Plus One

by Sarah L. Young

  "What the hell were you doing there?" Emily demanded, breaking off my story. To most she would have seemed angry, but I could see from the anguish in her face that she was as scared as I was. "What were you thinking," she spat. "Drinking at a college party? You could have been drugged or, or—"

  "Quiet!" I hissed. "My parents will hear if we're too loud." I composed myself before whispering, "I know. Raped. I could have been raped. I shouldn't have been there in the first place, but I was, and now I'm…" I trailed off and looked down at my stomach. "Now I'm pregnant. And now I need you. Should it really matter what happened?" I pleaded, my eyes blurry with fat tears and my throat stinging with the sobs I was trying (and failing) to keep down. If I was too loud then my parents might hear.

  I covered my mouth with my hands, trying to muffle my cries. I stood there, unsure of what to do. Emily was crying, too. She was only a few feet away, yet she seemed to be frozen; she stood rigid in the corner, probably trying to process the news while I was being crushed by it. I needed her to hug me and tell me it would be ok. I needed her to tell me what to do. That was why I had called her, but instead she was standing across the room from me, completely motionless and mute.

  "Why did you call me?" she asked me suddenly, breaking the uncomfortable silence. I didn't even know how to respond.

  "I don't know what you," I tried to say. "I mean, I, I—" but she cut me off again, suddenly angry in addition to afraid.

  "I mean, what the hell do you want me to do?" she asked. "What do you think I even can do? You screwed up, Lex! God, I'm not even your girlfriend anymore and you still expect me to clean up your freaking messes! It's ridiculous and I'm sick and tired of it!"

  I fell to my knees and wrapped my arms around myself. I felt so powerless. She always did that to me, made me feel small. Made me feel less than. I bowed my head down, my face sticky and wet with tears. I tried to wipe them away, but it was no use. My hands were wet too, and my face was sensitive to their stinging touch. After a couple minutes, she walked over to me. She knelt on the ground beside me and then, sinking further down to the floor, pulled me into her lap. Her anger was gone.

  "Shh," she said, rubbing my back with one hand and stroking my hair with the other. "I'm sorry. It was a shock. I wasn't ready." She paused for a minute as my cries quieted down and my heartbeat lined up with hers. "It's okay. We'll figure this out. I'm here." No matter how much she got on my nerves, I knew that I still loved her. She was the only one I could turn to, and the one person who I needed the most. "We'll work it all out," she whispered calmly in my ear. "The first question that we need to figure out an answer for is do you want to have an abortion or carry the baby."

  Just then, I lost it again. How was she so calm, so rational? She was talking about my baby. I had a baby growing inside of me and she was suggesting I kill it.

  "How could you even ask me that?" I demanded of her, sitting up to look her straight in the eyes. "It's a baby. It's a little person. It's alive, which means I would be killing it! How can you think that that's okay?" I couldn't believe that she was even mentioning it.

  "It's not a baby yet. It's a clump of cells about the size of a grain of rice and—" but I cut her off with my glare. She sighed and went on. "You need to think about this for real," she said, looking deep into my eyes, pleading with me. I let her talk. "This is your life. You're the one whose life will never be the same if you choose to carry this baby. You'll have to take time off from school, people will never look at you the same, your family would disown you. You could be homeless!" I kept my head down and didn't even attempt eye contact as she rattled through her list. "That doesn't even begin to cover the financial needs of a pregnancy and then eventually of a baby. Just the diapers alone are probably more than you can afford, let alone all the doctors you'll need, especially if there are complications. You need to think about this logically."

  I sighed. I had thought about it. Of course, I had thought about it. But the thought I kept returning to every time was what it would be like to hold my baby for the first time, versus the image of them being taken out of me, dying outside my protection. I couldn't let that happen, it was simply too much to bear.

  "I can't do it," I told her flatly. "Look, I know that you believe in a woman's right to choose, and I am choosing. I'm choosing to have my baby." I was certain of almost nothing, save for the fact that I was going to have this baby. I knew in my gut that it was the right thing for me to do.

