25. Haley
25
HALEY
I woke up too late for classes, and I just knew I wouldn’t be able to make it to campus.
Something wasn’t right. Something had to be wrong.
“Haley?” Aunt Cindy knocked on my bedroom door. “Please, don’t let Eli be in here,” she mumbled on the other side of the door. “Haley? Eli?” A few more knocks sounded.
All I could do was curl into a ball and press my lips together so I wouldn’t moan loudly.
I had a little bit of a kink developing with pain. I liked it when Eli pushed me. But this? These cramps and utter nausea? They weren’t just pain. It felt like I was wrung out and left to rot.
“Yeah?” I called out weakly, letting her know I was up.
She opened the door and entered carefully, as if she worried that Eli and I had broken her rule about his not staying over. In time, I was sure she’d warm up to him. Maybe she would have a better opinion of him if he stuck with me outside of Marsten.
But at this moment, as my stomach revolted, I couldn’t summon the energy or brainpower to think that far ahead.
“Oh, honey…” She winced as she stepped into the room. Before she got too far in, she lifted the collar of her shirt and covered her mouth and nose with it, like a paltry mask. “You are sick.”
I nodded, wishing that I could go back in time and feel like I did last night instead of this misery I was waking up to. Last night, I felt just a little off. Queasy, but steady enough to move around and handle what was necessary. This morning, I felt like I’d puke if I sat upright.
“There’s so many things going around right now,” she said sympathetically. “Half of the staff at the daycare are out sick.”
I believed it.
“At least you’re going through this now, rather than closer to graduation.”
I nodded. “And final exams.”
“Yeah.” She lowered her makeshift shirt mask and pouted. “I was just coming in here to see if you were still going to classes today. I didn’t hear the water running for a shower and got a little worried.”
“No need to worry,” I told her. I hated to inconvenience her or make her worry at all. “It’s like you said, just one of those bugs that are going around.”
Taking a step back, she hesitated to leave me like this. “I bet. I need to get going, but maybe that’s all you need, peace and quiet to just relax and take it easy.”
“I think taking it easy would be best.” That admission was an understatement. I couldn’t see myself getting out of bed at all. I had no energy. It was all taken up by this stomach bug.
“It’s not like missing a couple of classes will hurt your grade.” She smiled gently with that praise.
“I know.” It was so close to the end of the semester that it was smooth sailing until the end for me. I hated that it wasn’t the same for Eli. He was still trying to prepare for the end of the semester and make sure his grades stayed up.
“A day in bed is what you need, so I guess I’m going to head to work. Let me know if you need anything, okay?” She watched me from the door and seemed uneasy about leaving me.
“Thanks, Aunt Cindy. I will.”
Still, she hesitated. “We’ve got soup to warm up. Crackers. Some popsicles too.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” The idea of eating turned me off completely. My appetite was just not there. In fact, the thought of putting anything in my mouth almost made me want to gag.
After she left, I couldn’t escape the possibility that chicken noodle soup wouldn’t help this time.
As I lay there, willing my stomach to settle, I took stock of what else was wrong with my body. I didn’t feel feverish. I wasn’t congested. Just bone-tired and nauseous.
What if this isn’t some stomach bug going around?
While the question was one that could induce panic, I wasn’t freaking out at the idea that I felt like this because I was…
Pregnant?
I rolled closer to the edge of the bed, squeezing my eyes shut as another wave of nausea swept through me.
“I can’t be,” I whispered to myself, as if saying it out loud would change it.
I took the pill. I’d started taking the pill since I was sixteen, when I saw how much Natasha’s life had been changed when she learned she was expecting a baby. In order to avoid having a baby too soon—because I did want a family—I was religious about taking my birth control on time. Every day. At the same hour. No excuses.
It didn’t make sense that I could be pregnant when I took precautions that seldom failed. Yes, they could fail, but that was something out of my control. I did what I could to make sure I could break history with the women in my family.
I didn’t sleep around like my mother had. I’d only lost my virginity to Eli weeks ago.
I didn’t get drugged and taken advantage of like my sister had. I was “fortunate” enough that when someone planned to rape me, I was conscious and able to physically fight back and escape.
“No. I can’t be,” I muttered to myself as I tried to steady my breaths.
It didn’t work. Almost as if my body wanted to mock me, the urge to puke was too strong to overcome. I ran to the bathroom and emptied my stomach, and then some, feeling weak and more wrung-out than before.
I lost track of time as I sat on the bathroom floor, nearly hugging the toilet. Once I felt strong enough to move, I crawled into the shower stall and steamed myself until I could feel slightly human again.
And yet, nothing else bothered me. I’d been sick before. Last year, I had a horrible flu-like virus, and there was a whole list of symptoms. This was too different for me to trust it.
After I got out of the shower, I plugged in my dead phone and got dressed to walk into town. It wouldn’t be a brisk walk, but the second I stepped outside and the cool spring air touched my face, I felt marginally better. The chill of the air soothed me, and going at the best pace I could, I headed into town to get a pregnancy test.
I had to know.
Dancing around what-ifs never helped anyone. I didn’t want to debate what was improbable versus impossible. It would be better to just know.
Once I got into the pharmacy, I bought the first test I could find. Then, because I really didn’t want to wait for the whole walk home, I took the test in the restroom and carefully wrapped it up to keep in my pocket for the walk back to the house.
