Annie's Baby

by Beatrice Sparks

  Annie’s Baby

  The Diary of Anonymous, a Pregnant Teenager

  Edited by Beatrice Sparks, Ph.D.

  The PAST will forever be

  a part of my PRESENT as

  well as my FUTURE.

  —Annie

  Contents

  Epigraph

  Foreword

  Begin Reading

  Questions from Teenagers about Pregnancy and STDs

  Statistics

  Violence

  Crisis and Information Hotline numbers

  Abstinence

  Excerpt from FINDING KATIE

  About the Editor

  Other Books Edited by Beatrice Sparks, Ph.D.

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Foreword

  Dear Reader:

  I suspect you think that Annie’s problems are not your problems, that there is no way you would allow a boy to control your life…your entire future! But…whoa…wasn’t that exactly the way

  “ANONYMOUS ANNIE

  14 years old and pregnant”

  felt before she met Danny? We should all love and respect Annie for consenting to share her most private thoughts and experiences in the hope that they will help you make wiser decisions in your life, FOR THE DECISIONS ARE UP TO YOU! I can’t make them for you, your parents can’t, your teachers can’t, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t! ONLY YOU! It is an awesome responsibility but I’m smiling, for Annie assures me you can do it! I know you can, too!

  —Dr. B (Beatrice Sparks)

  Begin Reading

  September 11, Monday

  I can’t believe I woke up this morning and it was an ordinary day: Take a shower, brush my teeth, clean my room, slap a last-minute polish on my (due yesterday) science paper, do the breakfast dishes, empty garbage, etc….then WOW…WHAMMY…CRASH…BANG…

  Me! Limping off the soccer field all smelly and bruised and battered and stuff after my Volkswagen bug-diesel-truck collision with Mountain Marion Martin. I was streaked with grassy dirt, trying to push my sweaty, limp hair out of my face, and rubbing a big “owie” under my right eye. Actually, I was feeling generally like Humpty Dumpty, when HE…came running toward the football field, suited up like a regular NFL star and gorgeous as Brad Pitt, even gorgeouser…is that a word? If it isn’t, it should be!

  Anyway, he ground to a stop right in front of me like an airplane coming down the runway for a landing and said, “Hi. Should I ask how you’re doin’?” Ordinary me looked around to see who he was talking to. He tapped my shoulder and started laughing. I couldn’t help laughing with him. Usually I’m…you know, really uncomfortable around boys, except the guys who are my buddies, male slugs I’ve grown up with. But him! Wow! Now I guess I know what hormones are!! They seemed like a strange idea in health class, but then and there—KA-POWIE—I felt like a stick of dynamite had blown up inside me.

  I remember every word the gorgeously gorgeous one said. Actually, they are each forever engraved in my memory and mind for posterity! He said, “I’m new here, and…I’m looking for a friend. A sort of, not embarrassed to be”—he snickered—“sweaty, sporty sort of friend.” He looked past my grungy, stringy bangs into the very deepest part of my heart and brain, and my whole body and soul smiled back at him.

  The guys on the field began yelling. As he ran off, he whispered very slowly, in a kind of husky whisper, as though it were a sacred secret, “‘Bye, friend.”

  I’m lying here on my bed going over and over and over the awesomeness of it all. HE wants me to be his friend! I want to be! I really do want to be! More than I’ve ever wanted anything in the world in my whole life!

  September 12, Tuesday

  6:32 a.m.

  I got up before it was even light outside—(me! Who sometimes doesn’t even hear my alarm clock go off)—showered, washed my hair and curled it on hot rods, used some of Mom’s face mask, and tried on everything in my closet. I’ve got to look my very best today! I know he said he wants a “sweaty, sporty sort of friend,” but I’m sure he wants a girl who sometimes looks like a girl’s supposed to look too, at least I hope with all my heart he does. Oh please, please make him not want to see me looking my sweaty, dirty tomboy worst like he did last time.

  4:21 p.m.

