hardest to finish with prospects of getting a job to support you. Fortunately his college is a short commute away, as **** as the two of you are for some kind of longer term security than the collective banks of Mom & Dad, you doubt that you'd be able to cope without the regular sex of having Alex around.

Your belly is showing no change at only 8 weeks. It appears that despite your curiously accelerated insemination, your pregnancy is progressing normally. After the grim warnings of your Mom, you have been profoundly relieved that there is not even the slightest hint of morning sickness or fatigue so commonly associated with early pregnancy. As a result, your hyper sex drive has kept you so active that despite eating quite a lot more, you've gained just over half a pound since the day you got knocked up, and you're pretty sure that's all in your boobs.

In fact, you feel so good that it's almost as though you are energized by your pregnancy. Gwen has helped you get a job at the restaurant she worked at before moving up the food chain, and you are taking on as many shifts as possible while you feel able to work. It is fair to say that your future finances are a constant worry. You are dismayed at Alex's somewhat blasé approach to money, so despite your deep commitment to him you have resolved to keep a solid hand on your meagre wealth and try your hardest to develop some kind of income that might help sustain you in the unpredictable future.

Gwen has become more than your sister and confidante, and is now an unfailingly loyal and supportive best friend. She is beyond excited at the prospect of being an aunt, and promises that she will be available to help look after the rug rat turns up.

Your parents... well, let's just say that their initial indifference to the weirdness of your situation has not changed. As Gwen predicted on that very first night, your Mom approached the issue with her characteristic pragmatism, cutting off the rent that she had been charging you for staying in the house after graduating from high school on the proviso that you saved every cent. She has been attempting to teach you every frugal trick of motherhood that she learned, including a surprisingly advanced degree of skill with electrics and domestic plumbing. She proudly estimates that she has saved almost eighty thousand dollars in the thirty years since first becoming a homeowner having never had to call a tradesman in. That seems optimistic to you, but you're not suicidal enough to call her on her numbers. Nevertheless, you are gaining a crazy amount of eclectic knowledge from your dear old Ma and that can only ever be a good thing. More than anything else, the two of you have been growing very close in the process. Her sympathy for your condition runs deep, it seems, and you again feel that you can rely on her when the going gets tough in half a year's time. Your father is the same old Dad, half-heartedly running the guitar shop that he took on to keep him busy in his retirement and spending the rest of his time doing whatever it is he does. You've been fishing with him a couple of times but the sight and smell of the fish guts have proved the only thing that will upset your rock-solid pregnant stomach. When you've raised your money fears with him, he's very sweetly said that there's always a job for you at the shop, but you know for a fact that he can't afford to pay even a quarter-time wage. You still cherish the occasional afternoon spend with him polishing and waxing the beautiful vintage Gibsons that are his pride and joy, which was something you always used to love as a teenager.

Your family has fully accepted Alex as a pseudo in-law rather than the long term nuisance that he was when he was just your friend. That doesn't stop Gwen and your mother muttering to each other when your dopey boyfriend commits one of his numerous infractions, like knocking a tin of paint out of the window while decorating your room, sending an eight foot spray of white all over the front yard and your parents' car. Well, okay... even you got mad at him for that.

As for your in-laws, Alex's family, well that's a different story. Robert and Kathy are still barely even speaking with their son for knocking a girl up in circumstances of ****. They actually kicked him out of the house when they found out, leading to a blissful (for you) two weeks where he lived at your place. In the end, your parents went over to remonstrate with his to let him back in as they couldn't bear the constant sound of your fucking any longer. Everyone knows that come the last couple of months before delivery, you'll put your foot down about having Alex living with you again, but they are all trying to get as many of the forty weeks to be as quiet as possible in anticipation of the chaos that will inevitably follow. That's fair enough, you grudgingly suppose. With sex at home being verboten, you and Alex drive off a few miles most evenings for a bit of outdoors alone time, with only occasional embarrassing brushes with the law.

Alex's parents seem to feel very differently towards you, however. The disgust they feel at their son's behaviour apparently stems from a devotion to your cause that leads to their being extremely friendly and supportive, often inviting you over when Kathy has her manicurist or masseuse doing a house call and treating you to luxury that you had never before experienced. They are a fair bit wealthier than your parents, and they have made it clear with characteristic lack of subtlety that they are going to help the mother of their grandchild out wherever able. The obvious unspoken feeling being that if Alex is still in the picture, then he'll benefit too, but they couldn't really care less at this point.

There was a brief ripple of scandal in your immediate neighborhood about the changing sex of the Doe boy, but most people lost interest and appear to be forgetting that you ever were a male. Those few neighbours who are close family friends have remained so, most notably the Davies' who live across the street and have two six-month old twins. You secretly suspect that their relief at another forthcoming young child in your somewhat 'gray' neighborhood is the main cause of their friendliness, but you won't complain when their growing friendship appears as genuine as it does. The other devoted friend who's continuing affection you are touched by is Mr. Grant, the elderly widower who lives next door and who has been yours and Gwen's fifth grandparent for as long as you've lived in this neighborhood. He is a wonderful source of wisdom and experienced perspective on life, and despite his increasingly frail body he has a lively spirit that you feel a close kinship with.

All things considered, you are incredibly fortunate. The bizarre circumstances surrounding your condition are undeniable, and never going to go away, but it seems that by and large the world just accepts it and moves on. You have wondered on several occasions whether this is part of the twisted magic that started all of this off. Indeed, you have wondered quite a lot about the nature of this 'curse' or 'spell' that has changed your life so completely. You brim with questions, but a few attempts to trace the mysterious call of that first morning have proved fruitless, and gradually you are having to accept that you will probably never know more. Your life is pretty good, at the moment, and maybe its best for everybody if you just let it roll along in its bizarre and unnatural new configuration.