I Got Preg-nant From Swimming with My Friends

My life was over. Bury me, forget about me – over. I had gotten pregnant from SWIMMING IN A POOL. I had to skip town. Could I fake my death? Could I disappear? My heart was pounding like it was going to jump out of my chest and try to strangle me for being so STUPID. How had I gotten knocked up at 15?! I couldn’t even be on “16 and Pregnant” what kind of BS was THIS?! What was I supposed to do?! I had to tell him. I had to just...waltz over and tell the man that did this to me the truth...that he ruined both of our lives because he couldn’t handle a snack in a cute lil swimsuit. So how did I, a cute lil snack, end up getting knocked up in a pool? My name’s Felicia, and yeah, yeah, yeah. I know what you’re thinking, I must be so stupid. Well, I was, not all of us had ed, so get a load of this. I was raised in the mid-west. know, the middle of the west in the US? Cow fields? Corn fields? Just...just a lot of fields. Jot that down. My parents aren’t...like, extreme Mormons or anything, but they might as well be. I was raised with the bible as my bedtime story. I was raised with a creepy statue of crucified Jesus on a cross staring down at me in every room of the house. I was raised to be quiet, to not ask questions, and to basically be an innocent, uncombative doormat to everyone in my life. Do you know what else that meant? No Harry Potter! No Pokemon! No TV shows! From the get-go, I was that weird girl at school. know, the weird girl everyone avoids? The one who gets gum in her hair and tacks on her chair? Not that that...not that that happened to me, or anything. Because of everything my parents did, you’d THINK I would be ready for what happened to me in the 5th grade. I mean, you’d think that. But I was dumb and like, 11, so give me a break, alright? The TALK happened at our school. know that god-awful day where they separate the kids and shove the girls in a dark room to watch a video about periods and get handed pads by the sweaty, creepy gym teacher? Yeah. It was time for THAT nightmare. Lil’ old, dumb, uneducated me funneled into the classroom, bright-eyed and unaware of the horror that was about to ruin my life FOREVER. As soon as the video started, the giggles began. The word ‘Breasts’ was said and I swear on my life the girl beside me milk out of her nose. I giggled to join in, cuz for some reason, I thought maybe I wouldn’t be the weird girl if I laughed at the word ‘breasts’. That’s. When. It. Happened. I can still see it to this day in slow motion. The door of the classroom launched open like the Hulk himself had business to take care of. A million little prepubescent heads SNAPPED to face the intruder– And guess who it was? Go ahead, guess. Take one little guess. In her ankle-length denim dress, cross and turtleneck sweater-wearing fury, my MOTHER slammed the door open. Her face was the color of the devil’s butt. Her eyes were about to pop out of her head like a squeeze toy. In that moment, I wanted to die. No casket. No funeral. I wanted to be yeeted into a hole, covered in dirt, and succumb to by embarassment. I saw it all happen in slow-motion. My mom bolting across the room like she was heading for the finish line of the Olympics. Her grabbing my wrist like it was the last TV on black Friday. Her YANKING me out of the room like it was on fire. On top of this, she’s yelling about the teacher ‘poisoning our minds!’ I don’t know what’s so poisonous about and fallopian tubes, but apparently, they were like, arsenic’s twin brother to my mom. After that, it was game over for me. Black screen. No more lives left. Can’t restart the system. Done. D-O-N-E. No one would talk to me. I was the girl with a crazy mom. When I actually got my period, I was about 900% sure I was dying. My insides felt like they were occupied by Wolverine and Edward Scissorhands who both took up a hobby throwing knives. I didn’t know why it was happening. I didn’t know how to talk about it. So, the years passed. I bled. I got ignored by everyone in the class. I got shoved into lockers...ya da ya da. But a shiny, glowing beacon of light erupted into my life during my freshman year of high school. That shiny, glowing beacon? The other nerds in the AV class. Specifically: Miles. Miles was the Ross to my Rachel. The Angelina to my Brad – circa, like 2009. He was the Jack to my Jill – okay, wait, maybe not that one. What I’m trying to say is: I wanted him. BAD. Like, real bad. Kind of...desperately, bad? But I didn’t have moves. I had anti-moves. I had: “Whoops I accidentally spit on you while I was talking!” “Whoops I just handed you my phone and YOU’RE MY FRIGGIN’ LOCK SCREEN-” moments. When I got invited to a pool party with the AV club, I knew it was my time to shine. I had to do it. I had to make a move