Non Pratt - Trouble

“Hey, kitten.” Tyrone comes in, shuts the door and sits down next to me. I never noticed how creepy it is that he thinks calling me “kitten” is sexy. Kittens are about as sexy as granny pants.

“Hey.” My left leg is buzzing where his thigh touches mine and I wonder if I could lose myself in this feeling.

“You’re looking pretty gorgeous tonight.” He brushes his fingers gently up my bare leg and under my hem. I breathe in deeply, focusing on his touch. “Is this for me?”

I nod. It’s not — Tyrone didn’t exactly factor in to my thoughts when I grabbed this dress off the back of my chair. More on my mind.

I’m pregnant.

I stamp down on that thought so hard my head hurts with the effort and I concentrate on Tyrone as he twists round and leans over. His eyes are closed as he leans in and kisses me. It starts slow, but it soon gets more exciting, more promising. I remember how easy it is to turn him on and I slide under him, legs opening so our bodies fit together better in this cramped little space. I don’t even realize that my hands have worked their way under his T-shirt until I’m scratching my nails gently along his spine.

He kisses my neck and I sigh at the feel of his lips on my skin.

What am I doing?

This is such a stupid idea.

His hands run up my body straight to my breasts.

“Ow.” I wince, surprised at how bruised they feel.

“Sorry,” he murmurs then slides his face down into my cleavage. “They just look amazing.”

He nudges aside the top of my bra and that’s when I freak out.

“Get off!” I buck and twist under him, suddenly claustrophobic with this boy’s body on top of me in this closet in someone else’s house.

Tyrone sits away from me. “What’s wrong?”

“I can’t…” I’m breathing fast and shallow and I feel faint. I can’t do this. I can’t have sex with Tyrone. I can’t.

“Hannah, are you all right?”

“No!” I shriek. I’m shivering. Tyrone reaches out but I shuffle away from him, only there’s not much room to move and I press my hands to my face, wishing him away.

I hear the swoosh of the door on the carpet.

Tyrone is crouching on the floor of what appears to be a wardrobe talking to a girl who’s pressed herself right into the corner, dress ridden up far enough that I can see her pants. She looks up. It’s Hannah.

“Get out!” Tyrone’s voice is squeaky with fear.

“I think it’s you that should get out.” My voice is cold and hard and the sound of it scares me even more than it does him. That voice does not come from a good place. It comes from a part of me that I’m supposed to have left behind. Before I know it, I’ve pulled Tyrone up and out of the door, his face so close to mine I can almost taste the sweat standing out on his skin.

I’m trying to reel it back in and my silence gives him a chance to speak. “I don’t know what you think you saw…”

“I think I saw you behind a door with a girl who I just heard yell ‘no’ at you.” My grip on myself is distinctly less steady than the one I’ve got on the boy in front of me.

“You what?” Puzzled then horrified. “No, it’s not like that. I wasn’t… shit, man, you think I’d do that?”

He takes my silence to mean that I do.

“Aaron! There’s no way I’d force myself on a girl. I swear. We were fooling around and it was all fine then she just went mental. I swear. We wasn’t even doing anything yet. I swear on my life, man. Swear it.”

I walk past him and shut the door. He might be telling the truth, but I’ll wait and hear Hannah’s side. Although she’s pulled her dress down, she’s still shaking, so I take off my jumper and give it to her.

“Thanks,” she says as she wraps it around her. “You must think I’m such a head case.”

“I don’t really think anything.”

“I heard what you said to Tyrone. Don’t worry, no one can make me do anything I don’t want to do. Least of all him. Least of all that.” She smiles as she says it, fleeting and small.

“I’m glad to hear it,” I say. “I didn’t want to have to fight him.”

It sounds like a joke and Hannah smiles again, a little bigger.

“That doesn’t surprise me.” Then she sighs and she seems faded, deflated, miserable. “I just want to go home.”

Aaron walked me home. We didn’t talk much, but it was nice to have the company.

All I can think about is how this happened. I use condoms, FFS, and I know they were all on properly because I’m the one doing it. Tyrone put up a bit of a fight, but if he’s refusing to wear one for me… I know I’ve got a reputation — ask Katie who I lost it to and she’ll say it was the summer-jobber at Lola’s playgroup, ask anyone at school and they’ll say whatever name they saw scratched in a park bench or heard whispered in the corridor — but whatever, whoever, whenever they say, I’m not a skank. There are times when it’s not been, like, full-on sex, but has there been a tiny possibility of something ending up where it shouldn’t…? No. There is definitely no chance that I got pregnant from not wearing knickers in a nightclub and straddling that guy’s lap while we pulled. That’s the kind of question you read in problem pages and the agony aunt calls you out for being incredibly stupid on more than one level.

But I am being stupid, because I know exactly when this happened, don’t I?

Yeah, I use condoms. Except for that one time, with that one person…

I open up the text conversation we had afterwards and skim down the threads until I reach the last one I sent:

Just a 1 nite thing? thats it? srsly?!

And I make myself read his reply, no matter how much I know it will hurt:

What did u think was going to happen?

Not this, that’s for sure.

