Waiting was absolutely killing me. Minutes felt like hours, and I couldn’t even imagine what Kate must have been feeling about this entire thing. It would have been so much worse if I was in her situation.
When the bathroom door opened, I nearly jumped right out of my skin. Kate stepped out of the bathroom, looking up at me with worried eyes.
“Well?” I asked, pushing a piece of my hair behind my ear.
Kate let out a sigh, and I could see the test in her hands. “I don’t know yet. It says we have to wait for a couple of minutes.”
I quickly rushed her into my room, not wanting the boys downstairs to hear what we were saying. Luckily both Brianna and Steve were at work, and Elizabeth was still at her class, so we didn’t have to worry about them.
“What am I going to do if it’s positive?” Kate wondered out loud, placing the test on my desk before pretty much pacing all around the room. “What am I going to do? Of course I’m going to keep it, but I’d be having it before we graduate. What would everyone in school think? I can’t remember anyone getting pregnant the entire time I’ve been in high school.”
“I heard someone named Erica Sanchez got pregnant by her boyfriend when she was a junior or senior,” I told her, remembering the things people would tell me when I had first come to the school. “So it’s not like you’ll be the first one in the entire school’s history. The school’s been around for a long time.”
Kate waved that away. “I was a freshman when that rumor came out. In all honesty, I don’t even know if it’s true or not. All I know about that girl and her boyfriend is that they broke up because she cheated on him or something.”
I shrugged. “Whatever, it doesn’t matter. Is the test done yet?”
Kate stopped pacing beside my desk, letting out a deep breath before snatching up the test in her hand. She didn’t look down at it, and I waited to see what she was going to do. As much as I wanted to see the results, I wasn’t going to rush her.
She finally looked down at the test, and I continued to wait for her reaction. At first, she just stared at it without any type of reaction at all, but after a few moments, she dropped the test on the ground and started crying.
I didn’t ask her what the test said, because I already knew it. Kate was going to have a baby.
“What am I supposed to tell Logan?” she sobbed, wiping at her eyes as the test continued to stay on my carpet. “I don’t know how he’s going to react to something like this! We’re together and everything, but he’s never said anything that would make me think that we’re officially boyfriend or girlfriend or anything!”
I stood up from my seat on my bed, picking up the test carefully and placing it in her hand. She looked at me with watery eyes, and all I did was lean forward and wrap my arms around her shoulders tightly.
“I’ll be here for you,” I assured her, letting her cry into my shoulder as she hugged me back. “Whatever you plan on doing, I’m going to be here for you every step of the way. I’ll even be there when you tell Logan, okay?”
Kate pulled away from me, wiping at her eyes with her free hand. “Okay. Thank you so much, Maxynn. I’m so glad that you’re my best friend.”
I smiled at her. “I’m glad to be here.”
When the door opened, Kate and I broke apart immediately and turned to see Zach looking at us both suspiciously. Kate hid the pregnancy test behind her back, but he noticed her tear streaked face and the tears in my eyes.
“You both… okay?” he asked, looking to her and then to me.
“We’re fine!” I assured, wiping at my eyes and taking a step in front of my best friend. “Can’t you learn to knock?”
Zach’s eyebrows furrowed at me. “Why are you two crying?”
“Kate’s dog died,” I blurted at the exact same time she cried, “My parents are getting a divorce.”
Zach’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion, and I gulped.
“Yeah, that combo was really too much,” I excused, placing my hand on Kate’s back and leaning her toward the door. “Maybe you should go home and talk to you parents, okay?”
She blinked at me a couple of times before picking up her purse. She breathed in and out, obviously trying to calm herself down so she wouldn’t freak anyone out, before smiling at me once again and saying, “Yeah, you’re right. I should talk to my parents about this. I’ll see you later, Maxynn. Bye, Zach.”
He gave her a little wave as she went by him, making sure that he didn’t see the pregnancy test. It made me wonder where she was going to throw it away.
I wanted to offer to go with her, but I knew that that wasn’t the right thing to do. Kate needed to be the one to tell her parents, and she needed to be alone while she did it. I had done enough for right then.
“What do you want?” I demanded after Kate left.
“I just wanted to annoy you,” he shrugged, shoving his hands into his pockets as he leaned against the doorframe. I glared at him, but he only laughed. “I didn’t expect to see you both sobbing your eyes out.”
“I wasn’t sobbing,” I denied, still glaring at him.
“Eh, there’s no difference” he waved away.
“Get out.”
