Chapter Text
Marisol Lewis woke up feeling abnormally sick and raw.
While rubbing her eyes, she groggily got out of her bed, walked out of her room, and entered the bathroom to get ready for school. While she showered, she couldn’t get the nauseous feeling out of her stomach. She constantly felt the urge to throw up and it’s been like that for the past few days.
Her breasts were very sore too, and she didn’t know why. It was painful just washing them or putting a bra on. She didn’t know why her body was attacking her like this, but she hoped it stopped soon. She was feeling a lot like shit lately enough as it is.
‘Maybe it’s my karma for homewrecking,’ she thought to herself, ‘In that case, K.C. should come down with the worst flu.’
As she brushed her teeth, she wondered if she should even bother showing up to school today.
“Good morning Katie-kins!” Marisol greeted her best friend, Katie Matlin, as she sat down next to her in their homeroom period. Katie was studying for their final exam for french class. She tried to sound as cheerful as she normally could, but it was hard when she was still feeling super tired and sick. Her mom wouldn’t let her stay home even though she begged her too.
“Morning Mare-Bear,” Katie greeted back with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. Marisol knew why. After it came out that she was sleeping with K.C. Guthrie even though he was dating Jenna Middleton and had a baby with her, her best friend didn’t look at her the same. No one did right now as she was seen as the new school slut, but she was always viewed as that even before this. After she broke up with Owen Milligan, her first boyfriend, for the final time, she rebounded in three different relationships afterwards and was judged for it. However, what she did with K.C. earned her scorn from the entire school.
She knew what she did was wrong, and while she didn’t care at first because she thought her and K.C. were making a genuine connection, the consequences of her actions were now hitting her severely.
Her Power Squad members were looking at her in deep disapproval, especially Chantay who was friends with Jenna. She was still set to be captain next year, but the gossip queen of Degrassi made it clear that it was only because no one was more qualified than her. While Chantay considered her a friend before this, now things were tense between them. Jenna was going to come back to Power Squad before she found out about the affair, but now she wasn’t.
People wouldn’t stop giving her dirty looks in class and whispering about her as she walked the hallways. Jocks were making jokes about her being “ran through” by the football team because she dated Owen, went on a date with Riley Stavros at the barbecue, went on an awful date with Drew Torres, and slept with K.C. It was awful. She felt like she had a scarlet letter on her shirt, and she wanted to crawl into a hole and die. The shame was getting to be too much, and seeing the disapproval in Katie’s eyes hurt more than anything.
“Are you ready for the school year to be over? I’m so ready for it to be over,” Marisol asked her friend.
“Yeah I bet,” Katie answered flippantly, which made Marisol frown. “So when do you think we can start making the posters, buttons, and shirts for the student council elections? I was hoping we can do it by Friday,” she questioned her.
“Um, Friday is good I guess. You want to come over to my house or yours to make the posters?”
“Yours. You know, Mare, you do realize that what you did with K.C. might look bad for my campaign right?” Katie asked her again with a critical frown.
“What do you mean?” Marisol asked her back in confusion.
“Well, think about it. Being friends with someone who helped ruin a family isn’t a good look. It might make people not want to vote for me,” her BFF pointed out.
“So what are you saying? You don’t want me to be VP?” She asked with fear. From the time they were little girls, they swore they were going to run the school together. They were class reps in every grade since middle school, and were even the president and vice president of their eighth grade class. They have always been partners and attached at the hip, so Katie possibly abandoning her made even more sick if that was possible.
“No, I just wish you were more considerate of how your wild sex hookups with K.C. could affect me before you did it. Was it even worth it, Mare? What was he possibly offering you to make you think that homewrecking was okay?” Katie scolded her.
“He told me that he was going to leave Jenna for me because I made him happy while she did nothing but make him miserable. We shared so many deep conversations about our pasts, and had so much fun at work that he told me that I was his perfect match, not Jenna,” she admitted, and she just realized how foolish she sounded. At the time, it made so much sense while they were cuddling after sex and K.C. was telling her how wonderful she was.
