Plastic

That’s all there was to it. As soon as those two words dropped from Barbara’s lips my life was over, like a sandcastle you worked so hard to build being swept away by the tide. Seventeen years of being polite to my elders, never doing drugs or alcohol and always eating my greens helped make the sandcastle of my life and within an instant it was destroyed, crumbling through my fingertips.

All because of “I’m pregnant.”

Barbara, the stupid country girl that she was, hadn’t even whispered it! She’d said it in normal conversation as if she was simply saying, “I went to the shops this afternoon, and there was a darling little dress I just had to buy!” Yeah, that was exactly what she had said- in a foreign language maybe!

My family had been talking about heavy machinery for God’s sake! Every normal person knows you wait until the conversation moves on to a topic like the one you mean to bring up to shatter the lives of everyone around you. God, what an amateur.

Moreover, if it that wasn’t enough, my little sister was at the table. It wasn’t enough that she wanted a pony but now she also wanted to be pregnant. Luckily, before my mother’s carotid artery imploded on the spot I managed to change Ashleigh’s opinion by telling her that pregnant was just Irish for “becoming as fat as an elephant”.

She’s five; she doesn’t exactly know that Irish isn’t a foreign language. She does know, however, what fat means, and quickly shook her blonde little head back and forth on the spot, screaming that she didn’t want to be pregnant anymore.

Barbara had opened her plump, red lips to disagree with me. She was probably going to tell Ashleigh what being pregnant really meant, but I silenced her with a stern look that must have clearly depicted that fact that the whole situation was all her fault in the first place. She had frowned, a crease appearing in her pale forehead, but had closed her mouth, folded her hands in her lap with forced manners and had kept silent until I managed to bribe Ashleigh £15 to go and play outside with headphones on.

I’m a paperboy; it’s not as if £15 grows on paychecks for me. I get £40 a month! Bribing Ashleigh left me both an empty wallet and an awkward situation. Her departure to go off and ‘play dollies’ had left the ‘adults’ and the ‘considered adults’ in the small dinning room together, and there’s only one thing adults can do when alone with each other -discuss issues.

However, to me at least, a fetus in the womb of my girlfriend - that probably would inherit my silver blonde hair and Barbara’s green eyes - wasn’t an issue but merely the beginning to a completed meltdown in my life. Red alarms were screaming “Catastrophe, Catastrophe!” at me. Weirdly enough the voices had a Glaswegian accent. Funny thing that.

The first question out of my mouth was “How?” which earned me a glare from both women in room and an “OMG seriously –you’re- my son?” bedazzled look from my father. He motioned for me to sit in the chair next to him and, after I fell onto the pink cushion in complete shock, he placed a sturdy hand on my knee.

“Don’t be an idiot, son” he warned, rubbing at my jeans and I knew the underlying meaning to that touch was –say nothing!-

We all sat in silence for about five minutes and I kept my head looking at my hands on the tablemat in front of me. About twenty minutes ago I was eating cottage pie, now it’s threatening to come back up on me in shock.

I raise my head from my submissive state and cautiously look at each of the three people seated before me. My father is sitting up straight; looking like he’s ready to take this matter on…he just doesn’t want to be the one to start the downfall and my mother is shocked to the point that her mouth has been open for at least five minutes straight, sucking in air deeply as if to settle her racing heart.

Barbara is glaring at me like she’s better than I will ever be and I find myself breaking my gaze before she makes me feel even more like shit. To tell you the truth I never planned to stay with Barbara for more than a few months. Just enough time to make it something serious and then I was going to dump her on the curb, rubbing her with the ‘Can we still stay friends?’ line until she herself got annoyed and dumped me right back.

I can’t do that now can I? I’ve got a stronger connection than just a ‘couple of months’ now. We’re parents. The word makes me shudder. I’m seventeen, my life was barely even beginning and now it’s being crushed to the ground. I was going to have sex with at least another twenty girls before my eighteenth birthday and maybe even a couple of guys if I got drunk enough. But now, now that Barbara’s gone and ruined everything I guess there’s nothing left but for me to take it like a man and help her with the baby. It’s all about experimentation right now and I’m going to miss out on it! Oh well, no gay sex for me - ever.

I suppose that might lead me to live a more normal life though…you don’t really get lots of teenagers going around complaining that they can’t become gay, now do you? It’s more like, if you DO have gay sex you must keep it as a secret or else everyone will beat you up for it and take the piss out of you from life thereon. You’re even allowed to turn it into a heterosexual experience- then you can boast about it rather than fear it!

No, my life from now on will be ‘all about the baby’. I’ll be the one who has to feed it, bathe it, pay for it, wipe up it’s arse, get up in the middle of the night to shut it up and I’ll never be able to get rid of it. It’ll be like suddenly growing a hunchback and having to drag it everywhere. Oh yeah, it’ll also be my fault it was ever created. Don’t blame the woman who told me she didn’t like the feeling of condoms and assured me she wasn’t on her period or anywhere near it. For all I know it could have been a ploy to get me to stay with her. Maybe she overheard me and Rick talking about how I was going to drop her ass in a couple of weeks and she got so afraid of losing (the gorgeous, wonderful, amazing) me that she planned this pregnancy all along.

Oh well, it doesn’t matter does it? It’s not like it’ll never be my problem…even if we learn of it’s true origins it will always be a fact that MY sperm had a part in it. In nine months they’ll be a sobbing mass of flesh demanding every penny and scrap of attention I own and there’s nothing I can do to stop it from coming…unless I commit suicide but I really like living!

Anyway, I liked Ashleigh enough when she was born… maybe I could manage. I’m sure my parents won’t just dump the responsibility on me- hell knows, maybe my mum will do what some ladies do on the TV and take the brat in as her own and leave me free to frolic about in the meadow of adolescence.

