T W E N T Y - N I N E
chocolate and bagels.
School was already a lot for Otto to go to with her father dead. But when the entire damn school is staring at you because you are almost 37 weeks pregnant at 17 year old it makes it even worse.
It was like she could feel every pair of eyes burning holes in her, she felt them everywhere all staring at her shamelessly like she wasn't a person.
Not to mention it was the first time she'd been without JJ for more than 10 minutes. The entire day went painfully slowly for those exact reasons.
Every hour, second and minute stretched on for what felt like years.
She tried not to check the time too often because that makes it feel like time stretches on, but that was almost impossible with how badly she wanted to leave.
Otto had completely forgotten how much people stared and whispered, before she was so use to it, and she had such a wall up that protected her from people's feelings and assumptions about her. But that wall had crumbled, completely fallen down and was rumble at her feet. Now the staring and the whispering stung.
It was especially strange considering she hadn't been at the school for an entire year, so she had no clue who most of the people were, they were strangers and she still cared.
At the school she went to in her hometown a girl got pregnant. Due to the size of the school everyone knew everyone, everyone knew exactly who she was, they knew her parents and who the babies father was.
The girl was the talk of the town, and Otto participated in the whispers and the staring.
She had no clue how it felt.
It felt like shit.
Otto now felt so guilty for playing a part in someone feeling ostracized.
School was the last place Otto wanted to be, but it was what her father wanted.
Even on the day he died - the day he knew he was going to die - he made her go to school, it was that important to him. And he didn't want her to be there, watching him slip away slowly.
Coming out of the last class Otto was emotionally drained, not to mention how tired she was. She was always tired. But when she walked out of the class JJ was standing opposite it, leaning against the wall with a smug grin on his face like she knew something she didn't.
She glared at him, Otto hated not knowing things.
Then he pulled his hands from behind his back, he held a paper bag from a cafe that had her favourite bagel, and a bar of chocolate. The gleeful smile the took over Otto's face was well worth ditching his final class. To be fair if he didn't go to school with Otto he probably would've done it anyway.
JJ and Otto took her car to the school, JJ slept at her house every night so there was no point of Kie and Pope coming to pick the pair up. Kie's house wasn't that close to Otto's so it really was quicker to both take separates cars. The group said goodbye to one another and went their separate ways.
"JJ I know you're not the sharpest knife in the drawer but this isn't the way to my house, or the Chateau."
For a brief second JJ looked across at Otto who was happily eating her chocolate bar.
"That, my dear--"
"JJ, I will cut your dick off if you ever call me your dead again." Otto cut him off.
"Duely noted, let me start again. That, Tillie, is because we are not going to either of those places but to my place."
Otto snorted, "I think you'll find it is my place."
"I have lived here for longer than you have."
"That actually has nothing to do with who found the sport first. We'll both say the age we found it on three and then we'll know whose spot it is."
Otto counted down and they both spoke at once.
"Six."
"Like seven." JJ said.
"See. My spot."
"Pretty sure I am about a year older than you."
"It was the age we found it, your age relative to mine is unimportant. I found it at six, you found it at seven, and thus I win and you lose."
"That, my-- Tillie. Tillie I said Tillie. But I was just going to say you using fancy sentences is not fair."
"What was fancy about that sentence?" She was genuinely confused.
"Like something being relative to something, and thus. Shit like that."
"Pretty sure that is English 101."
"Well I never attended that, I found it boring." JJ grumbled, considering no one ever made him go to school he missed one too many classes in junior school, and thus he wasn't the best at English. Or any subjext really. Except maths, he was actually quite good at that.
"That, my dear, seems like a you problem and not a me problem."
"Why are you allowed to call me your dear and I'm not?"
"Because I don't have balls to cut off." Otto gave him a smug smirk.
The light-hearted fight was cut short when the arrived near Otto's spot.
They walked out, JJ moving to walk right beside her, he'd hold her hand but she was holding the bagel like it was the most important thing on the planet.
Once Otto took a seat on the log JJ always sat on, she decided it probably wasn't the best idea to climb a tree when she was very, very pregnant.
"What about we call it our spot." JJ proposed.
Taking the first bit of her bagel, yes, she ate the chocolate before the bagel, no, she wasn't open to criticism.
"I'm feeling generous today, you may refer to it as our spot."
"What about you?"
"If I'm feeling generous and I'm not mad at you I'll call it our sport, if I'm made at you I'll call it my spot."
JJ decided it was good enough for him, she swallowed another bite of her bagel, she was pleasantly surprised he knew her order. She really shouldn't have been surprised, JJ always remembered the little things like that.
Her hand shuffled in her pocket and pulled out a perfectly rolled - if she may say so herself, - slightly smooshed but otherwise fine blunt and offered it to JJ.
He looked her slightly confused, "I didn't think--"
His phone buzzed, he grabbed it out of his pocket and realised he had a few texts from Kie and Pope. He ignored them and turned his phone off.
"I was going to say I didn't think pregnant women couldn smoke, it caused like deformities and shit."
She held it a little closer to him, "It's not for me." She said with a smile.
When he took it from her with a smile on his own face, JJ dug in his pockets for the lighter he always had on him he came to a strange realisation.
He was sober.
Completely and utterly sober.
For the first time in what was probably years he didn't have any intoxicating subsatnces in his body.
He leaned against the tree and lit it. He savoured every drag.
JJ decided something, in that moment, sitting beside a women he was completely obsessed with - still in a good way and not an 'I want to wear your skin way' - that it would be his last. He was dealthy serious when he said he refused to become his father, he wouldn't be a drunken, abusive excuse for a father. He wanted to actually remember things, his memory was always spotty due to the drugs and alcohol.
When he pushed the last bit into the damp dirt he looked up and smile at Otto who had finished the bagel and was looking out onto the water.
"I'm going to stop. The drinking and the drugs, I'm going to stop it all. He said firmly.
Otto looked at with a blank face, trying to decide how she felt about the declaration.
"Don't set the bar too high, if you cut everything out completely you're more likely to snap and drink and smoke it all at once. Just try to cut down, the occasional beer and blunt is okay."
He smiled and her and grabbed her hand, "Here I was thinking the smart one."
Otto scoffed at that, "You are complete lunatic."
"I don't know what that means." That was a lie, or a half lie, he could make an educated guess and he would probably be right. Otto didn't compliment his intelligence.
Her phone buzzed for what felt like the millionth time, she wasn't so paranoid about checking every message for fear it had something to do with her father anymore so she just let them go. But she was getting annoyed at the constant buzzing.
She answered the call and pressed her phone to her ear.
Otto could barely make out what Kie was saying, she was frantic, although she made out a few phrases.
John B and Sarah were back.
•
We're back bitches!
They aren't dead, at least not for now lmao.