Jerk (9 page)

M
y dad
and Laura left the house.  Rather, Laura left and said she needed to be alone and Dad ran after her like a lost sheep.  Laura wanted Kelly to go with her, but she wanted to stay with me.  Not sure why, as she hadn´t said a word since she nursed me.  She was tending to me like a little baby, wanting to make sure that I was okay.  Dad could never hurt me physically, not when I was so mentally damaged.  Shit, I knew I had hurt him, but he deserved it.  To make things even weirder, the whole time Kelly was still speechless.  It was almost as if she knew or something. I wanted to ask her, but I was scared about her reaction.  Earlier we had made love.  Connected properly for the first time. I didn´t want that feeling to go away.  Until Dad pushed me and the demons came out and I said the one thing that I knew would hurt Laura.

Dad had lied.

I knew why he had done it, not to protect me but to protect himself.  Kelly just walked out onto the porch.  Her face was expressionless as she sat in the rocking chair, and her thoughts weren´t with me.  I joined her, waiting for her to speak.  To say anything, but she didn´t.  As I sat facing her, I saw Sandra driving towards the house, this made my heart skip a beat.  It was as if time stood still. Our plans for the future were about to get shattered if the person in the car was coming to the house.  Shit, she parked right in front of the house.

What do I do?

What the fuck is she doing here?

I thought she’d left town. Sandra was in our school until last year, when she dropped out. Because of me.  Kelly saw the look on my face. I felt as if all the blood had been drained out, and Sandra had sucked it out.  The shit was about to hit the fan if I didn’t get Kelly off the porch.

“Kelly, go inside.” My heart missed another beat as I saw that she was not alone in the car. She’d better not have done what I thought she’d done. 

Fuck.

“Why, what´s up, Seb? You´ve gone pale.”

 “I remember those girls, both Sandra and Carly. Wonder what they´re doing here?” she whispered as she got up from the chair and started to walk towards the drive.  Yep, Sandra, the pretty blond cheerleader who would not take no for an answer.  She’d practically thrown herself at me–morning, noon, and night.  How could a guy refuse?  Carly, well, let´s put it this way.  I was down, and she just happened to be around.  She gave me the sort of comfort that I needed one night at a house party.  I was wasted, and she took advantage of my state.  Or maybe it was the other way around.  Either way, it didn´t matter.   Kelly didn´t need to find out.  Or rather, I didn´t want her to know. Especially now.

Kelly was going the wrong fucking way. She needed to get as far away from them as possible.  This shit was so fucked up.

What the fuck are they doing here?

 “I need to talk to them.” I grabbed her arm, and she stopped for a minute to look into my eyes.  I´d hurt her so fucking much.  Shit, my heart started beating uncontrollably.  I was sweating like a pig.  I couldn’t let them do whatever was in their evil minds.  Kelly didn’t deserve it. Not when we´d come so far.

“Go inside, now!” I barked. 

She looked at me as if I´d gone mad.

“Why are you sweating so much? What is wrong with you?” she screamed. By then it was too late.  Both Carly and Sandra were standing on the porch in front of us.  I blinked my eyes a few times and then my head started spinning out of control.  Before I could even open my mouth, my head hit the ground.  I couldn’t think or anything.  Everything went black, right before my very eyes.  Which shut firmly as my body started to jerk…

***
K
elly
***

“
S
ebastian
, wake up! Wake up. It’s okay, you just got excited and passed out.” He started to open his eyes slowly.  Luckily our neighbor from across the street was going to work, and when she saw what happened, she rushed over.  Sandra and Carly were laughing. I hated those bitches from school.  God, they thought they were the best girls in the school just because they were cheerleaders.  Yep, their parents should have named them Vanity and Stuck-up.  The typical we are so perfect because we are thin, beautiful and dumb as shit. 

One day, we’ll marry a player and have two point four children and still be perfect.  I shook my head thinking about the amount of girls lives they tortured or picked on because they weren’t as beautiful as them.  That is the worst part.  It was not just them that thought they were beautiful.  It was the whole damn school.  Even the fucking teachers treated them like princesses.  I didn’t understand what they were doing here?  I didn’t care, because I hated them back then.  Seeing them every day in the halls was bad enough. Picking on a girl because she was overweight.  Picking on a guy, because he was the same.  There was always something.  All I could think about was them  as they snickered at Seb like they used to do with any victim that they decided to pick on a particular day.   They needed to leave.

“What happened to his eye?” Melissa asked as she started checking his vitals.  She was one of the first neighbors to come and introduce themselves when we first moved in.  Mom knew her already— she pretty much knew everyone in the neighborhood.  Half of them did their hair at her salon.  The benefits of being a stylist, you get to meet a lot of people.  This is what Mom said, and that sometimes, it’s a bad thing when people see you and ask your thoughts on their hair.

