Burgeoning Story

So I wrote the beginning of a story a couple of years ago in my Creative Writing class as a result to a prompt I was having my students do. Every year, when we do the exercise, I read my sample to them to show how one little sentence can lead to a potential story. Every year, I always have at least one student (usually a girl) come back and ask me what happens. And guess what? I don't know. I have know idea where to go from here. So I am posting this to all those who read out there and asking for suggestions.

Please keep in mind (fellow ward members) I have a slight swear mouth. Something I am working on, but my characters are not. I am sorry if I offend anyone. But if Bella can have wild vampire sex, then I can swear.

Quite Frankly

Quite frankly, I was expecting more. More fireworks, dizziness, Puccini, anything to meet the elaborate expectations years of movie watching had built up. I guess I’m not being exactly honest—there was dizziness involved. It just accompanied nausea and vomit. In fact, it was the doctor that told me I was in love, not Puccini.

Those were his exact words, too, “Congratulations. You’re in love.” Oh good. I have a funny doctor. He couldn’t just come right out and say I was pregnant. No. He had to make it cute, “You’re in love.” What the hell is that supposed to mean?

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Well,” funny doctor smiled. Did he take pleasure in seeing my whole life do somersaults through those crazy fire rings? “That means that you’re going to have a little bundle of joy in about seven months, here.” Yep. He was enjoying this. “Got a boyfriend?”

I was going to kill him. No, not the boyfriend. The doctor. I might kill the boyfriend, too. After all, he was the one who got me into this mess. This was his doing. I always figured that everything would be safe. I mean, what are the chances of one of those things not working? One in a million, I figured. Well, my dad always did say I was special.

“Well?” Oh yeah. Him. The doctor.

“What?”

“Well, do you have a boyfriend, or a fiancée, or…” I envisioned a slow and painful death for Mr. Funny PhD. I won’t go into it here, but I will tell you it involved swords and a very dull spoon.

"Yes, I have a boyfriend-type of man.” I have been trying for the past year to keep my relationship with Chad strictly non-committal.

“You might want to decide if you love him or not.”

“Why?” My brain had ceased working properly. I knew it was a stupid question, but all I could think of were the various ways I could commit a capital crime right here in this office.

“Well,” Mr. Not-So-Funny-Doctor continued, “Well, you are now going to be a mother, and I suggest you find out if your baby’s going to have a daddy. And if not, you need to decide what you are going to do.”

“You mean I have to decide now? You mean I have to decide whether my boyfriend-type-of-man and I are in love or not? Listen, sir, I know you are probably a very nice person, but I don’t think you understand. I had to close my eyes this morning and poke a pile of my jeans with a pin just to decide which pair I wanted to wear. I have only been dating this guy for like, a year, and I have to decide now whether I love this man or not? NOW?”

“Well,” the doctor suddenly looked tired. I wondered how many girls have given him the same look I felt on my face right then. “Well, it’s better now than in seven months. And you might want to devise a method of deciding that doesn’t involve sticking things with pins.” He thought that was funny, no doubt.

So here it was. No fireworks. No Puccini. Just a stick with pee on it, and I was in love.

Slowly, I returned home. I walked into my dark apartment and looked around. Suddenly, I felt that this space that I had inhabited for the last year was alien and new to me. I looked at all my Harry Potter posters, my concert tees that now doubled as “artwork,” my Red Socks pennants, and I wondered what type of freak lived here. This wasn’t the apartment of a potential mother—mothers should have café curtains and floral wallpaper. And mothers definitely wouldn’t have my long, messy, hair. Their hair would be short and coiffed with enough hair spray to kill off some kind of cute blue frog somewhere in the world.

I had a feeling that a good mother would never wear a shirt that had hung on her wall and then staple it back up at the end of the day. I did. I did it all the time. I used to think it was cool, hip, unique; it was something just quirky enough that would prompt some guy to fall madly in love with me, and, even though he would pretend that it bothered him, after I died a tragic death this guy would write a book about me and say very endearingly, “She wore her own posters.” And everyone would read the book and think, “I want to be like that girl with the shirts on her wall,” and all of a sudden my poster concert tees would be the trend. Everyone would start stapling their shirts on the wall, and even the designers on Trading Spaces would think it was cool and inventive—maybe not so much Edward or Frank, but defiantly Hildi or Genevieve.

But now I was pregnant, with child, knocked up. Suddenly concert tees on the wall weren’t so quirky. They were downright irresponsible.