Non Pratt - Trouble

When we get to school that afternoon, Mum tells me that she’d prefer it if I waited in the car before my exam.

“Why?”

The sigh she lets out sounds as if she’s so tired of talking to me that any more words will drain her completely. “I don’t want you distracted.”

Mum watches me watch Aaron walk past with Gideon. How can I describe to her — to anyone — how I feel? Aaron’s not someone who churns me up the way Jay does — he calms me down, keeps me sane. Can’t she remember how hard it was when we fell out in the holidays? Doesn’t she know that seeing him look at me as he walks past, hurt that I’m not getting out and waddling over, is breaking my heart? Worse — it’s breaking his. Will he know that I think about him all the time, when I’m meant to be thinking about a thousand other things?

He is my best friend in the whole wide world.

Surely he knows that without me sending a text?

But Aaron’s not like me. If he were in my seat, he would unclick the seatbelt, swing open the door and run across the tarmac, shout my name and tell me, to my face, that I am his best friend. Just to remind me. Just in case.

But I’m not as brave as Aaron. Despite my track record, I cannot bring myself to disobey my mum. Not on this one.

All I need to know is whether she’s OK. That is all.

Even as I tell myself this, I know that I am lying. I need to know whether she needs me because I still need her. Hannah and her baby are a part of my life now. I don’t want them to slip out of it.

I’m the last person to take my seat in the hall. I look over at Aaron, but he is looking at the clock. I look at the paper on my desk and the pens and instruments I’ve brought with me and I look at the back of the person in front. You can see her bra through the top she’s wearing — the slightest hint of back fat nudging over the top of the elastic. I run the flat of my fingertips up my own back, as if I might be scratching it, but I can’t tell what my back looks like. For all I know I could have a full-on back boob to match the pair at the front.

I look at Aaron again, taking in everything about his face, the lashes, the lips, the scar on his jaw that I now know came from a night he would rather forget — from a life before this one. I want to tell him about my communications blackout. I have screamed, I have cried, I have punched the wall — I could show him the grazed knuckles — but I have not been able to escape.

“If you set foot outside this house without my permission, you will not be allowed back.” And I can’t risk that being true — for my baby’s sake, not mine. I haven’t even been allowed to see Gran in case she smuggles Aaron in for a meeting. Instead I had to watch as my paranoid mother called her and told her what had happened. I was crying with shame — why couldn’t she have let me tell her? Eventually Mum handed me the phone.

“Hannah? Are you OK?” Gran sounded worried.

“Not really.”

“Do you remember what I said? That you’re a brave girl and I love you?”

I’d thought she was about to tell me that she was taking it back, but she didn’t.

“I should’ve added that you are the strongest girl I know. The strongest person. Remember that, love. This’ll sort itself out and I will be here for you as soon as your mother comes to her senses, which she will. She always does.”

“I love you, Gran,” I sobbed, but Mum was hovering close, beckoning for the handset once more.

At least Mum and I are talking, if you can call screaming matches talking. Robert and Jay aren’t speaking. Jay’s still at his mother’s — Robert told him that if he ran back to university he may as well stay there and, like me, Jay’s not prepared to put that threat to the test. And Lola, my rock, is gone. No one knew how to tell her what was happening, so they’ve sent her to Robert’s parents until everyone stops shouting at each other and we’ve worked out how to patch up our fallen-apart family.

None of them seem to realize that, for me, Aaron is family too.

I am here to do an exam. I am not here to worry about Hannah, or think about what’s happening between us.

I look down at my paper.

I’ve to bisect an angle.

Best get on.

It’s the end of the exam and I reckon I’ve done worse than I did in my mocks. I’ll be lucky if I don’t get a minus grade. So much for my mum’s theory about distractions.

Sitting this close to Aaron, not being able to speak to him, is killing me. As soon as my paper’s collected, I’m ready to leap up and out of my seat. Now is the only chance I’ve got to see him, to talk, to explain…

My bump knocks into the edge of the desk and I bounce back into my seat awkwardly. Shit. I’m wedged now and one of my flip-flops has come off. Fuck the flip-flop. Aaron’s already walking up the aisle. I’ve got to get out of here. I twist out of my seat and hobble after him with only one flip-flop on.

“Hannah Sheppard,” Prendergast calls out and I’m forced to turn back and collect my flip-flop. And my bag of pens. And my calculator. And my bottle of water.

I scuff my way out of the hallway, trying to slide my foot into my footwear, because I can’t bend down to do it or I’ll never get back up again, and I’m searching the crowd for him…

There’s no sign of Aaron, just my mum, standing outside the school doors, waiting to pick me up and take me home.

I walk slowly. Very slowly. I walk so slowly that Gideon and Anj have reached the end of the road before I’m even halfway up the hill. They get so bored waiting for me that they turn back and meet me halfway.

“What’s wrong with you? It’s just a Maths exam,” Gideon says, but I see the look Anj gives him. I haven’t told them what happened at the weekend — it’s definitely Hannah’s place to tell them about Jay and the baby — but Anj noticed Hannah’s absence pre-exam and she knows it’s not a good sign.