  "Please listen to me," she begged. By then she'd stopped rubbing my back and patting my head. Instead, her hands were folded in her lap and she looked me right in the eyes, desperate. "I know that you were raised religious. I know what the church says about abortion, and when life begins, but this isn't some hypothetical case. This isn't some ethical dilemma that you're talking about with your priest in church school. This is your life. Having a baby is a huge decision, and more than that it's a huge responsibility, and a lifelong commitment. You're sixteen years old. You're still a kid yourself. You shouldn't have to take on that responsibility. You're not expected to at this age. You need time to give yourself some time to grow up yourself before you can raise a child."

  She took my hand in hers and calmly patted it, never breaking eye contact. "Lex, I'm literally on my knees here, begging you," she whispered. "You can't go through with this. You can't have a baby. Not now."

  "I don't know what to do," I told her plainly. "But I know one thing. I know that because of decisions that I made, there's a baby. You can call it whatever you want: a fetus, a clump of cells, it doesn't matter. What it is, what I know is inside me, is a baby. There are no shades of gray here for me. This is a legitimate human life, and I'm not going to end it because it's an inconvenient time for me to be a mom right now. Think about how selfish that would be."

  "You're not thinking," she said, her voice rising both in pitch and in volume. "You aren't thinking about this in the right way. You need to at least consider it. Think about the plan. The plan you have for the rest of your life... It can't and won't happen if you have this baby. You don't get to keep going to school, you don't get to go to college and vet school, you get to drop out and work a crappy dead-end job that you hate to put food on the table for the child who you put your dreams, your life, on hold for. Tell me you won't look into that child's eyes, even for a moment and resent them. Tell me you that you will be able to love this child, and love your life with them in it, even if you never get to do what you want to do. Can you tell me that? Can you honestly tell me that?"

  "Yes," I said, not even taking a moment's hesitation to think it over. "I already love this child, more than I thought I could. And no, it's not perfect. It's not the perfect time, it's not the perfect set up, and it will be hard. But I can do this, I know that I can do this because I have to do this. There are tons of single moms—single teen moms—who are able to do it all. They get to take care of their children and have a fulfilling life and career, and I'm going to be one of them. My life will be fulfilling because I have this child. I will never resent my baby. I'm doing this. I'm not having an abortion, and there's nothing you can do to convince me that I should."

  I placed my hands on my belly. Even though it hadn't even begun to swell, I knew my baby was in there. I knew that I needed to keep them safe. This was my baby, and there was nothing Emily could do to convince me otherwise. I knew it wouldn't be easy, but I knew what I had to do, and I knew it would all be worth it when I got to hold my baby for the first time. I would look into their eyes and see their tiny smile and know that I had made something so beautiful and so pure.

  No matter what mistakes I had made in my life, this wasn't going to be one. I knew I shouldn't have been at that party. I knew that I shouldn't have been drinking. I knew that I shouldn't have agreed to have sex with that boy, someone who I had never met and whose name I had never learned. I knew it was a mistake to ignore the fact that he didn't have a condom and to sleep with him anyway. It's possible that everything I did until that
moment, sitting on the floor with Emily, had been part of a huge mistake. But there was one thing that I knew for absolute certain: not having this baby would be the worst mistake of my life, so I promised myself right then and right there that it was a mistake I would never make.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Emily

  What the hell? I mean what the actual hell? I knew she was reckless, but going to a frat party and hooking up with some rando? It was ridiculous! And of course, she had to go and get pregnant, because that's how lucky I am, I guess. I knew this was about her, not me, but I knew that she would rope me into it somehow. I knew that from the minute she held up that damned pregnancy test. She called me because she doesn't trust herself, and I really couldn't blame her. She was a kid, for heaven's sake. She called me over to tell her what to do, and being a kid, she didn't even take my freaking advice.

