In the Band

THE END HAS NO END

“What am I going to do?” Allison’s head was in her hands.

“Well, the best thing to do right now is get him involved,” Nick sat beside her. He contemplated touching her arm to comfort her. When he started to reach out, she looked up at him and he retracted, using his raised arm to scratch his head. “You know, the father.”

She opened her mouth and rubbed her forehead, taking a few moments to push words out.

 “I don’t know who he is.” Allison laughed at herself. “I mean, I’m not…sure who he is. Yep, that sounds worse.”

Nick made a noise in the back of his throat and lightly punched her on the arm. He immediately regretted it, but couldn’t think of another response.

“You know you’re going to keep it, there’s that.”

“But they’re just going to keep harassing me and I don’t have any way to defend myself.”

Nick wanted to tell her that their classmates’ opinions didn’t matter. He knew better. Allison was still caught up on the group of people that she’d been calling her friends, who dropped her as soon as they found out she made a mistake.

When everyone found out that Carson was some big rock star, they started caring. Nick, Allison, Carson started sitting with Allison’s friends at lunch. The other two didn’t expect it, but Carson was eating it up. She seemed ecstatic. Everyone was so suddenly interested in her and Panic. There hasn’t been a day in the past couple weeks where Allison didn’t see someone wearing a fan shirt in gym class or playing the music in the hall.

After the Big Game finally happened, there was a huge victory party and Carson was of course invited several times. She wanted to stay with Allison though. Her personality hadn’t completely diminished.

The two girls sat together in a crowd of tipsy cheerleaders. Brendon showed up to the football game and they were drilling Carson about all the happenings of her new stardom as usual. Allison left and came back with a bottle in her hands. She sat down on the arm of a couch next to her friend.

The rim of her bottle barely touched her lips when Carson, previously in the middle of an explanation, suddenly yelled.

 "Allison, you can't drink that!"

The group around her silenced. Carson gasped and covered her mouth with her hand, not realizing that only confirmed their assumptions.

Allison ran through a range of emotions (and also a range of murder tactics), while the room's noise level dwindled down. She audibly swallowed, took in a large shaky breath, and turned to her friend without meeting her eye. She scrunched her face and then looked at the ceiling. Through clenched teeth and with eyes red with tears Allison said:

 "I emptied it. It's water, you incompetent cunt."

 By the next school day, everyone knew that the head cheerleader was pregnant. Not the best of days for Allison Reed.

"I could, you know, be the father." Nick looked down at his hands, his heartbeat in his ears. "You could tell people that..." He looked to see Allison's reaction. She was staring into space.

 "I'm a whore." Nick didn't realize it was a confession.

"No, you're not. Everyone fucks up once and a while." It was the first time Allison ever heard Nick swear. She looked at him, half-smiling in appreciation that he still thought she was a good person. "It would make sense, if it was me. We started hanging out a lot recently. Maybe I don't look like you're first choice, but I'm not like a religious freak or anyone else that's like incapable of...it." Nick's face was hot. Looks like the performance is rougher than the rehearsal, but he's glad that he had the balls to say what he's been wanting to. "There are reasons it would be me."