Toby Oliver West.

That was what the baby was called.

Pretty much as soon as they'd decided they were keeping it, Jade had insisted that the baby should have her surname. After all, she was the one who would be carrying it for nine months, birthing it and experiencing all the pain, exhaustion, judgement and hardships that accompanied that. Beck was told he could have the middle name or nothing, so he decided on the former.

He had been born on 22nd August, three months after his mother's 16th birthday, and just before the beginning of her junior year.

And in Jade's eyes he was perfect.

Contrary to popular belief, Jade actually was capable of love and other positive emotions. Sure, she loved Beck, but she just wasn't capable of the unconditional, unrequited love that a mother must possess, right? Most people were shocked when they heard she was keeping the baby, even more so when it became clear she wasn't going to put it up for adoption either. Jade West as a mom? No. That was like Cruella de Vil as a dog sitter or Pennywise as a children's birthday party entertainer. It just wasn't her, everybody knew it.

Except they didn't.

Because from the first moment Jade laid eyes on her son, with his crop of dark hair and soulful, exploring eyes, she knew that there was nothing in this world she would rather be. Because no matter how many songs she sung or plays she wrote, she would never be able to create something so incredible, so important as this fragile little life before her.

So, to almost everyone's surprise, Jade was absolutely devoted to Toby. She had him 24/7, constantly hovering and ready to cater to his needs, and barely sleeping through fear of him choking or suffocating, or being kidnapped by an eagle as Beck had once tactlessly joked.

He'd slept on her floor that night.

Sure, Beck was around a lot and slept over many nights to help with night feeds and changing, but in the six weeks that he was at school all day, Jade had grown used to it just being her and her son, and she wasn't quite ready to hand him over to some random, overly peppy ladies at the daycare, no matter how many childcare qualifications and certificates they might possess.

So, for now, school felt like a chore, a never-ending timer counting down until she could go home and hold her baby once more. Not only that, but it was populated by either people she didn't like or people she merely tolerated who wouldn't stop asking her annoying questions that only made her feel more like she was abandoning her son. Motherhood had changed her and she couldn't help but feel like the old world that she had been forced back into hadn't kept up.

"Do you think you have postpartum depression?"

Jade looked up from her phone to the other side of the room. She was sat on one side of the den, Toby on the floor doing tummy time next to her, whilst her older sister sat on the couch on the other side, watching Grey's Anatomy.

"What?"

"Postpartum depression, like after you have a baby. Do you think you have it?" Amber asked, cocking her head.

"Obviously not." Jade spat, looking down to check on Toby, who was squawking as he tried to lift his head up.

"Well you might have it. They just read out all the symptoms and it sounds like you."

Jade sighed indignantly, sick of her sister who, as she had repeatedly relayed to Beck hates my guts. "Well if they read out the symptoms of bitchy sister-itis, it would sound like you."

That was poor by her standards, even she could admit. But she was tired.

Amber was unfazed. "I can read them out if you don't believe me." She said, evidently pulling up a page on her phone.

"Knock yourself out." Jade replied, her mind already on Toby's next feed and when he would need to be bathed before bed.

"A persistent feeling of sadness and low mood," Amber began, "a lack of enjoyment and a loss of interest in the wider world, a lack of energy and trouble sleeping,"

Jade was barely even listening.

"withdrawing from contact with other people, frightening thoughts, difficulty bonding with your baby-"

"Are you trying to call me a bad mom?" Jade snapped, that last item on the list hitting a nerve.

"No, Jade. I'm trying to help." Amber said, stonily.

"I don't see how any of this is helpful." Jade retorted.

"Maybe if you'd listen instead of immediately rejecting everything I say..."

"Maybe if you'd actually say something useful then I'd listen."

"God, Jade," Amber groaned, "you don't have to be such a bitch all the time. How on earth you got a guy to set foot near you, let alone get you pregnant, I will never know."

"Fuck off Amber." Jade spat.

"Gladly." Her sister replied, returning her attention to the television.

Beside Jade, Toby had begun to grumble, unnerved by the argument, so she scooped him up and took him upstairs for his bath.

Beck had gone home a few hours earlier as his family were having a celebratory meal for his dad's job, or something dumb like that, so it was left to Jade to put the baby to bed. Placing him in his basin, she tried not to think about what Amber had said. People had been naive if they thought that their comments wouldn't get back to Jade; she had known that practically everyone in the school, teachers included, thought that she would hate the baby, or drop it down the stairs, or abandon it with Beck and run off to France or something. No one thought that about Beck. Instead, he was congratulated and told he would be a great dad, with some girls even making edits on photoshop of him with a baby and commenting how hot he would look.

Jade West didn't let people get to her. But Jade West wasn't the same person she had been before Toby. Amber was right - she was tired, disconnected and defeated. But she wouldn't let Amber be right about the bond between her and her baby; no, Toby would always come first.

"I'm sorry," she whispered to the fidgeting baby, careful not to speak loud enough for either of her siblings, her mother or her stepfather to hear. She was still self-conscious of people overhearing what had once been her inner thoughts and were now her baby's nighttime stories. "I'm sorry I'm sad, and tired, and everybody thinks I'm a bitch. I'm sorry I'm not like Cat, or that new girl. But I'm trying really hard to be a good mom, I promise."

Toby giggled, almost like a response.

"You think that's funny, huh? How the mighty have fallen and all of that?" She smirked. "Yeah, you might be right."