“He only said that because you were giving it up to him because Jenna couldn’t. How could you think that he was actually going to leave his family for you? You were just a distraction for him. I can’t believe that after all the times you were hurt by Owen cheating on you, you would hurt another girl the same way. I’m very disappointed in you, Mare,” Katie argued before turning her attention back to the textbook she was studying in. A few minutes later, the bell rang and the homeroom period had officially started. Students were chatting all around them but Katie was pointedly ignoring her.
Marisol felt like she had just gotten a brutal tongue lashing from her mother, but even her own mother was nicer than Katie when she was mad at her. She sank down in her seat as she tried not to cry at her friend’s harsh words. Katie always knew how to talk down to her when she felt that she was acting stupid.
Admittedly, she was stupid for sleeping with K.C. and she was realizing that more and more every day. But, that didn’t mean Katie was allowed to throw it in her face like that and make her feel even more terrible than she was.
She already knew she was a horrible person for what she did.
Later, she was getting her lunch at the cafeteria when she overheard some troubling words from some members of the football team behind her.
“If Owen and K.C. can get some, I can’t see why she won’t let me hit. She’s been curving me since freshman year,” Julian, Owen’s best friend grumbled as the lunch lady put nachos on his plate.
“Yeah, if she’s opening her legs up to multiple members of the team then I can’t see why I can’t get some hot ass from her either. You know a wise man once said that it ain’t no fun if the homies can’t have none,” Tom, another one of Owen’s asshole friends replied before they both laughed.
“Like I would fuck either of you when Owen told me you guys don’t even believe in washing your assholes because it’s ‘gay’,” Marisol snarled to them as she got her food and stormed off. It was a miracle none of her food fell off her tray with the way she was stomping off to her table.
She had fourth period lunch by herself and she was usually fine with that until now. She had never felt so alone before without Katie by her side. As she sat down at a table by the back of the cafeteria, she felt as if a thousand eyes were watching her.
She looked to K.C., who was eating numbly as his friend Dave Turner was joking about something to him. He looked back at her before glaring and turning to talk back to his friend. Her stomach dropped in response and she felt her anger rise. K.C. coldly dumped her immediately after Jenna found out about them and pretended she didn’t even exist at work these days. She understood that he was regretting their affair but she didn’t hold a gun to his head and force him to fuck her. It took two people to have an affair and it wasn’t fair that he was acting like it was mainly her fault. She wasn’t the one in a relationship, he was.
Marisol decided to focus on something else, like the plate of chicken nuggets and cheese fries in front of her. Cheese fries were one of her comfort foods and it was usually a quick remedy in making her feel better about something.
However, when she looked down at her food and smelled the melted cheese, the nauseous feeling inside of her suddenly got more tense. It was like cheese was the most disgusting smell in the world. She tried to ignore it as she ate her food, but the feeling wasn’t going away.
Eventually, it was all too much and when she got another whiff of the cheese, bile bubbled up in the back of her throat.
She wordlessly got up and ran to the bathroom.
As she was puking her brains out in the toilet, Marisol overheard more words about her.
“I can’t believe he got a job at that restaurant just to cheat on his baby mama with one of the school sluts,” a girl was saying to another.
“Yeah I guess you could call Marisol K.C.’s “little mistake”, the other girl joked before they both started to laugh. To Marisol, it sounded like two dying seals were squealing. She wanted to jump out of the bathroom stall and fight them both.
By the time she was finished throwing up, the girls had left and seemingly no one else was in the bathroom but her. Wiping her mouth, she flushed the toilet and left the stall with a sore throat and watery eyes.
She looked at herself in the mirror and was seeing nothing more than a dirty, disgusting slut right now. Was this how junior year was going to end for her? She felt and looked like hell.
