Allison decided it would be best to skip school the next day, and Bender did too, so he could make sure she was feeling alright. Allison did feel a little better, but she spent half the morning blowing chunks she didn't even know she'd eaten previously. Allison's selfish parents got as drunk as they could and ended up passing out on the sofa around 3 AM. In the morning, despite being brutally hung over, they opted to go to work, as always. There weren't very many big cases going on after the one in Chicago they'd needed to go to. Allison, in between ralphing sessions, could hear their conversation as they walked out the door (Bender had gone home for a little rest on the advice of Allison, and he promised to be back at 10 AM). She did not like what she heard very much…

"No one will hear about this, Marty! Got it?"

"Yeah."

"My daughter is NOT a floozy and I won't have Mr. Lembo gossiping around the water cooler about the daughter of Daniel Reynolds being a whore!"

Well, at least they know I'm a female. And not a skank.

"Danny, she's NOT a whore. She's just retarded—"

Allison nearly spit out the water she was forcing down her throat. Who said anything about being a retard? If ANYONE in the apartment was mentally retarded, it was the parents of the child, not the child.

"—yeah, you're right, Marty. She can't be held accountable on a count of being taken advantage of."

Hardly, thought Allison. As I recall, it almost seems like it was ME taking advantage of HIM! And NEITHER of us are retarded!

"Let's just go, Danny. The car's in the shop in Chicago so we can't miss the bus."

"Like I could drive someone to the end of the driveway now anyways."

Then they left. And Allison felt another wave of nausea hit with full force.

Allison and Bender spent the day lying around the apartment. Tad and Rudy stopped by around 4 that afternoon with some movies Allison would enjoy and some tea bags to settle her nerves (Bender had told them about her condition, and Allison didn't mind as long as nothing got beyond the four of them). They talked for a few minutes before Tad and Rudy went to their evening jobs (they were part-time disc jockeys at Club Jupiter for some extra cash), trying not to step into the territory of Allison's pregnancy. It was incredibly hard.

After Tad and Rudy left, Bender and Allison called Brian up. Brian still had a right to know about Allison too, and Allison wanted to keep him in the loop. She put it on speaker phone so it could be a 3-way conversation. When Allison told Brian, she could hear his stifled sobs over the phone, and Allison cried for a few minutes with him until Bender told Brian to "suck it up, it's not his." This made Brian laugh, and the group spent a few hours laughing about things. It was like a group therapy session, and it made everyone…all three of them…feel mounds better.

Right before Bender left that evening; Allison told him that because tomorrow was Wednesday, she was going back to school. She didn't want to miss too much on a count of her crappy condition. Bender agreed to pick her up in his car (if he could hijack it from Roxanne before she got up for her morning shift at the bowling alley). The ride to school was without a doubt one of the quietest, tensely-filled car rides Allison had endured in a while, not counting the one with Danny on the ride home from the hospital).

"Meet you for lunch like always?" asked Allison. She and Bender didn't have any classes together.

"Yep," replied Bender. "Tad and Rudy have a lunch-detention session banging erasers in Mr. Keyes' room, so it will be the two of us."

"Mm-hmm."

Bender made a right turn onto the road where the school driveway branched from.

"No one knows, nor should they. You still in the 2nd month, right? So you don't look knocked up! That's good. You shouldn't tell anyone you don't want to, so no one will know. Don't get freaked out over it, Al."

Allison nodded. True, she could easily pass off her 'sickness' as a 24-hour flu or something. It was doubtful that many people would be interested, thought. She was still an outsider. The richies and jocks wouldn't waste their time whispering about an outcast.

