Pregnant with My Roommate’s Dad by Sofia T Summers
Maxie
Istared at the equations written out on the lecture hall’s smart board. It all looked like gibberish. The professor assumed calculus and I were friends, but we weren’t. We hardly knew each other. I could only hope my weekly tutoring session would help me decipher these foreign runes everybody else seemed to understand.
If I didn’t need one stupid math class to graduate, I would’ve dropped this course in a heartbeat. I’d happily take another communications elective for my major or some random history class for fun, but I couldn’t put my math requirement off any longer.
The torture had my mind begging for a reprieve.
Of course, it didn’t help that Brandy and I didn’t get back from a fraternity party last night until two in the morning. Brandy’s sorority was their sister organization. It wasn’t mandatory that she attend, but nobody needed to twist our arms to get Brandy and me out.
Half the point of college was making memories, and I planned to have volumes of stories by the time I left school. Nobody knew how many years we had in this life. I knew it better than most.
My mother was thirty-three when a blizzard ran her off a highway and down a sheer drop into a forest of unforgiving pines. Fourteen years later, my father was betrayed by his body with an incurable brain tumor. I buried him one month after my high school graduation.
Two months later, I was here in Michigan starting over.
I worked myself to the bone to get into the university where my parents first met. I even got a hefty amount of academic scholarships to save myself from crushing debt, but I’d still spent so much of my inheritance to be here. That didn’t even account for the money I was spending to keep up the family home back in North Carolina.
Some suits told me I should’ve sold the family cabin, but I wasn’t interested in the property’s monetary value. My great-great-grandfather bought the land in 1910, building the house with trees he’d cleared from the hillside. I didn’t care if I’d get a million dollars from the land and home today. I didn’t care if someone offered me ten million dollars.
I was the last Lawson, other than my great-aunt, Aunt Jane, but her mind was . . . slipping. She had a nurse stopping by every afternoon, but in a few years, she would need full-time care. The house and Aunt Jane were both under my protection. I couldn’t fail them.
I especially couldn’t let one freaking math class screw up my well-laid plans.
Every cent of my money had been budgeted, right down to the last penny. I didn’t have room for error. There was nobody to swoop in and help me when I screwed up, which I’d done by picking the budget-friendly apartment. It was a small miracle that I could ride the coattails of Brandy’s good fortune.
As long as that man was breathing, Ian Weiss would always be there for his beloved angel, including giving her a free place to stay. I felt weird taking his charitable offer, but there wasn’t much of a choice to make. I could spend a few days in a hotel before the insurance stopped paying. Then, the backseat of my Jeep would’ve become my new bedroom.
Swallowing my pride, I moved into the house with Brandy, hoping to avoid her father’s judgmental gaze. It was hard for me to be around him, even without the silent condemnation. He was just so . . . I didn’t know how to describe it.
I wasn’t even sure what to call him. He’d introduced himself as Ian, but back home, he would’ve been Mr. Weiss. He did seem too young to earn such a name, and he was certainly too good-looking to be some old grouch.
When I saw him, memories of my carefree teenage fantasies would paint themselves across my mindscape. School-girl thrills would shoot up my spine, but it was nothing I’d ever planned to indulge. First and foremost, Brandy was my friend. I didn’t want to jeopardize that relationship.
Besides, I had Chris Caulfield, co-captain of the college swim team and my boyfriend of maybe two years? Between our fights and falling outs, I wasn’t sure how much time we’d spent in a relationship, but the whirlwind began in October of my sophomore year. Chris was cute and usually well-intended, but he could be dense. Years of potent chlorine and tight swim caps had clearly affected his common sense, but that didn’t make him a bad person.
He seemed excited when I suggested that he move back down to North Carolina with me. He could train as a swimmer in Charlotte while I worked helping underfunded schools. Then, I’d get my graduate degree at Appalachian State. The program had accepted me, but I deferred for the year-long service fellowship. Chris would follow his Olympic dreams while using his degree in sports management with one of the collegiate or professional sports teams in the city.
It wasn’t a perfect image, but it was far better than sitting alone in my four-bedroom house. Just because I knew how to survive on my own didn’t mean I enjoyed it. The time had come for something better.
