Chapter Title: Ohmygod
Disclaimer: Any references to Flight 29 Down belong to DJ MacHale and all those other lucky people who get to work with Corbin and Johnny. Yeah.
A/N: Okay, the drama starts here! Hopefully this chapter will be more eventful than the last. All right, I'm done talking. Enjoy!
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A week later, Melissa woke up feeling the same nausea she had felt the previous week. She tried lying in the sand again and eating fresh fruit, but it just made her feel more restless. The others had only just started waking up, and Melissa looked frantically to the trees. I have to get this over fast, she thought miserably.
She stood and ran toward the cover of the forest, desperate for relief. As she ran, it felt as though her stomach was being throttled, but she had no choice if she wanted to stay hidden from the others. She reached the tree line, ducked behind the nearest tree, and vomited. Then she heard a crack. She spun just in time to hear:
"Melissa?" Daley.
Melissa was at a complete loss for excuses. Her mouth almost opened, but then she remembered that she had just thrown up. She shut it tight and swiped at her lips vigorously.
"Okay, so now I really want to know what's going on with you. You can't have eaten yet—"
"I had fruit this morning, before you guys woke up."
Daley stared at her skeptically. "And it's the exact same fruit you ate last week when you got sick finding wood with me. And it just so happens that you're the only one who's eaten it. Coincidences like that don't exist, Mel."
Melissa looked as though she'd been caught robbing a convenience store. "Daley, it isn't what it looks like. It can't be that serious!"
"I have to tell them, Mel," Daley threatened levelly. Melissa looked mortified.
"Day, you can't!" she cried, discreetly pushing dirt with her shoe to cover the sickness on the ground. "Please, I'll figure out how to make it go away."
"Melissa, what if you have something like what Jackson had? We can't just keep letting you throw up every morning—"
"It's not every morning!" Melissa interjected hurriedly. "Wait, does everyone else know?"
"No, they don't know. And that's not the point!" Daley said persistently. "My point is that you can't just go on like this. It may not be serious now, but if it gets serious, we'll regret not doing anything about it now." She looked at Melissa gravely.
Melissa started walking away from Daley and out of the woods. "Daley, don't worry," she said sweetly. "I've got everything under control." With that, she turned around and headed toward camp, eager to leave the conversation.
Truthfully, this was the fourth time in the last two weeks that she had woken up feeling sick. The trees of the tree line had become allies in her game of hide and seek against the others. Each day, she became just a little bit more careless, but today was the first time that anyone had caught her. She was coming to think that she might not care if the others found out that she was sick. Then they could medicate her and she would stop throwing her guts up when she woke up.
But, for now, she wouldn't be a pest.
She walked into camp and grabbed a papaya in one hand, a knife in the other. She brought it out to the beach and started slicing it into pieces, popping them gingerly into her mouth to see if she could keep them down. So far, so good. She just hoped it would stay that way. The last thing she needed was to be sick all over the beach. Gee, that would be fun!
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Daley stared as Melissa strutted away, then rubbed her eyes and turned to go back to camp, herself. She watched Melissa grab a papaya and a knife, then walk by herself to the beach. Whatever. She needed Nathan.
And to speak of the devil… as she walked back into the camp, Nathan's bushy hair and lean form exited the boys' tent groggily.
"Nathan!" she called to him, careful not to wake the others just yet. He looked up at her, still yawning and scratching his sides.
"Oh, hey, Day," he said breezily. "What's—?"
Before he could get the rest of the thought past his lips, Daley thrust her arms over his shoulders and hid her face in his shoulder. Nathan stumbled and caught her around her back, holding her tightly to him and turning to look at her. They didn't get to show blunt affection very often, but when they did, he was willing to give it to her.
"Tell me what's going on," he said to her calmly.
"I was about to ask you the same," she said, her voice muffled against his shoulder. He put his hands to her arms and gently pried her away from his body. She looked a bit shaken up, but she wasn't crying.
"What are you talking about?" he asked.
"Melissa."
"Oh," he said, a look of comprehension renting his features. He looked at her seriously and asked again, "What's going on?"
"I saw her throwing up," Daley said miserably. Nathan looked slightly taken aback, but he continued to listen attentively.
