Blooming

“So what was it like?” Lucy asked when I’d gotten home from my doctor’s appointment. She was lying at one end of the couch in our living room, looking at a sonogram of the baby. Right now, it looked like a tiny little blob, but somehow she was fascinated with it. I was at the other end, answering her on going questions.

“Weird.” I said simply. I didn’t want to go into much detail as to how I felt because I didn’t want to break down in front of Lucy. The truth was, I was scared. I was pregnant! I could never care for a child at sixteen.

“What do you mean weird?” Lucy asked.

I shrugged as if we were talking about something far less important.

“What do you call a tiny little person living inside you at sixteen years old?”

She copied my shrug, still staring at the sonogram.

“Weird.” she agreed.

For a while, we sat in silence, leaving each other to our thoughts. But I wasn’t sure if I liked this. These days, thinking wasn’t good for me. Thinking lead to worrying.

“Are you scared?” Lucy whispered, finally.

I nodded and wiped away a tear from my eye. Lately, it seemed like tears could pop out of nowhere at any given time. So could the urge to hurl....

“Yes.” I whispered back.

I felt like we were in a Lifetime movie. I always promised myself that I wouldn’t be the girl who got knocked up at sixteen, the one in all those movies. The one who struggled through every scene, trying to make the right choice for her child and herself. But the thing was, with those movies, you can never tell from the beginning whether it’ll be a happy ending or not. Then again, this was real life, not something I could stop with the push of a button.

“You have to tell him.” Lucy told me, still whispering. She’d laid the sonogram on her stomach, now.

I wiped more tears from the corners of my eyes and held my breath.

“I know.” I answered her. “Tomorrow.”

I even surprised myself.

She sat up.

“What?” she asked, confused.

“I’m going to tell Darren.” I said, with a shocking surge of confidence. “Tomorrow.”

“Are you serious?” she asked. The look on her face was indescribable, kind of a mix between excitement and denial.

I sat up, too.

“I have to do it sometime.”

Lucy put her hand to my forehead.

“Are you okay? I’m worried about you.” she joked. I rolled my eyes.

“The only thing I’m worried about is how we’re going to get Carla away from him.” I said, trying a bit of honesty.

Lucy got a sudden look of mischief on her face.

“Don’t worry about her,” she said. “I gottcha’ covered.”

` I looked at her, hopeful and afraid of what she was planning to do. I couldn’t even begin to imagine it. Some people might have been mad. Some might have tried to push those thoughts out of her mind. Nevertheless, I just smiled simply, because that’s what you do when you know you have a friend who will always have your back.