Chapter Nineteen
She Senses Something, Call It Desperation

16 and Pregnant was on MTV. Knocked Up was on TNT followed by Juno. And on Cake Boss, the guy's wife was going in for her ultrasound.

Life seemed to know exactly what buttons to push sometimes.

I settled on Gilmore Girls, but honesty, their references made less sense to me than….Thalia's, and I ended up going to my room to grab the pack of cigarettes I kept hidden under my mattress. Like I said, stress always brought me back to the habit.

A few hours later, my stress relief session was interrupted by someone ringing the doorbell over and over again. If my mom had lost her key to the house or something stupid, I swore I would kill her. Without bothering to put the cigarette out, I went and got the door.

"Package for you." It was the damn UPS guy. He handed me a small box addressed to my mom. "You really shouldn't smoke. It's not good for you."

"Yeah? I'm stressed."

He frowned. "It's a Friday night."

"And?"

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you have a girlfriend or something?"

I felt like taking that package with the bright red fragile sticker and kicking it down ten flights of stairs. "No," I said flatly.

"You look like you need fresh air and someone to talk to."

Yeah, why not go for a walk with a complete stranger? Things couldn't get any worse. I threw the package inside and stepped out the door. He immediately took off, and I found myself struggling to keep up.

"So tell me what happened with the girl," he said, plucking the cigarette out of my hand and stomping it on the ground.

So he wasn't one who was much for small talk. I guess I could handle that. "She was pregnant and decided to get an abortion."

"And the emotional stress broke you two apart?" His phone started ringing. He pulled it out of his pocket, glanced at the screen, and silenced it with a sigh.

"No. She didn't tell me about it."

"So you wanted her to keep the baby?"

It felt weird when he put it like that...a lot more…real. "Yeah…well, no…but, it's that…"

"You know, it's easy to say yes when the answer is already no," he said. It was hard to tell because I didn't really know him, but I was willing to bet he was speaking from experience. He shook his head. "Listen, you're in high school. I'm sure you didn't want this to happen."

"She could have at least told me."

"But she didn't. And it's done. Now you can choose to sit around moping about it or move on with your life, with or without her." Again, I was getting the feeling that this came from experience.

"What about-"

"No."

"But there's-"

"No excuses."

"Aren't you supposed to-"

"Nope. Just do what I do and forget about it. Now that everything's happened, there's nothing you can do anymore."

"So you're saying I'm just supposed to forget everything?"

He shrugged. "If it's what helps you."

I wondered if he had kids, and if so, just how terrible of a dad he was.

It was funny how everyone would openly stare at you one day, but the next they would only whisper and look at you behind your back. It had happened to me enough that it was weird having it happen to someone else.

People were talking about Thalia and Luke every chance they got. Everyone claimed to have seen this coming, but they were all so amazed when it finally did. Well, the baby thing threw in a loop, but really.

When I tried explaining it all to Clarisse, she just glared at me. Like, literally glared. "You're just mad that someone else is getting all the attention." She was still sore about Chris shooting her down, but was pretending not to care.

Thalia had been acting unaffected. Luke was a different story. He was walking around like a cute little lost puppy that'd just been left at the side of the road. It made me feel terrible for him – I hadn't been there for the breakup, but a few different people had told me what happened, and it sounded…bad.

"Yeah Silena, she was all like, going on about how annoying he was and how she couldn't stand him and would rather become a nun than be the mother of his children, and-" Katie Gardner gushed.

"No, it was more like shouting, shouting, shouting and then something about a girl named Molly. Whatever that means." Her twin sister, Charlie, corrected.

I tried not to roll my eyes. I loved Katie and Charlie, but the two of them together was way too much. Especially when you just wanted a straight answer.

"And then she just ran off. And he was just standing there, like a…hmmm…like…"

"Like John when he found out Savannah was getting married to the old guy!"

"Oh, I love that movie. It's on Starz tonight."

"But it's so sad when the dad dies and he's the only one there. It almost makes me cry worse than The Notebook."

As much as I loved listening to them talk about Dear John, my twin tolerance was at its end. "Well, thanks ladies, but I have to go now." I grabbed my English book and slammed my locker shut. "That English sub is such a Nazi. Won't ever let me show up late like the old one."

I don't think they heard me, since they kept going on about Channing Tatum and Ryan Gosling. The really bad thing about those two was they made anyone who hung out with them feel like the third wheel. No wonder they were both single.