"When?"
"Just now," she replied, gesturing toward the woods. His eyebrows slowly went up, and Daley couldn't believe how cool he was being about all of this. She just wanted to know what was wrong with Melissa.
Nathan brought his hands to her shoulders and slowly rubbed up and down Daley's arms in an effort to calm her. The role-reversal that had apparently taken place here was astonishing: he was being calm and collected, and Daley seemed unhinged and even slightly afraid. She seemed way too upset about one case of nausea…
"It's not the first time." Well that answered that question. Suddenly, it clicked.
"What?" he asked for confirmation.
"She threw up last week, while we were gathering wood. I wasn't sure that was it, but she pretty much just confirmed it. I don't know what she has, and she doesn't want treatment."
"Uh, Day," Nathan said, his hands caressing her arms once more as he began to move her aside. "I need to go talk to Melissa. Where is she now?"
"She just walked down to the beach," she said, pointing him toward the shore. "I think I'll go get myself some food."
"That's a good idea." He gave her a last comforting glance and said, "I'll be right back."
His feet sank into the sand as he trudged down to talk to Melissa. It seemed that the new fears buzzing viciously around in his head were weighing him down. What's wrong with her? Could it really be that? Why hasn't she said anything to me? Aren't we best friends? It had to be Jackson. It certainly wasn't me, and if she did something with Eric… no. And she and Jackson… they were about three months ago now, isn't it? That was about the extent of his sane thought. Anything after that was a continuous progression of Ohmygod Ohmygod…
"Mel?" he asked, his voice cracking nervously as he approached her from behind and sat in the sand beside her, sand sticking to his palms.
"Oh, hey, Nathan!" she said, seeming cheerful. He couldn't tell if it was a front or if she was really happy to see him. Either way, he couldn't muster the energy to seem at all happy.
"Mel, I need to talk to you about something," he said, his tone that of utmost seriousness. Melissa looked at the remains of her fruit mournfully.
"Daley told you, didn't she?" she asked him quietly.
"Yes," Nathan said impatiently, "but—"
"Listen, it's not that bad. I just wasn't feeling well this morning. It's a one-time thing."
"A one-time thing? You mean, it never happened before this morning?"
"No," she said innocently.
Nathan put his forehead in his hand tentatively. "Why are you lying to me? I know you were sick last week getting wood with Daley. She told me." He looked up at Melissa, hurt and question on his face. "It wasn't just then, either, was it? How many times has it happened?"
She couldn't lie to him any more. He looked so upset with her already. "Four."
"Four? Jeez, Mel." He put his hands back to his head and let them slide into his already-tangled hair. "Do you have any idea what's going on?"
Melissa didn't look at him, but slowly started shaking her head. "It can't be—"
Nathan scoffed and said with disbelief, "It can be serious, Melissa. You've thrown up four times in the past… what, two weeks?"
"That's about right," she said and petered off. Finally, she looked at him. "Why, what do you think is wrong with me?" He looked at her cautiously, then brought into words what was flooding his mind.
"How long ago was it that you and Jackson… you know?" he asked awkwardly.
She rolled her eyes as she counted. "God, Nathan, I don't know. I'm losing track of time at this point."
Nathan continued staring at her, nervously calculating. "If I've got it right, I think it was probably… three months ago, more or less."
"Okay, so?" Melissa asked, genuinely confused. Nathan looked at her and thought, This would be acceptable if I was talking to Taylor
"Melissa, come on. You had sex with Jackson three months ago, and now you're nauseous, and you also seem to be sleeping a lot. If you were Eric or Taylor, we would probably have yelled at you by now. Come on, Mel. You took health in school."
And that was it. Melissa's eyes opened into an alarmed, disbelieving look she hadn't shown him in a long while. Her lips parted slightly, as though she was suddenly finding breathing to be a difficult task. Her nostrils flared and she pulled her knees in closer to her chest. "Oh my god," she whispered, tears cracking obscenely through each word.