  After she had made her whole speech about how it was her baby, and she was going to have it no matter what, I got so fed up that I left. If she wanted someone to hug her and tell her it would all be okay, then she should have called someone else. I don't do that sort of thing. I tell people my honest opinion, and they can either listen to me or they can screw up their lives. I knew that having this baby was going to ruin her life, and she needed to see that. I was afraid that if I didn't show that to her, it would be too late. Then, of course, she'd come crawling back to me to complain when her life was in shambles.

  Riding home that night, these thoughts and many others whirled around my mind. Of course, she was right, she had to make the choice in the end. I was afraid she'd make the wrong one. I needed to convince her, but I didn't know how. Maybe I could figure out the cost of raising a baby compared to the means of someone working minimum-wage paying their own food, rent, utilities? Maybe something like that would work, but Lexi's ridiculous positive attitude would only make things harder. It always had. There are times when it's good to be positive, and there are times when you need to be realistic. I'd much rather be pessimistic, in all honesty, because then I'm always either right or pleasantly surprised.

  Lexi was the total opposite. She was always so optimistic. Not in a good way, though, but rather to the point where it was irritating. She always got her hopes up about everything, and when they didn't end up working out—because usually in life things don't work out—her hopes would get dashed and she'd come crying to me so I could kiss it and make it better.

  I vowed to myself right then and there that this would not be a time like that. Her optimism be damned, I wasn't going to let it happen this time. I mean, you can't just hope and pray that it will all work out with a baby. You can't. For a baby to "work out," you need money. You need a stable job, a stable living environment, and enough time to make all those things happen. Lexi was a junior in high school. Time was the last thing that she had. Even if she were to drop out tomorrow, she wouldn't have any money. Working a minimum wage job, which was pretty much all that she was equipped for, she would have to spend so much time getting enough money to afford everything that she wouldn't be able to take care of her child, or herself for that matter. There was also the issue of her parents. I didn't understand how she could be so blind about her parents. They threatened to disown her and kick her out back when she came out to them, and I wouldn't put it past them to follow through on that threat now. If Lexi was going to keep this baby because of her religion, then religion would also be what was going to take her down.

  Her parents were pretty much religious nut jobs when it came to some things, premarital sex being one of them. They were also obsessed with how people saw them. After coming to America from Mexico, both of her parents had worked so hard to build a better life for their children. They didn't want people to look down on them and had worked hard to maintain a good image in the community. I can only imagine what having a daughter both sixteen and pregnant would do to that precious image.

  As I silently rode my bike up the driveway and put it in the garage, I realized that I had grown angry over all of this stupidity. If she was going to raise this baby, she had to understand that her life was no longer her own. With a baby added to the picture, everything in her life would be for that child.

  With my mind still racing in a million different directions, I climbed back up the tree, opened my window, and crawled back inside my bedroom and stared longingly toward my warm bed. I looked down at my watch and wasn't happy when it showed that it was nearly three in the morning. I had to be up in two and a half hours to get ready for school, but I doubted that I could sleep anyway, considering everything that was going on.

  I quickly slipped into bed, eager to get as much sleep as possible but instead found myself tossing and turning all night. No matter how hard I tried, I simply couldn't shut down my brain. It was so late, but sleep was practically the last thing on my mind. All I could focus on was Lexi and the huge mistake I feared she would make. There had to be some way to convince her to make the right decision, and apparently my brain decided that three a.m. was the perfect time to figure out that way.

  I went through scenario after scenario, conversation after conversation, reason after reason in my head. Nothing I could think of was going to change Lexi's mind. And with that realization, coming at around five-twenty in the morning, just before my alarm went off, I began to cry. Truth be told, I didn't even know why I was crying. This wasn't my life; I wasn't the one who had gotten pregnant and had royally screwed everything up. But somehow, I still felt responsible. Maybe it was because she had only gone to that stupid frat party and slept with that guy because I had broken up with her. Maybe it was because I still loved her, no matter how stupid and reckless she could be. I still cared about her, and I still worried about her, so I cried.

  To give myself something to do besides worry, I started getting up and getting ready for school. First, I shut off my alarm, since I was already awake. Then I went into the bathroom. I caught a glance of myself in the mirror and was shocked by what I saw. My eyes were red and glassy; my face was puffy. I looked like a mess, and I certainly felt like one, too.

