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HURRICANE

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Skyla smiled and wrapped her arms around Shannon's neck as she kissed him. He grabbed her by her hips and pushed her down on her bed. Skyla shushed him as she said, “I don't know if my mom is gone yet. Maybe we should wait?” She got up and looked out her bedroom window anxiously.

“She's gone. Now let's rock.” She crawled back onto her bed and began kissing Shannon again. He stripped her of her t-shirt and jeans and she blushed as he stroked her small baby bump. Her blush deepened when Shannon reached over and pulled her bra off over her head; Skyla pulled his shirt off over his head as he pulled her closer. She hurriedly unfastened his pants and waited for him to slide them off. Together, they stood in their underwear in her bedroom. She felt her heartbeat quicken as her brain kept repeating one word over and over again: Hurry! He pushed her down on her bed.

“Wait,” she said. Shannon leaned back up.

“What?” he asked her irritably. He grabbed his pants.

“It just... feels wrong,” she said. She sat back up and covered her chest with her arms. “Listen, what I'm trying to say is that Jared helped me a lot when I was with you guys and I... miss him.” Skyla shrugged her shoulders.

“First you admit you made a mistake. Now you say you miss Jared. What next, you love Tomo?” Shannon joked. He sat back down on her bed, half-dressed.

“No!” Skyla admitted crossly. “Trust me, I love you all. But if I'm going to love anyone-”

“It's going to be the guy you are in the loveless marriage with? By the way, why do you do that?” Shannon asked her.

“Do what?” she asked him.

“Pick me, then Jared, then me, then Jared,” he told her.

“Because you guys are so sweet,” she told him. She distantly heard her mom calling her name. “Listen, I'd love to explain things to you but I got to help my mom and then she is taking me to her doctor, okay?”

“Why are you going to your mom's doctor?” Shannon asked her.

“My mom wants to see the sonogram on the computer with her own eyes,” she told him. “Now I have to go help my mom.”

“No, let me.” Shannon and Skyla walked downstairs to greet her mom. Shannon started grabbing bags of groceries and began putting them up for Cecelia, who turned to Skyla.

“Why don't we go ahead and get a start on heading to your doctor?” she asked Skyla. Skyla nodded.

“Sure. Bye, Shannon,” she whispered in his ear as she hugged him bye.

As Skyla and Cecelia were backing out of the driveway, her mom looked at her. “Why didn't you tell him the truth?”

“Because they all think I'm pregnant. I didn't want to tell Shannon I started my period the night I ran away.” Skyla looked at her mom. “Mom-”

“Don't. You need to figure this out on your own. Okay, young lady?” her mom said. She drove to the end of their street and stopped at a four-way stop sign. “I know one person you can tell.”

Skyla looked at her mom. “I'll tell him later.” Skyla yawned as she emailed her friend Marliet.

“No. Do it now,” her mother begged.

“Why?”

“He deserves to know. And he was the father.” Cecelia kept her eyes on the road until she got to the hospital where her husband worked. As they got out of the car, Skyla hurried to the doctor's office so she could fill out her paperwork. Cecelia met her husband, Neil Miller outside the office and discussed Skyla.

“She won't even call Jared,” Cecelia told Neil. “I'm getting tired of her attitude. Maybe you can talk some sense into her.”

“Yes, well, let's go and sit with our only daughter, now, shall we?” Neil told her. He walked in and sat beside Skyla. She rolled her eyes.

“Did Mom call you?” she asked him, looking up from the newspaper.

“No.” Her father grabbed another newspaper and shuffled through to the Sports section. “I'm going to stay out here while you go in there.”

“Skyla, we're ready for you,” the nurse told her. She stood up and walked back with her mom; this time was different than when she went with Jared. After a urine sample, a weigh-in, a height check, and a blood pressure check, her mom came into the room with her and didn't bat an eye as she took her pants off like the doctor asked; Skyla took a few deep breaths as the doctor examined her and declared that Skyla had had a false positive on her pregnancy test. Cecelia whipped out Skyla's sonogram from her first doctor's visit and asked the doctor, “if she had a false positive then why was her sonogram...” to which the doctor answered that Skyla would need a blood test to confirm. Skyla headed to the lab and sat down as a lab technician took enough blood to get a good result to confirm that she wasn't pregnant and to also check her blood levels. When she left, the doctor prescribed her some birth control (on Cecelia's orders) and spoke with her father about seeing Skyla again in a few months.

“Mom, I don't need this, we'll use a condom next time!” she told her mother as she waved the prescription around.

“But what if you forget? Then you'll have backup!” Cecelia wouldn't hear anymore of it, and walked away toward her car.

Skyla called Jared. “Hey. Listen, I'm not really pregnant. It was a false positive.”

“What about your bump?” he asked her.

“I'm really skinny. That must have been some weight gain.”

“And your morning sickness?”

“I always got sick real easily.”

She heard Jared sigh; she felt intensely sorry for him. “But don't think this will be your last chance!” she told him cheerfully. “Maybe we can have a baby Jassie or a baby Trey later on down the road.”

“Yeah. Yeah we can.” Jared smiled. He couldn't wait to talk more with Skyla about their upcoming future.