The other students at South Vale stared at me until I thought their eyeballs might fall out, but not many approached me. Not many of them even knew me. I was Cal’s girl, the girl with a condition who was always at Cal’s hip. I didn’t have friends of my own, or any social life to speak of outside of my trips to the Montgomerys’ or the occasional party I attended with Calvin just to get out of the house and pretend to be normal.
My English teacher, Ms. Benson was nice enough to ask me to stay after class with a note she placed on my desk discreetly.
“Ellison, if you can, stay after the bell and chat with me a bit. I’d like to give you an extension if you need one and also offer up any counseling resources you might be able to use here at the South Vale.”
I stayed. I needed someone to talk to. Someone who wasn’t a Montgomery or a Kraft, who wasn’t a lawyer, an MC member, or a member of the press.
“Can I hug you?” was the first thing she asked me after the room had cleared out.
I didn’t even know I needed a hug so much. I clung to my English teacher and let the sobs come out. They shook my chest and she held me as I let it all out.
She pushed me back and looked at my face and smiled, handing me a wad of tissues.
“Thanks,” I said and tried the best I could to clean up my face.
“I’m not even going to ask you about the case. But I do want to give you an extension on the Bronte paper, and I want you to know how talented I think you are. You write the best essays in this class, if not the entire grade, and that poetry assignment you did absolutely blew me away.”
I smiled at her through my tears and ran my fingers under my eyes trying to clean up my mascara. It felt like it had been years since an adult had complimented me on something other than my looks or been interested in more than my seizures and epilepsy.
“It’s really nice of you to offer, but I don’t need an extension. The homework is helping to keep my mind off of everything that’s happened, and I loved the reading and it inspired me to be more independent.”
“What about counseling? I know you came here to escape one tragedy. That’s a lot to manage your senior year in high school. You can even do straight academic counseling where an advocate can help you find a college with a program that fits your needs. I can recommend someone, I think it would help you.”
“Ms. Benson, I’m pregnant. I probably won’t be going to college,” I told her frankly. I needed to get it off my chest.
Her eyes widened in disbelief, and she opened and closed her mouth twice. I guess it wasn’t the answer she was expecting. She tried to play it cool and not act like she was shocked or scandalized by my news.
It would be my parents’ reaction too. Disbelief, shock, out of wedlock, eighteen years old, writing good essays wasn’t exactly a career with which one could support a new infant. Maybe dad would even kick me out for bringing disgrace to the Kraft name. If the Chief of Police couldn’t keep his own daughter in line, how could he control a city and police force?
“Are you going to have the baby?” she asked me in a whisper.
“If the baby will have me. I have epilepsy, Ms. Benson, so I'm at high risk. But I’ll do my best to stay healthy and get my baby here with the body God gave me to work with.”
“And you’ll keep it?”
“I couldn’t give away Calvin’s baby. I know there’s been a lot of drama, but that doesn’t change the fact that I love him. But I’ve decided not to tell him, because it would kill him to know that and be stuck behind bars. So, I’ll go away if I have to or let him think that the baby’s not his, until he gets out.”
“Please tell me you’re not dropping out of high school?”
“I don’t know yet, Ms. Benson. If I have to keep it from everybody, then I might have to. I don’t want Calvin to fall apart and I don’t want him to bring shame onto my family.”
I could tell when I left her classroom that she wasn’t entirely sold on my idea of keeping the pregnancy secret. She kept telling me I needed support and that would entail letting people in to allow them to help me. Ms. Benson even gave me her cell phone number and said I could call her about anything.
I wished with all my heart that Adler were still alive because he knew how to solve any problem and his love always pulled me through the worst times.