- Usagi - Chapter three:

It had been two days since Minako and I had our "little talk" and I began to wonder, if in some twisted way, it meant something. Every moment after that time had been relatively quiet. I hadn't heard a peep out of her or her friends. I was wondering if she grew a heart and decided to leave me alone. I was wrong. The next morning I opened my rusting blue locker to find wave upon wave of plastic wrapped squares flow from it. I bent down to half figure out what they were and half shove them back into my locker. Amongst the squares I saw a folded piece of paper it read in big obnoxious letters:

CONDOMS!!!!FOR YOUR SPECIAL MOMENT!!!!

Suddenly it all came together. I was standing ankle deep in condoms. Fantastic. They must have took some time slipping them, one by one, into the vents of my locker. I quickly began to shove them back in before anyone saw me but every handful I took at least two or three managed to slip through my fingers. Suddenly I felt a presence behind me. I stopped what I was doing and stayed completely motionless hoping that whoever it was would just go away. Maybe they wouldn't see me? That was a stupid thought. The person came down on one knee and I just stared into the blackness of my locker with my hair hiding my face, pretending not to notice. Suddenly a hand picked up one of the condoms.

"Wow. You must get around A LOT!" A voice said in awe. I looked up to see Seiya holding the plastic square between his thumb and forefinger. His other hand placed over his mouth and his eyes squinting excitedly. I quickly snatched it from his hands and threw it and last of them into my locker. I was getting tired of this.

"Would you just leave me alone?" I pleaded. His eyes softened to a more authentic look, "Do you know what I have to go through everyday?"

He turned his head to the side, his expression relaxed and comfortable, "Yes! And you deserve it!"

That ass. He obviously didn't know anything about anything. He had only been around for a week and he thought he knew everything about me, he thought I deserved the hell that people brought upon me day after day. I obviously had caught the rest of the school lip synching too so they knew that I was no good. I was sick of seeing Seiya, he didn't know me at all but he had already to jump to conclusions and condemned me. Looking very hurt I shook my head and just pushed past him. I felt a hand grab the end of one of my pigtails, I turned back to see him giving his best "don't be a poor sport" look but I just yanked my hair back and continued on.

-

The time had come for Chemistry and our teacher had given the class time to work on our projects in the library again. Mr. Chiba was too trusting with his students. Most of the class wasn't even in the library they were all off goofing around waiting for the weekend to panic and throw everything together. Not me though, I worked diligently on my project, and I say "my" because it basically was. Minako and I had formed a nonverbal agreement to have me do all the work, I didn't mind though. I would probably have to soldier through all the work alone landing me a B or C, but as long as I didn't have to work with the girl, I would be perfectly happy going it alone.

After sifting through my papers I noticed I was missing a formula. I began to look through my pink school bag for my Chemistry book but after pushing various loose papers and folders aside, I noticed it was missing. I must have left it at home. I looked around the library with some hope that there was at least one other person there but, with no shock, there wasn't. Reluctantly, I stood up. I knew that Minako had brought her book to school. She always did to make it appear that she was paying attention when she was really marking up my shirt with her pen. She probably hadn't opened the book since she received it at the beginning of the school year.

I walked to the black doors that I had run through when Minako was interrogating me the other day. I peeked through one of the windows to see her head bobbing around as she chatted mindlessly with some unfortunate soul. I popped my head out the door to get a better look at who it was and suddenly I felt a blush rise on my cheeks. She was with Seiya. I saw her flip her hair around flirtatiously as she laughed and talked with him, telling him god knows what about me. Probably something awful, she really was a relentless bitch. I stepped outside and folded my arms around my waist and tried not to make eye contact. I could here her chuckling lightly and whispering something that sounded like "speak of the devil".

"M-Minako, I need your Chemistry book, I left mine at home." I said flatly trying to get this confrontation over and done with as quick as possible.

"Sure." She said, I heard the zipper on her bag open up and she rustled through it, then suddenly I heard her stop.

"Are you ok?" Seiya asked. I looked up to see her sporting a little green hue to her face with her hand on her forehead. She was breathing in and out the way you do before you throw up. She stood up but her legs weren't cooperating with her causing her to lose her balance on her high heels. I jumped up beside her and swung one of her arms over my shoulders.

