-Aria-
"Like I said," I say, out of breath, as Hanna and I jog together in PE, again. "I do care about the kid. I mean, it is not the baby's fault. So I made an appointment to get a check up. It's tomorrow at four. They got me in so early cause they had a cancellation. Lucky me."
Hanna slows down to talk and I do, too.
"Are you gonna tell Ezra before the appointment?" She asks.
"I don't know." I sigh. "I mean on one hand, he might be upset he didn't get to go to the first one. What if I get an ultrasound? Or find out something major? And he isn't there? And he missed it?"
"It may not even be his kid though."
"Exactly," I say. "And if I go before telling him, I'd have more information, you know? So when I tell him I'm you-know-what, I'd know weather or not it's his."
"How can they tell?" She asks.
"How far along the baby is. Then I'd know when it was.. you know. Concived."
"So, maybe you should wait. No point in making him think he has a kid unless he does."
"But what if it and he missed the first-"
"Just say no to an ultrasound."
"That's how they'll be able to tell, Han." I pick up my pace again so she can't talk. We jog for a while without talking.
I stop running, and Hanna stops at a halt, too. "You okay?"
"A might tell him before I do." I say.
"Gosh Aria, I thought you were hurt or something." our class mates pass by us.
I roll my eyes. "Han, are you gonna think I'm going into labor everytime I breath or something."
"You did pass out." She shrugs. "Sorry. But, go on."
We walk now. "If A tells Ezra, I'll never be able to forgive myself."
"So tell him..."
"I am. Right now." I run again, heading towards my bag.
"NOW?" Hanna struggles to keep up with me.
"Yes, now. Or I'll lose the guts to do it."
"But he's in class..."
Ezra had to finish out the week.
"I'll pull him out. This is important."
"Aria you're being irrational." Hanna pulls my arm. And I know she's right. I take a huge breath.
"I need to do this now..."
Hanna looks at me intensly. "Come on." She pulls my to our stuff, grabs it, and calls over to the coach that we're using the bathroom. She waves us off, her way of saying okay. And, without knowing why, I let Hanna drag me to the English room.
She knocks on the door. "Stay here." She says. I listen.
Ezra opens the door, and she goes in. He eyes me like I've lost it. I so have.
Hanna says something to Ezra, and soon he's standing outside his door with me.
"Aria..." He asks, patienly. "Why did Hanna just tell me to wait in the hall while she announces something."
"Uh,"
"Teacher surprise party?" He asks.
"Sure..." I roll my eyes. "Anyways, there's something I need to tell you."
"Right now?"
Suddenly I realized how stupid this was. He's gonna be distracted the rest of the day. Then again... this way she could leave him with the news and run away.. not have to deal with it till after he de-fummed. And, he'd have class to keep his mind a little distracted from the news, instead of sitting home going nuts.
"Yes, right now. Cause if I don't tell you now I'm not gonna. I'll chicken out and you'll hear about it from someone else. Probably Hanna." I roll my eyes, seeing her sit on Mr. Fitz's desk and cross her legs like she owned the room.
"Well, what is it?" He looks at me with concern.
"I'm... Uh..." I knock on the door, catching Hanna's attention. She gets up and says something to the class. She better not be asking for money in there for a fake present for Mr. Fitz.
"I'm pregnant, Ezra..."
His entire face goes instanly white.
"You're... you're what?"
Hanna strolls over now, and I've never been happier for her to come rescue me.
"I'm not sure if it's yours or not."
Hanna comes out. "You slept with other men?!" He asks, enraged.
"Well... Not exactly. Kinda..."
"She was date rapped." Hanna explains.
"You were rapped?" His eyes go from angry to heart broken, and I just can't stand here anymore and watch his emotions kill him.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner," I say. "But I didn't wanna talk about it. We'll talk after school, okay?" I start to walk away.
"No, Aria!" he yells down the hall.
"I'm sorry..." I call behind me.
"Ms. Montgomery, I need to speak with you."
"Not now..."
"Aria, you come back here, or you have detention after school!"
I stop and turn around now.
"Okay, Mr. Fitz." I narrow my eyes at him, and keep walking with Hanna back to PE, where I beat the schools record on the mile dash. Anger can do wonderful things.