“Just because I’m a hairstylist, doesn’t mean I think about hair all day. I do have a life,” Mom would always reply, then they would ask the same thing all over again, ignoring her comment.  Thinking that she was only joking, when she meant every word of it. 

Melissa was pretty. She was around the same age as Mom.  The same light features that mom had, but she was a touch heavier than mom.  Melissa loved to cook, unlike mom who tended to avoid cooking let alone eating, which was why she always wanted to go out and eat.  Melissa had two boys; they didn’t go to my school. Actually, I wasn’t even sure what school they’d gone to, and I asked the question, “So, what school did your boys go to?”

She stopped and looked at me for a brief moment. Probably wondering if I was the one that had hit her head?  She had two girls giggling in a corner and I crouching over Seb asking her about what school her kids went to.

“Girls, why not make yourself useful and maybe get Kelly a glass of water or something?” she used her hand to gesture that they should go inside. 

“What?” Sandra said as she came forward with a frown on her face.  Maybe for two reasons.  The fact she was asked to do something useful for someone else by herself and the fact she was asked to do something in general.  Sandra was the kind of person, who told others what to do, not the other way round.  Yep, she hasn’t changed at all.  She slowly moved towards Melissa as if she had given her a complicated geometry question. Not that Sandra would know the meaning of geometry.  I laughed as her face clearly showed that she didn’t have a clue what being useful meant.

“Look, lady…” She didn’t finish her sentence.  Probably, because for once in her life, the focus wasn’t on her, she didn’t know what to say.

Sebastian started to cough and come around.  It all flashed through my mind. The reason that the girls were here.  I hate pregnancy, sometimes I think I would forget my own name, if I didn’t have ID on me to remind me all the time.    Shit, Bloomsfield High School should have had a certificate for gossip.  Everyone in that damn school knew everyone’s business. Sure, the school wasn’t big, but it wasn’t exactly small either.  Yet, news travelled like Like the fact that Carly pretended to be pregnant, after having sex with Sebastian only once.  Then, he found out it wasn’t true when it was clear she wasn’t getting any bigger.  That she wasn’t pregnant, I think Brenda said that Seb said they probably never had sex.  He never used to talk to me back then.  Brenda heard it from Dwayne.  As I said, gossip school.

Not sure what happened with Sandra.  Sure, I knew they used to date. I knew it went wrong.  But because of pregnancy hormones, I couldn’t remember a damn thing half the time.  Anyway, I knew that they were coming to warn me.  Because that is what bitches do.  They only want to talk to you when they have something nasty to say.

I was so confused when I saw them.  I couldn’t understand why, today of all days, they were here.  Then, it hit me. The other day in the mall I saw a couple of their friends. I couldn’t even remember their names now.  They saw me and were asking what I was doing in the mall.  Yep, these girls are dumb. What do most people do in the mall? Anyway, I told them I was shopping for baby clothes. I was even with Sebastian.   So, they must have run and told their girlfriends about the incident.  So, both Sandra and Carly came, to do what? Run and tell me that he was going to dump me at the abortion clinic?

“Bitches, you can leave now.  If you’ve come to warn me that Sebastian is going to dump me at the abortion clinic, guess what? He’s done that already…”

They stood in front of me, mouths gaping as if they’d been stung by bees and they had to keep them open as wide as possible to let them get out.

“So?” I said with one hand on my waist, waiting for one of them to reply.  They said nothing.  How could they?  They kept opening their mouths, shutting them.  Screaming with their hands flat down as they walked like chickens returning back to their coops.  Go, fuck up someone else’s life.  Or rather true too.  I laughed as I watched them .  They would stop once in a while.  Stare at each other, unable to speak and continue moving towards the car. Their walk to the car was a lot longer then their sprint to the front porch when they thought that they had something to say.

Something interesting I must know.

We were never friends, so why pretend we are now?

I was not under any illusion about the man whose child I was carrying. I knew it was going to be hard work.  He was far from perfect, far from my knight in shining armor.  I was willing to pay the price.  I looked down at his blue eyes.  Yes, I was going to make that commitment without even going down to the aisle.  As they say love makes you blind, deaf and dumb.  I was certainly all three, because I was in love with this man, completely.

“
H
ey
, I wanted to give you a standing ovation,” Melissa said as she propped Sebastian up.  Laughing heartily as she did it.  I really did like her, she was nice.  I think if anything happens or I need someone to turn too.  I would not hesitate knocking on her door.