However, just to be sure this is really happening (I could be on candid camera or something-you never know)…“Are you absolutely sure?” I sacrifice myself and start my own descent into the madness of parenthood.

My four obnoxious words send them all into ‘let’s kill Kenneth’ mode. Barbara takes the first stab at my heart.

“What do you mean ‘am I sure’?” she snaps, slamming her hands on the table in front of her. My father reaches forward to save his wine glass from falling onto my mother’s good table cover and then promptly downs it in one hastily.

I defend myself naturally. “I mean, are you sure you’re pregnant? You didn’t read the test wrong?” I pause to think of other possibilities, “- Did you even take the test?! You’re not trying to tell us it’s a sure thing because of ‘gut instinct’, are you? I fucking hate those.”

Barbara looks like she’s going to slap me but luckily my father intervenes. “Kenneth! Don’t be an asshole. Do you really think she would risk telling us before she’d confirmed it? If you thought you’d caught a STD you wouldn’t tell us about it would you? You’d get it dealt with before even thinking of telling us.”

“Obviously!” Eww. What a creepy example.

“Well then, Barbara is being more considerate than you’ll ever be. She’s asking for our opinion before deciding what to do about it, it shows she thinks it’s as much our decision as hers.” My father’s always so wise and understanding; it annoys me a little how he never seems to get annoyed at anyone. He always ‘sees the good’; though that could be the wine he’s downing religiously at the moment.

Barbara thanks him and turns to me, glaring. “Yeah! I’m honest enough to let you know in hope we might work something out and you’re unbelievably rude and impossible.” My bet goes to her not understanding a word my father just said but just agreeing because it seemed to weaken my defenses. I never really liked how ‘blonde’ she seemed. She was kind, pretty and had a great body- those are the only reasons I ever decided to give her a few months of my love.

Come to think of it, wasn’t this pregnancy going to take all of those things away from her? All I’d be left with (because I couldn’t dump her now could I?!) was an airhead with a craving for pickles!

God, life sucks!

I try a different approach, ignoring the valid points my father has made. “So you have?” I’m really just changing the emphasis of my earlier question.

My father groans and pours himself another glass. There’s no getting through to me- he should know that already. I’ve always been polite to all elders and listened to everything they say, except him, because everything he says somehow just doesn’t get heard. His content is strong but his voice is weak. Luckily for him Ashleigh listens to him like he’s some kind of God.

Barbara notices I won’t stop with the persisting questions until she answers them straight out and sighs, slouching in her chair. Good, things will go much quicker now. We have surrender!

“Yes, Kenneth, I have taken the test. No, I did not read it wrong. No it wasn’t faulty-I bought about three different ones. Every answer was ‘positive’. There’s no escaping it, you’re a dad now.” She says this all with such a defeated tone that it hurts a lot when she adds at the end, “Unless you want me to abort.”

I kind of want to blurt out, ‘Would you?’ but I’m smart enough to know that’s just not going to go well when I’m surrounded by a group that probably want to slap me around already. That statement would make them want to gut me alive.

Saying that would also just be stupid. I don’t want her to. It’s obvious she doesn’t really want to and I’m not really fond of killing a baby when it hasn’t done anything wrong. It’s not it’s fault. It’s ours, I couldn’t ask her to destroy it just because I don’t feel like cleaning up after myself.

I’m not that much of an asshole.

“If you do that Barbara, then I’ll abort as well!”

I’d almost forgotten my mother was in the room. She’d been surprisingly silent during this whole argument (I was sure she would have snapped at me for swearing earlier had she not been in Wonderland) and we all turned to face her stern face as she came back from her vegetative space. We were also interested in what the hell she’d just said. Shock must have been evident on all of our faces because she snorted and rolled her eyes behind her stylist glasses.

“Don’t pretend you don’t understand or didn’t hear. I know you did. I’m just saying, Kenneth, that if you go so much as to kid on you want Barbara to abort her child then I won’t even think before doing the same to your sibling.”

I swallow what little saliva I have left to wet my harsh throat. “S-sibling?” I croak. Don’t tell me the obvious. Let me go on being clueless.

She focuses on me through her glasses, my own blue eyes drilling into me from her face. “I’m pregnant as well.” She states, just daring me to say anything.

I hear the cork pop from another wine bottle- this time my father’s not even bothering with a glass; he firmly places his lips around the top and does a good impression of trying to drown himself.

Barbara is the first to speak this time, though I wouldn’t call it speaking…more like buzzing. I understand nothing but the words, “Oh my god, babies, aunty, born, together, cute.”

It doesn’t really take a genius to figure out why she’s so excited- now she’s not alone. It’s so chick-ish I feel like puking even more. I slouch in my chair and lazily reach forward my hand to grip onto the neck of a wine bottle, bringing it to my lips. My father looks at me for a split second but must understand my pain because he’s facing the exact same thing as I am. He lets me drink my fill, and it does nothing to fill the ‘void’ in my stomach. It just settles unnaturally and freezes my stomach, making me feel ill.

I watch the two girls chat amongst themselves and feel my soul slowly ooze out of my body and crawl under a near by rock, wallowing.

In nine months, I may as well commit suicide.

Yes. I know I shouldn't start a new one, but I'm going to anyway. Though this first chapter doesn't give it away much, our main hero, Kenneth, is bisexual. There will be yaoi! But there will also be staright-ness. It's the best of both worlds.

Bra-Two

(1)- I know Irish is actually different, like Gaelic-Irish, but for the sake of the story pretendI mean the 'English' way of speaking Irish. Also, I love Ireland, I want to go one day but no one will let me yet because they say I'm too young to go by myself. (sad)