It's two thirty. School's offically out. But not for me. Ezra switched 'detention' to 'tutoring' so I'm sitting in his class room, and I'm in the back row, pretending to not care that he's a few feet away in another desk, staring at me as if comprehending the situation.
"Aria, where do I start?"
I look up. "Well, usually you ask what I need tutoring with, then we find it in the book and you explain it, then we work through a few examples and then you let-"
"Aria, just, cut it out." He moves a few seats up. "Start at the very beginning. The date rape. What happened?"
"I was on a date, and I got raped."
"Aria!" He raises his voice, then calms himself. "This is very serious. You do know that right?"
"I know..." I sigh. "I know. But you didn't have to give me detention."
"You didn't have the break the news to me like that."
"It was the only way I could think of..."
He stares at me for a few seconds, poundering if he wants to pick this battle or just move on. But before we can start fighting, I talk.
"I don't know who it was." I start. "I was at this party...I don't even really remember who's party it was...Or where it was... or who was there... I think it might've been a college part... I don't know anything but the room I was in had bed sheets wet with beer. I was so drugged."
"You do drugs?" His eyes get so wide.
"No, I like brownies."
"You didn't know not to take a brownie at a party?"
"No, I did. But I was drunk and the combination of alchohal and drugs made me stupid enough to take a tablet. LCD. Anyways... I was just hanging out, then I got fuzzy I just remember playing pool, and hitting myself in the head with the pole. So someone took me upstairs to a room. And I fell asleep. And someone woke me up and came in the room. He didn't talk, at all. He locked the door and I was too fuzzy to say anything... He locked the doors... and..." I shake my head. "That's the last time I remember. The click of the lock. Then the next thing I remember was waking up the next morning on the couch. My dad was really upset. He said I was brought home by some boy. But he didn't ground me... I think he kinda knew what I went through. So we don't talk about it. I don't talk about it ever... Mostly cause I wasn't sure if it even happened..."
"Awe, Aria..." he touches my hand. "When was this?"
"About three months ago..."
"Three months ago...? We had sex for the first time just two months ago..."
"Yeah, I know."
"You let me undress you and you agreed to sex just a month after being raped?"
I shrug. "I told you. I hardly remembered if it ever happened. I thought it was just from the LCD and beer. Until..."
"What?"
"When we had sex... I remembered a little... Just... A little... Enough to know it defanatly happened... Which is why we've only had sex once. And the only reason we even did it in the bathroom was because I wanted to erase the twilight rape from my mind. It kinda did the oppasite, though."
"Do you remember who it was?"
"Not at all..."
"Did you lose your virginity to him?" He asks, carefully like he's crossing a line.
"Yeah. Except I didn't lose it, it was stolen..."
And then I start to cry. And I can't focus on it. So I just move on.
"Anyways, this happened a month before we started dating. Then we met in the bar... we had sex... we got together, you know the story."
"When did you find out you were pregnant? And how?"
"Three days ago." I tell him. "And I took a pregnancy test."
He takes it in. "Alright, Ms. Montgomery." He stands up. "Let's go."
"Where?" I ask, collecting my stuff. He give me a 'you know where' look. So we take our seperate cars and meet up at his apartment.
We ignore the baby subject and he grills me on more details about the rape. But when I start crying again, he realizes I don't want to talk about it. So, we moves on to the pregnancy. But then he realizes this makes me feel worse. So we watch a movie and I fall asleep. It's not until he wakes me up because my mom called my cell phone that we talk about it again.
"I know it's early... But are you thinking you want to keep it?" He asks me.
"I don't know... what do you think?"
"Honestly...?" He takes in a deep breath. "I want what's best for her... I want to keep her. I really do. I'd pick up and move to Alaska where no one knew us so we could keep her. But I don't want you to give up your life for her if you don't want to. She deserves two parents. Not just me. So it's up to you."
I'm taken back by his answer. That's not what I meant at all. I meant what he thought I should do... I hadn't ever considered he'd want a part in the babies life.
"What if it isn't yours?"
"Well... if it's not mine... then... I guess I'll be 'mom's boyfriend'... if you keep the child..."
"Well we should wait on deciding anything till we know who's it is..."
"Right."
