Chapter 1: First Day Jitters

"Are you sure this is what you want to do?" Greg asked me over the phone and I cut him off before he could go on.

 

"I'll be fine. No one can touch me there," I explained to him once again for the fiftieth time tonight.

 

"If you ever need anything at any time of the day call me and I'll leave school to go get you," Greg told me and this made me yawn.

 

"I've got to get some sleep, Greg," I told him, "school starts for the both of us in less than twelve hours."

 

"Just promise me this," Greg said with a voice full of trembles, "you won't make any other guys your boyfriend."

 

Gregory Finster was a neighborhood boy who I'd grown up with for all intensive purposes. He was sixteen years old and he'd just been accepted on early admissions to Columbia University in New York City. Greg, as he liked to be called, already had a girlfriend and yet he chose to chase after me.

 

"Goodnight, Greg," I said into the phone.

 

"Goodnight, Myra, Goodnight, Little One," Greg said before he hung the phone up.

 

I lay in my bed. The crisp September air was seeping in and erasing all traces of summer. I lay in bed looking at my close blinds and wondering about the world that lay on the other side of it. My heart felt heavy as I remembered Eliza and her wonderful smile and kind heart. She'd just been lay to rest a two weeks ago at the tender age of fourteen. Besides sharing the same age Eliza and I were also not fully accepted for who we were by our families. Eliza lived with her aunt and uncle who were her legal guardians. Her story was that of which I decided not to think of at the moment.

 

I close my eyes and the sand man brought a wave of sleep to me. I dreamed of nothing and that was a good thing. Lately my dreams were that of impending doom. That probably had something to do with the months to come.

 

School began at eight AM. On any other first day of school morning I would've risen at seven, dressed by seven-thirty, and mom would drop me off by seven-fifty five.

 

Now that I was a freshmen in high school who was disdained by the community and pregnant this wasn't going to be like those other times.

 

I woke up dry heaving at five-thirty in the morning. I spent the next hour throwing up last night's dinner of egg rolls that I dipped in chocolate pudding. When I came out mom was in my bedroom waiting for me.

 

"Maybe you should just stay home," Mom said to me.

 

My mom stood five feet ten inches tall. She was lanky and she still had that model figure that had paid off for her so many years ago. Last week she decided to go ultra blond and she had even done her eyebrows too. Mom had blue eyes, like my oldest brother Kevin, and full lips that weren't touched up by botox. This morning she wore a pair of black shorts with a Minnie mouse t-shirt. Her hair was in a tight pony tail.

 

"No, I'm going and please don't try and talk me out of it," I said to her as I choked down the urge to vomit.

 

"All that morning sickness," Mom began, "how are you going to be able to sit in class like that?"

 

"I just will," I said to her shaking my head as I went to my closet.

 

Yesterday was pay day. Mom had given me my usual five hundred dollars for clothes shopping. Begrudgingly she had taken me shopping. I bought clothes that would fit me as my pregnancy progressed. I was barely showing, but mom was convinced that she could see the bump.

 

"Well I'll be ready to take you at seven-thirty. You are to go straight from the front of the school to Mrs. Lamponian's science class and do not talk to anyone. From there you'll go to Mr. Burkedale's math class and then to lunch," mom was reading my class schedule off to me that I'd already memorized by heart.

 

"I know all this. At lunch I am to sit far away from wherever Kimmi and Daisy are and if anyone tries to hassle me, which they won't, I am to go straight Principal Gellar's office," I recited on my own and mom let out a sigh.

 

"My daughter, my baby, is going to be a freshmen in high school," mom said gazing toward memories from a distant past.

 

"Everything will be alright," I said to mom just as she got to my bedroom door to leave.

 

"If you say so," she told me and I was left to get dressed and practice my 'don't mess with me' walk in front of my mirror.

Reviews

[Tina Kline]

I'm glad Myra is going to her regular highschool yet it doesn't seem like
it's going to be any fun for her at all, more like stressful.