by Lila Moore
“Do you always drink when you’re pregnant?” Sledge asked Astrid.
“Not always.”
I kicked Astrid under the table.
Sledge frowned. “What’s really going on here?”
“She’s drunk.” “I’m knocked up.” Astrid and I said at the same time.
“I should take you home,” I said.
“I’ll drive you,” Sledge announced.
“No, we’ll take an Uber. Thanks though.”
I didn’t want to get into a car with Sledge and have to deal with his suspicions. He wasn’t stupid; he definitely knew there was more to the story. What if he started to investigate? What if he talked to Chick? I needed to talk to him as soon as possible.
I stood up pushing my chair back hard. I grabbed Astrid’s elbow and pulled her to her feet.
“Hey!” she said, clinging to her drink.
“We’re going,” I said harshly.
I dragged her from the bar as quickly as I could. I expected Sledge to chase after us. Thankfully, he didn’t, though the fact that he stayed behind made me even more suspicious. He was on to me. It was only a matter of time before he learned the truth.
11
“What the hell was that?” I demanded.
Astrid collapsed onto her bed. “What are you talking about?”
“I was trying to give you an out back there. You could have come up with a hundred different lies to explain away a pregnancy misunderstanding, but you decided to run with the lie and be a drama queen. Did you really think anyone was buying those tears? You were so over the top. It was obvious you were faking.”
“Harley believed it.”
“Sledge didn’t. Now he’s suspicious.”
“So? Just call him up. Flirt with him. Tell him how you can’t get the image of him sweaty and naked out of your head. He’ll forget all about his suspicions and run over here to fuck you.”
“You’re impossible.”
“I’m practical.”
“Go to sleep. You’re drunk.”
“Yes, mother.”
Astrid pulled the covers over her head. I was going to kill Chick. The idiot had almost exposed me. I needed to talk to him. I pulled out my phone and found Chick’s Facebook page. I sent him a private message. ‘Call me immediately. We need to talk.’ I included my number.
I got ready for bed, but couldn’t sleep. I pulled out my phone and checked out the message boards.
‘Exclusive: Bobby Ellis, pregnant!’ A headline screamed. I sat straight up in bed. They’d spelled my name wrong, but they’d identified me. I opened the link.
‘Reliable sources. Bobby is pregnant. Everyone in the locker room heard it.’
A second comment said: ‘Can confirm. Harley and Sledge got into a huge fight. They don’t know who the father is. Sledge beat the shit out of Harley. He may not be able to finish the rest of the season.’
‘I’ll kill her if it’s true! What’s with this girl does she have some kind of magic pussy that she can score both Sledge AND Harley? It’s not fair. This has to be fake. I’m calling bullshit. The original poster is just making shit up,’ a third commenter said.
Somehow these girls had sources inside the locker room. Was one of them sleeping with a player? Maybe they were friends? It was odd. They knew that Sledge and Harley had been in a fight, but they got all the details wrong. That’s the way gossip spreads though. There’s usually some truth at the heart of it all, but by the time it spreads around the story has been twisted to ridiculous proportions.
I scrolled through the comments. The post had gone live ten minutes ago and there was already over a hundred comments and growing. I spent hours lying in bed reading them as they were posted. I’d apparently been positively identified earlier in the day. The dedicated members of the message board had spent all day trying to dig up dirt on me. They hadn’t found anything except for a Facebook page that I rarely use.
They’d contacted someone who claimed to have gone to high school with me and Sledge. This person went on and on about how Sledge and I fucked like rabbits. According to her, we’d been caught fucking in the locker room, in the gym, in the chem lab, and other places. It was ridiculous of course. For once, the other board members weren’t buying it. They immediately called bullshit on the girl and she was banned.
In the earlier thread, everyone was disappointed. They wanted dirty on me and they’d uncovered nothing. A few of the commenters actually seemed happy for me. They saw it as a win for regular girls. It’s not often a famous athlete hooks up with a normal girl. But now that they believed me to be pregnant, they turned against me.
‘Slut! Hate her.’
‘I’m cackling right now. I love how jealous you bitches are,’ a user replied.
There was speculation about how far along I was, and who the father could be. They pieced together a timeline. They were convinced that I’d only recently started hooking up with Sledge. They provided evidence that Harley had been out of town for the last six weeks, meaning Sledge had to be the father. The posters were positive they were correct.
It was mortifying and more than a little surreal. These strangers on the internet talked about me like they knew me. It was creepy.
Around three o’clock in the morning, I finally managed to turn off my phone. The internet postings had left me feeling dizzy and worst of all, Chick hadn’t called.
What if someone saw these insane ramblings and thought they were true? I took out my phone and opened Google. I searched for my name. The first result was a link to the message board declaring me pregnant. I groaned and turned off the phone. My parents never used the internet, but plenty of people back home did. It was only a matter of time before internet gossip found its way into the real world.
12
I woke to Astrid shaking me. “Wake up, Bobbi,” she whispered.
I rubbed my eyes and glanced at the clock. It was eleven. I’d overslept and missed my first class.
“Shit.”
Astrid clapped her hand over my mouth and said: “Shh.”
