This isn't a particularly happy/fluffy oneshot, but I really tried to stay true to my perception of Adrian and how she would act during her pregnancy.
For the past six months, Adrian has lived in the here and now. Here she is, barely seventeen, and she's now only three months from giving birth.
"Write an essay about where you want to be in ten years," says one teacher to the class. Another requests a list of their top three colleges as he sports his own alumni sweater. (UCLA; class of '02. No bias there.)
Adrian chews on the end of her pen until her teeth are sore and the plastic is twisted, but she still doesn't know where she wants to be in ten years. Will she be with her daughter (whom she found out was a daughter three weeks ago, a daughter with fingernails and ten toes who can already flutter inside of her), with her parents, with Ricky or Ben or some guy she doesn't know yet? Will she just be with herself, on her own?
Even the once-simple list of colleges (Stanford, Yale, Berkley) doesn't come. Because college isn't really in the cards anymore, at least not the hand she's playing right now. So again, she chews on the end of her pen, and this time it explodes in her mouth, coating her teeth with black ink that tastes horrible. When Adrian raises her hand quickly to be excused, the two girls beside her snicker.
"Morning sickness," she hears, a murmur through the room. She bares her black teeth spitefully at the original perpetrators, the two girls; they shudder like the first ones to die in a horror movie as she makes her silent exit.
Inside the bathroom, Adrian swishes her mouth with water and absently watches it swirl down the drain, a washed out gray color. She registers that she's hungry and tacos are being served in the cafeteria today; disgusting. Knowing that she can count on Ben, she pulls out her cell phone; texts him 'bring me something good for lunch, sausage boy'. Adds a smiley face to ease her conscience which occasionally feels guilty for what she's done to Ben's life.
Adrian, Ben, and their daughter, she thinks disjointedly. They don't sound like a family.
Ben wants to name their daughter something that starts with C, so they're A, B, C. "Colleen," he suggested once. "Courtney. Chelsea. Charlotte."
Adrian doesn't even know that she wants to name their daughter, period. So, "Penelope," she said, spitting as many ridiculous names as she could think of at him. "Tulia. Zera. Henrietta."
He doesn't ever glare at her. Not once. Sigh, yes. Moan, yes. Complain, yes. Glare, no. It's infuriating, how he can keep on being a wet blanket no matter what Adrian does to anger him into growing a backbone.
The bell rings as Adrian glowers at her reflection in the mirror: unwashed hair, unflattering shirt, distended stomach. Here is the proof that now she's someone pathetic; someone who has lost the energy to care. She spins on her heel, awkward as with all her movements now, and returns to Mr. Heeler's room to gather her books for fifth period.
"Feeling better, Adrian?" he asks kindly when she comes back.
All she hears is patronization. "I did not puke," she informs him icily. "My pen exploded in my mouth."
"Ah." Mr. Heeler raises his eyebrows, clearly out of his depth. "Well, I would like your three colleges and brief justification given to me tomorrow." He sets a blank sheet of paper on top of her books and leaves the room, Adrian seeing red with humiliation. Not particularly at her ordeal with Mr. Heeler; more at the past few months in general.
She almost hadn't come back to school.
"My father will pay for a tutor," Ben agreed when she discussed not going with him. "That's a good idea; stay home and take care of the baby."
She refused to be subject to his charity. "I will not," she retorted, and vowed right then to stay in school until her water broke.
Now she reminds herself that the important thing isn't the left out way she feels here, in this school she once loved. It's gaining the education she wants.
But January 17 looms over her like a death sentence. Nine months; a positive eternity when first the sentence was cast. But now it's not so long. Just the final color of autumn leaves, the garish red and greens of Christmas, and the first snow. Then the firing squad appears; then her due date arrives.
At the first available trash can, Adrian slams the empty piece of notebook paper Mr. Heeler mocked her with inside. She watches the flaps swing shut around it, and imagines her empty life being tossed down there instead.
Not empty, she tells herself firmly. With a giggle that makes her feel but a minute step above insane, she tells herself that she's certainly not empty; that she's more than reached her carrying capacity. As if on cue, tiny Colleen-Chelsea-Penelope-Henrietta flips inside of her.
"Stop that," says Adrian crossly.
The weedy underclassman walking by her gives her a wide berth. Contagious, his whole body seems to read; Don't contaminate me.
