A holiday romance

3

Now I want you to know that I'm not an entire catastrophe - but I'm pretty good at imitating one.

When I moved to Melville in the late summer, I started working at the local grocery store. It wasn't really my idea: My mom thought it would be a nice way to "earn some pocket money and get to know the town". She wanted me to find friends soon, probably because she pitied me for leaving everybody at our hometown. Working in that store was alright. I started two weeks before winter's term and I got acquainted with my tasks pretty fast. My boss said he hadn't seen anybody with that much drive in a long time - but I didn't know how you would stack tins with a deep motivation. After a while, I even started to like it, though. There wasn't much else to do and I really considered the store as my place to get to know others. So I tried to interact with the customers. Most of the people were nice but nosy. As soon as they had found out I was new, they wanted to know everything about my life "before" Melville. I got along with that too, although nobody actually wanted to answer my questions. That was the first thing I learned about Melville: When people get their answers, they simply shut down for any other conversation. Marc later explained that this is quite typical for isolated towns - and that I only knew the outgoing and open-minded city type of people.
Three days before school's start, there was a young woman in the store. I was just about to stack the diapers, when she passed me in the back of the shop. She wore a huge hoodie and some old grey jogging pants, while her hair looked sort of like a bird's nest. I turned around and she walked past me quickly. Still, I could see the whiteness on her face. She looked miserable. But there was something else. With her arms, she covered the bulge of her belly. I went on with the stacking. The woman returned and walked up another aisle slowly. There was something weird about her. "Maybe she's exhausted", I thought and decided to talk to her. Finally, I found her at the cosmetic's. "I'm sorry to bother you but do you need to sit? Which month are you in?", I gently tapped on her shoulder as I was facing her back.
The stranger turned around and stared at me in shock. Not even a second later, a loud noise followed. The floor between us was covered with lipsticks, cookies, magazines - but on top of all that stuff, there was a pregnancy test. I looked up again at the woman. The bulge was gone. Her cheeks had turned red and I saw her eyes watering. She stood in front of me as if she was waiting for her verdict. "Don't worry about it", I whispered, "now go". The woman ran off, while I silently put back the articles to their aisles.
I didn't think I would see her again.
Three days later, she walked into my English class and sat right next to the door. It was Louise.