Sun 13 Feb
Dear AllTheAnswers,
Like you, I’m an advice columnist on the Internet. But this time I’m the one who needs advice. I don’t know what I’m doing or where I’m going or what to do or anything. Because I’m pregnant. Pregnant. I decided not to have an abortion. I just couldn’t. But I don’t know what to do with a baby. A real baby. I. Can’t. Believe. I’m. Pregnant.
A
Hi A,
The shock of this situation is weighing on you. Your hormones are making it harder for you to decide what to do. Are you sure keeping the baby is the right choice? Have you been to see a counsellor? I hope you have friends and family to talk to—you need support. Make them listen to you. Don’t rush the decision.
AllTheAnswers
Griffin came into my room just as I finished reading the reply from AllTheAnswers, so I minimized the page.
He massaged my shoulders and asked, “What are you doing?”
“Oh, you know me, just working. Um, the essay for English.” The last few days at school had been a blur—the only relief was that Pete wasn’t there.
He leaned over and kissed me on the side of my neck. He whispered, “You’re lying.”
My whole body ran cold. He’d seen what I’d written. Oh God. Then a surprising shiver of relief went up my spine. Griffin knew. I didn’t have to tell him anymore.
I managed to croak, “What?”
“You were working on your website. I saw it before you closed the page.”
I spun round to face him, meaning he had to take half a step back. I said, cautiously, “You read what I was writing?”
“Wow, relax, Bird. I didn’t read it. I could just tell. You’ve gone all red.”
“God, sorry. I just …” So he didn’t know about the baby. He didn’t know anything about all the lies I’d been telling him.
He said, “I know it’s private and it’s important to you. Whatever. I promise I didn’t read a thing.” He sat on the bed. “I don’t even understand why you kept the whole thing a secret anyway. I had to find out from Cleo that you are this Internet advice columnist and you’ve been doing it for ages. I thought we were, you know, friends as well as you being my girlfriend. But then you don’t … well, talk to me anymore.”
“I do. I’m sorry.” I stood up and went over to him. “I haven’t had breakfast yet. Let’s eat. Let’s hang out. We can talk.” Time to tell him. Time to break up with him. Time for me to take control.
Downstairs in the kitchen we ate toast and eggs together. He wrapped his arms round me as I was doing the washing up. I stiffened, wondering if he noticed my extra weight.
I slipped free of his embrace, feeling confused and worn out. I just couldn’t find the right words for now. I said, “Dad wanted to go over my CV for that job at the photography studio one last time. I’ve been working on it for days. All I need after that is to choose three photographs. It’d be fun being a photographer’s assistant.”
“I should go home anyway. Have my coffee.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’m not, um, drinking coffee right now.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Detox,” I muttered lamely as we left the kitchen.
He kissed me long and hard as we said goodbye at the front door. I kissed him back, trying to enjoy the feel of him holding me, knowing it couldn’t last.
He said, just as I pulled away, “So will you be my Valentine tomorrow?”
I touched his cheek, feeling suddenly sad. “Of course. Sure, thanks.”
DAD HAD HIS LAPTOP ON THE SOFA WITH HIM, BUT HE WAS STARING AT a photograph I’d taken of my mother, which hung on the wall. In it, her curly hair blew around her face and her sad eyes seemed luminous against the grey sky. I nudged him.
“I’m job hunting,” I said. “Remember, you told me you’d help with the last draft of my CV.”
“I wonder whether I could stop those geodesic domes from leaking if I redesigned them.”
“What?”
“Because that’s the problem. They leak and they’ve never been able to stop water getting in along the lines of the connections. It’s because the roofs of domes are curved. But if that could be fixed, if I could fix it, I could make a lot of money.”
“We don’t need a lot of money,” I said. “We just need enough to get by.”
He looked over at me with his hazel eyes and pity crossed his face. Then he laughed. “Get by? That’s not what I want for you, Bird,” he said.
“Anyway, could you look at this?” My pregnancy felt like a red balloon floating over my head—surely he could see it. I gave him a copy of the CV I’d printed out. He took it from me and read it through.
