Shanna Henderson woke up alone.
On an ordinary day, this wouldn't have been a problem at all. Today it was.
You see, she hadn't fallen asleep alone. There had been a boy, and looking back she thinks his name might have been Blake…or was it Brian? Benjamin? She wasn't sure. She remembers his face like it's burned behind her eyes, but his name escapes her.
All she knows is she felt something. Something…significant.
But she's woken up alone, and she knows she won't find him again. She's leaving today, she and her best friends Nellie and Michael. They were only staying in Los Angeles for two days and a night. And now that night was over, and Shanna was alone in her hotel room.
She packs in silence. Soon there will be no trace of her or him here.
"You ok, Shan?" Nellie asks softly, as they're sitting together on the plane back to Chicago. Nellie's in the middle, Michael's asleep in the aisle seat, and normally bubbly Shanna hasn't said a word the whole flight, just looking out her window.
"Fine, Nell."
"You sure?"
"More than."
Nine months later there's a boy. A boy who will never know a father, a boy that's her son. A little boy named Ryder who's a mistake in every sense of the word.
The nurse hands Shanna her son. Shanna doesn't hold him. She can't even look at him for the first day. This little boy will grow up fatherless and it's her fault.
Nellie holds and nurses the baby like it's her own. For the first week, it's Nellie who takes care of the baby. Michael stops by the apartment Nellie and Shanna share almost every day, helping with the baby, while Shanna just stares at the walls. She can't believe what she's done to this poor child, this child who will grow up in ridicule and shame, just like she did.
The words crack baby chorus in her head like the kids who taunted her all those years ago are breathing down her neck.
She knows little Ryder will be taunted too.
It takes a week for Shanna to grow up and take care of her own baby. But she slowly turns back into her bubbly self, the one she was before they went to LA.
She goes back to teasing Nellie and Michael about their 'relationship' that doesn't actually exist - though she thinks it should. She goes back to smiling about everything, she goes back to going to parties at Abraham's, she goes back to the way it was. Except, it's the way it was - with a baby.
And now it will always be that way.