It was like carrying a ticking bomb with me. The agony of worrying and wondering gnawed at me until halfway there, I had to know. I had to look.
“Here goes,” I whispered.
I tugged the slim stick out of my pocket and looked.
Then my heart both dropped and kickstarted again in my chest.
Pregnant.
I gulped, staring at the pink cross mark in the little window.
Pregnant.
There was no guessing. No question mark. The indicator showed up clear and bright, pronouncing the fact that my life would forever be changed. It was no longer just my life. I was no longer just me , Haley, a soon-to-be college graduate, a young woman preparing to move to the city and get ready for graduate work to be a teacher of kids with speech delays like what my nephew had.
I would be Haley the mother. The caregiver to a new life. The parent of an infant.
I walked again, dazed and stunned by this news, news that I couldn’t fully understand happening at all.
I took the pill!
I just lost my virginity within the last month!
Sure, it only took one time, and yeah, that pill had a tiny chance of not working. But for this to happen to me?
I tried to make sense of it at the same time I tried to accept it. Making plans and having a strategy would come next, but I was too overwhelmed with the enormity of this revelation to think that straight.
And as I approached the house and saw a car parked in the drive, I lost the ability to be rational at all.
Not again.
Not now.
Not you .
The last time I saw Mr. and Mrs. Young, I told them to get off my property, that they weren’t welcome. Even though it was only Eli’s mother standing at the front door, hands on her hips, and not both of his parents this time, my decree still stood.
They were not welcome here. They never would be with the way they treated their son. Never minding how they’d talked down to me, I would have no room for them in my life if they abused Eli.
And now…
This moment felt extra charged with the fact that I was carrying her grandchild.
I continued to walk up to the house, searching for an idea of how to handle this situation. She had to leave, and the sooner, the better. Because with the bombshell of a shocker in my pocket, I needed time to think and accept this reality that I could be so cursed and blessed with this new life growing inside me.
“There you are.” Mrs. Young whirled around to face me, clued in to my presence when I stepped on the gravel of the driveway.
“I don’t want you here.” It wasn’t polite, but it was true. I had to stand my ground.
“Likewise, you little whore. I don’t want you here to mess up my son’s life. I want you out of his life.” She crossed her arms, not budging and blocking me from walking up the steps to the front door.
“Please move. And leave.” I climbed the steps, avoiding touching her, but with how narrow the steps were, I almost brushed against her and overcompensated, flinging my arm out the other way for balance.
Moving my arm like that caused the test stick to fall out of my pocket. It hit the concrete step, then bounced once, then twice.
And of course, she noticed.
“You— Are— No! ” She kicked the test stick, and I scrambled to get it.
“You’re pregnant ?” She screeched it as I grabbed the plastic stick and hurried to turn for the door. I didn’t care if she ranted and wailed, if she freaked out and acted like a monster. I rushed with the urgency of fight or flight. If she was going to be more of a threat and try to hurt me with something other than verbal hits, I wasn’t standing around for it. And I had no guess whether she’d lose her mind to attack me. Mr. Young didn’t think twice about raising his fists. This woman was going berserk, screaming that I was a filthy whore who was ruining her son’s life.
I frantically unlocked the door, ready to bolt inside and leave her yelling and screaming outside.
She was too quick, though. By jamming her foot near the door, she prevented me from closing it and locking it.
Still, I had to retreat. I couldn’t tell if it was for my own sense of survival or if I was more defensive because I had a tiny baby to protect inside me. But I was not getting near this volatile woman.
“You stay away from my son once and for all!”
I didn’t reply. I didn’t shake my head or speak. Nothing. She wouldn’t listen, and if I said anything and engaged with her, it would make her shout and fight more.
“You are ruining his life. If you are selfish enough to stay with him, you will be nothing but a burden for him. Nothing but a distraction he doesn’t need.”
No. That wasn’t true. I wasn’t selfish to want him, to desire a life with him. For so many years, I ignored and avoided him, not going near him at all. Now, it was so different, and so much better.
But is it selfish?
She was getting to me, almost sounding like a mother who just wanted the best for her child. Yet, I knew that wasn’t true. If she cared about him, she wouldn’t have mistreated him for so long. She would have loved him.
“I’m not selfish?—”
“You are!” She stalked toward me, breathing so hard and bullishly. “You would trap him with a baby. He’s so young, and you would trap him with a baby and end his future?” She raised her hands, shaking them like she needed to tremble before she exploded.
“Just like your whore of a sister did. She got knocked up as a teenager and at least had the intelligence to get lost and get out of town. Even she wasn’t selfish.”
“That’s not true.” A hot tear streaked down my face. I hated that people would judge Nat like that, and I loathed that this woman could scorn me so much without even knowing a single thing about me.
But her words hit hard and deep. They festered.
Despite every thought of love I had for Eli, I couldn’t help but worry that we had been so stupid to think we could last. That against the trials of reality, we would stay together.
How could we? How could I believe that we would stand up to the challenges of life together when I was still too scared to tell him that I loved him? When I wondered and stressed over whether he felt the same for me.
Love was the foundation for starting a family, for building a real future together.
With his mother’s cruel words, I had to cringe with this outsider perspective.
What if she was right?
What if I was going to ruin Eli’s life and hold him back from a successful future with a baby on the way?