I narrowed my eyes. A fist pounded on our door. There were angry shouts in Russian. Svetlana. What was she doing here?
“Open the door,” she said in a heavily accented roar. “I know you are in there. You cannot fool me.”
An angry string of what I assumed were Russian insults followed, then silence.
“Maybe she’s gone?” I whispered.
I slipped out of bed and tiptoed to the door. I looked out the peephole. She was standing in the hall talking to the Resident Advisor. He leaned against the wall coolly. Svetlana threw her head back and laughed at something he said. Her hand rested on his chest. She ran her fingers along the collar of his shirt, then pointed to our door.
The Resident Advisor hesitated, then seemed to agree to something. He walked off down the hall. Svetlana stayed where she was. I turned back to Astrid and shrugged. I had no idea what was going on. A few minutes later the resident advisor walked up to our door with Svetlana in tow. He had a set of keys in hand. My stomach dropped. He slid a master key into our door and opened it. He jumped back when he saw me standing there. I could tell he was expecting the room to be empty.
“Oh, um, I was just checking in. I thought there might be a problem,” he said.
Svetlana pushed him aside and stormed into our dorm room. She slammed the door shut behind her. Astrid and I took a step back. Svetlana spat something at me in Russian.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
She pushed me hard against the wall. The force knocked my books off the top of my desk.
“Pregnant.”
She pushed me again. Astrid grabbed her around the neck, but Svetlana was too strong. She turned at hit Astrid, sending her flying back onto my bed. Svetlana weighed next to nothing, but she was strong. She pinned my shoulders to the wall.
“I’m not pregnant!” I yelled.
“No? I will see to that.”
She grabbed me by the hair and dragged
me from the dorm room. I screamed as she led me down the hallway to the staircase. We walked right past the Resident Advisor who looked like a deer in the headlights. He would be no help to me.
Svetlana kicked open the door to the stairway. Suddenly, I knew what she was planning to do. The crazy bitch was going to throw me down the stairs. Astrid came running down the hallway and plowed into Svetlana. The force of her blow wasn’t enough to knock Svetlana off her feet, but it threw her off balance long enough for me to slip out of her grip.
I turned, balled my hand into a fist and hit her as hard as I could. I’ve never been in a fight before. My hand hurt like hell. She staggered backwards, losing her balance. She teetered dangerously on the edge of the stairs. I reached for her, but I was too slow. She fell backwards down the stairs. It happened quickly. She was nothing but a mess of limbs, twisting and turning over and over. I heard a sickening crunch as she came to a rest at the bottom.
“Oh my God… oh my God…” I yelled.
I ran down the stairs and fell at her side. I pushed her hair out of her face. She blinked with confusion. Slowly reality came back to her. Her eyes narrowed and her mouth became a straight angry line. She tried to push herself up, as if she wasn’t done fighting. She screamed in pain. Her hands were bloody and her top was torn.
At first I thought she’d broken a collarbone, then I saw the bone protruding from her jeans. Her leg was twisted at a sick angle. Blood started to soak her pants. The Resident Advisor stood at the top of the stairs, wide-eyed with fear.
“Call an ambulance,” I said. He didn’t move.
“You pushed her.”
“No!”
“She did,” Svetlana said icily.
“You saw her attack me,” I snapped at the RA.
She was going to the throw me down the stairs because she thinks I’m carrying her boyfriend’s baby. She’s batshit crazy.”
“I don’t know…”
“You don’t know?” I replied sarcastically. “I know one thing. You got the master set of keys and entered my dorm room without my permission. You were going to let a stranger into my room because you wanted to fuck her. How well do you think that’s going to go over with the university? That’s the kind of thing that can get you kicked out of school.”
I wasn’t sure if this was true, but my RA’s eyes grew wide with fear.
“Okay, okay,” he said. “I didn’t see anything.”
Svetlana scowled. “I will tell the police you pushed me.”
“Tell them whatever you want,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “There are cameras all over this place. All they have to do is pull up the security footage to learn the truth.”
Again, I had no idea if this was true. The dorm was pretty old and run down. The management was slow to fix problems. I doubted there were security cameras, but Svetlana didn’t know that.
“If you knew what was good for you, you’d keep your mouth shut,” Astrid said, joining me.
Svetlana cursed under her breath. The pain must have been excruciating, but she never cried. She gritted her teeth and fought through it. The RA called 911 and told them someone had fallen down the stairs. When the paramedics arrived, Svetlana kept her mouth shut. They asked her what happened to which she replied in Russian. I suspected she told them I pushed her, but they didn’t speak Russian.
“She tripped and fell,” Astrid said.
They loaded Svetlana onto a stretcher and took her away. I ran a hand through my hair and followed Astrid back to our room. I collapsed on the bed. It was almost noon. I had class in fifteen minutes. I wanted to go back to bed, but I decided to carry on with the day. I dressed quickly, grabbed my bag and headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” Astrid asked.
“Class.”
“Damn, you’re ice cold.”
“What do you mean?”
