I feel like I could pass out as I watch Mrs Karas pull Nat to her feet, and she doesn’t do it gently. “Right, well, we’re leaving now.”
“Don’t yank her around like that,” I snap, not thinking things through, just driven by an urge to protect my…
Oh, right. We’re not allowed to be girlfriend and boyfriend anymore.
Guess I’ll just call her myeverything, then.
“Excuse me?” Her mother sounds incredulous with outrage.
“I saiddon’t yank her around.She’s pregnant,” I mutter.
She steps forward and glares at me with all the rage in her heart. “And who’s fault is that,” she hisses, almost spitting with fury. “What you did was immoral, and it wasillegal, and my daughter’s life is ruined because you couldn’t keep your stupid pecker in your stupid pants. Howdareyou speak to me like that, you selfish little shit, when you’ve destroyed everything for her?”
Fuck. She’s right.
I’m the one who put a baby inside Nat. And I can’t even begin to think about what that means for her. For me.For the kid.
I fight not to cry, because those days need to be behind me now. I don’t have the luxury of breaking down. I’m needed. Nat and the…baby…they need me to step up, to be afather. Because I’m not going to punk out on them. If I have to go to court and have themmakeMrs Karas give me access, I will.
“I dare,” I say, very quietly but as clear as I can, “because she’s the mother of my child.”
“And that’s not something to brag about,orsomething to throw at me,” she snaps as Dad clips me round the ear. It’s not the first time he’s put hands on me, but it’s not a common occurrence. It does its job, though; I’m shocked into silence.
“Now, get in the car, Natalie.” The look Mrs Karas gives me should be able to kill me. But it’s the look on Nat’s face that makes me want to die as her mother pulls her - more gently - towards the door. Nat’s crying, and I can’t stand it.I won’t let them tear us apart -
My fucking father grabs both of my arms and pulls them behind me, holding me back as I try to go to her. I turn my head to shout at him to fuck off, to let me comfort the girl I love, but he says in my ear, “If you don’t simmer down, I will make you regret it for the rest of your life.”I don’t care. “I’ll drag her into court and make her prove that bastard child is yours.” I freeze. Thatmotherfucker.
Fine. But he can’t stop me saying this. “I love you,” I assure her, not blinking.
“I love you,” she says in a broken whimper.
“Oh, shut up,” my father shouts at us both.
“Please,” Mrs Karas sneers at me. “You’re all of fifteen years old, you stupid boy. You don’t even know what love is. Neither of you.”
Chapter 2
Then
Nat and Tim are both 15
Nat
There is not a single part of my life that brings me any happiness now. Not one.
I’m stuck in a body that feels nothing like my own and from which I cannot escape. Always swollen, always achy, permanently nauseated but rarely ever allowed the relief of throwing up, and so far past tired that it scares me. Food doesn’t taste the same, so much of it suddenly disgusting to the point of loathsome. And the baby must be gearing up to be a dancer, like I used to be, because he or she turns somersaults more than they ever stay still. God, I wish so much that they’d stop leaning on my bladder. That’d make life a little easier.
Still, the teachers give me free reign to take as many toilet breaks as I need during lessons. That’s about the only positive in my days: not wetting myself.
Every morning for the past three months, it’s been the same. I get up after a lousy night’s sleep. Sometimes I dry heave for a while, sometimes I don’t. Either way, I get stared down by my mother at the breakfast table. She only ever speaks to me in a clipped, matter-of-fact tone, mad that I couldn’t get an abortion, madder still that I even suggested adoption. I don’t understand her thought processes; I just know that she’s determined to be angry with me in some capacity. After swallowing that sad fact once again, I put on my new school uniform: a man’s white shirt, the largest school jumper they stock, and elasticated trousers. Oh, and wider fit shoes, because my feet have spread. That was unexpected.
Once I’m at school, the garbage really begins. Everywhere I go, all I hear are whispers, laughing, and snide comments.There she is… Jesus, she’s huge…The drama of my being a pregnant teenager never seems to lose its lustre for my classmates. I’ve always felt a bit like the odd one out, having only started here in Year Nine when everyone else has been in the same class since Year Seven. But now… Now I’m a spectacle.The Pregnant Girl in 11B. Famous school wide. They did a bloody assembly about what happened to me and the importance of not having sex at all ever until you’re old and married. I’m a cautionary tale, a silly slag whose inability to rein in her horniness destroyed her promising future in dancing. Nobody cares how much I miss it, and my classes, and the feel of twisting and twirling to the rhythm of the music until I feel like we’re one and the same. As far as they’re concerned, it’s my own stupid fault and no more than I deserve.
My friends are a mixed bag: either they’ve hung back, not wanting to be thought as big a slut as me, or they’re like Sadie, fiercely protective and daring anyone to look at me funny. Despite how painful it is sometimes to look at Sadie’s eyes, the exact same colour and shape as Tim’s, I genuinely don’t know what I would have done without her over the last few weeks. She makes sure I have everything I need, stares down the people who watch me like I’m an ant under a magnifying glass, and has been sent to the Head’s office three times for shouting at people who say rude things to me. One of them was a teacher. She got three days of detention for that.
As if all this wasn’t enough, it’s GCSE year, our final exams looming in the near future. We’ve done our mocks already, and I flunked them spectacularly. A few months ago I’d have been devastated, but I barely even care anymore, if I’m honest. It’s alltoo much. Why should I give a shit about my grades when I’m a few short weeks away from having togive birth to a baby?
Oh, that’s another thing. The endless blood tests and physical exams. The doctors are watching me like a hawk because I’m so young, and every test I can be sent for, I’m given. It doesn’t matter that I’m scared of needles, petrified of them in fact, and so tired of being poked and prodded. I don’t matter anymore. Only the baby does. And it feels like nobody cares that I spend my days rigid with fear and revulsion over what’s happening to me. And… What if I die? Will that matter, or will they just be glad they saved the baby and consider me collateral damage?
