Keesha's House by Helen Frost

NOW THIS BABY      STEPHIE
    My parents still think I’m their little girl.
    I don’t want them to see me getting bigger,
    bigger every week, almost too big to hide it now.
    But if I don’t go home, where can I go?
    Jason said, You could get rid of it. I thought of how he tossed
    the broken condom in the trash, saying, Nothing
    will happen. Now this baby is that nothing,
    growing fingers in the dark, growing toes, a girl
    or boy, heart pulsing. Not something to be tossed
    aside, not nothing. Love and terror both grow bigger
    every day inside me. Jason showed me where to go
    to take care of it. I looked at him and said, I can’t. Now
    he isn’t talking to me, and if he won’t talk now,
    I know what to expect in six months’ time—nothing.
    His family doesn’t know about the baby. When I used to go
    there every day, his mom would say, It’s nice to have a girl
    around the house. But they have bigger
    dreams than this for Jason. All my questions are like wind-tossed
    papers in the street, and after they’ve been tossed
    around, rain comes, and they’re a soggy mess. Now
    I’m hungry. I had a doughnut, but I need a bigger
    meal. I’m not prepared for this. I know nothing
    about living on my own. At school there’s this girl
    I know named Keesha who told me there’s a place kids go
    and stay awhile, where people don’t ask questions. I go,
    Yeah, sure, okay. I kind of tossed
    my head, like I was just some girl
    who wouldn’t care. But now
    I wish I’d asked her the exact address. (Nothing
    wrong with asking.) To lots of girls, it’s no big
    deal to have a baby. They treat it like a big
    attention getter—when the baby’s born, they go
    around showing it off to all their friends. But nothing
    like this ever happens in my family. Mom and Dad won’t toss
    me out, or even yell at me, if I go home right now.
    But how can I keep acting like the girl
    they think I am—a carefree teenage girl with nothing
    big to worry me. As for what I’ve started thinking now—
    don’t go there. Heads is bad; tails is worse: like that no-win coin toss.

WHAT’S RIGHT?      JASON
    Coach keeps asking me what’s wrong.
    I missed the free throw, cost our team the game.
    I thought I could count on you , he said,
    quiet, really puzzled, those dark eyes steady,
    looking through me. How can I say, Forget
    the championship, forget the scholarship, college
    is out of the question? And without college—
    what? You want to know what’s wrong?
    I want to know what’s right. I can’t forget
    Stephie’s eyes, the light through her tears. The old game
    plan won’t work now. Are you two going steady?
    Coach asked. He was serious. He said,
    She’s a lovely girl, Jason. All I can say
    is, times have changed. In his day, you went to college,
    married the lovely girl you’d gone steady
    with for four years. Nothing went wrong
    like this. I wish I could play the game
    like that. I wish I could forget
    about this baby. But I can’t forget
    the night it happened. Stephie said
    she loved watching me play in the big game;
    she loved the brains that got me into college,
    but there was more than that. I was wrong
    if I thought that was all she saw in me. Steady
    light in her eyes. I want to be steady
    for her now. But I’m not. I can’t. Forget
    it. It’s all turning out wrong.
    When I drove her past the clinic, she said,
    You want me to kill our baby so you can go to college,
    play basketball, be a big hero in every big game?
    Those words: Kill our baby. No. This is not a game.
    I need some kind of job, a steady
    income. I could stay here and go to college
    part-time, but I’d have to forget
    about my basketball career. Whoever said
    these are the best years of your life was wrong.
    But Stephie’s also wrong. I don’t think everything’s a game.
    I just can’t seem to