“What happened?” Melissa asked, joining me on my bed. “Did you and Justin have a fight?”
I nodded again. I wasn’t sure I would be able to talk around the new wave of tears I was trying to keep from flowing.
Melissa patted my hand. “I’m sure it’ll be okay,” she said confidently. “By morning, I bet he’ll be calling you, wanting to make up.”
“We broke up and I’m pregnant,” I said in a rush as tears coursed down my cheeks.
“Pregnant?” Melissa whispered, looking horrified.
I nodded through my tears, relieved to finally confess to someone.
“And that asshole dumped you when you told him?” she asked disgusted, snatching up her cell phone. “Rob is going to kick his ass.”
“I didn’t get to tell him about the baby,” I said, stalling her hands before she could text Rob. “Things fell apart before I could tell him, and now it’s too late.”
“Brittni, you have to tell him. He’ll change his mind. I know he’ll stick with you through this.”
I looked at her incredulously. She had to be kidding. “Melissa, he couldn’t even stick it out because I wasn’t quite myself lately. He was ready to call it quits because of a few broken dates and my moodiness this week. What in God’s name makes you think he’d stick with me over the next nine months and all the decisions we’d have to make afterward? He threw away what we had when it was no longer fun for him.”
“He’s going to find out, honey. It’s not like you’re going to be able to hide it,” she said, patting my hand.
I looked at her without saying anything as mixed thoughts continued to race around my head.
“Brittni?” she asked, taking in my silence. “Are you going to have it?”
I couldn’t answer her. I had no idea how I’d ended up here. I didn’t believe in abortion, but it wasn’t something I’d thought I would ever have to face. My views had always been black or white. If you were dumb enough to get pregnant, then you sucked it up and had the baby. If you couldn’t handle the responsibility, there were thousands of couples out there dying to adopt. Suddenly, nothing appeared black and white anymore. Everything was gray and cloudy with no right answer. If I decided to have the baby, it would come after my junior year started. There was no way I could attend classes. I would lose my scholarship and everything else I had worked for, but the alternative made me ill. >“Weeks,” she emphasized. “You’ve been complaining about feeling puny since the last week of January. Valentine’s Day is on Monday. I know my math skills are shaky, but I can read a calendar, and that means you’ve felt bad for more than two weeks. Maybe you’re anemic,” she pointed out.
“Maybe,” I answered, grabbing my purse.
“You should visit the clinic,” she said as I headed for the door.
“Maybe,” I said, flashing a fake smile as I closed the door behind me.
The smile faded before the door had closed completely behind me. Two weeks? Could she be right? Two weeks of sickness and five and a half weeks since my last period. For a week and a half I had been trying in vain to ignore the fact that for the first time in my life I was late. It couldn’t be possible. I was a Period Clock. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew something was wrong. I pushed it to the far recesses of my brain and buried it beneath mundane school-related junk, but suddenly the truth hit me like a brick wall, making me gasp for air. I detoured from my usual route to the daycare and sank down on one of the benches along the way. A lack of air made my vision blur and my stomach turn. Leaning forward, I placed my head between my knees. My world was falling apart at the seams.
After a few minutes of trying to calm my breathing, I was finally able to lift my head. The analytical part of my brain told me I needed to get up and go to work. That I needed to restore my life to some semblance of normalcy until it was ready to digest the news I had been avoiding. At the moment, I could not deal with the fact that my body no longer belonged to me alone.
Staggering to my feet, I gripped the back of the bench until the last of the light-headedness completely faded. I began the short hike to work, knowing that once I made it there I would be too busy to think about anything else. With each step I took, the band of despair that was encircling my chest loosened slightly so I was able to breathe a little bit easier.
Breathe, step, breathe, step, breathe.
Seemingly meaningless words when taken out of the context of this moment, but for now they served their purpose as they rolled through my head.
Breathe.
Step.
Breathe.
Step.
Breathe.
I plastered a smile on my face as I greeted the kind elderly receptionist who sat at the entrance of the daycare. Fellow teachers called out their own greetings as I made my way to the lounge and the locker where I stored my belongings. I returned their greetings, keeping the same brittle smile firmly in place. If they saw through my façade, they refrained from commenting.
Once I hit the classroom where I co-taught four-year-olds, my smile became a little less brittle and almost appeared normal if you didn’t know any better. The letter Q and number twenty became my best friends for the day as I worked one-on-one with each student. The monotony of the assignment allowed me to shut down the bothersome side of my brain. “Draw a circle and add a tail,” I instructed one student after another. I learned to love those words. After all sixteen of the students made their attempt at a capital Q, I moved to watching them count out twenty Goldfish crackers. Once their counting challenge was accomplished, I would hand them a cup so they could munch on their reward. The morning passed quickly and before I knew it, I was folding mats and stowing blankets and pillows in cubbies after naptime. Every task was completed with my mind occupied only on what I was doing. For a moment, a second, a minute, I convinced myself nothing was wrong.
Leaving the distractions of work behind allowed the dormant thoughts to once again rear their ugly heads. In order to make it back to the dorm, I focused again on what I could control.