Tiptoe Through the True Bits

I woke up at 2.43am with a startling realisation. Oh fuck.

“Gerard,” I hissed, shaking the slumbering boy beside me. “Gee, wake up.”

His arm shuffled around and he gave a soft groan and turned around to face me, eyes heavy with sleep, barely visible in the darkness. “Hmm?” he mumbled, rubbing his hands over his face before wrapping his arms around me, pulling me into him. “What’s up, baby?”

Baby. Baby. Argh. “Gerard, we didn’t use a condom.” I said it in a whisper, though I’m not sure why. Maybe because I was scared that the louder I said it, the truer it would be.

I felt Gerard’s frame stiffen around me, pulling his head back and holding me at arm’s length, as if I was maybe infectious or something. “Oh,” he said softly, eyebrows furrowing. And then again, even softer. “Oh.”

I chewed on my lower lip and closed my eyes. How can you have been so fucking stupid, Elise?! They drill it into you from the age of sixteen. Don’t have sex until you’re ready, and make sure you use a condom when you do. Stupid stupid stupid.

I guess we just kind of got carried away, is all. I made a plan to get a hold of a morning-after pill tomorrow and then everything would probably be fine. Probably. No of course it will be fine. I am only eighteen. There’s no way I could be pregnant anyway because I am by no means old or responsible enough to be having babies. And I need to go to college so I can get a decent job. And then I will have babies. When I am married. And have a job. And my own house. When I actually want babies. But not now. That’s absurd.

“Are you okay, El?” Gerard whispered, cupping my face with his hand. “You’re twitching a lot.”

“I’m fine,” I lied. “We’ll be okay.”

He didn’t look so sure. “Are you going to...” He didn’t want to say it but he didn’t have to.

“Yeah,” I nodded. “Yeah, tomorrow. At lunch. I’ll go to the pharmacy and...” I paused. “It’ll be fine.”

He kissed me on the cheek. “Whatever happens, Elise, I’m here for you, okay?”

“Okay. I know. I mean. Thanks.” My mind was thinking of a hundred and one things all at the same time and I just lay awake for what seemed like eternity. Eventually I felt Gerard’s breathing change so I knew he’d fallen asleep. We’ll be fine, Elise. That’s what my brain was telling my body. But I was not so sure.



I couldn’t do it. I stood in the pharmacy, staring at rows and rows of contraception. The morning-after pills were situated right next to the baby products. What kind of twisted pervert decided, when making the layout of the shop, to put baby-killing medicines on the same aisle as nappies with smiling faces of young infants? It’s sick. My stomach churned.

Eventually, after staring at the products on the aisle in tears, I picked up a pack of two pregnancy tests and headed over to the counter to pay for them. The lady behind the checkout had long fake nails which scratched the palm of my hand as she took them off of me to scan, and the way she was looking at me made me want to hit her.

“You know,” she said in a Southern drawl, “the clinic will do this for free.”

I didn’t say anything. I just stared at her firmly. She shrugged and handed me the bag, scratching me again in the process. “Twenty-nine thirty,” she said, and I thought she was maybe smirking a little.

I decided only to speak to people who were actually worth my time. This limited my vocal abilities pretty much to only the Way household. But that was fine. People had gotten used to my silence by now.

When I got back to school there was ten minutes left of lunchtime, so I headed straight to the girls bathrooms to take the test. I walked in to a cloud of hairspray fog. Chloe Edwards and her group of bitches had seemingly claimed this bathroom as their beauty parlour for today. But damned if I was going to let that stop me, even if it meant choking to death on fumes.

As soon as they acknowledged me, they turned to each other and giggled not very subtly. I rolled my eyes and ducked into the farthest cubicle. They began to talk about me, making no effort to lower their voices. But I had more important things to worry about for the time being.

“I hear she’s got a boyfriend now,” one of the anonymous skanks said. That’s the thing about skinny blondes; they’re interchangeable.

“No way, who is it?” gasped another.

I situated the pregnancy stick between my legs, did my thing and waited for two minutes while these bitches talked shit about me. It was the longest two minutes of my entire life.

“Some creepy goth dude from Belleville,” another voice said coolly. This was unmistakeably Chloe’s voice.

As crazy as it sounds, her and I were best friends in grade school. But as soon as high school began, I started to listen to Radiohead and Chloe got a position on the cheerleading squad. Soon after she deemed me unworthy of her presence. For a while she ignored my existence altogether. I was fine with that. And then the bitchiness started. She told people my secrets; how I still sucked my thumb and owned cuddly toys. That was okay too. But then this didn’t satisfy her anymore so she began to make stuff up. She spread rumours about my house stinking like a zoo and my dad being a pervert and all this bullshit. But by that time I already had other friends who knew that this wasn’t true. To be honest I found her pathetic, needing to make somebody feel shitty for self-validation. It’s sad really. But it still hurt me that somebody would do that to a girl who used to be their best friend and never wronged them in any way. I guess that’s just how that kind of girl works.

“Ew, I bet he stinks too,” one of the other cronies interjected. Bitches.

“How the hell did she get a boyfriend?” another asked. “She doesn’t even talk.”

I could hear everything they were saying but, as I mentioned, I had other things on my mind. Like how it was entirely possible I was going to have a baby. Or like how I should have just pulled up my big girl pants and got that fucking pill. Or how I should have used a condom in the first fucking place. It was not my most sensible decision, admittedly. And now I had nine months until the end of this hell they call high school. Nine months is quite a long time. You could have a baby in that time. Ha.

I put my head in my hands and finally, since I’d given no sign of reaction, I heard Chloe and her army of skanks leave, and I was alone in that little cubicle, sitting on the closed toilet seat and fighting tears as they rolled down my cheeks. Somewhere in the distance the bell rang.

My two minutes was up. With shaking hands I brought my hands away from my head and allowed a glance at the stick. Negative. I started to cry again. Maybe because I was so relieved. Maybe because I was a little sad. I’m not sure.

Either way, I got to history a couple of minutes late. Mr. Weck gave me a despairing look but said nothing as I slunk away to my seat. Inevitably, I was in a bad mood. The whole charade had completely exhausted me. I wanted to go home and go to bed with Gerard and cuddle and cry about our baby that could have been. God, how ridiculous. How can you be sad about losing something you never had? Or never even wanted, for that matter. I guess the more I thought about it, during history as Mr. Weck spouted on about the civil war (it is always the civil war, with that man), the more I thought that maybe a baby wouldn’t have been too terrible a thing.

I know that we’re young, and I know that we haven’t known each other long, but I kind of thought that there were worse things. I didn’t have a family anymore. Maybe it would have been nice to have a brand new family of my own. Maybe.

I just don’t know anymore.