and for the next part

This is the next part. I hope no one is under the impression that this will be a short story, I guess I should have made that clear, its not exactly going to be epic novel length, hopefully it will end up around the length of the average young adult novel. At least thats the goal, happy reading!   

    It wasn’t always like this. I had started dancing because of my mother, but I kept dancing even after she died because I loved it. I barely even remember her, but almost all of my memories included her dancing. She was not a ballerina, she was a nurse, but she had danced when she was younger. She died when I was eight, but my memories of that age are pretty fuzzy. I remember going to dance classes, taking vacations to the beach and school, but it was as though I was remembering someone else’s life and my parents were just blurry background images to a story that just happened to be mine.

            Her death was even more blurry. I remember the burial, but not the funeral and whenever I asked about what had happened my father told me that she’d been sick and the only elaboration that he’d give me was that she loved me and loved to watch me dance. So I kept dancing. I’d never pushed my dad for more information, it was just the kind of relationship that we had.

            We were not what most people would consider close, but for us it worked very well. My dad was not the talkative type, so we mostly left each other alone, but at the same time we protected each other. I couldn’t remember if he’d always been quiet or just after my mom had died. Hugs and I love yous were not a part of our relationship, but he was always there when I needed a ride to a friends house, or to and from dance practice, so it worked. I mostly took care of myself, I had learned from an early age that rides were about the only thing he was dependable for. I did most of the cooking, which we ate in silence or in front of a movie, and I also handled laundry and cleaning. It wasn’t a typical relationship, but we managed it, at least, until she came along.

            Before her my dad would occasionally yell when I let the house get too messy or didn’t call in time for a ride, but after her he yelled a lot. Nothing was the same. Not the hosue, not the cooking, not the movies, not the sounds. It all changed. And it didn’t change for the better. My dad had never made me feel particularly good about myself, but once she came along he started to make me feel bad about myself. It started small, he’d undermine me or correct me when we both knew I was right to beging with. But as time went on he started getting worse, yelling and calling me rude, stupid or embarrassing if I did anything that she didn’t like.

            Of course, that could be just about anything from parking crooked in the driveway to leaving too much lint in the dryer. I had no idea what my dad saw in her or, or why they had gotten married, but now I was stuck. I’d learned to handle the yelling, bracing myself much as one does for a physical confrontation, but it still hurt a little bit every time. The silence hadn’t been ideal, but I’d take it back any day over her.

            My best friend Jess said that maybe my dad had just been lonely and that she’d seemed like a good idea at the time and now he was filled with regret, but her parents were psychologists, so I knew that sometimes she just listened in while they talked therapy. We’d been best friends since about second grade when she moved to our town and started in my dance class. We were both feeling a little left out at the time, me because my mom had just died and her because she was the new girl. She was smarter than I was, but I was the better dancer. She had better hair, but I could hold a tan while her fair skin burned in about five minutes. She also had a serious boyfriend, while I simply had brothers.

In the end, I suppose, my brothers caused me few problems than her boyfriend did, because it was Jess who called me three days after school ended in the first week of June to tell me that she was pregnant, due sometime in February.

“Pregnant?” I asked. “Are you serious? You’re pregnant? What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I honestly have no idea. I mean, I guess there aren’t that many choices.”

“There’s three,” I said. “But still…that’s definitely not an easy choice. What did Alex say?”

Alex was Jess’s boyfriend. He was also from our small town, a year older than us and they had been dating since our sophomore year. As guys go, he was outstanding, he even tried to understand all of the dedication that went into Jess’s dancing, and he also became my friend. He let me be the constant third wheel on many of their dates, and even went so far as to purchase my movie tickets. He was enrolled to go to the local university in the fall, and in the meantime he was working in construction.

“Alex said it was my choice, and I know there’s only three choices,” she said. “But I don’t want to do any of them. I love babies, and I love babysitting, but I’m not ready to be a mom. I’m pro-choice but I don’t think I can actually have an abortion, and I mean, I guess I could go through adoption, but Maddie, I don’t know if I could do that either.”

“It sounds like you’ve made up your mind then,” I said. “And for the record, I think you’d make a great mom.”

“I’m not sure if I know that,” she said. “I just never thought this would happen. I really didn’t. And I know that I was having unprotected sex, and I know that I was being stupid, but this? This isn’t part of the plan.”

“I know,” I said. “I know.”

And I knew which plan she was talking about. It was the dancing plan. The dancing plan was kind of unspoken, but anyone who had been dancing as long as we had knew about it. You dance through elementary school and high school, then you go to college on a dance scholarship or you join a company straight out of high school. You take it seriously.

“What do I tell my parents?” she asked.

“Don’t tell them anything until you make your decision,” I said. “This is your choice, not theirs. I know they’re smart, but you have to decide this for yourself. This is your child, your life, and I’ll be there for you no matter what, so will your parents, and hopefully so will Alex.”

“Thanks, Maddie,” Jess said. “Just, thanks. Thanks for being here already.”

“Always,” I said, then I listened until she hung up the phone, before slumping down onto my bed.

Jess was smart, but her parents had always been very liberal with their parenting.  Jess was mature for her age, so they let her do what she wanted. Normally it worked out well for us, my dad also let me do what I wanted with very few rules, so we had always been free to enjoy ourselves together. Jess’s parents had also let her have Alex over whenever she wanted, which I guess was how she ended up pregnant, faced with the three terrible choices.

I knew that all of Jess’s freedom would be over if she had a baby, but I was afraid that she would never be the same if she chose not to keep it. A small part of me even said a small, thankful prayer that I wasn’t Jess. I had spent so much of my life wishing that I had her life, two parents, nicer clothes, no need to get a job, but all that hadn’t prepared her for this, and for the first time I could remember, I was completely glad to be me.

After the phone call I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I went to work and folded over 200 boxes, but there was really nothing I could do to take my mind off of it. Everything she had worked for seemed like nothing now, all of her grades in school, all of her dance recitals and the hours we had spent practicing were ending in a pregnancy. The one end neither of us had pictured.