Students were slowly making their way to their next classes – everyone knew which teachers wanted you there right away and the teachers who didn't care as long as you showed up eventually, so most people planned their timing accordingly.

Luke was standing in front of his open locker, slowly pulling out his stuff for his next class. Even though all the girls secretly crushed on him and the guys envied him for it, he didn't have any real friends. He gave off kind of a loner vibe, but I felt bad for him.

"Hey," I brushed his arm lightly as I walked by. "It's gonna be okay."

He stared at me blankly, like he hadn't been able to understand what I'd just said. "I'm trying not to think about it," he finally said, smiling weakly. "What's done is done, right?"

If that was his coping strategy, it obviously wasn't working well.

"You don't have anything to feel guilty about."

He shrugged. "Again, trying not to think about it."

An idea formed itself in my mind. "You know, if you're trying not to think about anything with…her, then the best thing to do is to find someone else to focus on. It helps you and pisses her off. Total win-win situation."

"Sure."

Well, that wasn't the reaction I was going for. "I don't know if you're that lovesick or what, but this is the part where you're supposed to ask the girl right in front of you if she'll be your girlfriend." This was going to be a lot of work.

"Okay, Silena. Will you be my girlfriend?" He had the same tone of voice that you used when you were humoring a little kid. Not exactly the biggest turn-on in the world.

"Yeah, I don't think so." I kept walking towards my English class that I was for sure going to be late for. The teacher hated me anyway just because I suggested she should try a different shampoo. Seriously, her dreadlocks looked like a bunch of little snakes hanging off her head.

He caught my wrist after a few seconds. "Silena, I'm sorry. I would love it if you would be my girlfriend."

Something was off about him, but I guessed that was about as good as it was going to get from him right about now. "Good," I said, turning around to face him. "Now that that's settled, you should-"

He kissed me before I could get the whole sentence out. Okay, so we'd have to work on his listening skills, but that could wait. I was pretty sure our school had some PDA law that outlawed stuff like this, but I'd been waiting for months. A girl had needs.

"Well, I really need to get to English now." There were traces of my lip gloss on his lips. "Now that you've made me very, very late." I giggled. Pretty soon everyone would know that we were going out. Life was perfect.

"Yeah, okay." He wasn't looking at me. I followed his gaze down the hall to a girl standing by her locker, eyes on the ground like she'd been caught looking.

Three guesses who.

It looked like we had a lot more work to do than I thought.

The only thing worse than puking was puking in a school bathroom. I thought my days of not being able to keep anything down were gone, but the image of my ex-boyfriend with his tongue down some other girl's throat was enough to bring it back.

I thought it was safe to say life couldn't get any worse until I walked out of the stall and someone was there washing their hands. I'd completely missed them when I'd run in. I thought she was Bianca di Angelo, but there were a lot of people I didn't remember after being gone for so long.

"Luke and Silena? You know he did that just because you were watching," she said. I pretended not to hear.

I knew he'd done it just to make me mad. He'd looked right at me before turning around and kissing her. And afterwards, he gave me this look, like see how much I don't care about you?

Oh God. The thought made me sick all over again. I barely made it back to the toilet before puking again. I prayed Bianca, or whoever she was, would be gone when I came back out.

Nope. Still there, waiting for me with a wet paper towel. I grabbed it from her and wiped my face off. This took embarrassing to a whole new level.

"I know you'd rather see him hit by a bus than making out with the school slut, but…you know. Sometimes you step in a giant pile of shit. It happens."

"Well thank you, Forrest Gump."

She rolled her eyes, but then her face softened. "Are you gonna be okay?"

I crossed my arms. "Do you want the real answer or the one that's going to let you off the hook so you can go on to your next class without having to worry about me?"

"You pretty much just told me you're not."

"No shit, Sherlock. I lied to my boyfriend, who then broke up with me, and a week later he's moved on."

You know those moments where you wish you could hit rewind and go back and change what you just said?

"What did you lie about? You really weren't pregnant?"

This was one of them.

"No."

She sighed. "Look, I'm just like you. I'm a bitch with no friends whatsoever, so I assure you, if you tell me, no one else is going to find out."

I kept my mouth shut.

"Whatever. I tried." She started heading for the door.

"Bianca!" I yelled her name just a little too loudly, and it echoed in the bathroom for a few seconds.

She turned around and raised an eyebrow. "Yeah?"

"I freaked out when he asked me if I was pregnant…so I lied and said I got it taken care of. But…"

"But?"

"I didn't get an abortion. I'm still pregnant."