“Well, what do you think?” I asked.
“It could do with being a bit shorter. Tighter here. You need an Experience section. How about when you worked for the newspaper?”
“That wasn’t anything, Dad. It was a week of making coffee that I did only because school made us do a placement.”
“Bird, if I’ve learned anything in life, it’s to accentuate the positive. Make the most of yourself. Surely there’s a quotation about that somewhere, something like: No one else is going to love you if you don’t love yourself.” For the first time in weeks, he smiled.
ADDRESS: 203 Warmingtan Road, South Norwood, London, SE23 4RE
Contact: birdamyfinch@yahoo.co.uk
07777- 888776
EDUCATION
First year of sixth form, studying for AS levels in Art, Spanish, History, IT, English (in order to complete full A levels next year) GCSEs from Harton’s High School, Forest Hill, London, SE19 3FJ, in Maths, Chemistry, Physics, Biology, Double English, Spanish, History, IT, Art; 9 As, 1 A*
EXPERIENCE
Baby Sitting—gave me experience of looking after others and tending to their needs, and experience of organizing finances Work Experience through school—one week at the Croydon Advertiser working in the photography department
WHAT I BRING TO THE JOB
Enthusiasm, willingness to learn, good attention to detail and a love of photography
REFERENCES
Mrs. Teague, Architect at Teague Architecture
Mrs. Livermore, Head Teacher at Harton’s High School
I pulled out a selection of my photographs. My favourite was of my street in the snow. I’d staged Cleo’s white scarf on the snowy ground and I loved the way it showed that the colour white was really made up of pale blues and pinks and yellows—the scarf and the snow were laced with shapes and shadows. I chose a photo of Griffin I’d taken six months ago. His face filled the frame, his blue eyes brimming with love. I studied them. I realized that behind the love was a look of disquiet. Huh. The next photo was of Mum sitting with both elbows on the table, her head resting in her hands. She had a faraway gaze, looking off into the shadows of the kitchen, her blonde hair catching the gloomy light. I felt a pang. Suddenly I wanted to cry—my photos showed me more about my own world than I’d been able to see with my eyes. I scooped up the three images and slid them into a black file ready for my application.
AS I WALKED TO THE PHOTOGRAPHY STUDIO, EACH STEP DRUMMED with the realization I wasn’t going to be saving for a holiday to Jamaica with Cleo anymore. I was saving up for the baby. It made me dizzy trying to comprehend what I was doing. After dropping off my CV, I slowed to a stop. I noticed the cobweb of winter branches the trees made, catching the sky in their spidery grasp. What was I doing? I felt like I’d spent the last couple of weeks in suspended animation. I. Was. Pregnant. Was I making a huge mistake? Keeping a baby? A baby? A plane cut across the sky. I averted my eyes and was faced with the long, empty street ahead.
When I got home, my head was spinning. I couldn’t be a mother. I couldn’t look after a baby or give it the life it deserved. What, I was going to work part time in a photography studio, probably making tea, and give up school to look after some screaming child? I wandered about the house in a fog, clouds of misery obscuring everything except my nightmare. And then I sat at the computer and slowly typed in
Adoption
One of the first pages I read told me to remember that adoption was permanent. With a weight in my tummy, I read the reasons a woman (a woman! I found it so hard to think of myself as a woman) gave up a child.
• Lack of money
• Lack of a partner
• Lack of experience—being too young
• Lack of family support
All those reasons applied to me.
I flicked from page to page. I read through forums and noticed that another girl, Angela, in the same position as me, seventeen and pregnant, said:
I thnk it ws the best decision for my baby girl. I thnk about her every day, every night, and I cry myself to sleep sometimes, but thn I thnk of her w/ the parents I chose and I know I made the right step for her future.
I clicked to another forum.
Mya: I waited & waited 2 know what to do but then I took Rio home. 1 day became 2 days then 2 days became 6 wks. Ive made up my mind.