“Maxine Lawson,” the professor called out.
My eyes snapping to attention, Dr. Charles was staring at me with his stern pointed features. Most of the seventy-some other students in the class followed his gaze.
“Can you tell me what the formula is for how fast something will fall under gravity by the second?” Dr. Charles demanded.
I knew it was on the page in front of me, but I’d lost my place. My mind had been wandering for too long. I wasn’t even sure why he needed it. My ears burned with embarrassment as I hunted down the formula.
“D equals half times G and T?” I replied with a heavy dose of doubt.
A familiar nasally voice piped up from a few rows ahead of me. Her neon pink pen shot up into the air.
“Dr. Charles, I believe Maxie meant T squared,” she corrected me haughtily.
Amber Mercer turned her cold, dark eyes toward me, smirking at my mistake. Sharing the same major, she’d been in most of my classes, and this was the first time she could best me. Course after course, I broke test curves and outshone her on projects. Amber despised me for it, among other things. Now, she knew my kryptonite was advanced math, and the power trip was going straight to her head.
“Yes,” Dr. Charles acknowledged her. “Thank you, Amber.”
“Of course, Professor,” Amber replied, flipping her fake hair over her ebony shoulder. “Happy to help a fellow student.”
No, she wasn’t. She just wanted to take the rare opportunity to kick dust in my face, but I didn’t let her snobbish pride affect me. Come May, I would be off starting a new chapter in my life. Amber could snicker about me to her shriveled heart’s content until then. Her jealous games didn’t matter.
Whispering to her friend beside her, Amber’s voice drifted up the lecture hall rows as the professor continued.
“It seems our mountain hick is off her game today,” she tittered under her breath. “I heard she had one too many at the Epsilons’ party last night.”
“Really?” the girl, another Alpha Beta Omega sister, hissed back. “That’s so embarrassing.”
I rolled my eyes, hating that Brandy was a part of their snotty pack. Brandy hadn’t seen what they were during fall recruitment our sophomore year. She hadn’t seen behind the curtain of polished faces and endless parties.
Amber regarded me as some white-trash nobody. I couldn’t possibly be better than her. I wasn’t even supposed to be her equal. She’d grown up in some millionaire suburbia of Detroit, and I’d allegedly grown up in a shack on some mountaintop. She wanted to claim my grades, my best friend, and even Chris.
To her, destroying me would bring balance to the world. Every hate-filled campaign was entirely justified. The whispers in class were part of the other lies she’d been spreading among the Greeks, but her petty games wouldn’t distract me from my goals. I had bigger fish to fry than a sardine like her. She was salty, small-minded, and not worth my precious time.
I focused on writing down my questions to ask my tutor until Dr. Charles dismissed us. With my two Friday classes finished, I was finally free for the weekend, shrugging into my winter coat and black canvas backpack with a sense of relief. The sting I’d gotten from my mistake was quickly healed by the sight of Chris.
He waited for me in the lecture hall lobby. With his brown hair swept away from his handsome face, Chris’s golden-brown eyes appraised me and my light-blue skinny jeans before taking me into his arms. He must’ve liked what he saw. As our lips met, I remembered why I liked having him around. Chris’s somewhat inflated sense of self-importance made him unafraid to hold me by my hips and make a show of his affection.
“You’re always a sight for sore eyes, Maxie,” he told me before stealing another kiss.
I wasn’t the kind of person to flaunt my relationship, but the sour look on Amber’s face did have its appeal. Her eyes tried to cut my way, but she couldn’t even scratch me. Amber’s subordinate friend hid her smirk before Amber could see.
“Thanks for the help today, Amber,” I called, waving with my own taunting grin. “I’d love to stay and chat, but Chris and I have a lunch date.”
Chris draped his long, athletic arm over my shoulders, leading me away toward the closest student union. The clear blue afternoon had the smell of ice in the air. It filled my lungs with biting cold.
“What was that about, babe?” Chris asked me casually.
“Oh, it was nothing,” I assured him. “Don’t worry about it.”
“All right.”
As a student athlete, Chris had an oversized meal plan free of charge. It was nothing for him to swipe me into one of the dining halls, but Chris was in the mood for a gyro sandwich today. We headed toward the student union on this side of campus.
