by Wilde, Ora
Third, I should tell Finn before he would expect more from me. But how? Does he deserve to know who the father is?
Thinking about those things made me realize another problem that might potentially come up... one that was far more harrowing than the others...
What if Nash doesn’t want me to keep this baby?
The question lingered in my head, so much so that I became detached and listless as I left the restroom and started to walk back to my class.
So detached and listless that I didn’t even notice the girl who was entering the restroom just as I was about to exit it.
I bumped into her with so much force that a loud thud echoed within the confines of the room. I lost grip of my handbag and it fell on the floor, spilling its contents on the ground.
I picked up my things as quickly as I could, apologizing profusely to the girl I collided with, without looking at her face.
“Oh, it’s alright, dearest,” she said, seemingly with a mocking tone. “I’m sure that’s the least of your worries these days.”
I looked up and saw who she was.
Tall, tanned, big breasts, slender and shapely legs, and a neatly-styled ponytail...
Kyla Sanders.
The school’s resident bitch. The girl who tried to steal Finn away from me. The girl who wanted me out of the cheerleading squad. The girl who has always tormented me with her cryptic messages about Finn and Jaynie’s secret affair.
I hated her.
Ever since.
But I never had the courage to confront her.
So I just finished collecting my things and stuffed them inside my bag. I got up and walked away as soon as I could without even bothering to look at her again.
“Be seeing you around, Andrea,” she jeeringly said as I turned left on the bend at the end of the corridor.
I got back to my seat just in time for a discussion on the Cold War in the eighties. I looked around and saw that no one was really listening to Mrs. Thurman. Everyone in the room was busy... fiddling with their phones... chatting silently with their seat mates... exchanging notes... dozing off...
I took that time to arrange the things that I hurriedly thrusted in my bag.
My purse, check. My lipstick, check. My comb, check. My mirror, check. Some gasoline receipts that dad promised to reimburse, check. My water container which I forgot to wash, check. A small notebook to jot down the things that I don’t want to forget, check. My cellphone, check. The pregnancy test stick with two red lines...
Oh my God...
It was missing...
16
A New Acquaintance
Where was it?
I have asked myself that question countless times the past two days.
It should’ve been a simple matter... a used pregnancy test that many people would’ve just thrown in the trash after it has served its purpose. But things weren’t that uncomplicated. The result was positive... something that was quite devastating for me and utterly humiliating if someone else found out. I lost it in school. IN SCHOOL! In an area populated by people who know me! And I wasn’t ready for them to find out that I’ve been knocked up. There have been no cases of teenage pregnancy in my batch. Well... there was Althea Carter who dropped out before junior year... but no one was really sure about her condition. All we ever heard about her were gossips and hearsay at a time she was already gone.
I tried to comfort myself with the thought that it was just a pregnancy stick. No one would know that it was mine. It’s not as if they’d run a finger print scan on the damn thing and match it with a database somewhere. My life wasn’t an episode of CSI. Reality was so much more... archaic.
Nevertheless, the whereabouts of that missing pregnancy stick still bothered me that Wednesday afternoon as I was waiting for my stepmother outside Elmo’s Grocery Store. She texted me earlier, asking if it was alright for me to pick her up after school. Monthly supplies, she said, too many paper bags to carry.
I left my car at the parking lot and waited by the shed in front of the supermarket. I sat at a long metal bench fronting the main road. I looked at the vehicles passing by, ruminating about how my youth has come and gone like a breeze and how I had to grow up faster than I should to deal with the months ahead.
Then my thoughts went back to that pregnancy stick, and I cursed myself for being so stupid to lose it.
“Stick?” someone suddenly said behind me.
I was paralyzed in horror. I turned around to see who it was.
He was a decent-looking man, probably in his late twenties. He was wearing a moss green jacket and a black shirt underneath.
“Excuse me?” I asked, stunned by his question. I clutched my handbag near my chest in fear. Recent events have made me very wary of strangers.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he apologized as he grabbed something from the inside pocket of his jacket. It was a pack of cigarettes. “I meant... would you like a stick?”
“No, no...” I charily replied. “I don’t smoke.”
“Hmmm... sorry ‘bout that,” he remarked. He sat at the other end of the bench, a good three feet away from me, and lit up his cigarette.
What made him think that I was a smoker, I wondered?
I surreptitiously stole some glances at this intriguing man.