Well, there was one girl Allison had to worry about. Liz Lembo, the anorexic blonde bitch who always wanted to be the Queen of Shermer High. Liz's father, Charles, worked with Danny. Normally, when someone like her wanted to torture Allison, Allison would easily brush them aside. But Liz's connection to Allison made it harder for her to ignore. They had an all-around bad history, starting with the Little Miss Shermer 1974 pageant. Liz had known all along that Allison never wanted to be a part of the stupid contest, while Liz would've stabbed her own mother to death to win the crown. The two of them had made the cut to the final 10. When the judges cut it down to five, Allison made the cut and Liz did not. After that, Liz made it her personal goal to do Allison in. When Allison went on to win, it only intensified Liz's hatred. Liz was an incredibly immature girl for being a high school senior. Allison wanted that damn pageant to be permanently erased from her mind. Liz kept that contest the reason for living in the back of her head. This proved for some rather interesting Christmas parties during the girls' youths. One year even involved a decapitated ice sculpture, two concussions and approximately 700 dollars worth of damage. Every time a fight broke out, Allison won, and every time Liz lost, she became more determined. Of course, as the girls grew into adolescence, the fighting became less physical and more catty. Allison would have preferred for it all to remain physical, because Liz knew that in the realm of Allison, emotional fighting was worth 50 times the hell physical fighting was worth.

But Liz had seemed to be in a bit of a recession for the past few months. She didn't even use the Allison/Andy separation situation to her advantage. Allison felt she'd be alright. Danny didn't want anything getting out on the street about her. How could Liz find out?

The morning hours surprisingly didn't go too badly. Allison's morning schedule had all her boring classes, like biology and math. Art, cinematography, and European History (a subject that Allison, for some reason, thought to be fascinating) weren't until after lunch. But in biology they learned about reptile reproduction (VERY interesting) and the substitute teacher in math didn't know the first thing about algebra, so they watched a movie. Allison zoned off in her other 2 classes, so she couldn't remember them.

However, smooth seas began getting rough as she walked towards the cafeteria to eat lunch. She noted people looking at her, then quickly whipping their heads around as she walked by…almost as if they were whispering about her. Allison didn't care. Usually when that happen, it was another rumor about her worshipping Satan or her casting a spell on Mr. Hashimoto to make his toupee fall off in front of the entire student body at prom…again.

But as soon as she walked into the cafeteria, her hopes for a peaceful day were dashed. As she walked past the table of Liz and her two scheming cohorts, Maria and Colleen, Liz popped up from her seat and grabbed Allison by her elbow to stop her. Allison growled and pulled away.

"Don't touch me, EVER," Allison hissed under her breath. "I'm NOT in the mood."

"You never are," Liz said. "But I'm not gonna be mean today, I just wanted to extend to you my sympathies on behalf of Colleen, Maria, and myself!" Allison paused a moment.

"I don't need your sympathy," Allison said, silently screaming. She wasn't going to play dumb. Liz knew. Something must have gotten out at Danny's law office after all.

"I just wanted to let you know you're actually pretty lucky," said Liz.

"Oh?" said Allison in a monotonous voice.

"Andy's hot. Any girl in school would kill to be the mother of his love child," Liz said with an eerie tone of voice. Allison was growing closer and closer to decking her. But physically she just wasn't up to it.

"Leave me alone," Allison snubbed, looking around the cafeteria.

"What?" Liz said, acting defensive. "It's true! Three quarters of the cheerleading team is jealous of you! They said so themselves!"

Allison turned to the cheerleader table. Every single one sitting there was either whispering in someone's ear, or giving Allison a look of shame. Allison gritted her teeth.

"Go to hell, Liz," Allison said.

"What, did I say something?" asked Liz with a malicious grin.

"Shove it up your—"

"—Al!" Allison and Liz turned around to see Bender towering over them both. Liz's jaw dropped.

"John, they know," Allison said. Liz continued to stare at Bender.

"Yeah, I heard. Let's go out to the courtyard," Bender said, grabbing Allison's wrist and dragging her away. Liz just stared at the tall…rugged…handsome man leaving the cafeteria with Allison.

After moving aside the windowpane that led out to the courtyard, Allison started shaking, trying to hold back tears.

"I swear, if it was Tad, I'll rip his intestines out and hang him high with it!" Bender cursed under his breath.

"It wasn't Tad. It was Liz Lembo," Allison said.

"Who?"

"The skank whose dad works with Danny," Allison answered. "She's hated me for years."

"Wanna blow this place?" asked Bender. Allison shook her head.

