Beating For Two

Chapter 6

After having made my decision about giving the baby up for adoption once it was born, I spent the

entire weekend at home in my bed, thinking about the next half year of my life. I would get big and gross, people would talk and stare, mum would yell and cry, Owen would tease and laugh, Ian would scream and bolt, and Harry... Harry was a whole other matter. The upside was that he wouldn't have to take any responsibility for the child, which he would probably be happy about, the downside was, well, there really was none. I didn't think so at least.

I stayed at home through all of the next week, happy that the morning sickness was finally starting to disappear. When I woke up the morning of Saturday, December 18th, I stayed in bed, feeling no need to rush to the bathroom for the first time in almost two months. It made me cry with relief – my frequent crying attacks had yet to stop –, but then I remembered what Dr. Hayes had told me about aching back, aching groin, itching foot soles and stretch marks, and then I was suddenly crying in despair instead.

Monday, December 20th

Fourteen weeks

It was when I woke up a Monday late in December, the day before Christmas break started, and looked at myself in the mirror that I realised that I really was pregnant. I also realised that I really had to buy some new and bigger clothes. My stomach was slightly protruding and none of the shirts and jumpers I owned did much to hide it. Two weeks ago it could have passed for just a little bit of overweight, but not anymore. It wasn't that my belly was that big yet, but it was quite round, and if I wore the wrong piece of clothing, everyone would be able to see that. After having tried on more or less every shirt, t-shirt and jumper in my closet, I wound up with an oversized t-shirt that I usually used as pyjamas and decided that I would just have to wear my jacket all day.

That plan proved to be a bad one.

By the time I'd gotten through my two first classes, which were English and Chemistry, I was sweating like a pig and I felt extremely disgusting. No one had told me that sweating was a side-effect of being pregnant. The second the bell rang and announced that it was time for lunch, I bolted out of the classroom and headed for the nearest bathroom. I needed to get out of that damn coat before I melted and disappeared off the face of this earth.

The hallways were crowded, like always, and I bumped into quite a few people as I walked. My brain was starting to feel like a puddle of mud and my vision was getting a tad blurry, thus when I rounded a corner, I managed to run directly into someone.

“Sorry,” I said before I looked up to see who it was. My eyes widened and I bit my lip. “Oh, I- I didn't mean to- sorry, I didn't see it was you,” I stuttered.

Harry just looked at me and I saw his eyes flicker down to my stomach for a brief second. “Yeah, sure, whatever,” he said.

I clenched my jaw in embarrassment, and looked at the three people standing behind him; Liam was there, and so was the black-haired guy and the blond guy, neither of whom I knew the names of. All three of them were eyeing me with different expressions. Liam simply looked thoughtful, the blond guy had his eyebrows raised in a sceptical and somewhat patronising manner and the black-haired one looked amused. So they all knew. Harry had told them. Now there were four jocks in my school who knew what an abnormal freak I was, four jocks who would without a doubt tell their other jock friends, their girlfriends, their parents and in the end, the entire town would know and I would be the subject of laughter for as long as I lived here. I felt my face grow red, my heartbeat increased and the familiar feeling of nausea started to rise in my throat.

“I have to get going,” I mumbled before I pushed past them and virtually ran towards the bathroom door that was a few metres straight ahead of me.