Free Reaction by Lesley Choyce

Chapter One
    â€œZach, I’m pregnant.”
    Ashley dropped the bombshell on me between classes at school. I remember the exact time, because I was standing in front of the hallway clock. 11:11. Yep. Eleven eleven in the morning. It was a Tuesday.
    She was looking straight at me when she blurted it right out.
    â€œThat’s impossible,” I snapped back. And I looked away from her and back to the stupid clock. The time changed to 11:12.
    â€œIt’s true,” she said. And then she began to cry.
    I put my arm around her and pulled her toward me. “Let’s go,” I said.
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œAnywhere. Let’s get out of here.”
    I led her down the hall and out the front door into the bright sunlight. As I opened the door of the school, I had this feeling that maybe nothing in my life would ever be the same again.
    That was exactly how it happened. I will never forget the feeling. I had never been more scared in my life. Never. I know that I wasn’t the first guy to hear those words from his girlfriend, but it felt that way. Sad to say, I wasn’t even thinking about Ashley at the time. I was thinking about me. What was I going to do? What was going to happen to me? What would this do to my life?
    We walked for almost an hour. Neither of us talked at first. Then I began to rationalize, and one part of my brain wanted to convince us both that it must be some kind of mistake.
    â€œAre you sure?” I asked.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œHow sure?”
    â€œVery sure.”
    â€œMaybe you made a mistake.”
    â€œMaybe we made a mistake,” she said.
    â€œI mean, about the tests. Did you buy one of those testing things from the drugstore?”
    â€œThree of them.”
    â€œMaybe they were defective.”
    â€œThey were three different brands. They all had the same results.”
    I was still looking for a way out of this. I was looking for a way to get me out of this. I almost asked her if she was sure it was me, that I was the father. But I didn’t.
    Because just then I remembered. Two months ago. We’d been partying. (That’s what we did, Ashley and I. We partied big-time.) We’d been drinking. And my parents were gone for the weekend. And one thing led to another. And we were so into it.
    And I knew the condom broke, but I didn’t mention a word to her. Hey, I thought it would wreck the mood. Plus, what were the chances?
    So there I was, sixteen years old, walking through the suburban streets with my fifteen-year-old girlfriend who has just told me she’s pregnant. And I’m still thinking, this can’t be happening to me.
    â€œI’m scared,” Ashley said, leaning into me and holding tightly onto my arm.
    I didn’t tell her how scared I was, and I didn’t even tell her about the condom then. I said what guys say in situations like this when the blood has drained out of their heads and they are screaming inside, panicking, ready to run for the hills and never come back. I said, “Everything is going to be all right.”

Chapter Two
    The morning became the afternoon, and it started to sink in. Ashley was two months pregnant. We had been going out together for only three months. She seemed to be sold on me. And I loved being with her. She was sweet and sexy and one year younger than me, which should have been no big deal. But one year can sometimes seem like a big issue in high school. She had been flattered that I wanted to hang out with her—most of the time it was just the two of us—and, well, like I said, she was sweet and sexy.
    We ended up sitting on a bench in a park where mothers pushed their little kids on swings and bigger kids played on the slide and the monkey bars. There were babies in strollers and mothers chatting about brands of throwaway diapers. It was the worst place to be thinking about Ashley being pregnant, but it’s like the gods had planned it this way.
    Ashley cried, and