We settle back into the couch and relax. "You said 'she..'" I say. "You want a girl? I mean, if it's yours..."
"Yeah..." He smiles. "Daddy's little girl, you know? But we're getting ahead of ourselves here... Even if the baby isn't mine, I'll be 'daddy'... If you want me to.. I mean, if you want to do adoption that's fine, regardless of the father but if it's his and he or she needs a dad... I'm here.." Ezra's talking all over the place. He's not making sense anymore, because none of this makes sense. It's like we're running in circles.
Daddy's little girl. In that second, it stuck me that this baby was real. That this isn't a lie I can get out of… This is for the rest of my life. And what's worse is that if
this happened in five years, Ezra and I would be married, and he would have picked me up and spun me around. Mom would take me shopping, buying pink flowery things before we even knew if it was a girl. Dad would insist it was a boy, and talk about taking him to baseball games.
I didn't notice, but I guess I was crying, because Ezra's whiping tears away with this thumb. I feel his skin on mine, and our flesh is the only thing that's keeping our souls from touching. Love so big it can create new life. Even if the baby isn't Ezra's, together we'd make the baby who he or she is, raising it to be who God created them to be, whether Ezra and mine, or the rapists and my gene combination made the baby, Ezra and I would be the reason the baby was born. For us to have.
"No," I push his hand away. "No adoption. I'm gonna keep him. Or her. Shim. I'm keeping Shim. WE'RE keeping Shim. Keeping..." I roll my eyes. "Like it's a kitten. You know, God gave us this kid, right? I mean it wasn't quiet made out of love. One was force and one was drunken lust on the first date. There's a reason the kid's here, right? If He didn't want US to have the baby, it wouldn't have been made... And we wouldn't have been together, you know? If you aren't suppossed to be dad... I wouldn't have met you..."
"You're right..."
"So, we'll be mom and dad." I take his hand. "Will you? I mean..." I look into his eyes. "Can we pull this off? Can we be parents?"
"Is that what you really want, Aria?" he asked.
I nod. "I think so..."
He kissed my cheek and leans his head on mine. "Okay." Is all he replies.
Okay. It's done. It's decided. Sealed with a kiss.
"Like I said," I say, out of breath, as Hanna and I jog together in PE, again. "I do care about the kid. I mean, it is not the baby's fault. So I made an appointment to get a check up. It's tomorrow at four. They got me in so early cause they had a cancellation. Lucky me."
Hanna slows down to talk and I do, too.
"Are you gonna tell Ezra before the appointment?" She asks.
"I don't know." I sigh. "I mean on one hand, he might be upset he didn't get to go to the first one. What if I get an ultrasound? Or find out something major? And he isn't there? And he missed it?"
"It may not even be his kid though."
"Exactly," I say. "And if I go before telling him, I'd have more information, you know? So when I tell him I'm you-know-what, I'd know weather or not it's his."
"How can they tell?" She asks.
"How far along the baby is. Then I'd know when it was.. you know. Concived."
"So, maybe you should wait. No point in making him think he has a kid unless he does."
"But what if it and he missed the first-"
"Just say no to an ultrasound."
"That's how they'll be able to tell, Han." I pick up my pace again so she can't talk. We jog for a while without talking.
I stop running, and Hanna stops at a halt, too. "You okay?"
"A might tell him before I do." I say.
"Gosh Aria, I thought you were hurt or something." our class mates pass by us.
I roll my eyes. "Han, are you gonna think I'm going into labor everytime I breath or something."
"You did pass out." She shrugs. "Sorry. But, go on."
We walk now. "If A tells Ezra, I'll never be able to forgive myself."
"So tell him..."
"I am. Right now." I run again, heading towards my bag.
"NOW?" Hanna struggles to keep up with me.
"Yes, now. Or I'll lose the guts to do it."
"But he's in class..."
Ezra had to finish out the week.
"I'll pull him out. This is important."
"Aria you're being irrational." Hanna pulls my arm. And I know she's right. I take a huge breath.
"I need to do this now..."
Hanna looks at me intensely. "Come on." She pulls my to our stuff, grabs it, and calls over to the coach that we're using the bathroom. She waves us off, her way of saying okay. And, without knowing why, I let Hanna drag me to the English room.
