Pregnant Without a Cause

Chapter 6, Episode 16

1063 words

The 10:00 sun slanted against the yellow bricks and beige doors of Classroom Building 1000. The stomping of hundreds of student feet on the walkway and threadbare lawn had raised a fine, loamy dust into the still morning air. Callie came down the walkway, looking for the room where her Spanish class was being held. The two girls stared ather.

"There she is," said the brunette in the short skirt, looking right at Callie. "Did she really do it?" said the one with the glasses and the long, straight hair. "Let's ask her."

As Callie turned toward them to open the classroom door, the question burst out of one of the girls. "Callie, is it true?"

Callie paused, and smiled at the brunette, a smile that conveyed a bittersweet joy mixed with a worldly sadness thing. At least she hoped that's what it conveyed. "Hi, Ronette."

Ronette had gone to Callie's junior high. They had never been mates, though they bonded somewhat over their unfair treatment by Detention Swenson, the greatest assigner of lunch detention in the known universe.

Ronette nudged her companion. "This's Crystal. You know her?" 

"Zup." Callie nodded.

"Zup." Crystal touched the hinge of her angular and kind of stylish glasses. Callie regarded Ronette cautiously. This could be it. "What'd ya do? Summer?" 

"No! What did you do?" Ronnie batted her eyelashes and grinned.

Callie broke into a daft giggle. No one had spoken to her in Biology or Geometry. So this was it. Her chance to make teenage history. She leaned toward them just a little, and it was amazing the way their heads leaned in, too, almost like magnetism at work. "Do you know?"

"Yes!" They replied together. Then the questions came too fast to think about. "Boy or girl?"

"Boy. I insisted we call him Boomer. I won't tell you his real name." 

"Boomer?" Ronette squeaked. And Crystal added, "What was it like?"

Callie's heart fluttered. They seemed to actually believe that she had had a baby. Unbelievable! "Unbelievable!" 

"How did it feel?"

Callie grimaced. Best to avoid this area. "Ufff." Empathetic groans. 

"Labor?"

"It was so fast, we never got to the hospital. A fireman delivered him. That's why he got the name. The fireman'sname was Boomer."

"Oh my god oh my god!"

Despite the excitement, Callie had a script. She would not name the father, would barely acknowledge the need for fathers at all. This was her dig against all the lame boys who had ignored her for the last few—well, really, forever— a lameness that would double when she became skinny and hot before their very eyes in about a month.

She also planned to be very clear that having sex at her age wasn't just a mistake, it was morally wrong. She knew that line of talk would be expected, and forgotten in her listeners' ears before it traveled halfway down their auditory nerves. But all that would come later. Today was Callie's day. She showed them the screen on her Nokia, Booms in his fuzzy white little knit cap. "He was six pounds and seven ounces. Just the tiniest thing!"

Groans of approval and amazement filled the small space between the three girls.

Then a couple of boys stuck their jabbering heads into the circle.

"Whazzat?" The one with the huge, shiny beak pointed at the little screen, eyes wide with obnoxiousness.

"Oh, Jesus, it's a marsupial!" This one was named Josh or something. "Damn! Which end is the top?"

Ronette and Crystal stuck out their skinny bums to shove the boys aside, one bum in a yellow and black miniskirt,the other in white shorts. Somehow it was both aggressive and inviting, the way they did it. The way those bums stayed shoved out just a little longer than they needed to. The boys yelled, the girls laughed, and Callie laughed, too. Someday soon she was going to have a bum like that, and a miniskirt.

Then they went into Spanish class to work on the emphatic tense that you use when you really mean something, except if you don't, or, like you're saying no... It's complicated.

Life had changed for Callie. An indicator light on some cosmic switchboard glowed green and she became accepted. Known. All her doubts about the plan, Callie realized now, had been no more than fear someone would find out the truth. But she quickly realized it wasn't about the baby. It was about her. She had done something. Herself, the person named Callie Scharf.

***

When Zam caught up with her at sixth period photography, Callie was already sitting at one of the student desks near the back of the room, looking pale and weary.

"For lunch I had peanut butter crackers and an apple." She sat sideways at the desk.

Kids had only begun to filter into the classroom. The teacher was not in sight. "That's not a lunch. That's crackers and a whatever."

"I lost my first three pounds."

"Cool." Zam did not know if you were supposed to be able to notice three pounds lost. He sure didn't see it. He sat at the desk next to her. In a lower voice, he said, "So how's it going? Are they buying it?"

An angelic smile lit her face. "Like zories two-for-four-dollah." Zam felt a kick. It had been his marketing that did it.

"And no one thinks you are the father." She whispered, though there was no one close enough to hear.

"I never claimed—" 

"You've been hinting."

"It's a slippery slip and slide, this gossip thing. Is he or isn't he? People make assumptions because we're such good friends." True that he'd been hinting. He had his wares to sell also.

Zam picked up an old Rolliecord camera that the photography teacher kept on one of the shelves. The viewfinder flipped open with a pleasant, sliding sound, and he looked down at the smokey square display. In the screen Callie was right side up, but backwards left to right. It was an odd effect.

As he watched, Callie did something unusual. He had expected her to nail him with a smartass comment. Instead, she bent down as if studying her knees. Then she began to lean toward him.

Zam laughed once. Then he realized she had fainted. He caught her before she came out of the seat.