But I won’t let them make me feel shame.
I felt shame when I tore my ACL. My father said sprinters didn’t show those kinds of tears, but I did. I fell from grace with them after that, and now I can sense that I’ve fallen even further.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I wanted to tell you in person, but it seems somebody already did.”
“Nora,” my mother says. “And she’s worried about you—all three of us are. She tells me she had to learn it from somebody else? How could you hide something like this from us? Let me tell you that despite you being somewhat mature, you were always too sheltered from boys. Boys . . . they just use and discard . . . especially when something inconvenient happens. Nora says this boy is known to be a troublemaker and linked to all kinds of problems?”
I am reeling from the way Nora’s presented Remy to them.
If I weren’t sitting down, I swear I’d have fallen on my butt.
My betrayed, stupid, foolish butt.
So it seems that Nora is home, acting the perfect princess, doing what’s right after my boyfriend helped her out of the worst relationship in the world and could have died saving her ass.
Her betrayal rips through me with such force, I can’t even talk for a moment. Hell, if anyone should know what kind of a man Remington is, it should be Nora!
“The father of my baby is not a boy. He is a man.” I clutch my stomach when it begins to hurt under their accusing gazes. “And we, this baby and I, are not inconveniences.”
My father has not said one word. He just sits there, looking at me like I’m a gremlin that got wet and turned ugly and has to be contained.
I feel like there’s a continent between us. Like I am going north, and they are determined that south is the best path for me and will never, ever be happy that I went the opposite way.
“But Brooke, this is so reckless and so unlike you. Look at you!” my mother says in complete agony and despair.
“What?” I ask in confusion. “What’s wrong with me?”
Then I realize I probably look like shit. I haven’t slept. I’m worried to death I’m losing this baby. I don’t want to be here. I haven’t showered and my face is swollen from all my tears.
“You look . . . depressed again, Brooke. You should stop wearing that athletic gear, now that you’re no longer a sprinter and put on a dress . . . brush your hair. . . .”
“Please. Please don’t come here and hurt me. You’re saying things you don’t mean to say because you’re confused. Please be happy for me. If I look depressed it’s because I’m dangerously close to losing this baby, and I want him, I want him so bad, you have no idea.”
They stare at me like I have lost it, because I’ve never, ever, opened myself up like this, and I feel so misunderstood and so unloved and so hungry to be comforted because I hurt inside. My hormones are out of whack and I am feeling angry because I am here instead of where I want to be. I am here, misunderstood and judged, instead of with him, loved and accepted.
I don’t even know how to tell them they’re being unfair to me, but I’m trembling as I suddenly get to my feet, go get his iPod, and set it on the speakers I have in my living room. Then I just click PLAY and raise the volume high, letting a song speak for me. Orianthi’s “According to You” begins, a little bit angry and rebellious, describing something of the tumult I feel, how they see me one way, as less than perfect, but he sees me another way, as beautiful and strong.
“Is this how we deal, like a teenager with loud music?” my mother yells.
“Turn the volume down now!” my father yells.
I turn it down, and for a moment, just focus on this silver iPod, which to Remy and me could be a journal, or a microphone, or any other way of expressing any other thing. “You don’t understand.”
“Talk to us, Brooke!” my mother says.
When I turn, they look as forlorn as I feel. “I just did, but you’re not listening.”
They are quiet, and I drag in a breath, trying to calm down, even with all these hormones rioting in me. I want them to know that I am no longer a young girl. That I am becoming a woman, so I tell them. “I’m seven weeks pregnant. Right now, his little limbs are forming. And I say ‘his’ because I think it’s a boy, but it doesn’t matter, because a girl would be wonderful too. While we speak, his heart is growing stronger, and he’s generating about a hundred new brain cells per minute. In two more weeks, his heart will have divided into four chambers and all its organs, nerves, and muscles will be kicking into gear. He will have a nose, eyes, ears, a mouth, everything already formed, inside me. This baby is his. His and mine. And it makes me so, so happy you have no idea.”