“Trust me to what? Keep a secret? I don't know.”
So I told her anyway. Kiley's eyes grew wide. “This is not good.”
“What am I going to do?”
“Well, the first thing you have to do is talk to her. It's no good for her to stay mad at you. You have to discuss options.”
“Yeah, right. Options.”
“You need to figure out what is best for both of you,” Kiley said.
“What
is
best for us?” I asked.
“I can't say that, you know that, Zach. Remember when we broke up? We both knew it was the best thing for both of us. We talked and we both decided.”
“Yeah, but this is different.”
“Still, you need to sit down and talk to her,” she said. “This is not about you right now. This is about her.”
And I guess it sank in just then. All along, I had still been thinking about how bad this all was for me. This must be even worse for Ashley.
I needed to talk to Ashley. Some days after school she went to a coffee shop close to her house. She usually went with a group of friends. They would all no doubt hate my guts, but I'd have to take that chance. I hopped off the bus at Kiley's stop and ran ten blocks to Java Junction. I was winded when I opened the door and spotted her.
Not giving myself time to catch my breath, I went right over to her table. The conversation stopped dead. “I'm sorry, Ashley,” I said. “I'm sorry. I'll do anything you want me to do. Anything. Please.”
I stood there for an awkward minute. I waited for her to say something, but she didn't. Everyone else just stared at me.
I didn't know what else to say. I tried to slow the pounding of my heart. Looking at her, I realized that something had changed in the way she looked at me. The anger was gone. It was replaced by confusion. “Anything,” I repeated, as if that word would do the trick. And maybe I should have stopped there and turned around, but instead I kept going. “I love you,” I added.
I watched her face for a response. It caught her totally off guard. It caught me off guard too. We'd had fun together and got along really well. But it was only now sinking in that I cared for this girl. I think I loved her.
And now we were both scared. There was dead silence. Then she stood up, and I saw the look on her face change from confusion back to anger. And she blurted it out. “Bullshit!” she said. “Liar.” The other girls scowled at me.
I had failed in my mission. I turned and headed out the door. All I could think about was getting out of there.
I hadn't realized that she had followed me outside until I reached the corner and felt a hand grab my shoulder and twist me around. “I'm going to have this taken care of, and I want you to pay for it.”
I'd thought about this but wasn't sure it was the right thing to do. “We need to talk first. Is this really what you want?”
She didn't answer that question. Instead she said, “My friends think you can be criminally charged. They say I should go to the police.”
“That would be crazy. Ashley, I'm sorry about all this. We need to go talk to somebody who can help us sort this out. Not the police.”
“Nobody can help us. You screwed up everything. I want you punished.”
“Is that why you lied and told people I forced you to have sex with me? You know it wasn't that way.” Ashley didn't answer. She just stared at me. I felt trapped, and my mind froze.
Then she took out her cell phone and started to make a call. “Who are you calling?” I asked, my voice shaking.
“My parents,” she said.
I didn't know what else to do. I turned my back on her, and I began to run.
I was never much of a runner. I ran for three blocks until my lungs felt like they were about to burst. I was afraid to go home. Afraid the police might actually be there. I didn't know much about the law. If a sixteen-year-old guy has sex with a girl only one year younger, could that be a crime? And if it was, what would they do to me? Everyone would know. And everyone would hate me. And my parents? What would they think of their son?
It was beginning to sink in that I could be in real trouble. That scared the crap out of me. And none of this seemed fair. Was it really all my fault? It wasn't like Ashley and I were the only ones having sex. So why did everyone want to blame me? Now I was feeling angry. All I wanted to do was get away from it all.
I caught a bus that took me to one of the main highways out of town. And, for the first time in my life, I stuck out my thumb there on the ramp leading up into the traffic. All I could think about was leaving. Leaving and maybe never coming back.
A guy in a van picked me up and drove me a half hour out of town, all the while talking about baseball and politics. A second driver, a guy in his early twenties who looked like he was high, took me farther up into the mountains. The music was loud, and he didn't speak to me the whole time. When we came to a river with a waterfall, I asked him to let me out there.
As I climbed down the embankment, I tried to calm myself. I hiked away from the highway along the raging river and sat at the base of the waterfall. It seemed both frightening, with all that power, but also beautiful. I took a deep breath and suddenly felt kind of giddy.
I had escaped. I had taken the first step in just leaving all that crap behind. I could do this. I could just disappear. Go somewhere else where no one knew me and no one would find me. Forget about Ashley and the stupid pregnancy. Forget about what everyone back there thought of me.
It would be that easy.
The giddiness lasted for almost an hour. And then the doubt set in.
I scooped some of the icy cold water into my hands and splashed it onto my face once and then twice.
And then reality slammed back into me like a freight train.
Could I do this to my parents? Did I really want to leave everything behind?
Yes, maybe I could do this if I had to. But not yet. Not now. I felt vulnerable. I'd only been gone a few hours, and I was already feeling lost and lonely. It would be dark soon. Then what? I felt like a lost little boy.
The hitchhiking back home wasn't so easy. I think the first driver who stopped, a middle-aged woman with sunglasses, was drunk. She slurred her speech. The next driver turned out to be a church minister who kept asking me what was wrong. I didn't tell him. It took three more short rides, each after a long wait, to get me back to my neighborhood.
I'd missed dinner, and my mom and dad wanted to know where I'd been.
“You've been acting weird,” my dad said. “Want to tell us what's wrong?”
My dad's an okay guy, just a little old-school. Always did everything by the book. How could I answer him?
And my mom. She stood there looking so worried. I knew that she'd never approved of Ashley. Maybe it was the age thing. Maybe something else. They were both good parents. I hated doing this to them, but I was going crazy keeping my problems to myself. So I said it.