An egg timer went off beside her, signalling that Toby should be getting out of the water now, as has been suggested in one of the many parenting books Jade had scoured. Carefully, she lifted the child out of the small bath and wrapped him in a towel before placing him against her chest and heading back into her room. Toby had been uncharacteristically well-behaved that day, so she was prepared for a fight to get him into bed, but was once again surprised by the baby falling asleep almost immediately after being placed in the cot beside Jade's bed.

He must be saving it for the night, then. Jade couldn't help but think.

Leaving the sleeping baby, she checked the time to see that it was only seven o'clock, leaving her plenty of time to catch up on the homework she had resentfully received this week and also actually have some time for herself. The two-month-old sleeping soundly beside her may have been behaving himself today, but his antics throughout the rest of the week had meant that she was well behind on both her scriptwriting project and also her math homework. Particularly with the asshole Gradstein being the teacher for the former, it was important she caught up, and quickly.

It was two hours later when she had finally finished and Toby had miraculously slept throughout the whole thing. It was weird, suddenly having this time that wasn't preoccupied with taking care of the baby or schoolwork, and Jade almost didn't know what to do with herself. The past two, or perhaps even eleven, months had been filled with Mom Jade and Student Jade and very little Jade Jade. She'd hadn't even updated her Slap page since Toby was born.

No time like the present.

Logging on, she saw she had over fifty Slap messages, all of which she ignored, of course. They were likely just irritating congratulations either from people she already saw every day or people she didn't like.

Cat's page wasn't worth checking, given the fact that the girl posted every five minutes, from important updates down to which toothpaste brand she was using; she had zero interest in Robbie's boring and borderline uncomfortable comments about mayonnaise and male makeup; and the less said about Rex's page, the better. So she clicked on Andre's.

Andre wasn't a frequent poster, and most of the statuses he did upload were about some form of music.

Just wrote a great song! #buzzing

About to perform in music class, feeling: nervous

My favourite little nephew 3

Jade smiled at the picture of her friend and her son, before continuing to swipe.

Meet Catherine! So excited that Tori gets to sing my original songs in #MoonlightMagic

Jade's smile dropped. Before her was a picture of Andre, arm wrapped around the new girl, both smiling widely. To her chest, the new girl was clutching a copy of the Moonlight Magic script, with 'CATHERINE' emblazoned across the front - the same script Jade been forced to hand back only a couple of weeks prior when the part was taken from her. And here was Andre, celebrating that with a girl he'd only just met.

Jade narrowed her eyes and clicked on the new girl's profile. Sure, she'd met the girl, and she'd been back at school for a week now, but she and Beck had sat separately from the others on her request, in order to help her reacclimatise to the environment better, so the two hadn't really crossed paths.

Jade scrolled through the girl's updates, noting that she seemed to post very frequently about irrelevant things and often about other people in a way that seemed a little weird and irritating to Jade.

Trina just asked me to pop her pit pimple #gross

Jade rolled her eyes. Of course, new girl was Trina fucking Vega's sister; Beck had told her last week. She knew there was a reason she'd disliked the girl.

Andre just played me his new music. It's so good!

Preparing for the bird scene, feeling: super scared

I think I kinda love this school! 3333 feeling: elated

And Jade's finger stopped scrolling. Because attached to this comment was a picture of Vega Jr. with her arm wrapped around Jade's boyfriend. Sure, Cat and Andre were also in the picture and Beck's arm was barely even touching her shoulders, but the girl's hand was gripped tightly on his waist that made Jade more than uncomfortable. And also angry.

Jade would be lying if she said she wasn't a jealous person. She trusted Beck and she was confident that he was happy in their relationship and wouldn't dream of breaking up their little family, but there had always been a niggling feeling at the back of her mind that one day he would realise he could do better and then this fairytale would fall down into the black nightmare that seemed to better suit her dark persona. Whilst she made it seem like people's opinions on their relationship didn't get to her, she could only hear so many comments about how lucky she was to have Beck and what a saint he was for putting up with her before she started to believe it. And it didn't help that his parents hated her guts.

So, Jade felt unnerved by this Tori girl, with her sugar-sweet smile and her lack of emotional baggage and her body presumably untouched in a way with which Jade felt her own post-baby just couldn't compete.

Upon finding out that Beck hadn't told Tori about her, or Toby, she had felt like time was up. This was it - the day the fairytale fell. She could take so much talk from other people because she could bite back, but to feel like her own boyfriend was too embarrassed to mention her and their baby felt like betrayal. However, Cat had assured her that Beck truly had mentioned the pair and that Tori had presumably been too absorbed in her own life to notice. Well, she was Trina Vega's sister after all.

But there was something about the hand so tightly clinging onto her boyfriend, and the head so closely leant towards his face that Jade just simply could not ignore. She was used to girls crushing on her boyfriend - Sophie Bunson for example had been head over heels for years - but usually she was around to scare them off, and never before had they managed to infiltrate her friendship group. Beck had never been great at reminding girls he had a girlfriend and therefore to keep their distance, something that had aggravated her throughout the entirety of their relationship, and Jade couldn't help but wonder if this had convinced Tori that he wasn't as committed to Jade as she was to him.

Beside her, Toby began to stir, and Jade checked the clock on her phone to see that it was about time for a feed.

"Don't you worry baby boy" she whispered, reaching into the cot to retrieve the baby. "I'm not gonna let anyone break up mommy and daddy. I think we're just gonna have to teach Tori Vega a little lesson."

Still mostly asleep, Toby smiled at the ominous words. After all, he was a momma's boy.

And finally, the baby has been properly introduced! It only took 8 chapters and 15k words :D