Chapter 9, Part 2 - Asia

Asia discovers a problem that she decides to share with Dawn, but to a very different reaction than expected.

 

I wasn’t worried about classes. I guess never really cared much about school anyway, but it was always kind of in my mind. Now I wasn’t bothered by it enough to think about it. I had been when the new semester started, in those first few days, as brand new as the beginning of the school year. It had pissed me off that I had gym first period, so I had to go through the rest of the day smelling like the girl’s moldy locker room. But that was only on B days; on A days I had Study Hall with Madison again. She had more Study Halls throughout the whole year than even me, and I was pushing it with four. I was happy about having Creative Writing with Andrew’s old teacher, whom he raved about. Maggie’s cousin Luke was in my 3D Model and Animation class, which was lucky for me because he wanted to major in graphic design and I was only in the class because it sounded cool. My last class of the day was Nutrition, and my cooking group had already agreed not to give me any critical tasks, which was fine by me. I guess I had been a little excited to have new classes, but the shine wore off by the second day of the semester. And now, a week and a half into February and moving ahead at full speed in classes, I was just over it.

My mom always used to tell me that I had to divide my energy evenly between school and friends and other activities. She thought I got too excited about what she considered to be unimportant things, and didn’t pay enough attention to school. It was true enough. I had a reason now, though, for not caring about school. Who can worry about how many syllables are allowed per line in a sonnet during a crisis? And I had a crisis.

The pregnancy test was positive. I had bought the most expensive one and used both sticks, so it couldn’t be wrong. Besides, it explained my nausea in the morning. Dawn had just told me that I needed to get more sleep, but that didn’t make sense because I had never been sick from no sleep before. This felt logical, which was weird, because the word “pregnancy” looked as foreign and strange as it might if it was written in Chinese. It didn’t seem real that I could be pregnant. That only happened to the basket cases who whined about not getting enough love at home, and then slept with half the school. I was loved. My parents told me every night before we all went to our separate rooms that they loved me – or at least, they told me most nights. And I had a boyfriend who only cared about making me happy, nothing like the guys who just pretended to love the s***s in my school.

It was true, though. I was eating all the time, even when I wasn’t hungry, but I think part of that might have been my nerves. Which were shot, by the way. I was pregnant and not married and I definitely felt like hiding under my bed and screaming until my lungs burst.

Should I have been crying? Whenever you watch movies or read books about girls getting pregnant, isn’t there crying involved? At least a little bit, I should think. You can’t be in much deeper than this. And my parents are totally Catholic, too. I should’ve been bawling my eyes out just at the thought of having to tell them.

My eyes did hurt, like I had already been crying and just didn’t know it. But when I looked in the mirror, they were normal. My cheeks were dry, just a little pale. It was kind of reassuring to see myself looking like I always did. It would be okay. Lots of girls my age had kids, and they were alive, or they wouldn’t be out there preaching against their own actions. My parents loved me, which would stop them from killing me over this. My friends always supported me, even when they didn’t agree with my behavior. I wondered about Andrew, though. Didn’t guys always bail when their girlfriends got suddenly pregnant? And his parents expected so much of him, he probably couldn’t afford to have a kid already. I wouldn’t blame him for getting out of it, although I’d probably have to kind of hate him forever for it.

Before I told him, though, and even before I told my parents, I wanted to talk to Dawn. She was smart. She would tell me how to tell them and when to do it and maybe even what to do with being pregnant.

The only problem was that it was Thursday, piano day. She wouldn’t be done for awhile, but I couldn’t wait. Not just me; this in general. This was a crisis, and they don’t wait for piano lessons.

It took forever for Dawn to answer her phone, and she had that fast and low “hello” as a warning that I had better not be wasting her time.

“Could you come over? I really need to talk to you. Promise it’s an emergency.” I said.

“Of course,” Dawn answered, sounding surprised but urgent. “I’ll be right there, okay?”
            “See you then,” I said goodbye and hung up. Leaning back onto the pillows at the top of my bed, I finally exhaled and told myself with confidence that I could relax; help was on the way.

I didn’t relax, though. Laying there so still just made me aware of my own skin, and I felt like it was crawling up and down. It took a split second for me to spring, from my back, to the foot of my bed on all fours, and another second to bounce over onto my swivel chair. A well-aimed kick to the side of my desk sent me scuffing towards the window, where I hung my chin on the windowsill and stared at the driveway below. In the sun, the tar looked like black glitter. Shiny things had always been a fetish of mine, even the silver wrapping on gum. Dawn and I had once saved those silver wrappers for a whole month so that I could cover one of my text books with them. It was so beautiful that I never returned the book, and just told my parents that it had been stolen when the fine came in the mail.

