My Lovely Headmaster

Chapter 3

The coffee shop on University Avenue maintains its eternal twilight ambiance regardless of the actual time—something about the mahogany panels and amber lampshades that makes three in the afternoon feel like midnight. Jessica and I claim our usual corner booth, where generations of students have carved their initials into the dark wood like promises they probably couldn't keep.

My fingers trace over "M+K 1987" and I wonder if they made it, if they're somewhere living their happily ever after or if they're just more casualties of college romance.

"You look like shit," Jessica announces, sliding into her seat with that particular grace she's perfected, like she's always on stage. "Like, worse than usual shit. Like you haven't slept in a week shit."

"Thanks, that's exactly what I needed to hear." But she's not wrong. Every time I close my eyes, I smell cedar and smoke. Every time Nathan touches me, I feel that stranger's hands instead. Guilt is apparently terrible for your complexion.

The barista approaches with our regular order—he doesn't even ask anymore, just brings Jessica's double espresso that she drinks like it's water and my vanilla latte with extra foam. The cup gets closer, steam rising, and suddenly the sweet smell hits me like a physical force, like someone's shoved their fist down my throat.

"Oh fuck—"

I barely make it to the bathroom, my knees hitting the grimy tile just in time. The coffee comes up, then breakfast, then nothing but bile that burns my throat. Jessica's designer boots appear in my peripheral vision, then her hands are holding my hair back, and for once she's not saying anything mean.

"How long?" she asks quietly when I'm finally done dry heaving, when I'm slumped against the stall wall that's covered in sharpie declarations of love and heartbreak.

"What?" I wipe my mouth with toilet paper that feels like sandpaper.

"Your period, Jas. How long has it been?"

The calculation happens slowly, like my brain is swimming through syrup. I've been so focused on avoiding Nathan, then on pretending everything's fine with Nathan, that I haven't even—

Six weeks. Maybe seven.

"Oh my God." The words come out as a whisper. "Oh my fucking God, Jessica."

"Okay, don't panic." But her face has gone pale under her perfect makeup. "Maybe you're just stressed. You've been acting insane lately, and stress can—"

"Seven weeks." My voice sounds disconnected from my body. "It's been seven weeks."

We leave the coffee shop without paying—Jessica throws a twenty on the counter and drags me out. The October air hits like a slap, but it doesn't wake me up from this nightmare that's suddenly taking shape.

The pharmacy on Chapel Street glows like a morgue under its fluorescent lights, making everything look like a crime scene. Maybe it is. Maybe this is where I'll find out exactly how badly I've fucked up my life. I stand in the family planning aisle—what a fucking joke of a name—staring at the pregnancy tests like they're about to tell my fortune.

"Just pick one," Jessica hisses, but I grab three. Different brands. Different prices. As if one might offer a different answer, as if ClearBlue might say "Congratulations, you're not a complete disaster!" while First Response delivers the truth.

Back in our dorm bathroom, with its persistent drip and cracked mirror that splits my reflection into fragments, I pee on all three sticks and wait. Jessica sits on the edge of the bathtub, uncharacteristically quiet.

Three minutes. The longest three minutes in human history. Longer than the time between when I saw Nathan with that girl and when I kissed the stranger. Longer than the walk of shame the next morning. Longer than every moment I've spent lying to Nathan's face about that night.

Pink lines appear like verdicts. Positive. Positive. Positive.

"Fuck," Jessica says, which about sums it up.

I stare at the tests lined up on the sink like soldiers of doom. My mind does the math I don't want it to do. Seven weeks ago was early September. The party was late September. I was a virgin until that party, until that stranger. Then Nathan and I got back together, had sex for what he thinks was my first time. Two possibilities. Two completely different futures.

"You have to tell Nathan," Jessica says.

"I know."

"You have to tell him everything."

"I know."

But first, I call my mother. My hands shake as I dial, and I can picture her perfectly in our kitchen in Connecticut, flour on her hands from whatever she's baking, NPR playing softly in the background. She answers on the third ring.

"Jasmine! I was just thinking about you. How's the semester going?"

"Mom, I'm pregnant." The words fall out like stones into still water, creating ripples I can't take back.

The silence stretches across two hundred miles of interstate between us. I can hear her set something down—a spoon maybe, or her coffee mug.

"Okay," she says finally, her voice carefully controlled. "Okay. We'll handle this. We'll keep it, of course."

"Mom—"

"Who's the father?"

The question hangs between us like a noose. Nathan or the stranger—the equation has only two variables, but infinite consequences. How do I tell her I don't know? How do I explain that her daughter, her straight-A student, her good girl, fucked a stranger whose face she can't even remember?

"It's complicated," I whisper.

"Jasmine Marie, who is the father?"

"I need to figure that out."

"What does that mean?"

"I have to go, Mom. I'll call you later."

I hang up before she can respond, before her disappointment can travel those two hundred miles to crush me completely.

Nathan finds me after Contemporary Literature, where we'd spent ninety minutes discussing unreliable narrators. Professor Williams had gone on and on about how the truth depends on who's telling the story, how reality shifts based on perspective. The irony tastes like copper in my mouth.

"Hey," he says, catching my arm gently. "You've been weird all class. What's wrong?"

I look at him—really look at him. His messenger bag is slung across his chest, his copy of The Great Gatsby sticking out, annotated to death because that's what Nathan does, he annotates everything, he finds meaning in every line. His green eyes are concerned, loving, trusting.

"I'm pregnant," I say without preamble, because there's no good way to say it, no amount of buildup that will make this easier.

His face drains of color so fast I think he might faint. He looks like a marble statue in the afternoon light filtering through the windows, like something that might shatter if I breathe too hard.

"But..." He stops, calculates, his brilliant mind doing the math. "We've only been together once. That night after we got back together. And we were careful. This almost never..."

He doesn't know the truth. He doesn't know about the stranger at the party, about what I did when I thought he'd betrayed me. He thinks that reconciliation night was my first and only time.

"Nathan—"

But he's already backing away, his bag hitting the wall with a dull thud that echoes in the empty hallway. "I need to think. I just... I need to think."

"Please don't go—"

"I'm not ready for this, Jasmine. I'm twenty years old. I have graduate school applications, I have plans—"

"You think I don't?"

He looks at me, and I see the moment he decides I'm not worth derailing his carefully constructed future. "I need to think," he repeats, and then he's walking away, disappearing into the crowd of students heading to their next class, each step taking him further from the future we'd planned in late-night conversations and morning coffee runs.

I stand there in the hallway where portraits of dead academics stare down at me with judgment, my hand on my still-flat stomach, carrying a secret that might not even be his. The Gothic architecture feels like it's closing in, all those carved angels and gargoyles witnesses to my spectacular fall from grace.

My phone buzzes. Mom: "We need to talk about this properly. I'm driving up tomorrow."

And suddenly, tomorrow feels like another word for the end of the world.