he forced her to have sex with him. He liked to
ride bareback , as he called it. It was only a matter of time
before she got knocked up.
She doesn’t want to be a mother at her age, let alone
the mother of an incest baby. As soon as she discovered she
was pregnant, she decided to get an abortion. Unfortunately,
since she isn’t yet eighteen, the state-law says that she needs
to get her mother’s permission. But she didn’t want to tell
her mother about this. She didn’t even dare tell her brother.
Telling her mother about the pregnancy was the
worst thing she ever could have done. Stephanie’s mom is
a devout evangelical Christian and is completely opposed to
abortion.
Her mother said, this child doesn’t belong to you, it
belongs to God. If you have an abortion you aren’t just mur-
dering your child, you are murdering God’s child.
Not only is her mother forcing her to have the child,
she is forcing her to raise the child with her brother as moth-
er and father. It’s your responsibility , her mother says. And
she told Stephanie that if she does anything to stop this baby
from being born that she would cut the uterus out of her so
that she could never have another child ever again.
God’s retribution , her mother calls it.
Stephanie’s brother smiled when he found out that
he had impregnated his sister. He seemed to like the idea
of having that kind of control over her. He had no plans to
actually help raise the kid, but he thought it was funny that
his sister was going to be forced to have his baby.
You deserve it, he told her.
Her mother didn’t care when she found out that
Stephanie’s brother was forcing her to have sex with him.
She looked at Stephanie as if she didn’t even hear what she
had said. It didn’t even seem to bother her. All that mat-
ters to Stephanie’s mother is that the baby is born and not
aborted. She will do everything in her power to make sure
this comes true.
Stephanie caresses the barrel of the gun. She loves
thinking about how her mother will react when she finds
out that Stephanie has killed herself. There’s nothing her
mother can do to her then. Her mother will lose. Stephanie
will win.
If only she had the guts to do it . . .
CHAPTER FOUR
JASON
Jason awakes to a loud bang. He lifts his head from
his pillow and listens carefully, wondering where the noise
came from. Everything is silent. He decides it was just
something he heard in his dream and lays his head back
down. He looks over at Crystal. She is dead asleep. She is
lying on her side, near the edge of the bed, as far away from
Jason as possible. She says she can’t sleep if she can feel his
body heat near her, so she always sleeps as far away from
him as possible.
A hangover is already growing inside of Jason’s head.
He needs some aspirin and some water. He’s not willing to
leave the bed to get them. Memories flow into his mind and
he smacks his forehead. He remembers the way he treated
Stephanie when she was playing the Theremin. It’s not that
he feels bad for treating Stephanie in such a cruel manner,
it’s that he is worried that his friends will like him less for
doing it. He could care less about Stephanie. He thinks she
doesn’t belong in their circle of friends and should be cast
out. If he made her feel like she doesn’t belong then that’s
great news for him. But if he ostracized himself in doing that
then he’s going to have to save his reputation somehow.
The Theremin made him a little emotional. It re-
minded him of how he lost his brother, all those years ago.
Then that made him think about how he lost his mother in
the car crash and how he lost his grandfather last year. Most
of all, it made him realize that he’s going to be all alone
soon. His dad was recently diagnosed with Leukemia. He
isn’t sure how long he has to live, but the doctor says up
to three years. Jason doesn’t want to join the military
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