"Oh, Melissa," Nathan sighed as he saw that she was starting to break down. In truth, he didn't know how strong he could possibly be for her when he was still trying to swallow the idea, himself. He twisted to face her and stretched his arms around her, pulling her tightly to his chest. She convulsed under his hold, and the chant of "Ohmygod ohmygod" seemed to have been transferred from Nathan's mind to Melissa's lips as she said it, over and over again.
For an hour, Jackson watched as Nathan held Melissa and she just cried for him. Yes, oddly enough, it seemed that she was actually crying for him: the two of them looked perfectly content to be together, no matter the situation. Well, they had always looked comfortable like that, but it had never seemed consequential to him until now. There was only one thing that he and Melissa shared that she didn't have with Nathan. The problem was, she could easily change that, and that depressed him. He couldn't make her love him.
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Nathan could only comfort Melissa for so long. There were tasks to be done and people to feed, which he was reminded bluntly when his stomach chose to groan very loudly. Melissa looked at him and laughed, hiccupping involuntarily, her face still moist. He brought his hands to her cheeks and wiped them with his thumbs.
"Will you be okay here? I have to go make food. I think there's a bit of fish and stuff left over from yesterday." He looked around pensively, then back at Melissa's blotched and miserable face, questioning her.
"I'll be fine," she said weakly. They both knew she wouldn't be fine for quite a while, but that didn't stop Nathan from making his next vital comment.
"You know, you have to tell Jackson." He had deduced that this was definitely a result of Melissa's relations with Jackson, and her abashed reaction confirmed that belief. But he had to be sure. "It is his, isn't it?" He watched as her face contorted between surprise, consideration, and embarrassment in a sum of about three seconds.
"Yes!" she squeaked. "You and I haven't… and I certainly haven't done anything with Eric! And well… you knew that morning after Jackson and I spent the night in the woods."
"Does anyone else know?" he asked her. She looked panicky at the question.
"I don't think so. I haven't said anything, and I really don't think Jackson would want to tell everyone something like that."
"Okay, well, you definitely need to tell him, Mel," Nathan recommended. She looked nauseous at the mere thought.
"I will. I won't be happy about it," she smiled grimly at him, and he returned the smile, "but I will."
"Good." He patted her arm and handed her a banana that he had had in his pocket. "Eat something. Whenever you decide to tell Jackson about this… I'll be there for you. Okay?"
Melissa smiled warmly at him and began to peel the banana. "Thanks, Nathan. You're a good friend." He rubbed her arm a last time and stood up, went back up to the camp.
"Oh, this is not good," Nathan said to himself as he began to rummage through their fruit stores. He saw Daley pass by behind him and gave her a small wave. She smiled at him and proceeded into the jungle with her empty fruit sack.
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Jackson, in an odd fit of aggravation, stomped into the woods after Daley. Nathan, who seemed immersed in his business with the food, didn't notice him, and Jackson didn't feel like calling for his attention. After watching his liaison with Melissa a mere five minutes ago, he found that he wasn't eager to talk to either of them.
When he finally caught up with the red-head, she was picking some fruit off of a squat tree in a small clearing. He put his hand on her shoulder to get her attention, and she jumped and spun to look at him. She doubled over laughing with her hand to her chest.
"Oh my god, Jackson. Don't sneak up on me like that!" she said, straightening up while giggling a bit, out of breath. She saw that he wasn't smiling, and her expression fell. "What's wrong?" she asked him. He looked uncomfortable and somewhat unsure, and she stepped away from the tree, setting the picked fruit on the ground. "Is something up with Melissa?"
"Melissa?" Jackson looked at Daley suspiciously. "Why would you say it's something with Melissa?"
"Oh, no reason," Daley said innocently. Jackson analyzed her for a moment, then he fell back to looking troubled. Daley remained persistent, and again asked, "So, what's wrong?"
"I think…" he thought for a moment, trying to come up with a way to arrange the words. "I think there's something going on between Melissa and Nathan."
Daley looked disbelieving and slightly crestfallen. "What are you talking about?"
"Melissa was upset about something, and she and Nathan were sitting on the beach, hugging. They looked pretty cozy."
"That's odd," Daley said, but somehow she sounded as though she believed what he was telling her. "Well Nathan and Melissa are pretty good friends."