"Pregnancy isn't contagious!" she wants to call after him, but instead she tugs her tee shirt down to fully cover her stomach and walks, late again, to her English class.
Her barely-there essay on ten years from now is so clearly incomplete there aren't even red marks on it. Just a big fat F, and the note See me after class. So she does; she sees Mrs. Flannery behind her, calling, "Adrian, wait! I wanted to talk to you."
She sees Mrs. Flannery sigh and retreat to her classroom, and then she goes to see Ben and whatever he brought for her lunch.
At last, here is the one place that Adrian feels safe now. She slips into the butcher shop, relieved as, for the first time since yesterday at four thirty nine when she left, she lets go of everything.
Ben thinks she finds refuge here because it's where he works, and she doesn't tell him otherwise; doesn't tell him that for all Ricky's shortcomings, she feels safe when she knows he's near. In the meat freezer, in his apartment above them, en route to work—wherever he is, she cherishes the feeling of peace that washes over her when he's so close. Maybe now he doesn't feel anything but friendship towards her, but here she can at least pull that close around her, use it as a shield.
"Doesn't the smell make you sick?" Ben asks, nearly every day, and this one no different.
She shakes her head and runs one finger across her belly, more tender than she expected. "Our baby's pretty good to mama," she says proudly.
Ben looks surprised that she didn't snap at him; Adrian is surprised too. Usually she does because it makes everything so much simpler. And never does she let herself show affection for Courtney-Charlotte-Tulia-Zera. As long as she and Ben wait to decide about adoption, she won't let herself get attached, because then her heart will become a part of the decision. Ben's heart (already saying 'Keep her!') is making it hard enough.
Ben returns to behind the counter while Adrian remains on the stool beside the cash register.
"You're here enough; maybe I'll teach you how to work that," says the red haired manager with an ominous grin.
Maybe not, thinks Adrian, and retreats across the store to browse the refrigerators aimlessly. It's almost four thirty now; any minute Ricky will come in, maybe ask her how she's doing, maybe just breeze by her. Either way, it's her daily fix. Like a prenatal vitamin, only one that strengthens Adrian instead of Colleen-Charlotte-Penelope-Zera.
The shop bell tinkles; she catches the faintest whiff of Ricky (Old Spice, clean laundry, and something even better that she has no name for), and then he's standing beside her.
"Hi, Adrian," he says.
"Hey, Ricky," she replies, muscles relaxing, aches receding.
He smiles that special smile that he only gives to her (she knows because she watches for it when he talks to other girls), the one where his eyes crinkle and the watchful, worried look he always has slips away. Then he goes behind the counter, and Adrian goes out the door.
The drive home feels short when she has the strength Ricky unknowingly fills her with. She even kisses her dad on the cheek and lets her mother feel Chelsea-Courtney-Zera-Henrietta kicking before she goes upstairs.
Mrs. Flannery has assigned her English students another personal essay. Too personal, thinks Adrian, and too difficult. She can write about Beowulf and Grendel as much as the next student, but she can't write about her goals for ten years in the future, and she certainly can't "Give her definition of family, as it pertains now and in the years to come".
For college applications; that's what Mrs. Flannery justifies her torture as. (College, another thorny subject since giving up on Stanford, Yale, Berkley.)
"What college applications?" mutters Adrian, tears springing to her eyes. Here she is six months pregnant and unable to think a week past now, let alone three months, let alone next year.
She abandons all schoolwork, and instead curls on her side on the bed, knees drawn up against Colleen-Courtney-Tulia-Zera, hands pillowing her own head. Several more tears fall in self pity before she slips into a troubled sleep.
When she wakes up, the sky is gray and dusky, the color of the inky water she rinsed from her mouth earlier. Downstairs she hears the clink of dishes; a family dinner for two.
Not hungry in the slightest, Adrian eases herself up slowly (she doesn't want to bend at the waist; it always feels like it'll hurt Chelsea-Charlotte-Penelope-Henrietta) and goes to stand by her window, playing one hand along the curtain.
There's a world out there, she realizes, far beyond her small sphere that comprises of so little: due dates and butchers shops, personal essays and relinquished dreams. Here she is, just another teenage statistic, and now Adrian Lee feels smaller than she ever has.
I hope this was enjoyed, and I'd love to hear any thoughts! (Conversationally, I write way too much about Adrian, and if you want to read more of my version of her, there's a few options.) Thanks for reading :)