The Accident by Courtney Jean Day

‘Andrew, we need to talk.’

Andrew pauses for a moment, glaring at the torn Skinny Puppy poster he has taped to the inside of his locker. He feels like complete and total ass. He’d been up much too late the night before, doing bong hit after bong hit alone in his room, studying The Anarchist’s Cookbook in confused fascination. Just think of it – kablooe! He’d set it off in the Headley-Royce parking lot where the school royalty congregates, sitting on the hoods of their sixteenth-birthday Mercedes, sneering down at him as he trudges up the hill from the bus stop.

He closes the door to his locker to find Niki lurking behind it. Her sizable breasts spill out of a crushed velvet renaissance-fair bustier; a single black tear is drawn carefully onto one cheek. Her eyes are red and puffy, as if having recently produced the real thing.

He takes a step back. The last thing he needs is to be seen with this loser, barely a level beneath him in the elaborate pyramid of the school’s caste system. Affecting nonchalance, he turns his back on her and begins to saunter away down the hall.

‘Andrew!’ she says from behind him. She grabs his shoulder and whirls him around.

‘I’m pregnant, you asshole,’ she growls, her hands gripping the sleeves of his shirt. A group of girls passing them comes to a halt.

‘What was that?’ says Rebecca, stick-thin in a white Abercrombie and Fitch sundress.

Andrew manages to push Niki away, his heart pounding against the wall of his chest like a child trapped in a dark basement. He’s had sex precisely once in his life, at a lame-o goth drinking party in the local cemetery. The whole thing had lasted about thirty seconds – he hadn’t even been sure if it really counted, if he’d actually gotten in there or if they’d just sort of bumped.

‘Oh. My. God,’ Rebecca says loudly. ‘Did you hear that? The Whale and the Unabomber are having a baby!’

The hallway, turgid with students, bursts in a booming blast of mirth.

‘Fuck you, Beckie!’ Niki snarls.

‘Fuck me?’ says Rebecca. ‘Oh, I’d say you’re the one who’s fucked.’

The bell rings. Rebecca swings her long blond hair over her shoulder and stalks away to class. Niki gives Andrew a final look – haughty and noble, her eyes bright with tears. Then she turns on a heel and rushes off down the hall.

Andrew is left alone, frozen in place like a forgotten doll in a playhouse. His heart continues to hammer frantically in his chest as he contemplates the details of his situation: the jeers; the taunts; the abortion fees…or, dear god, the child support payments. He’s already on the verge of expulsion, too, currently failing in trigonometry, German and phys-ed.

And now, this?

What will his grandmother say?

He makes his way down the hall and around the corner to the edge of the campus. There’s a thick hedge lining the perimeter – he pushes his way between the bushes, and then follows a faint footpath down the sandy embankment.

He finds Niki at the bottom of the dry streambed. The sweet smell of clove fills the air.

‘What the fuck do you want?’ she says, and takes a long drag. Her make-up is smeared, her cheeks wet.

Andrew looks down at the scuffed toes of his army-surplus boots.

Then, entirely unbidden, an image flashes into his mind.

A baby. His baby. He’s holding his baby. His grandmother, resplendent in her magnolia-print house dress, takes the infant from him. She jiggles it on her knee. Together, happily, they laugh.

He looks up at Niki. He thinks of her clever if sick-o drawings (she once sketched a perfect, true to life thumb on his English binder, a needle rammed disgustingly under the nail) – of her self-published zine, full of bizarre collages and surreal anti-church free verse (a brave move in their Episcopal school) – of the ample warmth of her that night in the cemetery, the comforting snugness of her embrace. 

He steps up to her, takes the cigarette, and throws it into the sand.

For a moment, they stand together in the streambed. The sun filters through the oak trees above, dappling them in faint diamonds of light.

Courtney Jean Day

Image – Pregnancy test from Pixabay.com