  All day long, every time I had a chance, I prowled up and down the halls hoping I’d see him somewhere, but it’s a big school. I wonder if he’s been looking for me? Maybe going down the East hall while I’m going down the West one. (I can’t believe I don’t even know his name.) Maybe he’s sick or was in an accident or something! That’s dumb!

  Wasn’t that a crazy dream last night when I visioned us playing tennis together and me letting him win! Not likely! Mrs. Raynor says if we had a team here at middle school, I’d for sure be its captain.

  Ummm…I wonder if I would let him win because of the hormones and the macho thing?

  And…I guess I might as well face it; maybe he says to every girl what he said to me. I couldn’t bear that! But I guess I could; maybe I’ll have to. Ouch! That really hurts! It hurts, but it could be reality too. Goodness knows it happens often enough on TV and I’ve never really had a boyfriend before. I mean, no one ever seemed to like me that way…maybe it’s just the way I want him to like me.

  6:59 p.m.

  Jenny called. She and Deanna were going to the mall, but I said I didn’t feel like it. I’d rather just sit here and feel sorry for myself. I wish I hadn’t told her how mushed I am about him. It makes me seem like a real nutcase, nerd, dweeb. Besides I wanted to just happen to rollerblade past the deserted schoolfield and the park and stuff…just in case…

  I was out for about an hour and a half but no sightings. Poor me.

  September 14, Thursday

  4:42 p.m.

  I’m trying to get over him. But it’s not really getting over him! It’s kind of like it was a dream or movie, or some other repeating and repeating stupid, idiotic thing. I can’t believe something like this can make me feel so completely world-shatteringly, darkly empty.

  September 19, Tuesday

  4:17 p.m.

  I used to write almost every day. Now there doesn’t seem to be anything worth writing about.

  September 21, Thursday

  4:50 p.m.

  Radder than rad news! Molly and I were coming off the soccer field, pushing each other and being silly, when I felt someone come up behind me and put their hands over my eyes. My heart literally flopped; I wanted it to be him so much, but I thought it was probably Mel or one of the other guys in one of my classes. But it was him! It was!

  He took my shoulders and turned me around. “Hi, friend.”

  I blubbered back, “Hi, friend.”

  The world started turning in a completely different orbit as he told me his name was Daniel, but I should call him Danny, and that he’d been looking for me all week. It was like we were the characters in the Indian story Ramona, our paths almost crossing but just barely missing, at least for the longest week in my life. Both of us looking for each other like our lives depended upon it. At least that’s how I felt.

  Danny asked if I wanted a ride home after school. IMAGINE me in the raddest boy in the world’s 1982 red Mustang convertible—just him and me! I still have trouble breathing just thinking about it.

  The bad part is that he had to bring me home, drop me off, and get right back to work. Oh, I guess I didn’t tell you that his dad bought the Four Seasons Restaurant on the corner of Hill and Elm. It’s the really classy place with a huge waterfall in the entrance. Anyway, the best part is, he asked me to go to a movie Saturday. Isn’t that the coolest, sweetest, most awesome thing that has ever happened in creation? Mom would die if she knew, but what she doesn’t know won’t
hurt her.

  September 22, Friday

  4:29 a.m.

  I can’t wait! I can’t wait! I can’t wait! I prowled the halls like a banshee between classes, but Danny has become part of the air I breathe or something, and invisible. I’m scared witless that I won’t be able to talk to him when we do have some time together! I’m such a “duh” sometimes, especially around boys. Especially boys I like. Especially a boy I really, really like.

  Danny’s dad must be superrich to give him his own sweet convertible, as well as to buy the restaurant and big old Pederson house on the river. He said his parents are divorced, and his mother lives in New York. She’s probably someone beautiful, powerful, and famous.

  My dad just grayly disappeared after their divorce when I was five. The only thing I vividly remember about him is my mom telling my aunt once that he “moved from job to job to job looking for money like a bee flits from flower to flower to flower looking for honey.” I remember thinking about that a lot.