“You punched that bitch so hard she fell down the stairs and broke her leg. Now you’re just heading off to class like nothing happened,” she said with a smile. Clearly, she was impressed. “I mean, I’m not saying she didn’t deserve it… I’m just saying I’ve never seen this side of your personality before.”
“To be honest, I didn’t know I had it in me.”
Astrid’s smile brightened. “Y’know, I think you’re going to do just fine on your own.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You’re much stronger than you realize.”
I shrugged and headed out the door. I took the elevator down. I didn’t want to see the stairway. Maybe I was stronger than I thought. I don’t know if I was ‘ice cold’ but I wasn’t going to shed a tear over Svetlana. She thought I was pregnant and she wanted to throw me down the stairs. She’d never have my sympathy.
The lobby was abuzz. Everyone was talking about the girl who’d fallen down the stairs.
“I knew it was dangerous. I hope she sues,” a girl said. “To think it could have been me.”
Her friend ignored her.
“Do you understand? It could have been me,” she said again. She sounded ridiculous and her friend seemed to agree, because she continued to ignore her pleas for understanding.
I heard the word ‘supermodel’ from someone in the crowd. There was another side to this I hadn’t considered. Svetlana was famous. This was going to attract media attention. I kept my head down and headed to class.
When I returned the lobby was full of people. Everyone was talking at once about what happened. I listened in as I waited for the elevator. No one knew what a world famous supermodel was doing in our shitty dorm. A rumor swirled that Svetlana was hooking up with someone in the building. I rolled my eyes. Why would Svetlana want to sleep with a broke college student? She had a rich, hot athlete as a boyfriend.
The rumors were ridiculous. Still, it was better than the truth. I hoped they never found out.
I walked into my dorm room to find Astrid on her computer. “Where have you been?” she demanded.
“I told you, I went to class.”
“You’re missing everything.”
I leaned over to look at her computer screen. A window was open to the front page of a gossip site. A huge picture of Svetlana on the runway looking stunning accompanied a headline: ‘On Ice!’
The article talked about how she’d been visiting an old friend at the university when she took a tumble down the stairs, breaking her leg.
“The story’s bullshit, obviously,” Astrid said. “Her PR team probably leaked it to the site, so they wouldn’t go digging for the real story.”
I raised an eyebrow. “How do you know?”
“I like celebrity gossip. This sort of thing is common. Celebrities control their images by leaking stories to the tabloids. It’s all part of their PR hustle.”
My cell phone started to ring. I’d forgotten it when I went to class.
“It’s been ringing off the hook since you left,” Astrid said.
I picked it up and saw that I had eleven missed calls from Sledge and two from Chick. The caller ID said Sledge was calling me now. I debated hitting Ignore and calling Chick. It was important I talk some sense into him immediately. I felt too guilty to hit Ignore though. I cleared my throat and hoped Sledge hadn’t talked to Chick yet.
“Hello?”
“I’ve been trying to call you for an hour. Where are you?” Sledge said.
“I just got back from class. What’s up?”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
“Sorry? I don’t know what you mean.”
“Cut the shit, Bobbi. You know what I’m talking about.”
I paused. There were several things he could be addressing. Had he found out about our secret baby? Did he know my story about Astrid being pregnant was a lie?
“Svetlana is in the hospital,” he said with a frustrated sigh. “She was at your dorm. She fell down the stairs. What the hell is going on? Why was she visiting you?”
“Would you believe that we’ve become friends?”
“No.”
“I was joking…”
“What’s going on?”
“People are gossiping about what happened in the locker room last night. They heard Chick say that I was pregnant. Word got back to Svetlana. She came here to confront me.”
I wasn’t sure if I should tell him about Svetlana’s attempt to throw me down the stairs. I’d have to own up to the fact that the punch I threw caused her to fall. He might think I pushed her intentionally. I didn’t want her dead-hell, I didn’t even like seeing her with a broken leg-but would Sledge believe me?
“And?” he asked impatiently. “How did she wind up at the bottom of the stairs?”
I wondered if he’d spoken to Svetlana. Who knew what she would tell him. I decided the truth was best-for once.
“She was acting like a lunatic,” I started. “She came over here and accused me of carrying your baby. I denied it-obviously- but she didn’t believe me. She tried to throw me down the stairs. I punched her in the face and she stumbled backwards. I wasn’t trying to push her, it just happened.”
“Wait-she tried to throw you down the stairs?”
“She’s nuts.”
Sledge cursed under his breath.
“Sledge? Are you still there?”
“Yeah. Are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m fine. She didn’t hurt me, just scared me a little.”
“Okay. I’ve got to go.”
“Wait, where are you-”
The line went dead. I stared at the phone and considered calling him back.
“Was that Sledge?” Astrid asked.
“Yeah. He sounded funny.”
“Funny, how?”
“I don’t know. I think he’s going to confront Svetlana.”
“Good. He better dump the bitch. If he doesn’t, you should cut him out of your life. I would not tolerate a guy who looked the other way after his girlfriend tried to give me a miscarriage. Just because she’s a supermodel doesn’t mean she gets to do whatever she wants. I thought about telling the cops the truth about what happened, but I was scared they wouldn’t believe me.”