  I quickly turned on the shower, pushing the handle as far as it would go to the left. Some people use cold water to wake themselves up, but I found that when I was feeling especially anxious, the warm water helped more. It felt like a big warm hug, and I had found that the steam cleansed me and made everything seem to be a little bit better. With the warm water washing over me, my thoughts slowed to a pace I could finally keep up with. As I ran my hands through my hair, untangling my curly tresses, I felt as though I was untangling the situation that was unfolding.

  As I hopped out of the shower, the silence of the early morning brought me solitude and peace. I thought about Lexi, but not about the mistake she was making. Instead, I thought about what she meant to me. I thought about how much I still loved her, how much I missed her, and how much I wanted to be a part of her life. She was important to me, there was no denying that. I wished that the situation was different. I wished that I had never dumped her, and that she had never gotten pregnant. Then everything would have been okay. Then everything would have stayed normal.

  Of course, wishes don't come true. I couldn't undo my mistakes, and she couldn't undo hers. I sighed, tired of working this through in my mind, and exhausted from my lack of sleep. I exited the bathroom and walked down the hall to my mom's room. I knocked on the door, and she told me to come in.

  "Mom," I said, in a quiet voice. "I think I'm sick. I don't think I can go to school today." I clutched at my stomach, feigning pain. She walked over to me and examined my lymph nodes.

  "Your glands aren't swollen, sweetie," she said. "Let me kiss your forehead and see if you're warm." She kissed my forehead, and I breathed a sigh of relief when she said, "You know, you do feel little warm. Do you think you can make it?" she asked me. I shook my head no, knowing that if I spoke I would begin to cry. She saw the tears welling up in my eyes and hugged me tight. "Oh baby," she said. "I wish I could make it all better." After a minute
she let go and said, "Why don't you go back to bed. I'll call the school and tell them you're too sick, okay?" I nodded, wiped the tears from my eyes, and left headed for my room, praying for the escape of sleep.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Lexi

  Emily left, and I was alone. I couldn't stand that she was so mad at me. She was my person. She had always been more than a girlfriend to me; she was the person I needed when I was sad, the person I wanted to talk to when I was excited, and the person I wanted to share my laughter with when I was happy. When she broke up with me, I was heartbroken beyond what I had anticipated, and the worst part was that she was the one I wanted to talk to about it. When I first found out that I was pregnant, my first thought was that I needed to call her. I needed her advice. I needed her back in my life.

  She wanted nothing to do with me, she had made that abundantly clear. I felt totally heartbroken all over again, only this time I was completely alone. There was no one that I could talk to about this. She was right about my parents; I knew that they would kick me out. Still, though, I knew that an abortion wouldn't fix it. They would hate that almost as much as the idea of having a pregnant sixteen-year-old. Maybe more. And besides, kicking out your child is far preferable to killing them before they've even had a chance to live. That much I knew for sure.

  Emily left when I was still on the ground, and apparently, I had fallen asleep there because when I opened my eyes, the room was bathed in bright sunlight.

  "Oh shit," I said, checking my watch. I was lucky, it was only 6:30, and the bus wouldn't come for another half hour. I hurriedly got ready for school, rushing around my room getting my school supplies in order, changing, and packing up my bag for the day. Then I ran downstairs to pack my lunch. I was moving so slowly that by the time I had finished it was time for me to be at the bus stop. Once there, I realized that I had entirely forgotten to use the bathroom, brush my teeth, or brush my hair. I worked out my phone, put my camera on selfie mode, and checked my hair, teeth, and skin for imperfections. I was breaking out, but honestly that was nothing new, and there was nothing I could do about it on the school bus. My teeth seemed okay, although my breath was a little bit smelly. I rummaged around in my backpack for a mint and popped it in my mouth. My hair was a mess, because what else was new, so I gathered it together and tied it up into a tight braid to keep it from getting worse and keep it out of my face. Just then, Jessica, the other kid at my bus stop came by.