Page 133 of Rock Bottom Girl

In less than two days, Amie Jo Armburger succeeded in spreading the rumor far and wide.

So far, I’d been impregnated by a high school drop-out who worked at the Dollar Tree. Or maybe it was the sweaty eighth grader I’d seduced after school in my car.

I ignored it when someone taped diapers to my locker. I paid no attention to the crying baby doll some joker shoved into my backpack in the cafeteria.

But I started to worry when Coach Norman took me aside before our away game and told me he didn’t feel comfortable playing me without a doctor’s note about my “condition.” Vicky told him he was being a dumbass for believing a stupid rumor, but it didn’t do any good.

I sat on the bench and stewed. My senior year was supposed to be the best yet. Steffi Lynn was long gone, having graduated and moved on to—and failed out of—cosmetology school.

Yet here I was riding the bench until I was able to corroborate my non-pregnant condition to the coaching staff. All thanks to another Armburger Asshole. It couldn’t possibly get any worse.

And then my parents sat me down for dinner.

“So, snack cake,” my dad said, sounding as if he were being strangled. “Anything you want to tell us? Any news you have that won’t make us love you any less because we love you very much no matter what?”

I suddenly wished Zinnia wasn’t off enjoying her freshman year at Dartmouth. I could use a big sister right about now.

My mom, with tear-filled eyes, covered my hand with hers. “I’m happy to make you a doctor’s appointment if you want me to.”

I decided that I would die of humiliation on this spot, in my kitchen, never having lived a full life.

“Mom!” I stood up so abruptly, my chair tipped over behind me. I felt the need to stand for this proclamation. “I’m not pregnant! I swear!”

My parents sagged back into their chairs and blew out sighs of relief. “Oh, thank God. I’m too young to be a Pop-Pop,” my dad squeaked.

“I’m too young to be some poor kid’s mother,” I complained.

“Sweetie, I hate to do this,” my mom said with a wince. “But I feel like we need to have the c-o-n-d-o-m talk again. Just to put my mind at rest.”

“Mother! I understand and have practiced safe sex. I am currently single and have no plans to start having sex with random strangers.”

“Ned, do we have any bananas?”

* * *

Marley,

I decided to take Amie Jo to Homecoming instead. She’s obviously more my type. Good luck with everything.

Jake

* * *

In school the next day, I marched past my locker—today they’d covered it in cutouts of unfortunate-looking babies with unibrows and giant adult-sized noses. I yanked off the ugliest baby and steamed down the hall.

Amie Jo was goingto hell. Or at least she was damning herself to have terribly unattractive children when the time came for the gates of hell to open and allow a demon spawn to be created.

She’d cost me a game and a date with the boy I really, really liked. I’d underestimated her deviousness.

I found her,blonde and perky and evil, hanging out in a circle of minions checking their mascara in compacts and probably plotting how to destroy other classmates’ lives.

“Amie Jo.” I slapped the ugly baby picture against her shoulder. “This needs to stop.”

“Well, bless your heart. You probably shouldn’t upset yourself. It’s not good for the baby,” she said in a stage whisper. She fluttered her thick, dark eyelashes. Her foundation cracked a little under her eyes.

“I’m not pregnant, and you know it.”

“But it’s what everyone else believes that counts,” she reminded me brightly. “As far as Culpepper is concerned, you’re a pregnant whore.”