A car drives past and we all watch in silence as Hannah’s mum’s car stops at the end of the road and pulls out into the traffic.

“Could’ve at least offered us a lift,” grumbles Gideon and he starts trudging up the hill with Anj once more. I stand there for a second, mastering my disappointment, before I follow them.

Surprise, surprise. I am awake. It is…

…late o’clock (or early o’clock, if you like) at night and everyone is asleep except me. And I need to pee. Padding quickly across the hallway, I sneak into the bathroom. I hear something over the noise of the flush, but I jump when I step outside and see a shadowy figure in the hall. Instinctively I lash out with a slap, batting whoever it is away, my mouth open ready to scream—

“Shut up, Han!”

It’s Jay.

“What are you doing here?” I hiss, but he shakes his head and guides me back to my room, where I elbow his arm away and step back to face him across the carpet. He looks rough, his eyes are small in a tired-looking face and he hasn’t shaved since Saturday. This time nine months ago, I’d’ve wanted to reach out and brush my thumb across the stubble on his skin. Every part of me would have wanted to get close enough to tilt my head up to his, to feel the promise of what might happen before I touched my mouth to his. There is nothing I wouldn’t have done for him to notice me. Now I mostly want to punch him. Repeatedly.

“I’ve got to go.”

“Robert doesn’t know you’re here, then?” I say, crossing my arms over my chest, aware that my ugly maternity bra is visible above the neckline of my vest. I try and tug it out of view.

When I look up, I catch Jay watching me and I see a shadow of the boy I fell in love with. Still want to punch him though.

“I wanted to see you,” he says, surprising me by coming closer. We’ve not been alone since he came home — every conversation has been uncomfortably played out in front of one of our parents, with both of us desperately skimming over the details of what actually happened between us.

Jay reaches out slowly and rests his hands on my shoulders so that I can feel him tilting me into the light that falls in through the gap in my curtains. He’s watching me closely and a more romantic me would dream of him sweeping in to kiss me like I’m the only thing he wants in the world.

The fat, pregnant, permanently disappointed me expects no such thing, remembering exactly how Jay’s kisses turn out. But she’s a little less punchy.

“I didn’t know,” Jay says, quietly.

“What? Could you start making sense sometime soon?”

“That I was, you know… your…”

Oh. That. I shrug. “First. Yeah.”

“But you were so…”

“Amazing?” I give him a cheeky grin and he shakes his head, letting out a quiet laugh.

“You’re impossible.” Jay looks at me, serious once more. “The way you talked I just assumed… But if I’d known…”

It’s not really important. I know everything is fucked. My life. His. But that night with him was something I wanted. Not that I wanted it to turn out like this, obviously. Jay’s hands are still on my shoulders and I wonder what he’s here to say — or is that it?

“Shit.” He takes his hands away to press them over his eyes and rub his face. “Hannah. I’ve got to go.”

“You said that already.”

“Back to Warwick.”

“What? When?” My brain can’t process this.

“Tomorrow.”

I can’t find the words to express the way I’m feeling. “Get out.”

“Let me explain—”

“Not much to explain — you’re running away!” I push him towards the door.

“I am not running away, not this time. Me being here isn’t helping anyone. My exams start the day after tomorrow and what good will it do if I fail the year?”

I stop, giving this pause for thought. But he hasn’t stopped trying to convince me.

“What good will it do the baby?” Which is so the wrong thing for him to say.

I grab the nearest thing I can find — a lever-arch folder of Biology notes — and hit him with it. “Don’t you start talking about what’s good for the baby now! You’ve had months to do the right thing.” I hit him again. Harder. “Months!” I’m screaming and he’s desperately trying to shush me, too much of a coward to face his father if I wake him.

“Hannah — stop — ow!”

I swing again and the clips burst, sending sheets of paper flying across the floor.

“Get out!” I use the half-full folder to bulldoze him out onto the landing, as our parents emerge from their bedroom. I carry on pushing Jay towards the top of the stairs, where he turns and hurries down, pausing halfway.

“I wanted to tell you myself!” he shouts up at me. “Doesn’t that count for something?”

“No, it fucking doesn’t!” I hurl the folder at him and it cracks against his shoulder.

It doesn’t count for anything whatsoever.

When I get up there’s a letter for me on the table. It doesn’t have a postmark and, anyway, the post hasn’t been yet. I pick it up and turn it over.

“Normally people open them to find out what’s inside,” Dad says from his spot leaning on the counter.

“Just testing my prescience.” But in all honesty I have no idea who could have delivered this to my house. Tucking my finger under the corner, I tear it open. There’s a second envelope inside with a Post-it note on the front. I peel the note off and see that the second envelope is addressed to Hannah.

Aaron

I know you don’t like me. Just understand that it wasn’t always like this. And I’m not running away. I’m coming right back after the exams. But since you’re the one who’ll be around, can you give the other letter to H when the baby’s born?

It’s a lot to ask.

Thank you.

J

P.S. Take care of her. As if I need to ask.