"How did you manage to do that?" Andrew chuckles, shoving another bite of pizza into his mouth.
"You don't have to laugh at my misfortunes," I frown, crossing my arms over my chest.
"I'm sorry, but come on Lottie, you were there for what, a month?" He laughs again. "What are you going to do when it's actually serious and the city needs you? I guess I'll have to take care of everything. Maybe you can stay home and take care of the kids."
"Maybe you can shut up," I snap.
"Ooh," his friends all laugh and I roll my eyes. I forgot they were listening.
"What are you looking at?" Andrew snaps, looking around the table at his snickering friends. They all quickly turn away, starting up fake conversations with each other.
"At least I was trying to start taking some responsibility. You promised me you would be there after the Castlebury game was over. It's been weeks, Andrew!"
"I have better things to do after school than being your father's bitch, Charlotte!" He finally snaps. "After high school the only thing I have going for my future is being the new leader, I'm sure as hell not going to start now!"
Jenny and Eliza slide into the seats next to me, giggling loudly.
"Lottie, you're never going to guess who's pregnant," Jenny says.
"Are we interrupting something?" Eliza asks, noticing the tension between Andrew and I.
"No, nothing," I shake my head, looking away from Andrew. "Who's pregnant?"
"Kayla Coslow," Jenny laughs, flipping her blond hair over her shoulder and sneaking a glance down the table at Ryan.
"It was to be expected, after all," Brooke says, an air of snobbiness around her, "she is a total slut."
She sits down on the other side of me as I furrow my eyebrows.
"And she's claiming that Keith is the father, but everyone knows they've been broken up for months," Eliza snorts.
"But I saw them making out in the hallway last week," I frown and they all laugh at me.
"Keith says it's not his," Eliza shrugs.
"I wonder what she'll do with it," Jenny says aloud.
"If she has any brains behind that pretty blond hair she'll get Eliza's Dad to get rid of it," Brooke says.
"You mean kill it before it's born?" I ask, shocked that she would say something like that.
"What else can she do?" She asks. "There's no one who will step forward and claim to be the father. Her parents would only be burdened from it, and she's too young to take care of it herself. She's only a junior. That's what Chelsea was going to do the time she had that pregnancy scare."
"Brooke, did you see what Maia Frank was wearing the other day?" Jenny asks, quickly changing the subject.
"That hideous green skirt? Ugh! It looked like someone threw up on her!"
Eliza and Jenny laugh and I look down at my fingers.
From the talk of killing an innocent baby to insulting someone's clothes, just like that.
///
I spend my afternoons and nights re-reading books that I've already read hundreds of times and avoiding Dad. I've talked to Mom since the fight and she was sympathetic with me. She said she would try to get Dad to budge, but so far we haven't talked at all.