After I shooed Zach out of my room, I just sat in my room for a little while. I was in a sort of shock, not knowing how we were supposed to deal with everything that was going on. People thought I killed my mother and I was a suspect in her murder, and now my best friend was pregnant as well.
After spending a half an hour just thinking up in my room, I finally trudged down the stairs in search for civilization. I didn’t want to be alone anymore, not caring who I was going to have to hang out with. Just as long as I wasn’t alone, I was fine…
When I got downstairs, I turned to see Ethan was on the couch, eating out of the large bag of candy that I had bought him. He stuck his now blue tongue out at me when he saw me, and I only rolled my eyes at him as I sat beside him.
“You want some?” he offered, opening up the bag to me as well. “There’s no way I’ll be able to eat all of this. Zach’s eating some too.”
I blinked at the candy for a moment before deciding to have some. This might have not been the healthiest way to deal with my problems, but I was hungry, so I was going to eat.
The door to the kitchen opened and Zach walked in, obviously not expecting to see me. He threw a soda at his little brother, and then at me. Ethan caught it easily, but mine hit me right in the stomach.
“Ow!” I cried out, covering my stomach with my arms. “That hurt!”
“Something like that wouldn’t hurt someone as strong as you,” Zach informed me as he looked down at me, his face riddled with confusion. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” I sighed, shoving another handful of candy into my mouth. I was so out of it and it had just caught me off guard. “I’m just really hungry… and tired.”
“She’s gonna get fatter,” Ethan commented, even though he was still eating the candy and was eating so much more than I was. “No one’s going to want to be with her if she’s fat. Even Johnny, and he says he loves her.”
I chucked a piece of candy at him. “How do you even know about that?”
The younger Deveraux brother pointed an accusatory finger at his older brother. “He told me.”
I only glared at Zach, shoving another handful of candy into my mouth. Ethan knowing didn’t matter very much, so I could only hope that Zach didn’t go off and tell anyone else, because it was such an embarrassing thing.
“So,” Zach started, plopping down at me and reaching for some candy for himself. “Are you just in a bad mood or something today?”
“Why would I be in a bad mood?” I asked now, my eyebrows furrowing at him in confusion.
“Elizabeth texted me and said you nearly got into a fight with a cashier at the convenience store,” Zach informed me nonchalantly, not even looking away from the TV screen as he spoke. “And now you look half dead, eating a bunch of candy. I just thought you were in a bad mood because of something.”
I stopped myself from glaring at him. “I’m fine,” I sighed, even though I didn’t know if it was the truth or not.
After eating a few more handfuls of candy, I forced myself up off the couch and I started towards the stairs again to go back up to my room. I didn’t feel like being around people anymore.
“Hey, are you sure something isn’t wrong?” Zach asked me before I could get up all the stairs. “You’re not acting like yourself. Even more than usual after what Johnny said to you.”
It made me kind of happy that he noticed I wasn’t acting like myself, but that didn’t mean I was about to tell him what Kate and I had found out earlier that day. I only forced a smile at him before saying, “I’m fine, really. Just tired, that’s all.”
I now made my way up the stairs and into my room, closing the door behind me and letting out a sigh as I plopped down on my bed. This was all so stressful that it was making my head hurt. Eating all that candy didn’t help.
It was only quiet in my room for about ten minutes before the door burst open, causing me to roll over to see that it had been Zach that had burst in my room. I was about to ask him what the hell he was doing in my room, but my eyes widened when I saw what he was holding in his hands.
“Oh, no,” I muttered.
“I found this in the trashcan in the bathroom,” he told me, a look on his face that I hadn’t ever seen before as he waved the pregnancy test around. “What the hell is this?”
“Um,” I gulped, not knowing what I was supposed to say.
“Is this why you were eating so much candy earlier?” Zach demanded, as if he was in a trance as he pieced everything together. “And why you flinched when I hit your stomach with the soda can even though normally that wouldn’t hurt someone like you. No. No. You can’t be… There’s no way that you’re… With Johnny’s baby…”
“Zach,” I blinked, staring at the pregnancy test that was in his hand. I was so going to kill Kate for just leaving it in the trashcan in the bathroom that I had to share with Zach and Ethan! “Zach, listen to what I have to say and stop blabbering!”
But Zach didn’t shut up like I wanted him to. “This is why you’ve been acting so weird. Not because Johnny said that he loved you… but because you’re going to have a baby. Johnny’s baby. You’re pregnant.”
“Zach!” I cried out now. “Listen to me!”
But he still didn’t do as I said. Instead, he grabbed onto my arm with his free hand. I didn’t know if he was having some sort of mental breakdown, but it sure seemed like he was. Why the hell was he even acting this way?