Steph: I wanted to write and thank Emmy for giving me my son. All of you wondering if adoption is the way to go, remember there are loving families out there like mine that would never get the chance to parent if it weren’t for you.
I looked at photos of people waiting to be parents in California on a friendly U.S. site that made it all sound really easy. I looked at another forum, my heart jumping around inside me and my head spinning. One girl had written that it was a good idea to look at YouTube to see adoptive parent profiles. And there they were: Jane and Jake cuddling each other and smiling. Her doing yoga. Him at a baseball game. But all these families were in America, and when I tried to find a U.K. couple, nothing came up. I flicked over to a U.K. site for parents looking for babies and it all sounded really formal and scary. The legal stuff made me feel nauseous. After that, I read stories by people who had been adopted. Good stories and bad. I thought of Jake and Jane in the photos. I thought of Steph and Emmy on the forums. And of Mya and Rio, one day becoming two, two days becoming six weeks …
I had to give up this baby. If I didn’t, I might never:
• do my exams
• go to university
• travel the world
• have sex again
• finish my photography project
• be successful in a career
• skydive
• go in a hot air balloon
I had to give it up. Had to.
I held my hand to my stomach. It had popped a little more, but not enough for anyone at school to know yet that there was something inside me, growing.
I finger-combed my wild hair and slipped on a jacket. I had to get out the house again. I wandered without thinking about where I was going. I ended up in the park opposite the school. I sat on a bench and let my thoughts whizz around while I watched the ducks on the lake. It had become one of those February days when shafts of sunlight probe their way through the clouds to point down at the earth. My mind wouldn’t settle. I was thinking of Pete and of Griffin, of Cleo, of my mum and dad. Suddenly, I realized all I was doing was thinking about other people, not about myself. Not about the baby. Thinking about the baby, imagining it, reminded me I couldn’t give a child a good life, because I was too young. It would be better off with another family.
But maybe I was wrong. Maybe I could look after a baby—
My phone rang. It was Pete’s number on the screen. I waited a second, not sure what to do.
I answered.
“It’s me,” the voice said.
“Where are you?”
I looked at the park, my eyes not able to avoid the leafy area where he and I had last kissed. “What does it matter?”
“I want to see you.”
“It’s not a good idea. I thought I’d, you know, made that clear.”
“I want to see you,” he said again. “And even if you don’t want to see me, I’m right here.” He started laughing.
As I heard him laughing over the phone, I heard him laughing in real life, the sound bouncing along the path and into my ears. He was walking straight toward me. His lean body, his sensual mouth, his gritty, unnerving gaze.
“Someone’s in a bad mood today,” he said, then the phone call was cut off as he put his phone in his pocket and sauntered over to me, smiling in that way he had.
“It’s not a good time,” I repeated.
He sat on the bench. “Fancy meeting you here,” he said, and as if nothing had happened, as if we were a couple, he slid an arm around me.
I found myself leaning into him slightly. My skin prickled under my clothes.
I said, “Why haven’t you been at school? I haven’t seen you around for ages.”
He shrugged. “I guess I’m not the school type.”
“But you said you were starting over.”
“So you were listening?”
“School’s important, Pete. It gives you a future.”
“And I’ve never heard that before,” he said sarcastically.
“Okay, okay. It’s none of my business.”
“What if I want it to be your business?”
“You don’t.”
He tightened his arm around my body and brought his face close to mine. He said, “Don’t I? Have you not forgiven me yet?”
“Pete,” I found myself saying. Heat crept up my spine.
He tipped my face up to his.
I was on fire.
He said, “I can’t read you at all. That’s what I like about you.”
“Pete, you have no idea.”
“Well, tell me, then.” He leaned in to kiss me and I almost let him, but then I held a hand up to his lips. He needed to know about the baby.
I said, “You don’t get it, do you?”
He sighed. “God, do we have to be so intense?”
