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Let Go

Alice didn't believe in letting a problem fester and grow, and this problem was literally growing every second.

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She had lied.

She had looked her father in the eye and let the lie slip easily part her lips. It wasn't the first time she had ever done it and it would certainly not be the last, but it was the first time in years that the lie had tasted bitter on her tongue. When she saw the relief flood his eyes, she knew she couldn't take it back, and so she didn't. Instead, she went into the bathroom, stood beneath the spray of the shower, and cried. They were silent tears of disappointment in herself, in Jasper, in the direction she had let her life take.

She stayed beneath the spray until the water ran cold, and, by that time, she already had a plan of action formed. Alice didn't believe in letting a problem fester and grow, and this problem was literally growing every second.

Alice had logically catalogued her options: abortion, adoption, and keeping it. She wasn't naïve enough to think that she could keep the thing growing inside of her — she refused to call it a baby — and she knew that if she did actually give birth to it, she wouldn't have the strength to hand it to someone else to raise.

Alice had never really picked a side on the whole abortion debate. She wasn't one of those girls that wore "Abortion is Homicide" and marched on Washington, but she also wasn't one of those girls that equated abortion with being a feminist. No, Alice's opinion on the subject was the same with abortion that it was with most controversial issues: it was their own private business.

Sitting on her bed in her white towel, her wet hair dripping down her back, Alice dialed the Women's Clinic and made an appointment. She could do this, she had done harder before.

That night, as she thrashed beneath her covers, she dreamt of the only thing she had been able to think of for the last few weeks: Jasper snorting lines off a naked Maria. Jasper once again laying waste to his life.

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A/N: Thanks for reading!