"They looked a little more than friendly to me," Jackson said sourly. Daley and Jackson were each aware that the other was romantically involved with either Nathan or Melissa, and both seemed sympathetic, albeit confused.
"Well, I guess we'll find out. Won't we?" Daley asked, and Jackson nodded numbly. She picked up her meager picking of fruit and the two of them walked through the trees back to camp. They found Nathan in the same spot he had been ten minutes ago when Jackson had gone after Daley, and this time he heard them and looked up from cutting fruit. He smiled and stood to take the sack from Daley, but she held it firmly and he let go.
"Uh, something wrong?" he asked gamely. Daley seemed unsure about whether or not she actually wanted to discuss with Nathan what was on her mind, and instead busied herself with rearranging the fruit in their storage. Nathan gave her a queer look, then looked at Jackson, as though to say, What's up with her? Instead of giving Nathan a proper answer, Jackson turned around and started walking into the jungle again. Nathan found it amazing how much time Jackson could spend in the jungle in a single day.
He turned back to Daley and put the fingers of his left hand lightly to her back. She recoiled very slightly, but didn't pull away from his touch.
"Day, what's going on?" he asked, his voice wavering slightly. She put the rest of the fruit down and looked at him seriously.
"Is something going on between you and Melissa?"
Nathan looked shocked, almost to the point of exaggeration. Daley felt her eyebrows rise a bit, but she looked at him steadily.
"N-no!" he stuttered, his voice cracking slightly. "What would make you think something was going on?"
It seemed the opportune moment for the certain darkness that suddenly made its passage over the island. Daley looked up and her gaze was met by dark, angrily-swelled storm clouds. She felt a slick drop beat onto her forehead, then another, until a drizzle formed. She knew it would become full-on rain soon, but she kept her ground. She needed to know.
"Jackson saw you two. He said you guys seemed to be… intimate."
Nathan looked slightly confused, then the worrying creases in his face began to calm. "Oh, he saw me hugging her? Is that all?" He smiled, but Daley didn't seem to have been quelled.
"Why were you hugging her?" she asked, unrelenting. Nathan looked at her stonily for a moment.
"What do you mean, 'Why was I hugging her'?" he asked. "She's my best friend. I'm allowed to comfort her when she's upset."
"Well, what was she upset about?"
Nathan was sure that there were about a million incriminating things she could come up with that ended in him and Melissa having a secret romance. However, those horrible fantasies couldn't be worse than the reality, and he wasn't sure that Melissa wanted him telling anyone before she had even had the chance to tell Jackson. The rain fell heavier, and he could feel his hair dampening and coming down from its usual frizzy halo around his face.
"I can't tell you," he said lamely. Daley looked at him, disbelief and disappointment etched in the lines on her forehead and radiating from her eyes.
"You can't tell me? Well why not? I'm a big girl, Nathan. I'm sure I'll understand."
He looked at her for a moment, trying to make his mind come up with a decision. Instead, all he got was a headache from banging his head against his imaginary brick wall, along with what seemed to be a full-body burn from Daley's incriminating stare. Why on earth was she this upset?
"I really don't think I should tell you, Day."
"Fine," she said, spinning in the now-wet sand and stomping away toward the girls' tent. Nathan watched her for only a moment before he plodded after her and grabbed her arm.
"Daley!"
"What?"
"If I tell you, please don't tell anyone else. Can you promise me that?"
"Oh, for god's sake, Nathan! Fine, I won't tell anyone. So tell me: are you romantically involved with Melissa?" She gave him the piercing look again, only this time he shut it down immediately.
"No! Listen to me." He moved a bit closer to her, and she looked at him questioningly, but accepted him. He leaned toward her ear and whispered something through the heavy fall of raindrops. Her eyes widened almost beyond physical believability and she looked at him.
"You're joking," was all she could think to say to him. He shook his head, and rainwater flecked off of his hair as the curls moved. He leaned in and whispered something in her ear, which seemed to make her feel even better. Then the full impact of his whispers seemed to occur to her, and she said, "Oh my god."
