Midnight ✔️

I wake with a start. My pupils flick about to take in my surroundings. Everything's dark. I fist my hands at my sides and let out a short breath when I feel bed sheets. Wait. Why am I awake? What time is it anyway?

Twisting around to see the book-packed shelf to my right, I gaze at my digital clock. It takes me a second for my brain to process the information my eyes are delivering. It's almost twelve at night. I breath in heavily and shove the air back out of me exaggeratedly. This is the fifth time this has happened to me this week. I blink blindly. I can't actually tell if I blinked or not.
I look to my other side. My mouth twists when my sight adjusts to the low lighting so that I can make out the shape of her blanket covered body and pillow resting head. That head full of hair that she's worked so hard to grow to just below her breasts. Hair that, after much discussion, she's decided to butcher to the bottom of her chin tomorrow afternoon.

My eyes fall down to the body that just fills me with amazement because of its flexibility. I bite the inside of my bottom lip nervously. She's still more beautiful than anything I've ever laid eyes on; and seven months pregnant with a girl that's sure to be just as beautiful. And me? I'm sixteen years young and scared out of my own skin.

I sit up so that my back can rest against the wall I can't see, but know is behind me. I've unintentionally memorized my room and it's now uselessly etched into my mind. My fingers link together on top of the sheets that cover me up to my bare torso. The nails of my thumbs scrap my shadowed skin as I twiddle them around each other.

When I admitted to my dad that I'd got Cameron pregnant he scolded me that it was my fault. He's right, of course. My dad is always right. He warned me, "If you have sex with a girl, you first need to ask yourself if you're ready to have a kid with her. If you're ready to marry her, too. Protection or not, there's always a chance that something wont work."

I'm not ready for anything close to marriage. Especially raising a kid when I'm still being raised. What was I even thinking? I close my eyes and let my straight, black hair press against the wall. I can feel it pucker up when I slide my head down slightly.

That's a lie. I do know what I was thinking and now I'm stuck thinking how idiotic it was. I could've waited. I could've waited until after high school to have sex. Maybe until after I was married. No, I don't think I would've waited that long. Could I have? I tisk at my own thoughts. Well, it's too late now for pondering like that.

I now have a limited brain capacity that only has room for things baby related. I clench my teeth and shake my head slowly, but with anger and disappointment pointed only towards myself. I'm such a prick. I've ruined three people's lives if I include mine into the count. Cameron is such a smart girl. Too smart to have even given me a second glance. I turn my eyes but not my head so I can ogle at her again.

I think I love her. I've thought so for a while now. What if I really don't? As I think about it, I really only got serious with her after I knew she was pregnant with my baby. When she broke the news to me we hadn't been dating much longer than four months. Stupid. Stupid. Looking back now everything I've done the past year is so ridiculously foolish my feeble mind can't seem to comprehend it.

I know everyone related to me or Cameron expects me to marry her. Some people have said it straight to my face. The rest, like her relatives choose to whisper it to Cam and let her pass it down to me like she's some kind of messenger. Some people expect me to marry her after high school and that's not too much pressure for me. It sounds doable. Others, though, have no problem with packing on the pressure by practically ordering me to marry her now. I roll my eyes and my lashes tickle my brow bone.

Are they right or am I right? I'm only sixteen and they expect me to be able to support not only Cameron, but a kid too all on my own?

Part of me feels like I should. My lips curl into my mouth and under my teeth as my thoughts fluctuate through me. She was so nervous to tell me. She thought I might leave her, but I would never do what my mother did to me, to Cameron and the unnamed life that will soon be under my care.

I can't shake the thought that if I marry her now, it will completely slaughter all of our lives. There's no way I can support them. I can barely get by living with my dad right now because I've had to help buy all this stuff so we can be prepared for the baby. Maybe I could marry her now, but I've never wanted my family to live in my dads house. I look towards the window. Cameron's already living in my dad's house. Is that what Cameron wants? Would she want to be tied down to living with me even after the baby arrives? Or is she quietly waiting to move back in with her own parents when she's mobile again? I blink a few times trying to hold back tears of distress.

I pass a glace at the clock.