Author's Note: Thanks for the reviews guys.

I walked home with the pain in my chest. Not knowing was terrible, but thinking about it more made me lighten up. I'd be alone…but still have Randa for support. "What's wrong?" she asked.

"Oh, nothing," I said softly. I didn't want to jinx this. I mean, I guess I want it…I mean, the baby, not it.

"You sure?"

"Yeah, just..you know...missing Michael."

MICHAEL:

We had strict rules in the barracks. Everything had to be uniform and neat. No problem there. I was always like that. I was going to train to work in the engine rooms of the ships. I had promised my mother and Mia that I'd stay out of the line of fire.

So it wasn't too bad. The worst part was that we weren't allowed to communicate with our loved ones until boot camp was over. That wasn't until nearly Valentine's Day. Then we were being sent right out to the Pacific.
If this was regular times, we would have a few weeks off after boot camp. But things were really heating up and they needed to get the ships out to the Pacific.

And they cut my hair. The hair I have been grooming for over a year. That Mia taught me to brush every night before bed. She always brushed it for me and then I brushed hers for her. Not that I'm that into my hair…I just like it the way it was. I thought of this after they buzzed my hair off.

"Awww, we got a pretty girl here?" a guy teased.

I glared at him.

"Pansy?" he asked.

Kevin came by. "What's going on?" he asked, staring at the guy who had me cornered at this point.

"Aw, your boyfriend coming to get you?"

Kevin pulled him back forcibly. "Forget about him. Nice cut."

"Mia is going to cry when she sees it."

They were sending photographs to our families. I can only imagine her reaction. Lilly would laugh. My mother would cry at seeing me in a uniform. I doubt my father will care much.

"Nah, she'll think it's sexy," Kevin teased. "Plus, it is she can't pull it anymore."

I laughed. "That only happened once and she apologized."

Thoughts of her warmed me up on the cold early mornings we trained. I wondered what she was doing. How her second semester of geometry was doing. If she was being nice to Jill. If Jill was being nice to her.

If she had written to tell her parents yet. You know…about us. What they thought. If they hated me.

"Hey, I told you that Randa and I are having a baby, right?" Kevin said one night after supper.

I looked at him, "No…you kind of failed to let me know about it. Really? When'd you find out?"

"Yeah. We figured it out right before I left. You know how girls figure those thing out, right?"

I nodded, my mother had felt it was only fair to explain the so called birds and the bees to both Lilly and I. I had to learn about women just as well as men.

"So anyways… She'll have the baby by the time I get home. Kind of weird ya know? Like a time warp or something. I leave and she's this skinny teenager. By the time I get back she'll be the mother of who knows how old of a child. It's going to be weird going back after we go over, ya know?"

Things are going to be different. How would Mia change?

MIA:

"Mia, you okay in there?" Lilly asked, knocking on the bathroom door.

I wiped some vomit from the corner of my mouth with some toilet paper. It had been three weeks since I went with Randa to the doctors. Three weeks since he left.

I unlocked the door and let her come in. "Hey."

"What's wrong with you?" she asked, flushing the toilet. I sat on the edge of the bath tub. "Got the flu or something?"

Should I lie to her? "Um, no," I said softly. It wouldn't be fair to lie. "I don't know…"

She studied me intently then shut the door. "Are you pregnant?"

That was not a proper question at all. It was incredibly rude. "I-I don't know," I said softly. "I think so."

"I should hope so if you've been tossing your cookies in here for weeks. My mom told me about this stuff when I turned thirteen. How long?"

"Huh? I don't know how long the baby is, it's in-"

"No, how far along are you?" she asked, sounding exasperated.

"Oh…well, I'm not sure. Almost three months I think."

She gave me a look, "Three months huh?"

I gave her a look like I didn't want to hear a lecture.

"Have you seen a doctor?" she asked.

"No."
"Have you told Michael in a letter or anything?"

"Not yet. He still can't communicate. It'll mess up boot camp. Just a few more weeks."

"He'll be really happy," Lilly said after a few minutes, rubbing my back. "But I would be very happy if you brushed your teeth."

I laughed and did just that.

"Is it true that you got married?" Jill asked before Geometry class one day. "Cuz that is really weird. You are only sixteen."

"Just because Josh has no intention of making a lifetime commitment to you doesn't mean-"

"At least Josh is around for me. Didn't your little husband run off and join the army after a few weeks of being with you?"

"He had planned on it already. That was why we got married." I didn't bother correcting her on the branch Michael was in.

"He's probably going to sleep with some female prisoners of war over there. I hear there are those concentration camps and everything. Maybe he'll find someone-"
I slapped her. "How dare you talk like that? You have no idea what it is like over there. And to speak so harshly of those poor people. That they'd be the whores of the American soldiers. How dare you! Not every man is like your Josh. Not every man follows the orders from his brain downstairs!"

Grandmama had referred to the male penis as the 'brain downstairs'. That men tend to follow the rule of the penis more so than the brain in their head.

I had not realized how loud I had been, but everyone in the room was staring at us. "And…And you're just jealous because your little boyfriend can't go and fight. Everyone knows it too. He could have joined up last year when he turned eighteen. But he was rejected because of his stupid flat feet."

She stared me down. I'm not sure if she heard what I said or if she was concentrating on the fact that I had slapped her.

"I'm going to ruin you, Thermopolis. Just you wait."

"Try it," I replied with a smile. "I dare you. And the name is Moscovitz." Okay, not yet, but after the war I fully intended on getting all that paper work done. In my and Michael's minds I was Mrs. Moscovitz.

I got a lot of praise for standing up to Jill today. It spread through the halls of school, and I saw her crying to Josh at his locker at the end of the day. He looked annoyed with her. My work is done there…