His face was quite attractive... in a rugged sort of way. A strong jawline, well-defined cheekbones, and a pair of blue eyes that could pierce through anyone’s soul. His hair - short, dark brown and messy - actually enhanced his roguish appeal. What made him somewhat mystifying, however, was the seeming gentleness in his voice, which was a stark contrast to his craggy good looks.
Then he turned his head towards me, catching me staring at him. My eyes widened in shock as I quickly tipped my head towards the opposite direction.
I wasn’t looking at him anymore... yet somehow... I felt him smiling at me.
“You’re probably wondering why I thought you smoked?” he asked. Some of his words slurred off his tongue as he was balancing the cigarette stick between his lips.
I tilted my head to face him.
“Actually, yes,” I answered. “I never smoked a single stick in my life.”
He just smiled at what I said. Then he fixed his gaze somewhere above me, protruding his lips as if they were trying to point at something that was there.
I got out of my seat, turned my head and looked up... then I saw it. A sign with words so clear that I couldn’t believe I missed them.
SMOKING AREA.
It was a face-palm moment and I ended up laughing at my own idiocy.
Surprisingly, he laughed with me, coughing in between as he might’ve inadvertently swallowed some smoke.
“Would it have been better if I just told you that I was a frustrated mindreader?” he asked in jest.
“I guess,” I said, “that would’ve saved me the embarrassment.” I tried my best to stifle a giggle.
He laughed once more.
It was then when Aunt Susan came out of the grocery, pushing a cart filled with packed items. I excused myself from his company, and went towards my car. I opened the trunk and waited for my stepmom to get there. We placed the groceries inside and prepared to leave. I waved at him to say goodbye, and he waved back with a wide beam.
Once inside the car, I turned the key.
Silence.
I pumped some gas, then turned the key once more.
And again, there was only silence.
“Uh-oh,” Aunt Susan muttered.
I clicked my tongue and tried to get it started for a third time. The same result greeted me.
“I think we have to call dad,” I told her.
She immediately got her phone from her bag and started to dial.
All of a sudden, someone tapped on my window. It was him. He flicked away his cigarette and puffed out the remaining smoke in his lungs. I opened the door - because the power windows have been broken since I got the car - and he started to speak.
“Problem?” he
asked.
“Yeah. The car won’t start,” I answered.
“The engine’s not responding?” he tried to clarify.
“Yep. Not at all. Not even a single bit.”
“Manual transmission?”
“‘Matic. Is there a difference on how to fix it?”
“A world of difference,” he said. “You’ve got a dead battery. Not really dead, though, just... asleep. Wait for me here. I’ll go get my truck.”
He darted off towards the other end of the parking lot. A few minutes later, a Ford pickup pulled up behind our car. He went out of his vehicle, carrying some thick cables. Then he opened his hood and attached one end to his battery. He ran towards us carrying the other end of the cord.
“Open your hood,” he instructed, still smiling.
I did.
He bent over to reach for something near the engine, then he got up and gave me the thumbs up sign.
“Let her rip,” he barked.
I turned the key and the engine roared back to life.
He quickly pulled out his cable and returned it to his truck.
“Wow!” I remarked. “That was amazing!”
“Heh!” he dismissed my awe. “Basic stuff. You would’ve learned it yourself if your car... well... broke down more frequently... just as much as my truck has.”
“Well, thank you so much for your help!” I told him. “Be seeing you around the area!”
“You sure will,” he said with that rather disarming smile.
A few minutes later, when we have exited Lincoln Highway, Aunt Susan decided to share her observation.
“What a nice man,” she enthused.
“He sure was!” I agreed.
“What’s his name?”
What’s his name? After all the help he has extended - not to mention how he made me laugh despite the emotional wreck I have been the past month - I couldn’t believe I forgot to ask for his name.
“I dunno,” I answered. “I didn’t get around to ask.”
“Sad,” she replied. “We could’ve used his help...”
“His help?”
“Yes. Just in case the car broke down again.”
We laughed at her comment until we reached our house. It was a refreshing afternoon, after days of sorrow. The things that happened... they made me forget about the stress and the problems I had to confront in the coming days.
But one thing seemed to bother me as we entered our home with the paper bags filled with groceries.
Something about that guy’s name...
Something I knew I should be worried about, but I couldn’t really pinpoint why...
I didn’t get the chance to ask for his name... but I did manage to read a name tag strewn on the left pocket of his jacket.