My eyes narrowed and I shoved him off. “This is too intense for you, Pete? You stroll over here, put your arm round me like … like things are fine. I haven’t seen you for ages; we don’t even know each other. And you sit down and tell me you want to be my business. That’s your problem—you can’t be what you say you want to be. You make out you’re into me, then when I call you, you can’t commit to anything. You come and sit here, trying to kiss me like you own me, but when I try to talk to you, you think I’m being too intense. Well, get this, Pete Loewen, maybe I am intense. Maybe that’s what I’m like. If you want someone different, there’s always Kitty.”
“It was a joke,” he said. “Relax.”
“It’s all a joke to you, Pete.” The air was cool and the shafts of sunlight I’d seen before were gone. “Well, I’m not laughing. None of it’s funny to me.”
His eyes became flinty. He clenched his jaw.
I let the words spill from my lips. “I’m pregnant, Pete. Hilarious. Ha. Ha. Ha. Right. Now who’s laughing? Not so funny anymore, is it?”
His face went blank.
I continued, “And I’m not having an abortion and I was going to keep it, but then I freaked out and I’ve been looking at adoption sites on the Internet, but part of me still thinks I should just have the stupid abortion, but then I can’t and I just … I just don’t know why. It’s a nightmare. I don’t know what I’m doing or why I’m doing it and I have no one to talk to because Cleo doesn’t know anything about this stuff either and I don’t want to talk to a counsellor because I just don’t and my parents have split up and they’re the last people I could talk about this with and then you come over and make jokes and act like you always do and mess with my head and make me crazy and then everything’s supposed to be funny and it’s not funny. And my head is just … is just spinning because I don’t know if I want to give the baby away and I don’t even know how to decide something like that.”
“A baby?” he said slowly.
Pete. The troublemaker. The guy who was going nowhere with his life. The guy whose dad was in prison. The guy who would sleep with any girl who was stupid enough to fall into his arms, including Kitty Moss. The guy who’d just asked me not to be so intense: intense? This baby would tie me to him forever.
“It’s not yours,” I heard myself lie.
His blank face suddenly transformed as it filled with fury, his grey eyes dark. “So why are you telling me?”
I pushed my hair out of my face. “You know what? Forget it. Don’t come near me. Everything that happened between us was a total mistake. I wish I’d never been so stupid as to go anywhere near a guy like you.”
“You’re so full of yourself, Amy. You think you know everything about everyone. I’ve seen your advice column online, Miss Take-Control-of-Your-Life. Huh, you seem to think you know how to tell other people how to live. Let me break it to you: you’re the most judgmental person I’ve ever met. You have no idea how to live your own life, yet you think you can tell everyone else what to do.”
“How did you find the site?”
“I saw Cleo checking it out on her phone when I was sitting behind her one day, then heard her call you Miss-Take-Control … She’s not very discreet, your friend.”
“Did you tell anyone?”
He shook his head. “Just our little secret.” He smiled briefly, then anger returned to his eyes.
I would have been flattered he’d gone to the trouble of seeking me out online if I wasn’t feeling so furious. “People love my column.”
His voice softened. “Why are you so blind to what you need in your own life when you’re so good at telling other people how to live? You’re pregnant. What are you doing?”
“I’m thinking of giving the baby away. I have a plan. I’m going places. I want to go to Oxford University. And you were just … a … a crush. You don’t care about me.”
His voice filled with venom. “You don’t know anything. You never even bothered to get to know me. I hope you and Griffin are very happy together.”
“You’re the one who started sleeping with Kitty Moss.”
“I haven’t touched Kitty. We broke up. It was nothing.” He rubbed his face. “I only brought her to that stupid party because I was trying to get you to pay some attention to what you were missing.”
“Pete, don’t give me that. You’re a womanizer and a creep.”
“You think you’re in control of your life? Well, Miss Seventeen-and-Pregnant, you’re not. We could have had something really good, Amy.”
“No, we couldn’t. You’re not ready for something good—you’re too immature.”
My words seemed to strike him hard, because he put his hand against his chest
I said, “Don’t. Come. Near. Me.”
He slumped on the bench like he’d just been shot. And with that I stood and walked away from him, the sounds of my angry words echoing in the space between us, ricocheting off the walls of my empty heart.