She didn’t know why she threw up her food, but she knew it had something to occur with her sudden illness. Just yesterday, she threw up her breakfast in the school parking lot before classes started. Luckily no one was around to see it.
What was happening with her right now was more than a common cold or seasonal allergies, but it didn’t exactly feel like the flu either. It wasn’t even flu season yet. And she was sure that sore breasts weren’t a symptom of the flu so she wondered what it could be.
A thought popped into a mind, but she rejected it because it wasn’t possible. K.C. used a condom every time they had sex and she was on birth control pills. Then something occurred to her. There was one day where she forgot to take her pill for the day and she had sex with K.C. later in her car before work.
‘I didn’t get my period last month or this month either so far…,’ she thought to herself in panic. Nausea was bubbling inside her stomach again, and this time it was from horror.
Could she be….
…. pregnant ?
She ran back inside the stall to throw up again.
‘I’m probably just freaking out right now for no reason. There’s no way I’m pregnant after forgetting to take the pill just one time. No way. Absolutely not. I’m going to look at the results of this test and laugh at how paranoid I was being,’ Marisol reassured herself as she waited for the results on the pregnancy test to show. She had been repeating this mantra inside her head since she bought two pregnancy tests at the pharmacy.
She didn’t want to believe that the universe was going to make her life more miserable than it already was. It was bad enough that she was dealing with the aftermath of sleeping with a taken guy, she couldn’t handle being pregnant with that guy’s baby too. She could just imagine everyone’s reaction to that. The shame would follow her to graduation and possibly beyond. She might have to change her name and move to another country, probably Jamaica to live with some family members she had there.
‘I’m probably just freaking out right now for no reason. There’s no way I’m pregnant after forgetting to take the pill just one time. No way. Absolutely not. I’m going to look at the results of this test and laugh at how paranoid I was being,’ she repeated to herself in anxiety. Her parents would flip out if she was pregnant and her father might just disown her and have her shipped back to Jamaica before she could make the decision herself. It would be a shitshow.
There were quite a few teen mothers on both sides of her family, and her maternal grandmother was one, but her parents expected her to not be one and she didn’t want to let them down. She couldn’t imagine juggling a baby in her senior year of high school and through college.
‘I’m probably just freaking out right now for no reason. There’s no way I’m pregnant after forgetting to take the pill just one time. No way. Absolutely not. I’m going to look at the results of this test and laugh at how paranoid I was being,’ she thought to herself one last time before it was time to check her first pregnancy test. She would have to wait a few days before she could take the second one in case she got different results.
Marisol got off the toilet and braced herself before she picked up the testing stick. In all honesty, she probably wasn’t pregnant. Just because she missed one day didn’t mean it would change anything, right? She smiled at the thought and then she finally looked at the results.
Her heart stopped when she looked at the amount of lines on the test.
There were two.
For dinner, her mother had cooked a nice oxtail soup with white rice and beans. It was one of her best dishes, and Marisol’s personal favorite from her mother.
However she did not want to eat anything right now and in fact she wanted to start throwing up again like she did earlier at school.
“Mari, you’re not eating your food. Is something the matter?” Her mother asked her in concern before sipping some of the soup from her spoon.
“No, I’m just not really hungry right now,” she answered numbly as she played around with her food. Right now, she was too scared to even look at her mother, which was a rare occurrence. Martina Lewis was one of the softest and nicest women she knew, and yet Marisol didn’t even want to speak to her after the results she got on her pregnancy test.
It read positive, but she refused to believe that she was actually pregnant because the consequences of that were horrifying. She couldn’t recall a time where her mother had ever beaten her, but she might make an exception for her sixteen year old daughter getting pregnant because she stupidly forgot to take her birth control pill one day.
“Well if you’re not hungry, then you can’t just let your food sit there. We got flies around here, Mari. Put your food in the fridge and eat it later,” her mother suggested.