  Mom and I are both so ordinary, everyday, like everybody else. Maybe I’ll seem too ordinary, everyday, and like everybody else to him. I don’t want that! I want him to think I’m very, very special! Like a princess or a movie star or a…I don’t know…I just want to be more than plain me! Could plain me possibly be good enough for awesome him? I do, do, do, do hope he will like me when he gets to know me. Will he? I’m not all that pretty, and I’m not all that smart, and our apartment is nice, but it isn’t like the big old Pederson house. Hmm, well, I was the attending Rose princess at last year’s Rose Festival. Does that count?

  Be quiet my shivering, insecure heart. Like Aunt Martha told me once: “We’re worth what we think we’re worth in life, and if we think we’re worth two cents people will treat us like we’re worth two cents!” I’m worth a whole lot more than that! Especially to my mom, who has to have good sense to be chosen the teacher of the year at her high school, so there, little nobody, no self-confidence person!

  Well…ah…just to be sure Mom doesn’t find out, maybe I better meet Danny in the mall, at the Gap, where Sally, my neighbor, works. I know everybody there and they treat me like I’m special, even when I don’t buy anything. That should be cool and impress him. Hey, wait a minute; either he’ll like me for me or not at all. Right?

  But…mmmm…maybe it would be best to call Danny at the restaurant and tell him to meet me at Jenny’s. Mom would have a dizzy-fizzy if she thought…you know…she’s soooo old-fashioned. She thinks fourteen-year-olds are babies, and that at middle school we ought to still be playing in sandboxes and making mud pies. Jenny’s mom is much, much more open-minded; at least she is when she’s home, which is practically never.

  4:40 a.m.

  I’m so excited, I can’t sleep and I must. I can just see Danny picking me up, and I’ll have these humongous dark circles under my eyes and red eyes like a vampire. Uggg, not that! I’ve got to look and act and be my very, very, very, very best! So good night dear friend diary.

  P.S. I’ve never been soooo happy in my whole life!!! Guess what makes me sooooo happy—Him!! Danny! I love that name.

  September 23, Saturday

  11:41 p.m.

  You can’t even imagine what a wonderful, marvelous, rad, joyous, sweet, happy time I had with Danny. He’s not like any other boy I’ve ever dated. Ha…that’s funny because I’ve never had a date before. Oh, I’ve walked through the park with Jerry Mills and gone skating with Bon and her two brothers and stuff but…well…this was like…like life on another planet in another sphere. Honestly, you can’t even imagine how glorious it was.

  I wasn’t the least bit scared or tense or anything from the very first. Because HE made sure I wouldn’t be. He came to Jenny’s door, and at first I felt weird, like I was strung tight as my tennis racket or something. Then he looked right into my eyes…and heart…and said, “Hi, fellow sports nut. You look yummy and nummy out of your wrinkled, sweaty uniform.”

  I opened my mouth and my brains fell out. “And…you smell sweet for a change.”

  He punched me gently on the shoulder and laughed. “It’s Ralph Lauren’s latest, ‘Old Tennis Shoes’ cologne.”

  For some crazy-mixed-up reason that made me feel comfortable as a warm, curled-up cat being petted. And talking to him wasn’t hard either. But maybe that was because he, thank goodness, did most of the talking. Oh, you would love him Diary, honest you would. He’s had such a hard, miserable life. I thought he had everything important. The beautiful house so big it looks like a castle, and the lawns and gardens like a park, and his successful dad, and his sweeter than sweet car! But he’s taught me that things aren’t everything! Parked up by Pebble Creek, he told me secrets that no one else knows. He said he needed someone like me to talk to. I was so flattered, I thought I was going to melt. He confided in me that he’s sixteen! And he’s over a year behind in school because two years ago he was in a horrible car accident. He was in a coma for two whole months. Then he was in traction and rehab for two more months. I just cried and cried when he told me, and we hugged each other like two little lost kids. I felt so honored that he would share his pain with me, and I know that it was good for him to have someone to unburden his soul upon.

  He called me an “Earth Angel.” And I think I’m going to commit myself completely to being just that for him, no matter what!