“Me too.” He smiled as he sat up on the porch.  By this time, the other neighbors were bored of watching what was going on our front porch.  Earlier when Tom was practically dragging Sebastian out of the car, they ran outside like it was one of the soaps.  They had to catch the final episode.  Then they brought they sun chairs to see what happened after he fainted on the porch.  I thought some of them would bring out popcorn or something seeing as they loved being entertained.  I laughed to myself thinking about why he fainted.  Probably, because I was going to be told that he had season tickets for the abortion clinic.  We would have given the neighbor’s a week’s entertainment. 

Strange, before I was excitable all the time, now I just feel calm.  Mom and Tom’s relationship is scaring me.  What kind of monster did she marry? He let some man take the blame for his first wife’s death.  Then, he went and beat up his own son.  A shiver went down my spine about him being in our lives.  He was A kind and loving man, is a monster.  Maybe, having this baby is not such a good idea.  The men seem to be fucked up and dangerous.

Sebastian was being kind and loving.  The cold-hearted jerk was punched by his own dad.  Guilt of my previous thoughts were thrown out of the door as he praised me for helping him inside.  He must have bumped his head.  Melissa helped him sit on the sofa.  Then she followed me to the kitchen to get ice for Sebastian’s  eye.  There was only one motivation for me to go to the kitchen and that was to make a sandwich.

“I’ll put the ice on his eye.  Where is it?”  She swirled around the kitchen.  Mom had gone a bit wild and bought everything white, so the refrigerator wasn’t so obvious.  She thought it was cool. I just found it annoying.  I opened the freezer and handed it to her. 

“Thanks, sweetie I need to go.  You take care of him, and more importantly, take care of yourself.”

Sebastian heard through the open plan kitchen, he wasn’t lying down far away. 

“I heard that, and I can take care of myself.”

I sniggered to myself, thinking about what caused him to faint in the first place.  A couple of bimbo cheerleaders. 

“He just needs rest and something to eat.  You can see it in him.  He’s pale. Dehydrated and probably malnourished.” I grabbed a hold of her like she was my long lost friend.  She had been so kind to us.  Melissa had a family of her own, she was on her way to work, yet she showed no sign of anxiety or that she had to go anywhere.  I was so thankful to her.  Then it hit me shit, I  hadn’t called Brenda or anything.  My mind was just lost.  I needed to talk to someone, I didn’t know Melissa well now but I hoped in time I would do.  For now I had to talk to Brenda.  I had to talk to someone I could trust.

 “Sandwich, sandwich,” I repeated to myself as if I was a robot.  I had to get it right.  Whatever Dwayne put in the sandwich he’d given me had made it completely amazing.  Either I figured it out soon, or I would have to move in there until the baby was born.  I wanted that sandwich so badly.  I was moving up and down the white kitchen, mainly because I was confused and everything was white.  Until it finally dawned on me. “That’s it,” I shouted out as I held up the mayonnaise as if I had finally figured out how to do algebra. 

“What’s it?” Sebastian said as he slowly made his way into the kitchen.  I’d probably scared him with all the screaming and jumping up and down. I had to stop.  It was making me dizzy, and the little fellow did not like it all.  He was kicking like crazy.

“How Dwayne’s sandwich tastes so good. It’s the mayonnaise he uses.”  I shoved the mayonnaise up to his eyes.  He looked at me as if I was the strangest person that he’d ever seen.  He seemed to forget that he had a black eye that he was holding an ice pack against with one. 

“If I hadn’t found it then I would have to move in with Dwayne. I mean, I need that sandwich.”  I started to make it.  The secret ingredient had made me run around the kitchen like a mad woman as if I had found the cure for a disease or something.  I was too excited about the discovery.  I wasn’t sure why I never thought about it before with all my enhanced taste buds.  Another, joy of pregnancy.

He nodded, probably scared that I was going to give him another black eye if he refused to let me move in with Dwayne.

“I mean, I need my energy.  When you’re better, we’ll have sex. Like we did earlier. Okay?” I nodded my head like a bobbing doll. 

I heard him say under his breath, “Yep, this is going to be the longest four months ever.”

I rushed to him with half of the sandwich sticking out of my mouth.

“What did you say?” He gazed at me, confused by my words.  I quickly chewed on the sandwich, savoring every mouthful, and repeated my question, “What did you say?”

He huffed. “I can’t have sex. I have a headache.” Then he laid down,  put the ice back on his eye and closed the other as if to avoid me.  If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought he didn’t want to have sex with me.

That was silly. I shrugged to myself as I headed back to the kitchen to make another sandwich.  I would wait.  Sebastian didn’t have to worry.  I was going to get plenty of energy for all the action I had in store for him later that night.  He wouldn’t know what hit him.