She knocks on the door. "Stay here." She says. I listen.
Ezra opens the door, and she goes in. He eyes me like I've lost it. I so have.
Hanna says something to Ezra, and soon he's standing outside his door with me.
"Aria..." He asks, patiently. "Why did Hanna just tell me to wait in the hall while she announces something."
"Uh,"
"Teacher surprise party?" He asks.
"Sure..." I roll my eyes. "Anyways, there's something I need to tell you."
"Right now?"
Suddenly I realized how stupid this was. He's gonna be distracted the rest of the day. Then again... this way she could leave him with the news and run away.. not have to deal with it till after he de-fummed. And, he'd have class to keep his mind a little distracted from the news, instead of sitting home going nuts.
"Yes, right now. Cause if I don't tell you now I'm not gonna. I'll chicken out and you'll hear about it from someone else. Probably Hanna." I roll my eyes, seeing her sit on Mr. Fitz's desk and cross her legs like she owned the room.
"Well, what is it?" He looks at me with concern.
"I'm... Uh..." I knock on the door, catching Hanna's attention. She gets up and says something to the class. She better not be asking for money in there for a fake present for Mr. Fitz.
"I'm pregnant, Ezra..."
His entire face goes instanly white.
"You're... you're what?"
Hanna strolls over now, and I've never been happier for her to come rescue me.
"I'm not sure if it's yours or not."
Hanna comes out. "You slept with other men?!" He asks, enraged.
"Well... Not exactly. Kinda..."
"She was date rapped." Hanna explains.
"You were rapped?" His eyes go from angry to heart broken, and I just can't stand here anymore and watch his emotions kill him.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner," I say. "But I didn't wanna talk about it. We'll talk after school, okay?" I start to walk away.
"No, Aria!" he yells down the hall.
"I'm sorry..." I call behind me.
"Ms. Montgomery, I need to speak with you."
"Not now..."
"Aria, you come back here, or you have detention after school!"
I stop and turn around now.
"Okay, Mr. Fitz." I narrow my eyes at him, and keep walking with Hanna back to PE, where I beat the schools record on the mile dash. Anger can do wonderful things.
It's two thirty. School's officially out. But not for me. Ezra switched 'detention' to 'tutoring' so I'm sitting in his class room, and I'm in the back row, pretending to not care that he's a few feet away in another desk, staring at me as if comprehending the situation.
"Aria, where do I start?"
I look up. "Well, usually you ask what I need tutoring with, then we find it in the book and you explain it, then we work through a few examples and then you let-"
"Aria, just, cut it out." He moves a few seats up. "Start at the very beginning. The date rape. What happened?"
"I was on a date, and I got raped."
"Aria!" He raises his voice, then calms himself. "This is very serious. You do know that right?"
"I know..." I sigh. "I know. But you didn't have to give me detention."
"You didn't have the break the news to me like that."
"It was the only way I could think of..."
He stares at me for a few seconds, pondering if he wants to pick this battle or just move on. But before we can start fighting, I talk.
"I don't know who it was." I start. "I was at this party...I don't even really remember who's party it was...Or where it was... or who was there... I think it might've been a college part... I don't know anything but the room I was in had bed sheets wet with beer. I was so drugged."
"You do drugs?" His eyes get so wide.
"No, I like brownies."
"You didn't know not to take a brownie at a party?"
"No, I did. But I was drunk and the combination of alcohol and drugs made me stupid enough to take a tablet. LCD. Anyways... I was just hanging out, then I got fuzzy I just remember playing pool, and hitting myself in the head with the pole. So someone took me upstairs to a room. And I fell asleep. And someone woke me up and came in the room. He didn't talk, at all. He locked the door and I was too fuzzy to say anything... He locked the doors... and..." I shake my head. "That's the last time I remember. The click of the lock. Then the next thing I remember was waking up the next morning on the couch. My dad was really upset. He said I was brought home by some boy. But he didn't ground me... I think he kinda knew what I went through. So we don't talk about it. I don't talk about it ever... Mostly cause I wasn't sure if it even happened..."
"Awe, Aria..." he touches my hand. "When was this?"
"About three months ago..."
"Three months ago...? We had sex for the first time just two months ago..."
"Yeah, I know."