  I’m so glad I lied to Mom about going out with him. I know I shouldn’t be, but she’s strong and mature and all that, and doesn’t need a support system like Danny does. We got a dose of the support system importance in mental health class, and I’m grateful for that because now I’ll be able to support Danny, at least some. Honestly, I do feel kind of bad about lying to Mom, but I know she wouldn’t understand me and Danny “bonding” so quickly. That’s another mental health class word, and age has nothing to do with “bonding,” no matter what she or anybody else thinks.

  I know this sounds completely out-there in the cosmic-cosmic since I’ve only talked to Danny at school and on the phone and been out with him once, but always and forever, I will be concerned about him, even when I’m old and gray and I have children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren; even if he marries someone else, and I marry someone else.

  I will remember after death the wind blowing through my hair and Danny’s strong arms holding me so close, I was almost part of him. He said I warmed up the “hurting coldness” in him that he’d always felt before. That made the little bright smolderings in my heart flame brighter and brighter, and made them feel righter and righter! I know that’s not grammatically correct, but it was all right and RIGHT! And it made then, and makes now, perfect sense to me! That’s all that counts! No matter what Mom or anyone else says!

  Our particular spot by the side of Pebble Creek, with the full moon filtering through the leaves, making lacy patterns on everything, will ever be special to me…no, not special, SACRED, in some, I can’t explain, way!

  We didn’t…go very far…but…everything in creation seemed…like new…and wonderfully US and right and kind of…forever together, unbreakable, unshakeable!

  We missed the whole movie, but actually, in a way we were a movie as we talked and walked along the side of our winding little stream. Twinkling stars sagged through the velvet black night watching over us. We threw rocks in the water to see their silver splashes and chased each other, often falling down in the meadows of sweet grasses and flowers. Once Danny climbed a tree and played Tarzan while I played Jane. It was amazing how free and completely unrestricted and “really me” I felt.

  I know I can help Danny. I want to so much. He needs to heal from all the agony he’s suffered. To feel well and safe again. I know I can help him by just always being there for him and for always being, as Mom says, his “EGO BOOSTER!” Who would ever have thought that big jock Danny would ever need simple, ordinary old Annie me?

  The fact that he’s over a year behind in school is very hard on him, I’m sure. He didn’t mention it, but I just know some mach
o inner part of him feels…I don’t know…kind of embarrassed or hurt…but it will be better now because I’m going to dedicate my life to helping him know that he’s all the wonderful, marvelous things he is! At last, and for a change, Mom’s teachings and preachings about the importance of self-confidence are going to come in handy.

  I don’t want anything or anyone to ever hurt him again. And I’m soooo glad we got distracted and didn’t go to the movie.

  September 24, Sunday

  2:14 a.m.

  I just had a miserable, horrible nightmare dream of dear Danny struggling to stay upright in his “walker” and going through excruciating therapy as he tried to rebuild his shattered life. I vow…I really do deeply and sincerely vow that in the future I will do everything possible to make him feel forever important, powerful, and loved. We won’t be like the other silly, dweeby couples around school. We’ll be truly special, because of his tragedy, especially because of the very, very specialness of his sharing his tragedy with me.

  Sorry I’m wetting your pages with tears, dear Diary, but I can’t help it.

  “Oh sleep take me into thy loving arms that I may dream of my newfound love.”

  Annie William Shakespeare

  A++++ student in Miss Turner’s

  composition class

  (I wish)

  September 27, Wednesday

  4:21 p.m.

  Sorry I haven’t talked with you for a while, but it’s like part of the time I’m a different person on a different planet in a different sphere. I know that sounds kadoodley, but it’s really how I feel…it’s like…well, for instance, Danny and I had lunch together and the regular cafeteria turkey and noodles tasted like the ambrosia of the gods (Mom’s expression for the tastiest of the tasty). After lunch Danny teased me because I don’t want Mom to know about him. He does that because it kadoodles me so much. Danny loves the word “kadoodle,” but it’s so childishly silly, I try not to use it. Sorry to say, it slips out anyway, and for some reason it always makes us crack up and laugh like two loony balloonies. I’m making up my own words again.