The teenage pregnancy pact

Jocelyn

Jocelyn wasn't stupid.

Or at least, she wasn't woefully unaware of the cruelty that her selfish desires carried against that who she called her best friend.

That thread of evil in her that came back to surface four months ago, the day Seth sat with her in their favorite restaurant and revealed his devastating diagnosis.

"Why do I have to be the one who will lose the person I love the most?" she said in the middle of her prayers when she came back home that night, "Why can't for once be her and not me?"

And now her wish had been granted, with Lizzie immensely suffering the pain that came with losing the man of her life.

I never wanted this! She thought yesterday when she came back home.

She repeated it in her mind time and time again, until night fell, until the words didn't made any sense anymore.

But she did ask for it, even if she never let her thoughts manifest that idea fully, somewhere in her subconscious that idea took over for just a brief moment.

Several times, before her breakup, she thought about confessing it to Lizzie, but now it wouldn't make a difference, that wouldn't absolve her cosmic participation in her best friend's disgrace.

And still, she couldn't stop that poisonous whisper inside her head from remembering her that Lizzie still had her mother to comfort her at every moment, reminding her how beautiful she was, how Paul didn't deserve her and how there were more fish in the ocean.

Jocelyn sighed in frustration as she gripped the spoon she was holding, fighting the need to cry, she didn't have to feel like this, she knew she didn't, but...

"Jocelyn, stop playing with your food," her mother's voice interrupted her train of thoughts.

Jocelyn shook her head, forcing a slight smile.

"Sorry, mom." she said, as she took another mouthful of her now soggy cereal, straightening her sitting posture.

"What is going on with her now?" She heard her father, who sat in front of her at the table, ask her mother.

"Uh, someone got her grades already and they're not looking so good?" Lisa, her younger sister, sang teasingly, adding a playful lilt to her voice.

"No! It's not that," she said, slight panic coursing through her, "the report card won't be updated until next week."

"Then?" her mother said.

"Then what?" Jocelyn asked, frustrated of the way her mother demanded answers to tricky questions as if Jocelyn could read her mind.

"Don't use that tone with your mother," said the harsh voice of her father, "and tell her what's wrong with you."

"Nothing," she forced her smile to be more tender, narrowing her eyes, "I just have problems at school with Lizzie and Laney, they're not getting along so well, maybe our group will split, and I don't think I could handle it..."

Her mother immediately let out a playful but condescending sigh, "I'd wish I could go back to when I was your age and say to everyone that those were the worst problems in my life." she said as she extended her arm towards Jocelyn's and gave it a pat, "Enjoy it, you're living the best years of your life."

Jocelyn frowned, if those were truly her best years, the years of heartbreak and watching Seth die before her, then what waited in store for her next?

"Just stop thinking about it," Santiago told her when he confronted her in the school hallway after he noticed her second absence, "you can't help him, and you're just sabotaging your future, he is the bedridden one, not you." Jocelyn just smiled at him and said she would give it a thought.