No, no... It wasn’t a name, though. It might not even be related to him. It was just a word... a rather common word...
A simple word that somehow... somehow... caused me to be perturbed.
General.
17
Revelations
A knock on the window.
I didn’t have to look at the source. I knew that there was a man outside sitting precariously on the sill. I didn’t have to check who it was. I knew it was him.
And it was about damn time that he came.
Five days.
It has been five days since the incident at Linda’s Round-The-Clock Convenience Store. It has been five days since he got arrested for a robbery he pulled out of at the last second. It has been five days since he punched the guy whose father just saved him from serving some jail time.
Is he really the kind of father I want for my unborn child?
Someone who spends more time away from me than with me?
Someone whose presence is as erratic as Shia Labeouf’s periods of sanity?
I gave him a cold stare. He looked at me with sullen eyes, wondering whether I would open the window for him. I just gazed at him for a minute or so. I wanted him to wait. I wanted him to feel how it was like to be uncertain about something. I wanted him to know how disappointed and frustrated I was with him.
I finally stood up and approached the man outside who, at that time, seemed like a stranger to me. I pulled up the glass pane. He greeted me with a smile.
“Mad, huh?” he uttered.
That was all he could say?
After making me wait for five days after the hell we’ve been through, that was all he could come up with?
I got so angry that I wanted to push him off the small ledge he was balancing on. Instead, I just walked away and sat on my bed.
He didn’t wait for my invitation. He leapt inside my room and went to me. He sat by my side and sighed.
“I guess we have to talk,” he said.
Guess? Was he really that callous? Was I merely blinded by a misguided sense of affection - and most probably, lust - that I didn’t realize that before?
“Yes,” I frigidly answered him. “We have a lot to talk about. But then, you might just act all mysterious again and say ‘ooohhh Andrea, I have to go, it’s for the better’ and run off to God knows where.”
He bowed his head and fiddled with his fingers, resigned to the fact that what I said was true.
“We have the entire night,” he spoke. “I won’t leave until we get this sorted out.”
I took that as my cue to ask the questions that have been bothering me since I saw him bloodied and bruised a month ago.
“Who are you?” I questioned, looking at his face... sad and ashamed and defeated, yet his handsome features still shone brightly even in the darkness of my room.
“What do you mean?” he replied, perplexed.
“Who are you, Nash?” I repeated. “I know so little about you. And all these things you’re involved with... all your questionable activities... all your sneaking in and out of every single place in this city... they just make me doubt if you’re the Nash I really know.”
He looked at me, his deep-set eyes burdened with sorrow and regret but brimming with sincerity. He pulled up his hood and his hair fell over his face, concealing those very eyes that would’ve given me more hints about the struggle he was waging within him.
“I... have made some very bad choices, Andrea...” he started to say. “A year ago, I joined a group. They gave me something that I never had before... something that I didn’t even know I wanted... something I didn’t even know I needed.”
“What’s that? Friendship?” I asked.
“No. Acceptance,” he succinctly answered.
I found that hard to believe. I wanted to tell him that if all that he needed was acceptance, then he shouldn’t have looked anywhere else. We, his family... his own family... fully accepted him for who he was. Never did he hear anyone of us complain about his dubious behavior, nor his quirks, nor his moods. He didn’t have to look elsewhere. We were, as we still are, always there for him.
But I stopped myself from speaking my mind. I wanted him to share what he wanted to share as freely as he could. I kept silent and allowed him to continue.
“They treated me like their equal,” he said. “They never judged me. They were there when I needed them. And I didn’t have to force myself to be there when they needed me.”
“They sound like good friends,” I remarked.
“Friends?” he queried. “They aren’t my friends. They never were. Once, we called ourselves brothers. And I believed that. Brothers bound by fate stronger than blood, they always proclaimed. There was a time when I held on to that belief... as if I carved those words on my heart.”
“You’re speaking in the past tense,” I shared my observation. “What happened? What changed?”
“Everything.” His answer was resolute. “They did things... bad things... very bad things... things that I didn’t approve of... things that I didn’t believe in...” He struggled with his words, agonizing over the memories that he was compelled to remember.
“What things? Like robbing convenience stores and shootin
g old, defenseless women?” I tried to confirm as my rage was beginning to possess me.
“That wasn’t part of the plan,” he said defensively. “We were just supposed to rob that store. We weren’t supposed to draw our guns.”