There’s an angry voicemail from Katie. She must have been drunk when she left it because all her words are slurred together and she repeats herself a few times. There’s something about being worried. (Which meant she hadn’t checked her texts before calling me. As if I’d leave without telling her.) Then she tells me that Tyrone was looking for me. And something that’s so garbled I only catch Rex’s name after the second listen. Basically, I’m a bad friend.

I stare at the text I’m about to send.

Im pregnant…

Then I delete it and ask if she’d like to hang out in town later.

Since Katie’s decided she’s in a mood with me, I’ve been concentrating on how to tell my mum. I’ve tried, I really have. But I can’t work out when to do it:

• over dinner: This casserole is lovely. The beans look like tiny little foetuses. FYI, I’m growing one of those. Foetuses, not beans.

• in the car with Lola singing in the back: Hey, Lolly, shush a minute. So, Mum, did I mention I’m pregnant? Please don’t drive into that wheelie bin. Or that postman. Or the side of that house.

• in the middle of a homework/school work/too-much-time-going-out argument: NONE OF THAT SHIT MATTERS, MOTHER! I’M PREGNANT, ALL RIGHT?

I know it sounds spineless, but I’m scared of how she’ll react.

You see, Mum’s a nurse.

At the Family Planning Clinic.

Yeah. I know.

We had the chat about the birds and the bees ages ago, with regular refreshers on the occasional car journey. I’m better educated about sex than on any subject I’m taking for GCSE, but then it’s not like I have History books lying on my kitchen table with key facts written in teen-speak the way Mum’s leaflets shout “Rubber is kinky — get dressed before you get down” and “Nothing cool about chlamydia” at me whilst I eat breakfast. It would be very hard not to have a clue in this house.

But it’s always — always — been a case of “As soon as you’re sixteen, we’ll get you an appointment.” There’s not a single part of Mum’s brain that suspects it might be a bit late by then. And the thought of me being the one to bring it up… It’s one thing talking about fictional sex, but a whole conversation of cringe if she knew I was actually doing it. A thought that’s enough to keep me away from the Clinic even on her days off — the girls on the reception gossip so badly, Mum’d know about it before I even got home.

So condoms are the only option I’ve got. You can buy them at Boots.

And there’s always the morning-after pill. Not that that went to plan.

In the back of my mind I always thought I’d go and get an abortion. Simples.

The reality? Not so simples.

This is life and death we’re talking about. I mean, I don’t think you exist until you’re born, not properly, but there is something in there and it’s something that matters. If babies in the womb didn’t count until they came out then no one would give pregnant people who smoke funny looks, or tut too loudly when they have a drink. There wouldn’t be all these rules and guidelines about what’s good for the baby if the baby didn’t matter at all.

But is it alive? Would I be killing it?

You hear about people changing their mind outside clinics because they find out that their foetus has already got fingernails or genitals or a tattoo saying “Mum” on its arse or whatever. But it’s not like fingernails = soul. They don’t qualify you for anything other than a manicure.

I’m all for choice, but what happens when you really don’t want to choose?

Mum has taken the day off work to go shopping with me for some new clothes. She finally noticed that each of my five T-shirts is on the cusp of disintegrating, although I think the last straw was discovering a hole in the crotch of my only jeans.

After three shops Mum decides that it’s time for lunch. There’s a brief squabble when she tries to make me decide where to eat. I don’t care where we eat so long as it’s not sushi, but Mum seems to take it personally when I say this. It’s like I have to care about everything these days and today there’s a lot of things to care about. Grey socks or black? Baggy, skinny or straight leg? For some reason she wanted my opinion on where to park the car. When she pushed me on the lunch issue, I snapped that it was up to her.

We aren’t on the best of terms when our food arrives.

“They’ve given you a baked potato when you asked for chips,” she says and turns to call back the waitress.

“Mum, don’t — it’s fine,” I hiss and she turns back to me.

“I knew that girl wasn’t listening.” She starts trying to shuffle some of her chips onto my plate.

“What are you doing?” I move my plate away and some chips tumble to the floor. “Stop it. I’m fine with a baked potato.”

“Fine, Aaron.” She slams down her plate so some more chips escape. “I’m just trying to have a nice day with my son. Is it too much to ask that our waitress gets the order right?”

This isn’t about chips.

“Mum, we are having a nice day.” She looks at me dubiously. “You know I don’t have to have everything my own way to enjoy myself.”

“You should have your order your own way,” she says, but she’s smiling and I smile back.

“Whatever, I just mean stop trying to please me all the time. If I say I don’t care about something, it doesn’t mean I don’t care about anything. It just means I want you to choose.”

“OK.” Mum nods, then adds, “But, Aaron, you’re my son, and what I want is to make sure you’re happy, so don’t bite my head off for trying.”

“No, Mum,” I say. “I’ll try to remember that.”

She never used to worry about making me happy.

But they found a new school, new jobs, new house — new life.

My happiness means more than it should to my parents.

It’s late but Mum’s in the sitting room finishing a coffee — I don’t see another mug, which means Robert’s having his in his study. Now is the perfect time. I psych myself up in the doorway: just do it, just do it, just do it—