"I…I need to go to the nurse." She said in a breathy voice, barley moving her mouth. Seiya took hold of her other arm and assisted me as I brought her down to the nurse. It was so strange how suddenly she had become sick, I had never seen it before. One minute she was fine and doing her usual thing and another she was almost completely incapacitated.

Seiya took on most of her weight as I opened up the door to the Nurse's office. Sitting at her desk was Ms. Meioh our young and pretty new nurse. She was a tall elegant woman with very long dark hair and naturally tanned skin. I had only talked to her once when I came to get a Band-Aid but from what I gathered she was a sweet woman who cared genuinely for the students. She was talking to a tall man with brown hair pulled into a ponytail, arranging flowers in a strangely ornate vase. She looked up at and jumped to her feet upon seeing Minako in her awful state.

"Ms. Meioh, Minako needs to lay down I think." I said as I watched Seiya lead her to a cot. With some worry on her face she walked up to the girl, she looked up at the man with the brown hair and said, "I'm sorry but I'll have to talk to you later." He gave a silent nod and walked out. She looked back up to see Seiya looming over her shoulder but she waved him away.

"Would you two please wait outside or go back to class?" She asked with her back facing us as she pulled one of the privacy curtains around the cot. Feeling no need to argue I walked out and sat in the hallway, Seiya followed behind me and rested against the ugly blue and yellow tiled wall opposite me. There was some silence between us. I really didn't know what to say to him since he openly expressed his hatred for me, which was probably now magnified by whatever lies Minako had told him. But it didn't matter, I told myself. I hated him equally as much. Right?

"Don't listen to anything Minako has told you about me." I said out of the blue, Seiya smiled a little and arched his eyebrow at me. I knew he was thinking of something mean to say, "Not that I care what you think! I mean you're just a male version of her anyways..."

His smile wiped away pretty quickly after I said that, "That's not nice to say about me. I'm nothing like her. And she wasn't saying anything bad about you."

I gave a bitter laugh and arched my eyebrows, "Oh! I'm sure she wasn't! She only flooded my locker with condoms this morning…"

"Well, I don't know what that was about but strangely enough, she was trying to get me to ask you out."

I immediately stopped breathing and my face got hot. My hands fell to my sides. I must have looked like a deer caught in the headlights. Did she tell him about our conversation? Was this some sort of cruel joke? What was going on? Quickly, I tried to regain my composure and acted as if I didn't care. I did care though. I cared a lot.

"Which, by the way isn't happening." he continued. "I mean every time I see you I start to feel sick. You know…maybe that's why Minako got sick? She probably saw your sneaky little ass skanking around and felt like she needed to throw up. I know I do!" That really stung. He then proceeded to ham it up pretending as if it was some sort of revelation.

"Right, right, that's it." I said sarcastically, "Now that you've made that clear…You can go back to class - or whatever pretty boy slacker thing you were doing, and be an ass there. Maybe take a cat nap, looks like you didn't get enough beauty sleep anyways. Or did you just forget to put your make up on?" Good one! I thought to myself accepting a pat on the back from my ego.

He stood for a moment and looked very amused; he had an odd smile on his face and folded his arms in front of him. "Why don't you go back to class?" He asked me.

"Because I don't want to have to walk with you and even though Minako is a bitch she's sick and staying here with her is – believe it or not, the lesser of two evils."

I refused to look at him but I could feel him staring strangely at me in the corner of my eye. I was about ready to turn and ask him to stop but without a word he disappeared and went back to class like I suggested. After he was out of sight I slumped down onto my butt and leaned against the tiled wall behind me. I pounded my fist against the floor in frustration. I don't know why I was so angry. He really wasn't like Minako that much and I was beginning to feel bad about saying that. He was a jerk to me but out of all the people that hated me he surprisingly seemed to have the most humanity. I suppose I found it strangely attractive in some sort of sick perverse way.

The door to the nurse's office opened up and Minako emerged silently. She looked down at me and appeared to be a little shocked to see me still waiting there. I stood up and dusted my navy blue skirt off.

"How are you feeling?" I asked.

"Better, but still a little shitty. Can't be helped though." She said as she began to walk down the hall. It was true she did look a great deal better than she was before, but there was something different about her. Her face looked like she was feeling something, which was unusual because normally she didn't look like she'd ever felt anything in her life besides the joy of being a sadist. Something was very wrong and though I didn't want to admit it, I was worried.