Dawn’s white car came speeding down my street. I imagined Dawn watching the speedometer and thinking that she should go slow in the neighborhood, but my crisis made her rush. What could she think was happening? She had defined emergencies to me as blood and armed men, but I would hope she thought I had enough sense to call 911 in those cases. Maybe she was expecting a confession to bulimia. Or maybe she already knew I could be pregnant. As s****y as my friends teased me about being, I was surprised people didn’t suspect that of me every other day. Who knows, maybe they did and I just didn’t know. It wouldn’t matter now, anyway.

I sat watching the top of Dawn’s car even when I knew she was in the house. The sliding doors squeaked when you opened them too fast.

“Asia?” Dawn’s voice was loud and tense. Maybe she really was expecting blood or strangers. She was probably freaking out privately.

“It’s okay, I’m up here,” I answered. “There aren’t any psychos here or anything.”

A few seconds later and Dawn was walking through my doorway.

“What about psychos?” she asked, her eyebrows coming together in concern.

“With knives or guns. There aren’t any in the house, so you don’t have to worry,” I explained. “And I’m not bleeding either. Actually, that could almost be considered a problem…” I almost laughed, but Dawn was giving me a lost stare. You can always tell the difference between her intentional blank looks and the real ones, because of the way her eyes focus. If she’s really confused, she stares you down like a hawk.

“Should I be worrying that there will be psychos eventually? Or are you referring to yourself?” She wasn’t even being sarcastic, which was almost funny, since the reference was originally hers.

“You told me, emergencies are strangers in the house with weapons or excessive bleeding…”

“Oh my God, please don’t tell me you would seriously call me with that problem! I was exaggerating when I said that because I was mad at you!” She looked frantically from the open door to me and back again. “Was someone in the house earlier?”

Well, now I was a little pissed off. “No, nobody was here. That’s what I told you. And in that situation I would call the police, duh.”

Dawn sighed heavily. “Good. That’s a relief.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t get your sarcasm, but sometimes it’s really hard to tell when you’re joking and when you’re being serious because you always sound serious.”

“Yeah,” Dawn sat on my bed and lowered her eyes, nodding. “I know. I’m sorry.”

I exhaled slowly but my heart was still pounding. “Anyway, not that you’re a 911 operator or anything, but I hope I could call you if I had to, about that…”

“Of course,” Dawn said quickly. “Although I honestly don’t know what I would do. Call for help, I guess. I’d be done if I walked in here and found you bleeding to death.”

“Me too,” I laughed. “So if you weren’t expecting any of that, what did you think I meant when I asked you to come over?”

Dawn shrugged and looked lazily at my collages. “I don’t know. Something not life-threatening, like Andrew breaking up with you.”

“Um, pretty sure I’d actually die from that.”

“Well, so what’s the big emergency?”

I hesitated. It wasn’t that saying it out loud would make it “real”; things could be real without being put in words. It was that once I said it, I couldn’t take it back, and I didn’t want it to get out of control. My heart thumped loudly all the way into my throat and I had to swallow before I could make any sound.

“Pregnant,” I said, losing the “I’m” in my nervous dry voice, and I almost winced at the sound of it. It sounded even less possible when I said it to someone, just scarier. And was my life so much like a cheap romance novel that I had to say it in that stupid serious tone? Was pregnancy such a bad thing anyway? I forced myself to smile nonchalantly. “I mean, I’m pregnant. I kind of had a feeling, but I just took the test like an hour ago and it was positive.” I restrained from adding a giggly “what do you know?” when I saw Dawn’s face.

People register shock on their faces in different ways. Some people, like me and my mom, go as white as powdered sugar. Surprises just knock the blood right out of our cheeks. Other people, like my dad, change expression instead of color. He gets this really sour look on his lips if he gets a bad shock and his eyes get small. And others go red. I think they’re probably the people who start out with less natural blush and only find it when something big gets it running.