"You let me undress you and you agreed to sex just a month after being raped?"
I shrug. "I told you. I hardly remembered if it ever happened. I thought it was just from the LCD and beer. Until..."
"What?"
"When we had sex... I remembered a little... Just... A little... Enough to know it defiantly happened... Which is why we've only had sex once. And the only reason we even did it in the bathroom was because I wanted to erase the twilight rape from my mind. It kinda did the opposite, though."
"Do you remember who it was?"
"Not at all..."
"Did you lose your virginity to him?" He asks, carefully like he's crossing a line.
"Yeah. Except I didn't lose it, it was stolen..."
And then I start to cry. And I can't focus on it. So I just move on.
"Anyways, this happened a month before we started dating. Then we met in the bar... we had sex... we got together, you know the story."
"When did you find out you were pregnant? And how?"
"Three days ago." I tell him. "And I took a pregnancy test."
He takes it in. "Alright, Ms. Montgomery." He stands up. "Let's go."
"Where?" I ask, collecting my stuff. He give me a 'you know where' look. So we take our separate cars and meet up at his apartment.
We ignore the baby subject and he grills me on more details about the rape. But when I start crying again, he realizes I don't want to talk about it. So, we moves on to the pregnancy. But then he realizes this makes me feel worse. So we watch a movie and I fall asleep. It's not until he wakes me up because my mom called my cell phone that we talk about it again.
"I know it's early... But are you thinking you want to keep it?" He asks me.
"I don't know... what do you think?"
"Honestly...?" He takes in a deep breath. "I want what's best for her... I want to keep her. I really do. I'd pick up and move to Alaska where no one knew us so we could keep her. But I don't want you to give up your life for her if you don't want to. She deserves two parents. Not just me. So it's up to you."
I'm taken back by his answer. That's not what I meant at all. I meant what he thought I should do... I hadn't ever considered he'd want a part in the babies life.
"What if it isn't yours?"
"Well... if it's not mine... then... I guess I'll be 'mom's boyfriend'... if you keep the child..."
"Well we should wait on deciding anything till we know who's it is..."
"Right."
We settle back into the couch and relax. "You said 'she..'" I say. "You want a girl? I mean, if it's yours..."
"Yeah..." He smiles. "Daddy's little girl, you know? But we're getting ahead of ourselves here... Even if the baby isn't mine, I'll be 'daddy'... If you want me to.. I mean, if you want to do adoption that's fine, regardless of the father but if it's his and he or she needs a dad... I'm here.." Ezra's talking all over the place. He's not making sense anymore, because none of this makes sense. It's like we're running in circles.
Daddy's little girl. In that second, it stuck me that this baby was real. That this isn't a lie I can get out of… This is for the rest of my life. And what's worse is that if
this happened in five years, Ezra and I would be married, and he would have picked me up and spun me around. Mom would take me shopping, buying pink flowery things before we even knew if it was a girl. Dad would insist it was a boy, and talk about taking him to baseball games.
I didn't notice, but I guess I was crying, because Ezra's wiping tears away with this thumb. I feel his skin on mine, and our flesh is the only thing that's keeping our souls from touching. Love so big it can create new life. Even if the baby isn't Ezra's, together we'd make the baby who he or she is, raising it to be who God created them to be, whether Ezra and mine, or the rapists and my gene combination made the baby, Ezra and I would be the reason the baby was born. For us to have.
"No," I push his hand away. "No adoption. I'm gonna keep him. Or her. Shim. I'm keeping Shim. WE'RE keeping Shim. Keeping..." I roll my eyes. "Like it's a kitten. You know, God gave us this kid, right? I mean it wasn't quiet made out of love. One was force and one was drunken lust on the first date. There's a reason the kid's here, right? If He didn't want US to have the baby, it wouldn't have been made... And we wouldn't have been together, you know? If you aren't suppossed to be dad... I wouldn't have met you..."
"You're right..."
"So, we'll be mom and dad." I take his hand. "Will you? I mean..." I look into his eyes. "Can we pull this off? Can we be parents?"
"Is that what you really want, Aria?" he asked.
I nod. "I think so..."
He kissed my cheek and leans his head on mine. "Okay." Is all he replies.
Okay. It's done. It's decided. Sealed with a kiss.