Crazy Stalker

Chapter 24 - What They Don't Tell You

I nod because now I'm embarrassed, and I just want him to leave me alone.

"Fine. Sure. No problem."

"Are you sure it's okay?"

"Yeah, it's weird, that's all. Not like the other boys."

"What kind of boys have you been hanging out with?"

"The bad kind," I reply with a laugh. "The kind that says 'hey, nice to meet you, let's fuck.' What I mean is — you're a good guy, Nick."

Nick laughs at my joke. His dimples show, and they make me want to forgive him for squirming away from me like I had the cooties.

"You deserve a good guy, Corinne. Okay, let's call it a night for now. See you in the morning for biking into town and getting ice cream?"

"Okay," I say and pound my way upstairs. I head into the spare bedroom where I had dropped my backpack of spare clothes and textbooks. As I shut the door behind me, I lean against the door and clutch my cellphone. I consider calling Natalie to tell her that Nick is a limp-dick weirdo, but I decide to count to ten before making any rash decisions.

Maybe Nick isn't blowing me off. Maybe he just wants to get to know me first. Why is that so weird?

Is it weird because Jake humped me under the boardwalk in Coney Island just because I ate a bite of his ice cream? Maybe not all boys were like Jake Villin. I'm a sexual newbie; I don't have anyone else to compare Nick to other than Jake.

I finally turn my cell phone back on with plans to call up Natalie. I decide to tell her about all the fun I had with Ruth and the others. I'll leave out any curse words I had for Nick.

As I look down, I curse.

Oh, crap.

I have a couple of missed calls. Yeah, even though it had been only four hours since I had turned my phone off by the pool — I expected the missed prank calls and weird trolly messages from my new internet stalker.

As I had learned in the last couple of weeks, Saturday night is a big night for my stalkers. That's when they are the most bored, I guess.

The one missed call I didn't expect was from my OBGYN's office.

They even sent me a text after three missed calls.

Call us back immediately when you get this.

Oh, my God. My breath catches in my throat. I can't breathe. Am I pregnant? I can't be. Jake said that the condom didn't slip!

I immediately call the office back, and I count the seconds until they pick up. It is a Saturday night. It's 8:30 in the evening. Maybe they went home for the day. The suspense is killing me. I can't spend the rest of the weekend, not knowing if I was going to have a baby or not.

The receptionist picks up and breathes a sigh of relief that I finally called back. I can't believe she makes me confirmed my name and date of birth with her before telling me the news. I hear her pause before answering as though she's not sure how to break the bad news to me.

"Am I going to have a baby?" I demand.

"No, no, you're not," she replies, laughing.

"Then what?"

"You have HPV."

"Holy crap! How long do I have to live?"

"What?"

"Am I going to die?"

"No. No, you're not. It's prevalent in the sexually active. We'll just keep an eye on it until our next appointment. Do you have any idea where you got it from?"

"No," I lie.

Damn it, Jake Villin! I knew he was banging every girl in school. I can't believe I thought he wanted to be my boyfriend. I always thought that sleeping with the bad boy just meant he might knock you up. I never imagined there were far more gross and mundane things that you could get.

"Just be careful, especially with any new sexual partners for the time being. There's no treatment for it, but it usually goes away on its own. You don't want to spread it to anyone else through any sexual contact."

"Yeah, there's no risk of that. Thanks, though." 

That's another lie. I would jump into bed with Nick at this very second if he had let me. 

As I hang up, I realize that I now have a darker secret that I need to share with Nick. I have HPV. How the heck am I going to tell him about that? I need time to think. Nick was smart to make me wait. If Nick thought I was gross before, this sure as heck isn't going to help things. 

It dawns on me right at that second that with one little accident with Jake — the bad boy — I had become one of the bad girls.