I peered at her face and watched her expression slowly get worse, I furrowed my eyebrows up and tried to see her face while we walked but her bangs were in the way. "Minako?" I asked, my tone showing more concern than I wanted. I received no reply only a high pitched whine that suddenly turned into a sob. Not wanting to cause a scene, I quickly pulled her into one of the girl's bathrooms. She was full out crying now.

I quickly got some toilet paper from one of the stalls and gave it to her as a substitute for a tissue. She sat down on the bathroom counter and wiped her face which was now as red as a beat. Not knowing what to say, I just waited till her howling died down.

"I know I've pushed my luck," She said between sniffles, "I've done things in excess but I know I would have stopped at some point. I would have, I really would. I just wanted to have fun...I didn't deserve this…"

I turned my head to the side, "What are you talking about?" I asked.

"I'm fucking pregnant." She groaned out trying to wipe her tears away without messing up her make up but she was fighting a losing battle.

"You just found that out now?" I wondered if the nurse had done some sort of surprise school pregnancy test or something. The idea seemed a little odd to me.

"No, I've known about it for a couple days now. I took a home test and figured it out. Nobody knows, I told the nurse I was just feeling sick because I didn't eat breakfast."

"You haven't even told your friends?"

"Friends?!" She said with a bitter laugh, still holding the tissue to her face which was shining with tears, "I don't have any real friends. Those girls I hang out with don't know anything about me. They're always too drunk to care about anyone other than themselves and their fuck for the night. I can't come to them with this."

"Why are you telling me then?" I asked.

"You don't have any friends besides your he-she you hang out with. Who are you possibly going to tell?" I took offence to that; she really had no right to say those things about me or Haruka when I was the only one that would listen to her. I wanted to tell her to go find somebody else but I held my tongue.

"I'm thinking of sneaking an abortion before anyone finds out." She said with a sigh. I wound a finger nervously in one of my blond pig tails, this was my place to give advice and I wasn't sure how she'd react to what I had to say. So I stayed silent and just stared off, focusing on one of the stalls like it was the most important thing in the world. She looked over to me, grabbing my attention, and for the first time I saw that she had very pretty blue eyes. I had never seen them before because I had never really looked her in the eyes. I always felt too inferior to, but now…now it seemed that we were equals, just two girls talking in the bathroom.

"Minako," I said sternly looking deep into her worried eyes, "I don't like you. I won't pretend to like you. From my observations I can safely say you are the most worthless human being I've ever met. You're an irrationally cruel person and I don't think I'd ever see you as a good mother but,"

Her face was shocked and hurt, "Hey, fuck you! I knew I should - " she screamed but I swiftly put my hand up in front of her.

"I'm not finished! But I don't think that anyone is truly bad and if you want to do something good and give meaning to your currently dysfunctional existence, you should keep the baby, find the father and work together to make your child have a better life than you do."

"You're right…I am a pretty shitty person." She sobbed she was now looking down at the floor, her hand clamped over her eyes and her lips peeled back in an agonizing grimace.

I kneeled down in front of her and took her hand from her face making a "shh, shh" noise, "All's not lost, do you know who the father is?" I asked quietly.

She nodded, "I'm pretty sure I know who it is…I've been seeing him every weekend for two months. I like him a lot, he's cute as hell," She laughed, "but I don't know if he'd make a good father."

"Have you ever really gotten to know him?" I asked.

"I guess not…"

"Then you should try." I said with an enthusiastic smile. Minako returned it, she was beginning to look a little better. She had stopped crying now and was starting to adjust her make up which had been smeared all over her face making her look like a raccoon. She stood in front of the mirror and smoothed out her hair, my reflection appeared next to her, my hands placed triumphantly on my hips.

"What?" She said as she looked at me in the mirror.

"This is where I blackmail you." I said, still grinning, "You treat me like a regular human being and I'll keep this on the down low."

She smiled and started to laugh, "Fine, but you have to stick with me through this so that means you have to deal with cravings, mood swings, the works."

"That's perfectly fine with me." I said.

"And I guess you can feel free to give me more brutal criticism," she chuckled, "I mean, I'm going to be a mother now and all," She paused for a moment and pretended to be concerned with finding her mascara in her purse, "I need you to help me out."