"I never cared about what they thought before. Why should I start caring now?" was Allison's answer. Bender nodded. "They don't matter to me now, nor will they ever matter to me. But—" Allison paused. She looked up at the sky, which was lightly overcast, but none of the clouds were dark enough to produce rain. Allison felt a shiver go down her back. She really should have worn more than her black sweater. She'd had it since she was 10, and it was so worn in that it didn't serve it's original purpose (keeping Allison warm) anymore. There was actually a small hole on the left elbow.

"—what?" Bender asked.

"I wonder what'll happen to me?" Allison whispered. Bender couldn't hear her.

"Wonder why Danny didn't keep his yap shut like he seemed so desperate to do?" Bender asked after a second.

"Who the hell knows?" Allison sighed. "Like I said, no one in this world matters to me. I only need to care about myself." Allison paused again.

"You were right," said Bender.

"What's that?"

"You're heart's dying, Allison," Bender said with a smile to show he was teasing. Allison pouted her lips and squeaked in disgust, turning her head away from Bender and crossing her arms. Her right eye produced a single tear, which quickly rolled down her cheek and hit her knee. Bender was right.

Out of nowhere, the windowpane moved. Bender and Allison looked up to see Dick Vernon staring down Allison. He pointed at her, and she squealed again. Allison could have sworn that she'd seen Liz smirking behind him, but she was gone in the blink of an eye.

"You. Reynolds girl, my office. Pronto," Dick instructed. Both people sitting in the courtyard got up and climbed inside, following Dick to his office. Dick glared malignantly at Bender, but Bender didn't back down. What had Allison done? Why did Dick choose TODAY to rag on her about it? After all, she hadn't even been there yesterday, and the day before she'd spent nearly all of in Nurse Hale's office.

The three of them were seated in Dick's office quickly. Margie, Dick's annoying secretary, shut the door behind them. Bender crossed his arms and sunk low in his seat in defiance. Allison imitated him. This made Bender smile momentarily.

"Well, well, looks like your bodyguard is in here too, eh, Miss Reynolds?" Dick asked.

Allison remained silent.

"You know why you're here, right, Miss Reynolds?"

Allison remained silent.

"Miss Reynolds, speak when you are spoken to!"

Allison remained silent. Bender was proud of her for it.

"She. Doesn't. Talk. Sir.," Bender answered, repeating what he'd said last spring, only punctuating every word with a long hard pause.

"Shut your hole, Bender!' Dick pointed at Bender again.

"Don't talk to John like that," Allison snapped. Dick grinned.

"She does talk! Miss Reynolds, in all my years at Shermer High, we've had a very strict honor code. Our juvenile delinquency level has always been at a minimum, for the most part, anyways…." Dick glared at Bender, who uttered a wide, over-exaggerated 2-second grin. "But this is a first at Shermer High. Teenage pregnancy," Dick then began ranting, most of which neither students could hear. Allison as the first teenage pregnancy at Shermer High? What a laugh! When she was still on good terms with Claire, Claire had told Allison endless stories of her friends and their cousins getting knocked up or having scares. Allison sure as hell wasn't the first. But she was the first poor girl. That automatically made her the whore of Shermer High School.

"This is really something she should talk to Hashimoto about, sir," Bender said with mock sincerity.

"Shut your mouth!"

Bender grunted.

"I know you've been hanging around Andrew Clark. It was the best thing he ever did, moving away. He's above you. You doing this to yourself was going to bring him down in life, and that's not good…"

Bender was getting red in the face. Yeah, Allison got pregnant all on her own. She did it to ruin Sporto's life. Of course. It was all her fault and she deserves to be expelled for choosing to get pregnant! And what was this about him being above her? Bullshit, that's what.

"…I hope you know that you purposely bringing this shame upon our school will not go unpunished…"

Was he kidding?

"You nearly destroyed one of our star athlete's futures. I tell you, Andrew was smart to bail out when he did—"

"—oh SHUT UP, Dick!" Bender shot out of his seat. "Yeah, it takes only one to make a baby, and you know it! You wanna know something? It isn't Sporto's kid! It's….it's mine, Dick. Her kid is mine."

With that, Bender got Allison to her feet and defiantly left school grounds that very instant.