Blooming

“So did you tell him yet?” Lucy asked.

I sighed.

“Well....” I started. But she knew perfectly well that I hadn’t told him. What would I say? ‘Oh, hey, I know we dated for, like, half a year and then broke up and all, but, uh, I’m pregnant with your baby’?

“Sav, you have to tell him.” Lucy answered. We were walking to her house from school talking about the same thing we’d been talking about all week.

“I will.” I said giving her a hopeful look. “It’s just...he looked really busy...with Carla and all.”

The truth was I was afraid. I was afraid even before this whole pregnancy thing and now I was terrified. Carla was so intimidating with her long brown hair and blue eyes. There was no way I could even come close to competing with that.

“Screw Carla.” Lucy said. “You know he isn’t really into her.”

I rolled my eyes. There was a time when Carla wasn’t even in the picture, a time when everything was perfect. But things got complicated. In fact, I didn’t think they could get more complicated...Until now.

“It doesn’t matter. Darren and I don’t even have anything in common anymore.”

Lucy looked from me to my stomach. She poked it with a smile.

“Except that!” I yelled.

Lucy bent down and put her face to my stomach.

“Hey, there, baby! Auntie Lucy will take good care of you!” she said, rubbing my stomach. I pushed her away.

“Shut up!” I yelled. “We are trying to keep it a secret.”

She laughed.

“Chilax. Nobody’s even around.” she replied looking behind her. I did the same and found, to my surprise, that Riley was right behind us.

“Riley!” I shouted.

Riley and I used to be best friends all through grade school and junior high. But as soon as we hit high school, something changed. It was awkward talking now.

“I-I’m sorry. It’s just...” he stuttered.

“You live next to Lucy. Yeah, sorry, I forgot.” I said. Riley gave me one more look before walking up to his house. I watched as he walked inside, not realizing that we were already by Lucy’s.

“Wow.” Lucy said in strange tone.

“What?”

“I can’t believe you still like him,” she said. But this was completely untrue. I have never liked Riley. Not even a bit...

“Ugh,” I whined. “Would you let that go already?”

She shook her head.

“Not until you admit it.”

Lucy and I walked up to the door of her house. I looked at the plants on either side of us as we stood at the porch, waiting as she unlocked the door. All around us, there were flowers of many kinds. Yellow ones, red ones, purple ones, everywhere. But most of them were dying, loosing their color. Lucy’s mother had a real green thumb before she and Lucy’s dad had become lawyers. I remembered coming over and seeing Mrs. Palmers covered from head to toe in dirt. I’d never seen her so happy as when she was gardening.

“Savannah,” she said one time as she usually did when I came over. It was a brilliant sunny summer day but hot, not the type of weather I’d like to be in all day, gardening.

“Hey, Mrs. P.” I answered. “Don’t you want to come inside? It’s got to be, like, a hundred degrees out here.”

She shook her head.

“No. My flowers need me.” she said smiling up at me.

I started to walk inside but stopped.

“Don’t you ever get tired of planting, Mrs. P?” I’d asked her.

She shook her head as if I was crazy.

“No, why do you ask?”

I was careful not to offend her.

“Well, I mean, doesn’t it take forever for your plants to even start to grow? I know if it were me I wouldn’t have that much patience.”

She simply smiled at me.

“Short term sacrifices for long term goals, Savannah.” she said simply and turned back to her flowers.

But now as I looked at them, it seemed they’d lost their luster.

Lucy and I walked inside, set our things down, and immediately began reading the pregnancy books. Lucy drank her Pepsi and I drank my water. This was already becoming a routine.

So far, I’d gotten half way through The Parenting Guide to Pregnancy and Child Birth and she’d started reading Your Over 35 Week By Week Guide to Pregnancy. We’d been doing this all week since we’d found out. Still, we were the only ones who knew.

“Hey,” she said. “It says here, in around week six, organogenesis starts occurring.”

She was always doing this, telling me things I had no idea about. But it comforted me knowing she was so interested.

“Organ-o-what-a-sis?”

She didn’t even look up while responding.

“Organogenesis. It’s when the baby starts developing its internal and external body parts.”

I nodded and watch as her brow furrowed.

“Oh! Look!” she said pointing to something in the book. It was a picture of a rendered woman, looking into her stomach from the side. Inside, the baby looked no bigger than a fist. In fact it looked like a little blob.

“It looks like blob.” I stated. She looked at me and smiled.

“But it’s your blob.”

We laughed for a moment before returning to our books.

My blob, I kept thinking to myself, Yeah. My blob. It almost sounded nice.