“I got Ashley pregnant.”
I saw the muscles in my father's jaw tighten. I saw the shock in his eyes. And my momâshe sucked in a gasp of air and then looked quickly away out the window.
I went upstairs to my bedroom and lay on my bed. Ten minutes later my mom and dad came in with my dinner and watched in awkward silence as I took a few bites. Finally, my father cleared his throat and asked, “Have the two of you gone to speak to a doctor or someone at Planned Parenthood? You have options, you know.”
There was that word.
“I'm not sure Ashley will talk to me.”
“Call her,” my mom said. “Talk to her.”
After they left me alone, I did call her. And, amazingly, she did not hang up.
“I nearly ran away today. For good.”
“Why did you come back?” I didn't hear any anger in her voice.
“I don't know. I just couldn't leave.”
“What you said today in the coffee shop, was it true?”
I took a deep breath. I couldn't lie to her. “I don't know. I'm not even sure I know what love is. I just know that I do care what happens to you. I know it's my fault, but I'd like to be there for you.”
“I'm not sure what to say. One minute I hate you and the next I want to be with you. It's like an emotional roller coaster.”
“I know,” I said.
“What do you want us to do?”
“I want us to go together to Planned Parenthood. I want to find some stuff out. Okay?”
There was a long dead silence on the line.
Then she said, “Okay.”
We went to the clinic the next day after school. Neither of us told our parents. We were both nervous, but the clinic staff treated us okay. We sat in a room with a lady doctor. She said her name was Dr. Benson. She seemed nice enough, and you could tell she'd done this a thousand times before. I tried to hold Ashley's hand, but she pulled away. I think it was just the nerves. This was hard on both of us.
“You could have a procedure,” the doctor said, “if this is not the right time. If you really don't want to have a baby, we can schedule you in. I'm not advising you to do this. It's just that the earlier it's done, the simpler the procedure is.” She paused. “The other option, of course, is that you can have the baby. Then you could put it up for adoption. There are a lot of married women out there who can't get pregnant. To them, it would be a blessing.”
“What if we didn't want to give it up?” I heard myself blurt out. The room went silent, and Ashley looked at me like I'd lost my mind.
“I'm just saying, what if ?” I added.
The doctor cleared her throat. “It's an option,” she said. “This is all about choicesâyour choices. What's best for you both and what's best for the baby. If there is a baby.”
Ashley took my hand now but didn't look at me. “When do we have to decide?” she said.
“The sooner, the better,” Dr. Benson said. “Just be sure you decide on something you can follow through on. Something you can live with.”
When we left the office, we didn't say anything to each other. I think we were in shock. I walked Ashley home and tried to start a conversationâfirst about the decision, but then anything just to fill the dead air. Each time Ashley said the same thing: “I can't talk about this right now.”
As we approached her house, she said, “I'm okay from here. You go on home. Let's sleep on this and see what things look like tomorrow.”
I nodded and gave her a hug. I knew she didn't want me anywhere near her house or her parents. Best to keep a low profile, I thought.
I slept terribly that night. I'd doze off and then wake back up. At school the next day, Ashley still looked like she was in shock and didn't want to talk to me about the clinic or the decision. I got that. I didn't want to talk about it either. On my second near-sleepless night, I got up and sat down at my computer. I visited websites on teenage pregnancy and abortion. Pro and con. I tried to stay away from the sites where people expressed strong views one way or the other. I wanted this to be our decision. Ashley's and mine. Man, there were a lot of strongly opinionated people out there on this topic. I didn't know who was right or who was wrong. And I didn't know what I thought about it myself. I guess there were a lot of things I was uncertain about.
Then I googled
teen fathers
. It was weird just keying in the words. I mean really weird.
I ended up at a website in New Zealand, of all places. Teenage guys had posted their stories about being fathers.
Now I was wide-awake. Some of them were eighteen and nineteen. Some of them younger. One guy was only fifteen. They wrote about how difficult it was. Some of them had been pushed away by the girl or her parents and were angry. A couple of the older guys had actually moved in with the girl and the baby and were trying to make it on their own. They were struggling. But a couple of younger guys had decided to just stay in the picture. Both parents were still going to school, both lived at home. They sure as hell didn't have it easy. But these guys were committed to being the baby's father. One guy named Mark made it sound like it wasn't so bad, and he seemed totally committed to being there to help his girlfriend and to be a good father.
I read every posting on that site. There were picturesâsome with the mother and father. Some with just the dad and the baby. There was even one dude who was raising his kid at home with his own parents. After the baby was born, the girl had said she wanted nothing to do with him or the baby. None of the stories suggested anything was easy.
I kept wondering why and how these guys had been able to go this route. Man, it must have been damn hard. But some of them seemed proud of being a father. They were helping to raise their own kid. One part of me thought that was awesome. But the reality of such a decision was starting to kick in. Helping to raise a baby. Being there for a little kid who is growing up. Just thinking about it made me shake. This was all getting way too weird.
I don't exactly know why I did what I did next. It was nearly midnight when I woke up my parents. “I need to talk,” I said. I had already told my parents about the meeting with the counselor at Planned Parenthood, and they had been surprisingly cool about it all. I think they were pretty sure we would get the abortion, but they weren't pushing me one way or the other. Now I was having second thoughts.
“What's wrong, Zach?” my mom asked, sitting bolt upright and suddenly fully awake.
I sat down on the edge of their bed and suddenly felt like a little kid again, coming into my parents' room in the middle of the night because I was scared. “I've been thinking,” I said. I swallowed hard and then continued. “I've been thinking about Ashley and about her being pregnant.”
“We know it's not easy,” my mom interrupted, trying to sound comforting.