“You can’t be pregnant,” he said now, still gripping onto my arm. “Tell me that you’re not!”
“It’s not mine!” I shouted, ready to kick him if he didn’t let go of me. “It’s Kate’s!”
Zach finally let go of me without me having to kick him, and he took a step away from me and stared at me with wide eyes. I stared right back at him, waiting to see what his response would be.
“Ew!” he suddenly shouted, dropping the stick onto the carpet.
I couldn’t help but make a face at him. “Oh, so you were fine with touching my pee, but not hers?”
Zach scowled at me. “I wasn’t thinking clearly when I grabbed it.”
“Obviously!” I shouted back at him.
He rolled his eyes at me, turning away and exiting my room, leaving the pregnancy test on the floor for me to pick up. After I had thrown it into the trashcan in my room with other items on top of it, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and called Kate.
“Hey,” she greeted once she answered the phone, and I could tell that she hadn’t told her parents yet since she wasn’t crying.
“You left the test in the trashcan?” I practically shouted at her, not believing that she could have done something that stupid.
“Oh, I did?” she laughed nervously, and it made me want to smash the phone against the floor. “I’m sorry! I guess I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
This made me snap out of my rage. Of course she hadn’t been thinking clearly. She had just found out that she was going to have a baby. I had no right to be angry with her.
“It’s fine,” I sighed, running a hand through my hair now. “Zach found it and pretty much attacked me though. He thought I was the one that was pregnant. I’m sorry, but I told him that it was yours.”
Kate was the one to sigh now. “That’s fine. Logan’s going to tell him and Johnny after I tell him anyway.”
After a few more minutes of talking to her, we both hung up and I went back downstairs, because I was sure that I was going to go crazy if I stayed cooped up inside my room. I just hoped Zach wasn’t going to act differently around me after thinking that I was pregnant.
But when I got downstairs, Zach wasn’t there. Ethan was, and he was still eating out of the huge bag of candy. With my eyebrows furrowing at him, I pulled the bag away from him. “Okay, I think you’ve had enough for now. You’re going to throw up or get fat.”
Ethan swiped the bag back from me. “You’re just going to eat it yourself.”
I puffed my cheeks out at him, because I knew that that was true.
“Where’s your brother?” I asked, letting out a sigh as I sat beside him and let him continue eating more of the candy as I now ate some as well.
“On a date,” he shrugged, shoving more candy into his mouth.
“What?” I shouted, not expecting this kind of answer from him. “He was just in my room five minutes ago! Who could he possibly be on a date with when I was seriously just with him?”
Ethan shot me a flat look, not answering for a moment as he chewed on a piece of candy. I sat there, just waiting for him to answer me, and I was going to strangle him if he didn’t answer me right away.
“He got a call from your singing teacher,” he finally answered, and I felt my stomach drop. “She said you cancelled your lesson with her today, so she asked him if he wanted to go out since she got off work early.”
I couldn’t believe him. He just went off on a date with Andie after thinking that I was pregnant with Johnny’s baby! What the hell was wrong with him? And I was really ticked off at Andie as well for going out with Zach after I had cancelled that day’s lesson with her earlier that day. I really didn’t like the two of them hanging out together.
“Someone’s jealous,” Ethan sung as he flipped to another channel, and I turned to glare at him like I always did. I was not jealous of Andie and Zach, and I never could have been. Zach was nothing more to me than a fling.
“I’m not jealous,” I denied, crossing my arms over my chest as I glared at the TV. “Zach means nothing to me.”
Ethan snorted. “Uh-huh.”
I did nothing to deny it any longer, because there wasn’t anything I could say that would make Ethan think any differently. He was smarter than I was anyway, so he’d probably just say something that would make me feel like an idiot like he always usually did.
“Maybe you should just tell Johnny you love him back,” Ethan suggested now as he finally turned toward me, his hand in the bag of candy. “It’ll probably make Zach just as jealous as you are now.”
I was not about to take advice from a ten-year-old boy. I didn’t even want to make Zach jealous anyway. I might have not been in love with Johnny just yet, but that was why we were dating. I’d fall in love with him eventually.
But then I had the game to worry about. There was no way Zach was going to let me out of it. All I could do was hope that he found a girl one day that he could actually fall in love with so our game could finally be over without winning or losing.
But who am I kidding? This is Zachary Deveraux we’re talking about here. We all know that’s never going to happen.
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I wonder why Zach freaked out when he thought Maxynn was pregnant... >.>
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