TO THE BONE

Two Pink Lines

They finally leave her room to the front door, both hand in hand. The house is finally quiet so they don't budge with trying to be silent. They enter the heated up car and Johnny drives them to school. They blast their favorite song and reminisce in the memories they withheld.. Their playlist from when they dated. The drive is smooth and peaceful, a type of feeling you feel on Christmas as a kid.

After arriving, Johnny pulls in and parks in the parking lot. After about five minutes of still listening to music, Victor and Alice stride passed the car both gaping a mean look at the two.

"Thanks for the ride," mumbles a sarcastic Victor, leaning into the passenger window.

"Thanks for waking me up with the sound and smell of your morning sex." Victoria retorts. "Guess we forgot you guys were there."

Victor purses his lips and Alice yanks at Victor's sleeve as a signal to leave. Victoria's eyes pierce into the back of Alice's head in hopes she would see it just explode.

To her dismay, it didn't.

Unbuckling her seat belt, Victoria pauses as her eyes meet an opened condom wrapper in the center console. Johnny notices her sudden freeze and his eyes follow her gaze. He bites his bottom lip in embarrassment and squeezes his eyes shut. He can sense the disgust fuming off of Victoria as she finally releases the seat belt from off around her.

"You're disgusting, Johnny." She chokes.

As they both exit the car, Victoria looks from across it to meet Johnny's face once more to see if there was any guilt lingering. Once more to her dismay, none. Not a single fucking ounce for a matter of fact. Instead, he was banging the roof of his car treating it like an old drum set looking around mindlessly.

He wiped his now ashy hands on his light blue jeans. Johnny is for sure something. "Fucking hell." She murmurs to herself. She then rolls her eyes and begins to walk to campus.

Victoria never not got stared at. She had been going to the school for four years now and is never left without thousands of eyes burning into her small bony body. She convinced herself that she was flattered, but in reality, it made her skin crawl. Her physique wasn't really seen as "beautiful" in the eyes of the student body. It was rather alarming to them because she was out numbered by curvy girls with visible breasts and asses. Not something she withheld unfortunately. At times she can sense the judgement from them and would just want to yell, "what the hell are you looking at!" But she bit her tongue each time.

Finally on campus, Victoria feels for her phone. For a few seconds, her heart stops and her face drops a nasty pale color. Withholding from breathing, she starts to panic. A tear slowly stains down her cheek as she realizes what she had done. Fuck. She forgot it.

Victoria was not addicted to her phone, but it did distract her from the hideous demeanor of the school and the negative energy released from every gaping eye. The life the school withheld was nothing but pure evil and snobbishness. Her music tuned out the thoughts of others that she thought she could hear.

Her mind today was undoubtedly going to be chaos. She wouldn't know what to do even in her dizziest of daydreams. Her attitude already showed at best a pathological need for NO attention, but at worse a psychotic death wish.

Johnny, who had been talking with some friends, notices her frozen stature in the middle of the courtyard and catches up with her. Finally behind her, he grabs her hand and asks wide-eyed, "Tor? You good hon?"

Victoria slowly turns her head to meet his face. He reads it well.. He wasn't oblivious. She was good at speaking without actually doing so. This face showed an objection to his rhetorical question. Of course she wasn't okay.. Johnny just didn't know why.

She breaks loose from his firm grip and speed walks to the bathroom, leaving him bewildered and shocked.

As she approaches the door, it conveniently swings open, but unconventionally reveals Alice Lennon stumbling out while feebly pulling down her tight skirt. What the hell?

Alice's complexion makes her look ill and her glossy eyes tell Victoria that she had just been crying.

But I just saw her... She looked fine... Bitchy, but fine. Victoria helplessly thinks.

Now trying to hold a proud posture, Alice struts towards victor where she became engulfed and sheltered behind his tall friend group.

Victoria furrows her eyebrows noticing she had watched Alice walk all the way back. She pushes the door open and shuffles groggily to the largest stall in the bathroom. She sits on the toilet still skirted and rests her elbows on what little thighs she had to support her, propping her head up with the palms of her hands. She smells it again, Chanel perfume.

Alice must have been in this stall.

She then pulls her backpack to her front unzipping it, shuffling through it trying to find her granola bar from the previous day. Alas her bony fingers envelope the squished chewy bar her pediatrician recommend she snack on.

Opening the sanitary bin to throw away her wrapper, her clouded eyes meet a pink cardboard box. She wipes her tear resin and leans in closer to inspect the small words on it.

A pregnancy test.

Her eyebrows furrow as she takes a bite into the bar she had crumpled into a ball. "Slut." She murmurs with a mouth full of granola. She sniffs again, still a trace of Alice's perfume lingers in the stall, but it drowns Victoria as she realizes what had just happened.

Holy shit. She loudly thinks. No wonder the bitch had looked a mess.

Holy. shit.

She shoved the rest of the balled up granola bar practically down her throat and frantically zipped her bag up hauling it over her shoulder almost choking on the food in her mouth. She closes the bin cover with her the toe of her shoe and hurries out of the bathroom stall, having it hit her side on the way out.

She stops in her tracks and closes her eyes. She fights with herself for a second.

Don't assume Victoria. It could be anyone's. Why would she take a test at school? Why did she come to the bathroom this morning? Why did she look so drained? FUCK. Where the hell even is the test if any?

Her internal fight gets the best of her. She turns on her heel and scurries back to the stall, her eyes meeting the bin once again. Wrapping her hand heavily in toilet paper, she cautiously sifts through the bin avoiding the fully exposed menstrual products.

Her eye catches the lonesome test which seemed to be buried under the mess. Reluctantly she reaches in and picks it up.

She lets out a ghastly gasp as two pink lines scorn her eyes. Her eyes growing heavy and head spinning, she thinks again, Don't assume Victoria. Don't assume.

But it all just made sense. Alice Lennon was pregnant.