“How was your first Spanish II quiz?” I inquired to make conversation.
My fingers still laced with Chris’s as we wove through the bustling sidewalk’s afternoon foot traffic. I looked up to his angled face, waiting for my reply.
Chris shrugged. “I bombed it.”
He didn’t blink twice at the failure. He barely made it through the first level of Spanish, and he needed both to graduate. The university had enjoyed their star swimmer for five years already. It was about time that Chris turn his tassel.
“I know you had a hard time with your language course last year,” I recalled. “Are you thinking about getting a tutor?”
“Nah.” Chris shook his head as we reached Pierpont. “It’s not that big of a deal.”
Walking through the halls of students and staff, we headed toward the food court. The warmth of the interior heat warmed my skin, and my duck boots squeaked against the beige linoleum floors. The faint sound got lost among the sound of other people's voices.
“Because it was just a fluke?” I pressed. “You know you’ll do better next time?”
“It’s just one stupid language class, Maxie,” he replied dismissively.
“That you need to graduate,” I reminded him as we reached the dining area. “We’ve both applied to do that in May, remember? If you don’t pass the class—”
Groaning, Chris cut me off, saying, “Then I’ll swim for another semester here while I finish the credit.”
Ten paces from the gyros, I stopped dead in my tracks. I became immovable as a mountain as frustration sparked inside me. Chris and I were supposed to be moving on to the next chapter of our lives together, yet he seemed content to carry on right here. Our plans were obviously frivolous to him.
“But what about the interview you had with the basketball team in Charlotte?”
Chris studied my annoyed expression, asking, “What about it?”
“You’ve accepted an internship with them this summer, Chris!” I huffed. “They only accept recent graduates.”
He rolled his eyes. “And they’ll be there next spring. We’ve only had, like, eight days of class. Why do you even care so much?”
“Because we have plans!” I shot back, causing nearby heads to turn my way.
I sighed in order to keep my cool. Chris never had the patience for conflict. He avoided it whenever he could, even if that meant breaking up with me for a couple of weeks.
“Plans can change,” Chris insisted.
“I’m aware,” I grumbled. “That doesn’t mean it’s okay to treat them like they don't matter.”
"Why are we doing this here? I mean, what gives, Maxie?" Chris huffed back. "You're the one who is always saying that stuff doesn't matter."
"Yeah, about things that really don't matter!" I fumed. "It doesn't matter if I have a gyro sandwich or a slice of pizza for lunch. It only matters that I'm eating. It doesn't matter if I become a university chancellor or a janitor. It matters that I'm doing something with my life. What are you doing, Chris? What are you gonna do with your life that will make you feel good about yourself?"
Almost boasting, Chris exclaimed, "I'm gonna be on a cereal box!"
I couldn't roll my eyes hard enough. Everything always boiled down to his aspiration for the clout of an Olympic medal.
"Forget it," I seethed, shaking my head in annoyance. "I'm not hungry anymore."
"But I thought you said it was important to eat!"
Chris probably thought that line was clever, and it was . . . for him. I didn't have the stomach for it, though. My whole body was close to shaking with frustration.
How could such blatant mediocrity be rewarded? People smarter than me never got the chance to go to school because of the overwhelming cost or being set up for failure by societal inequality. Too many people were forced into the shadows, and others like Chris ignored it. They laughed it off and continued to fail upward.
For Chris, it didn’t matter if he failed yet again. His coaches would continue to make space for him on the college team. He would always have his circle of fans and a vision of a bright future. Everything was a guarantee for him, making the threads of my life feel even more fragile.
It felt like everyone had someone but me.
Even Brandy had Ian. Her father had a house waiting on a silver platter when our apartment fell apart. I had nowhere to run but the corners of my mind, but I couldn’t hide there. Aunt Jane was relying on me. My family was watching from the next life, counting on me to preserve everything they’d created.
I stepped out into the cold as bitter ice filled my lungs. I wanted to scream until somebody noticed my living nightmares, but I stayed silent. I schooled my features and headed toward the safety of my bed.
On a crowded college campus, I felt entirely alone.
