Willa promised herself that very day that she would wait until marriage to have a baby, because the stress of having one on top of trying to live a real life was just too much for her to bear. And she wasn't going to take any chances.
The baby she was in charge of was actually very cute. His skin was tan, and his gently curled black hair fell down in front of his forehead. His name was Tiago, which was the name of one of her friend's Brazilian cousins that she had heard once in a story and it had just stuck to her brain.
The past few days of Tiago being in her care, he had been a good baby-as soon as he was fed or had his diaper changed, he immediately started cooing or fell asleep. He was the darling of everyone they came upon, and his favorite place to sleep was in the back of her Physical Science class-
Oh. It should be mentioned that Willa had to take Tiago to school with her every day.
That she carried him around in his car seat, along with diapers, a bottle, and a blanket, as well as her textbooks and water bottle. Willa's mom told her that particular experience, not having enough hands for everything, was a very important skill that would do well to be mastered before motherhood. You can't just take the stroller everywhere, and even if you could, they don't make enough darn pockets for those things.
And that Tiago was going to be in her care for a full week, and it would have been longer if she had chosen to have him over the weekend.
It should also be noted that Tiago was a fake baby for Willa's Parenting class, but he was incredibly lifelike.
Tiago was the whole reason that Willa had decided to take Parenting over Mythology or Women's Chorus. She had seen other students responsible for fake babies, and the whole assignment had sounded very fun to her. Willa didn't like to admit it to herself, but sometimes, it was fun to have attention, especially if it wasn't on something she directly said or did. People who had never even talked to her before wanted to now so they could hold her fake baby. The whole thing was pretty weird, but she tried not to think too much into it. Especially when her mom kept calling Tiago her "grandson" while on the phone with her friends.
The first few days had been fun. Willa had taken Tiago to the soccer game with her, to the grocery store, and her mom had taken care of him while she was in the shower. He had even slept through the night! However the night before had been a different story, when whatever she tried, whether it was feeding him, putting him down to sleep, or changing his diaper-he wouldn't stop crying. Willa slept on her hard bedroom floor that night so she wouldn't have to keep getting in and out of bed, and at one point had cried herself to sleep. She was one of those people who can't survive off of less than eight hours of sleep. She gets pretty cranky.
"Just like a real baby," her mother told her as she groaned all the way down the stairs.
It had happened again, just before second hour. Willa had rocked him for ten minutes, and it seemed like he was sleeping-the fake babies did weird things like breathe and sigh and snore, ugh, it was so creepy-and he had settled down enough for her to drop him in his carrier and hurry him to US History.
The sub that day was Mrs. Hall, an incredibly old woman who Willa didn't think should be allowed to leave the house, let alone supervise children-and she was delighted upon seeing Willa walk in. "Oh my goodness, what a beautiful baby!" Willa didn't have the heart to tell the woman that Tiago was plastic.
"Thank you," the girl yawned, making her way to the back row.
"How old is he?" The woman crowed, watching him with glee as Willa sat him down in the aisle next to her seat.
"Not old enough!" she moaned, flopping onto her desk chair. The old woman giggled.
"Oh, the time flies, darling. It really does. Wait til your little boy has his own baby..." Mrs. Hall droned on and on about her son who lived in a picturesque part of Ohio (which Willa was sure didn't exist) and didn't stop until someone asked in a loud, pointed voice if the class was going to watch a movie that day.
Their teacher Mr. Binns usually left movies for them on sub day, and this particular one was about Prohibition. Those teachers who just leave movies as their lesson plans are great, except for ones like Binns, who require you to fill out a fill-in-the-blank worksheet to make sure you actually watched it and not just played on your phone the whole time. The worst thing about it was that Binns preferred this history video company that had the worst narrator ever, whose voice sounded simultaneously like nails on a chalkboard and the murmur of a broken car.
A young man named Severus Snape was Willa's seat buddy. He was one of those students that usually was able to blend into the background, no matter what he did. His clothes were old and faded, and his hair usually fell in a curtain in front of his face. The only thing that really stuck out about him was his rather prominent nose. The boy was incredibly smart; he didn't want to make a big show of it, so he didn't offer answers when the teacher called, but he worked as hard as he could on every test and project. He didn't know who he was trying to prove it to, but whoever it was needed to know that he wasn't to be ignored.
Ten minutes into the movie, young Severus looked up from writing the word "moonshine" on his paper to quiet, restless noises from inside the car seat.
He grimaced at the glorified baby doll.
After a few minutes, the baby started to whine a little louder. Severus narrowed his eyes at the thing's unnaturalness and glanced at the quiet blonde girl he had never before paid any mind to. She was conked out across her desk, her long, slender arm hanging off the side, her black and white sweater pulled up at the arm to show her pink and gold watch.
Severus wrinkled his nose. He really didn't want to wake her up. He didn't know her that well, and that was no one's fault but his own. The girl had tried making conversation on a number of occasions, but he had pointedly ignored her or given her a few word answer. How could he have done that to her? It wasn't like people were lining up to be his friend, or ask him questions about his life, even within his own family.
Because of this, he couldn't wake her up. He also didn't want to be awkward-how do you even wake up a stranger? But he also didn't want the baby to keep annoying him.
Before he even thought about what he was doing, he stuck out his tattered sneaker, touched the edge of the car seat, and began to slowly rock it back and forth. He didn't know a lot about babies, and he knew even less about these fake babies, but he had seen a lady on the train do this once, and the movement had seemed to help her baby fall asleep.
Willa's baby was not crazy about it at first; for a few moments, it cried even louder, but slowly, the noises stopped. Severus didn't want the baby to cry again, of course, so he thought he would keep rocking. Not because he was doing a favor to Willa, he didn't care about her, of course. He just wanted some peace. By the end of the hour, his foot was beginning to get sore. Severus never thought of himself as becoming a father someday, but with a glimmer of pride, he thought about how he had a skill to offer to his potential parenting partner-rocking their child to sleep in the most noncommittal way possible.
At the end of the hour, when Mrs. Hall abruptly clicked on the lights, Willa sat up, a long spiral mark running down from the corner of her left eye to her cheek, and wondered where she was. She glanced over at quiet Tiago in his car seat and smiled gratefully at him. "What a good boy, you let Mama sleep for a while!" she cooed, nudging the car seat with her own foot, this one decorated in a pair of those flat shoes Severus had seen girls wear, only hers were bright pink.
Severus Snape didn't care enough about her approval to tell her that it all had been his doing, that he had taken care of the thing, but it would have been nice for her to see him not just as the creepy, standoffish guy who sat next to her. He almost thought about telling her, but maybe it didn't matter what she thought. As the bell rang, he smiled at her, which took her off guard, as he had never done that before. She thought he was just being nice, but it was actually because her curly blond hair had gone completely flat on the side that she slept on it, and she didn't learn about that problem until lunchtime.