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The rain ended about an hour or so later, and Melissa exited the tent where she had been hiding from the steady teardrops while braiding some new rope for them to use. She really wanted to find Jackson so she could just tell him and get the awkwardness and shock over with. Instead, she found Nathan and Daley, Nathan gutting fish and Daley re-gathering palm fronds. Both looked as though they'd spent their fair shares of time in the rain, but they were back out to working now. She figured one of them had to know where Jackson was.
"Hey, guys," she greeted them. From the surprised and sympathetic look Daley seemed to be giving her, she judged that Nathan had told her the news, or most of it, at least. She would have time to explain to her later, although she probably understood the situation already. She was a smart girl. "Have either of you seen Jackson?"
Nathan shook his damp head, but Daley said, "I think I saw him go into the jungle a little while ago. Not sure what he was doing, but yeah." She gave Melissa a smile, which was reciprocated.
"Thanks." She turned and walked where Daley had said Jackson had gone and started her way through the trees.
Fifteen minutes later, she was some depth into the trees and still had no idea where Jackson was. She stopped to get her bearings, then heard something to her right. She trudged through the trees cautiously, in case there was some sort of animal waiting for her. Instead, she found Jackson pacing in a clearing. With vague realization, she noticed that this clearing happened to have been the one that she and Jackson shared their night alone in. She looked around it. Other than the obvious wetness from the rainfall, three months' time didn't seem to have done much to it. She stepped out and, though the wet leaves didn't crunch, the compression from her boots seemed to have made enough noise for Jackson to have noticed and looked up. When he saw her he seemed expectant, yet disappointed.
She decided to take the awkward moment to notice the soothing nature around her. The sky was a profound, dusky blue and the air around them was moist with the residue of tropical rain, yet somehow streaked with a cool, desiccated breeze that caressed and clung to their skin. The forest around them had a captivating scent, sharp and natural—she assumed the smell of wet palm trees. Before she could say a word, she absorbed the soothing energy of the weather around her. It seemed to make telling him that much easier.
"Jackson?"
He looked at her again, and this time they connected, however unwilling he seemed to be. She couldn't even begin to imagine what he was angry with her about: she needed to focus on the news at hand.
"Jackson, can I talk to you?"
"About what?" he asked her bluntly. She looked all around her, willing the wet bark to give her any strength it had to offer.
"It's about… well, sort of about us."
"Oh yeah?" he asked, as though he wasn't entirely surprised. "And let me guess, about you and Nathan, as well?"
"What?" she asked. What does any of this have to do with Nathan?
"You and him have been friends for quite some time now. Is it time for you to take the next step in your relationship?"
Melissa was truly off guard. What on earth is he talking about? "Of course not. Nathan's my friend. You know I have feelings for you! That's what I wanted to talk to you about."
"Save it. I already saw you two down on the beach. I can't make you love me, Melissa."
She put her hand to her forehead, steadying. "Jackson, listen. Nathan and I are not romantically involved. Please don't make this harder for me than it already is."
He suddenly seemed to notice that she was out of sorts, and stepped closer to her. "Are you all right?"
At that exact moment, it seemed, her mind flashed her back to that night, some odd months ago, when she and Jackson had spent the night in the jungle by themselves. She suddenly thought of the moment after his fingers had left her, ready to make his big move. She remembered it in such fine detail, remembered the feel of his hand on her back, and her own scent on him. That scent. At the time, it had been exhilarating and somehow securing. Now, smelling herself on someone else was a nauseating catalyst.
"Oh," she groaned, then quickly turned away from him to the trees.
"What the…?" he asked himself as he followed her. She bent over at the outskirts of the clearing and suddenly he recognized what she was doing. He put his hand to her back as she choked and was sick. He kept it there as she continued to cough and then, when she had cleaned her mouth with a rag from her pocket and turned to look at him, she seemed to be crying. He couldn't even begin to imagine…
"What is going on?" he asked her, letting her put the rag back in her pocket before pulling her to him and wrapping his arms around her, letting one hand support her head as the other fell to the small of her back. She hadn't been sick on her clothes, so he wasn't worried about hugging her. He didn't honestly think he would have cared if she had been sick on herself.
"I don't love Nathan," she said to him in a slight delirium. He smiled to himself and continued to stroke her hair, as she pulled long, calming breaths. She pulled away from him and looked desperately over the planes of his face. "You have to understand, I love Nathan. But he's like my brother. I don't love him the way… the way I love you."