“What, Little Mari has boy trouble again?” Her older brother Devon asked her in a teasing tone of voice.
“Even if I did, it wouldn’t be any of your business,” Marisol answered sharply as she got up with her food and headed to the kitchen to put in their refrigerator. She wanted to add “asshole” at the end but she couldn’t when their mother was sitting right there.
“I’m just making sure I don’t have to beat one of those floppy haired boys at your school up,” he replied with a shrug as he went back to eating his food.
“Is it because of your sickness? You really are starting to look ill,” her mother pointed out.
‘It’s because I might be pregnant,’ Marisol thought to herself but didn’t say aloud. None of her family could know about this no matter the outcome.
She had shoved her pregnancy test as deep in the bathroom trash bin as she possibly could so no one could find it. She even put some of the trash inside the bin over it so it could be completely covered.
“Yeah, I think I need to go to bed early,” Marisol agreed as she left the dining room and started walking upstairs to her bedroom.
“Well make sure you do your homework before you go to sleep!” She overheard her mother saying. Her mother and brother were probably confused as hell. If she was in their shoes, she would have been too as she had to admit her behavior looked weird.
When she got into her room, she immediately went to her bed and plopped down on it. She grabbed her stuffed teddy bear from her nightstand and hugged it tightly to give herself some comfort.
In a few days, she would be able to take her second pregnancy test and she was going to pray that the test came back negative. She needed it to come back negative because the idea of being pregnant with K.C.'s baby after the turmoil their affair caused her was already too much. Too much of her future was dependent on her not being a statistic.
‘God, if you are gracious, then you will let this second pregnancy test come back negative,’ she prayed in her mind.
A few days later
God was not gracious to her.
“Marisol, Marisol, MARISOL!” Katie shouted to her to get her attention. Marisol snapped out of her current thoughts, which were all anxious and alarming.
She had just taken a second pregnancy test an hour ago in her bathroom again, and the results tested positive just like they did with the first one. She was pregnant. She was pregnant with the seed of her affair with someone else’s baby daddy.
She was absolutely disgusted with herself right now, but she was also feeling rather light-headed. She felt like she was going to end up falling down at some point today, and considering her current circumstances it might be for the best. This was the scariest thing she had ever gone through.
“What?” She asked her BFF, and she was firmly aware that her tone was a little aggressive but she didn’t care.
“I’m trying to get your opinion on what picture of myself I should use for the campaign items, but you seem to be in a different world,” Katie answered with narrowed eyes.
Marisol debated on whether or not she was going to tell Katie, but she figured that she should be the first person to know about this. She trusted her best friend more than her family.
“Because I have just found out some troubling news,” Marisol replied with a tremble as she turned to face her friend, “Katie, I’m pregnant.”
Her best friend went through a whirlwind of emotions in a matter of seconds at the news, but the one she ultimately settled on, and the most troubling one at that, was judgment.
“Seriously?” Katie asked, and Marisol knew another tongue lashing was coming.
“Yes, and I’m getting an abortion,” Marisol answered swiftly as the decision on how to handle her pregnancy was made right then and there. She was not going through with this.
Katie pursed her lips at her answer as they both knew how she felt about abortion. She was pro-choice but didn’t personally approve of it, and she was probably never going to let her live this down.
“You really got yourself in trouble, huh?” Her best friend asked her.
“Trouble that is going to be over soon,” Marisol dismissed.
“Sometimes, you worry me a lot, Mare. I love you but it’s true,” Katie replied to her with a worrying look in her eyes.
“I’ll be fine, Katie. You won’t tell a soul about this, right?” She asked her friend. She should know at this point that Katie would never tell any of her secrets, but she was rapidly growing scared of anything these days.
“Of course I wouldn’t,” Katie promised her with a reassuring smile.
For some reason, Marisol was not reassured at her words, and as they worked on the posters for Katie, she felt a deep tension in her gut.