✨️ONC 2023 Shortlisted✨️
'And I knew then, with an earth-shattering certainty, that everything I'd worked for, strived for, suffered for, had just turned to dust. My life as I knew it, scattered along the pavement with shards of windscreen and the c...
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The door knocks and I'm surprised to see Sarah standing there, her face screwed up unhappily. Her arms folded tightly across her chest defiantly. But her jutting bottom lip and tapping foot were giving her away.
"Do you want..."
Sarah doesn't wait for me to finish, or really start before she storms in, sidestepping me like physical contact would burn. Exhaling, my shoulders slump as I follow her into the main room. The long, grey days of January have swept past in a blur of hail and rain. I'm nearly five months pregnant. My belly is unmistakably swollen. People glance at me as I pass down the street, the judgement like sharpened daggers in their eyes. The occasional tut-tut of disgust, a shake of the head - another teenage girl pregnant, two lives ruined. Insert your judgmental nonsense here.
Sarah storms into the front room, her eyes glancing over my coursework spread across the carpet and coffee table. She brings with her the scent of musky body spray and car fumes. Swallowing hard, she glares as she turns to face me.
"We need to talk."
"I'm leaving in one hour. I've got my interview for Oxford."
She glances down at my belly and self-consciously I tug at the billowy blouse I'm hoping will cover the bump. I'm not naïve, I know I can't hide it from them forever. And I know I'd have to care for a baby whilst living and studying miles away from everyone I know, but I was choosing to ignore the list of overwhelming challenges. I can't walk away from my dream. I won't. Logic be damned.
"Fine."
She exhales and sits down in the armchair. She fixes narrowed eyes on me until I sit down on the settee opposite her.
"I thought about what you said. Maybe I did want to hate everyone at the Academy, though I haven't been proved wrong on that count. And maybe I did think we'd have something in common coming from the same street."
I say nothing.
"It doesn't make everything else OK," she adds bitterly.
"I wouldn't expect it to. And I didn't tell you because I thought it would." The tension is so thick it makes my head throb. I don't get morning sickness anymore, but my back hurts a little more each day and sleeping is growing more and more uncomfortable. Quite frankly, I don't have the patience for this.
"And just because you have some kind of complex about growing up with the rich kids, that doesn't justify anything either."
"And I never said it did," I snap. "What do you want from me? Do you want me to say that almost every person I knew at that school is now pretending I don't exist? Do you want me to say that every academic decision I've made since I was in primary school is probably going to be for nothing? Do you want me to say that my ex-boyfriend found someone new within days and has presumably worked out how to use a condom unless she's now pregnant too?"
