The Sisterhood of the Teenage Mothers

After: Chapter Twenty-Two - Home Sweet Home

After: Chapter twenty-two – Home Sweet Home

98 days After

Mary walked through the hallways of Groves High trying to ignore the whispers around her. She had just come from Esther's office, to fill her in on what had happened to Ronnie, but mostly just to talk to someone. Ronnie had now been in the hospital now for a week, as the doctors kept her under constant surveillance incase she tried to kill herself again. But since that day Mary and her friends had found Ronnie in her bathroom, Mary couldn't wipe the image from her mind. It seemed to haunt her because she seemed to realize how quickly a life could end in that moment. Mary had watched Ronnie as she threw the pills into the back of her mouth and had thought it was all over and realized that's how quickly a life could end. Without any warning, without any one able to stop it, someone could just die right in front of your eyes. That concept alone terrified Mary; how a life could end so quickly and even though Ronnie was still alive, Mary couldn't wipe this thought from her head. Mary began to think about how short her life really was and how precious and fragile it could be. She thought about all the things she wanted to do before she died. She wanted to go to college, travel the world, get a good job, meet new people and experience new things. Something about Ronnie's near death experience made Mary think about all things she wanted to do before she died.

Esther had given Mary some College brochures of all these different schools around the country. She held them with her books tightly against her chest as Mary wondered what she wanted to do with her future and who she wanted to be. But as she walked past her fellow classmates, who would stop their conversations to stare at her, she seemed to be reminded of one thing she had forgotten about for a moment. She was pregnant. It seemed like that was one thing no one could just forget about. But Mary had for a moment as she thought about her future and thought about what her future would be like if she didn't have a baby and suddenly she felt guilty. Now she was a mother there was a certain way her future was going to be that had already been drawn out for her. She would live in a nice house and become a housewife, caring and looking after her baby. Then maybe when her baby was a certain age maybe she'd get a part time job working in a library or volunteering at their school. But as Mary thought about this, she realized how boring that sounded to her. Mary shook her head to snap her out of her thoughts as she rounded the corner as more people stopped whispering to stare at her. The staring and whispering had started up again for all the girls since everyone had found out about Ronnie. The girls always thought that after every scandal had cooled down that there wouldn't be another one, but there always seemed so be something going on in their group that made them the talk of the school. Whether that was Mary moving out of home, Kayla's mystery man, Farah's baby daddy, Ronnie's abortion or just the fact that they were pregnant full stop, there was always something. And now the new scandal about their group, that everyone in school was talking about, was the fact Ronnie had tried to kill herself.

Mary didn't know how everyone had found out about it, but somehow everyone did, and people were staring at them all, like at any moment, any of them could fall down dead. Maybe that was another reason Mary had thought about her future more then usual because they were treating her like that, maybe because for a moment all Mary wanted was to be normal. Just a normal teenage girl who went to school and did normal teenage things, instead of being stared at because one of her friends had tried to kill herself because she wanted to with the baby she had aborted. Mary didn't know when her life had become so complicated and so dramatic. But it had and sometimes Mary caught herself imagining what her life would be like if she wasn't pregnant. So she guessed that's how she had become so caught up in her future and forgetting about her baby all together because sometimes she let herself imagine the "what if".