Jackson's chest burned and swelled, but he felt that he could reciprocate her last comment. He kissed her on the cheek, feeling the streaks of tears press effortlessly against his lips.
"Okay." He let her go and held her at arm's length, then put his hands down. "Please, tell me what's going on."
She stood away from him for a moment, silently pondering which would be the best way to break the news to him. Nathan was right: he had to know. She couldn't put it off until she started to show. In fact, she already seemed to have gained a bit of weight, but no one else had had the opportunity to notice.
"There's something I need to tell you."
"I kind of figured after all the drama." He smirked and she smiled sheepishly.
"This is serious, Jackson."
"I'm listening."
She took a deep breath, but couldn't seem to let it go. Once she let this breath go, she had to tell him. That was the ultimatum her mind had come up with for her, and she couldn't seem to defy it.
One, two, three, four. Her chest constricted with nerves and want of air. She brought her hand to her throat and fiddled with the necklace there. Six, seven, eight…
Sigh.
"We had sex about three months ago," she began, and Jackson looked slightly surprised at her forwardness, but remained attentive. "We also didn't have any means of protection."
Jackson looked stricken and pale. "What happened?" he asked her with harsh seriousness. She almost didn't want to tell him. "Is something wrong?"
"Well, not technically."
" 'Not technically'? What the hell does that mean?"
"Jackson, please relax," Melissa pleaded. His face rapidly transitioned from a sickly white to brilliant pinkish-red in irritation.
"I can't relax. We had sex, and something went wrong. This is the one thing every couple our age fears, and we've just walked right into it!"
"JACKSON!" He shut his mouth and looked at her. She seemed to have set her expression in resolve to get her point to him. "I'm pregnant."
That shut him up for a few minutes. He simply stared at her, and then walked away, pacing around the little clearing. He stopped and looked back at her. "You're…you're…"
"Pregnant," she finished for him, almost impatiently. He continued to stare, and she became self-conscious of the weight she had recently gained. Suddenly, he began to notice the difference in her.
The first he took care to notice was the gentle curvature at her middle that had never been there before, and he felt the overwhelming urge to move forward. He walked quietly toward her and reached his hand out hesitantly. Would she forgive him now?
It seemed so. When his fingers came in contact with her small, curved middle, he was amazed how safe the idea of this conception felt to him. He looked down at the area his hands touched, then up at Melissa.
"So this is real now," he said to her numbly. She looked at him, cocking her head.
"It wasn't real before?"
"No, no. I'm just saying… I don't know, this makes everything so… confirmed. It's so real to me now."
"I think I know what you mean." She looked down, and his hand nervously left her. "It's okay. This… baby is as much yours to nurture as it is mine."
He rolled his eyes pensively. "A baby. A baby. You and I… we have a baby." She smiled at him.
"That we do."
"You're having my baby."
She laughed lightly. "I've got it Jackson. I've been throwing up all week, if you need proof."
He stroked her hair distractedly, a hint of a grin on his face. "I'm sorry. It's just… strange. Interesting. Not to mention, I can't really say I've ever experienced this before."
"Neither have I. If I had known there was this much vomit involved in pregnancy, I would've said no that night, for sure!" The sarcastic tone in her voice told him that she was just as happy about this as she was. The only thing that could possibly dampen his spirits was the chaos he knew this would cause at camp.
"Who else knows?"
"Well, you know, I know," he looked at her skeptically, as she was only stating the obvious. "Nathan knows, that's what I was telling him before, when you saw us hugging I guess." He looked slightly ashamed about this part, but let her finish. "And I think Nathan may have told Daley. Other than that… no one I know of."
"Okay, well that works, then. Nathan and Daley won't freak out unless they absolutely have to."
"Right."
Jackson held Melissa loosely to him. He looked at the dusky sky and thought to himself, I'm in love. I'm in love with the mother of my child.
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A/N: Okay, so that didn't come out quite as I'd hoped, but there's the drama for you all. More shall come, but for now be content with this far-too-long chapter, and I'll try to update ASAP.