Dawn kind of did all three, which was funny to watch, and by funny I mean really weird. She’s always kind of pale so I would have her pegged as a red-face in response to shock. It only occurred to me as I was watching her face change that I must have never seen Dawn truly surprised before, because her face did things I’d never seen them do. First she turned red, kind of slowly, starting in her ears and spreading across to her nose. Her lips knotted together, then rolled inward as if she was biting them to hide whatever expression they wanted to make. She hadn’t been looking directly at me before I spoke, but her eyes glazed into the palest blue they had ever been and locked onto mine. I felt like they were burning right through my head, though Dawn’s stare is usually cold. All this while the blood was pulsing darker and darker in her face.
            Suddenly she blinked, and looked away to her clasped hands, and I watched all the color drained back down her neck until her face was pasty white again.

I had seen Dawn angry before, and I had always understood that anger had to be vented and Dawn was careful in her release of it, even if it meant her words hit harder. And I knew she always kept her face in check, because anyone watching closely enough could see that she was holding things back behind her usual neutral gaze. But it wasn’t until Dawn looked up again, squeezing her hands together and still clenching in on her lips, that I realized just how well had always hid her anger. Her mask was on by now, but it had been down for a moment and I was never going to forget what it looked like. I was scared.

“Nobody else knows yet,” I began, but Dawn cut me off.

“Is this what you meant when you said that not bleeding was a problem?” she asked. I had wondered if she had picked up on that, and I wasn’t surprised that she had.

“Yeah, because I missed my period. Well, really two of them, but I kind of forgot about the first. You know I don’t count the days.” I wanted to make it funny. I couldn’t stand it being so angry and serious. Why weren’t we making jokes about it? Stacy would be saying that she was surprised it had taken this long for trampy little me to finally get pregnant. Why was telling Dawn just as bad as telling my parents?
            “What did your parents say?”

“Nobody knows yet,” I repeated. “Not even them. You’re the only one so far.”

“Why tell me?” Again, she wasn’t even bothering with sarcasm. Did she not understand how teen pregnancy worked? Your parents disown you, your friends band around you. I was hoping to find a loophole and keep my parents, but I wanted Dawn to start the support.

“Well, you are my best friend.” Was I really going to have to spell it out for her? “I was kind of hoping for your help.”

Dawn almost looked offended. Her eyes kind of squinted and her mouth pulled downwards. Was she going to cry? “I don’t know anything about this kind of thing,” she said defensively.

I spread my hands, feeling like I’d just been punched in the gut. “Like I do either? It’s just that you’re good with, you know, understanding stuff you haven’t actually experienced. I thought maybe you could tell me what to do.”

“What to do!” She wasn’t shouting or even speaking loudly, but her voice held so much disgust that it hurt my ears anyway. “You already did it! Oh my God, Asia, you’re a statistic!”

            I really hated that stupid “s” word. What the hell did she have to bring math into it for? And why did she have to sound like my health teacher, preaching against drugs and smoking and sex?

            “So now what, I just sit here and cook? I don’t know anything about babies and whatever.”

            Dawn snorted. “Of course not; you still are one.” Also not sarcasm; just an insult.

            Arguing had not been what I wanted. It just made my head hurt, and I already felt like crying as it was. I was afraid that if we didn’t stop fighting and start a real conversation, there would be tears.

            “Yes. I am. Please just tell me what to do,” I said, as calmly as I could, but I could tell even as I said it that it wasn’t going to happen.

            “I don’t know what to tell you,” Dawn replied, her voice sharp. “This is a problem, Asia. Do you even realize how complicated being a teenage mother is going to be? And that’s regardless of what happens when you tell your parents. Or even Andrew.”

            “But does it have to be?” Really, did it? Why could Abbi start having kids when she was my age, but it was so wrong for me?

            “It will be.” Dawn was standing up, sliding her purse over her shoulder and digging out her care keys. “You should talk to your parents sooner rather than later.”

            “I don’t know. I’m afraid they’ll tell me to leave or something,” I admitted, and the first two tears slid out when I slowly blinked.

            “I hope not, for your sake,” Dawn said coldly. “I have a mountain of homework. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

She turned and disappeared into the hallway. I listened to her footsteps as they led her down to kitchen and out the sliding doors, which didn’t squeak this time but I still heard them latch shut. I didn’t bother watching out the window when I heard her car start up. When I considered later how angry she was, I was surprised she had stayed as long as she did, and that she hadn’t just blown up at me and stormed out. But I was going to find out that even before she walked out of my room, she had already gone.

Author's Note

Needs lots of work, I know - this is completely raw, just written!