The Beginning of the End

XIII.

The pregnancy test picture Jess sent was not the belated birthday present I had expected overall. The day after we had sex, she didn't show up to school. I personally don't know the symptoms of a pregnancy just beginning, but for all I know, we could've done it too hard, or she already had morning sickness.

And I was really hoping it was the former.

As events soon started to play out, I almost instantly regretting my choices. Why go so far to only stop here or whatever else she had said. A complete load of bullshit. 

Personally, the sex ed I had received in middle school and high school always seemed too easy. I found it surprisingly easy to learn that I almost never paid attention in that class. Yeah, I, of course, knew the parts of my body already. I already learned that I should bring a condom in case something intimate happens. I know that there were resources available for me in case I had any questions.

They weren't wrong when they said that the impulsiveness would get to you. Of course, my annoying-little-pre-teen-self didn't pay any attention to that because of how I thought I had full control of my body. 

As I soon came to realize, it was almost impossible to have control in situations like that.

The first day that Jess was absent, I felt guilty for not having minded as much. Probably because it was my birthday, I don't know. I was met with many birthday wishes from people in person and on social media, and I almost didn't realize until I was laying in bed trying to go to sleep that night that I realized I hadn't heard from Jess at all that day. Normally, she and Shaun were always the first ones out of anyone I knew (aside from my mom and sister) to wish me a happy birthday. 

Those were the greatest of times for me. Over the span of my short life, I enjoyed the feeling of being embarrassed when Jess and Shaun would scream at me from one end of a hall at school to the other in an attempt to congratulate me for finally reaching their age (I was the youngest out of the three of them). 

Before Jess and Shaun started going out earlier in the year, it was like we all were a close-knit family. We went on short little trips around the Valley, had dinners together, celebrated personal milestones, and so much more. My dream of having older siblings had been fulfilled whenever I spent time with them.

And before I knew it, everything had gone to shit in a matter of one school year.

I could've written an entire journal about how I felt. Doing so would have hurt incredibly, no doubt. The mere thought of Jess and Shaun breaking the "sibling bond" between us by the first kiss that they shared would always hurt.

The realization that Jess and Shaun would likely never talk again also left an empty feeling in my heart and always would. If only Shaun learned his lesson to stay away from Claire and her toxicity. I knew damn well that he would end up right back to where I had been once she had dumped me. Knowing her, their relationship wouldn't last another month.

And then, of course, I fucked up every chance I had of ever being able to reunite us. If Shaun had ever found out what had happened between me and Jess, I could tell without it having to happen that he'd follow me to my house and kill me before I would be able to step inside.

But then again, what did it matter to him? He was the one that had hurt Jess first. Depending on how Jess viewed it, she could have either been carrying the greatest gift her significant other could give her, or a curse that had been placed inside of her by an accidental sexual encounter. 

Considering that we were nowhere close to dating (I think), it was probably the latter.

As that one day slowly turned into two days of absence, and then two weeks of absence, I'll never forget how the news of her pregnancy hit me. It hit me really hard.

The asshole that I was, I never called Jess to check up on her. If she had been traumatized, if she was regretting it as much as I was starting to, but I felt that what she needed most was space.

If only I had known the real reason she hadn't talked to me or anybody, I could've been able to help. I could have been able to do something that would have benefitted her, but personally, I'm not sure an abortion would have helped her.

Having to imagine the termination of something isn't as easy as it sounds, despite how much less stress it would have put on us.

I received the text during calculus. Because I had to actually open the Messages app to see what the picture she had sent was, the teacher surprisingly let me go to the restroom. 

Having locked the bathroom door, I desperately opened it up to see what it was. I was completely and utterly speechless. Like any person would take a pregnancy, I couldn't act, and I wasn't sure if I should have been happy or pissed.

And once these horrible thoughts that told me I had disappointed and hurt Jess hit me, my emotions soon took over, and I couldn't stop crying. I threw myself against the wall, shoving my phone into my pocket, and kept slamming my fist into the brick bathroom wall. I clenched my teeth and cried out mounds of tears, forehead feeling against the coolness of the wall, too. 

For all I knew, this pregnancy could have ruined Jess's chance at a future. From what I heard, she'd been accepted to an out-of-state college because of how scholarly she was. An academic scholarship that, depending on the board, she might have trouble keeping if her college heard about what happened.

Her chances of her dream future most likely would be crushed. And it all would have been my fault. She deserved so much more than San Jose State. She deserved the chance to go out there and explore, more than I ever could—I didn't have anything planned for myself.

Trying to go back to that classroom where people stared at me with dried tears on my face was horrible. No one realized the real reason why I was in there for so long, and so I had to play off that I had to take the longest and most painful shit of my life. 

That period luckily passed by in a breeze for me. I ignored the teacher's attempts to help me. News like that was enough for me that day, but of course, nothing in my life goes as planned.

Shit went down at lunch that day, I can tell you that.