Madame Williams ( teacherxstudent )

11

It had started to get dark and after texting my mother I'd sleep over, and telling Nicole that mom was outside waiting for me, I found my way out the damn place. Diane and I made it out alive and we climbed in her Volvo on our way to her place. She seemed genuinely happy, but I still had too many questions on my mind to reciprocate the small grin that played on her lips.

I kept touching my bracelet and looking out the window and then I almost jumped when her hand touched my thigh, "Everything okay?" She asked.

I nodded, "Yeah, yeah."

We arrived at her place and she opened a bottle of wine for herself but offered me liquor, of course I declined and took a glass of water instead. I had never been much of a teenager, if you ask me. I'd rather spend my free time with friends, reading, even trying to understand math, and sometimes I enjoyed drawing, but I was never a party girl, so alcohol wasn't really my thing.

I had a cigarette that I had stolen from Nicole, so I lit it with the kitchen's fire and made my way to the living room, where she was almost halfway through her red wine glass.

"Okay, so... Uh..." Diane rambled, pacing around the room.

"Dee." I called.

She looked up and I saw her frightened eyes, "I'm sorry. I... It's hard for me. I don't... I never talk about this to anybody."

I walked towards her and grabbed her glass, leaving it on the coffee table and then walking along her to the couch. We both sat down and she took the cigarette from me, smoking what was left of it before she truly looked at me in the eye and took a deep breath.

Diane threw the cigarette butt on the coffee table as well, probably making a mental note to put it in the garbage later. Then she looked at me in the eyes again and swallowed, she was having a hard time and I could see it in her eyes.

"Just say something, please," I spoke.

Diane nodded, "I was nineteen, uh... I went to California, LA, to visit my cousins and just spend the summer..."

"And?"

"I went a little wild. Uh, I was partying and having fun, and I had sex with a man. I was experiencing and I was a little tipsy, so I had sex with a random dude. He was good looking and he had bought me a drink." Diane said a little shaky, grabbing her glass from the coffee table and taking a drink from it, "I came back home, my parents were already divorced and I lived with my mom, so, a couple weeks passed and I turned out to be pregnant. I never... I never imagined that would happen to me."

Diane's eyes filled with tears. She put her red wine glass back on the table and looked at me again. As much as all of this was unexpected for me and I still was so confused, I got closer to her and hugged her.

"It's alright," I whispered to her, rubbing circles on her back.

Diane pulled away after a while and talked again, this time she didn't meet my gaze, she looked down to her ring, "My mom kicked me out so... I moved in with my dad and he supported me to get through with the pregnancy." She brushed a tear away from her cheek.

"After writing down thousands of baby names and reading books on breastfeeding...I was twenty weeks,  I was off the hook. One day I didn't feel so good and I... I didn't tell my dad because I figured it was normal. I vaguely remember, but I woke up in the ER." Diane sobbed, her body shaking with each sob.

Now I felt awful. I was a damn monster for what I had said earlier this week and I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Diane had been through so much crap and there I was on Wednesday, being a bitch, not to mention earlier when I confronted her about ignoring me. She was dealing with something deeply sensitive and I had treated her in such a crappy way.