Be Careful What You Wish For

  About ten minutes passed since my alarm clock went off but I was still in bed, flipping through my phone. School started early and I still had to acclimate myself to the morning. I went through Twitter, some top news sites, mostly things to distract myself from the fact that, yes, I had to get up and spend another day in classrooms.

  But it wasn’t just news I looked at. With deft thumbs, I opened an “incognito” tab in my phone’s browser and looked over some attractive ladies. It was early and it never hurt to give myself an extra jolt of energy.

  And, as I was apt to do, I searched for pregnant women.

  It was all planned out. I started by checking the Instagram feeds of some pregnant women I thirst-followed to see if they’d updated since I checked last night. Then it was through the usual channels to see some artists, and I think it’s fair to call them artists, put up the latest drawings of pregnant women, either with wonderfully unrealistic sizes or alluring poses. Or, ideally, both.

  Eventually, there were a few firm knocks on my door. “Alex, up and at ‘em,” said Samantha, my step-mom.

  “Okay,” I said with a drowsy sigh. Quickly, I closed out of the tabs, leaving no trace in my internet history. There was never a situation where my dad or step-mom or anyone else looked at my history but there was no sense in risking it. Besides, I could never count out Lori and Tori – Samantha’s daughters and my step-sisters. Any chance to tease me, they took and I had no doubt they’d also hold their punctuality over my head once I got downstairs for school.

  In the shower, I washed up while I waited for my erection to die down. As young men do, I woke up hard and indulging my pregnancy fetish didn’t help things. But I could never get my head around masturbating in the shower. There didn’t seem to be a way to pull it off without wasting water. Besides, I had to piss so my dick needed to soften and soon.

  Downstairs, as I expected, Lori and Tori were both at the breakfast table, smirking at me. “Look who’s finally up,” Tori said.

  I rolled my eyes and filled up my cereal bowl, eating quickly. For twins, Lori and Tori didn’t look all that much alike. Lori was a brunette and Tori was a natural bright blond, for one. Lori was also about six inches taller than her sister and had the physique to match. But both were staggeringly attractive young women. Wide hips, slim waists, big breasts, and model’s faces. Lori didn’t wear as much make-up as her sister but she had a naturally penetrating glance and had a little bit of a tan from years of sports. More of a tan than Tori, for sure.

  “They’re right. Try and move fast,” Samantha said, walking through the kitchen and checking the clock on the stove. One look at Samantha and it was clear where my step-sisters got their looks from. She was tall and had short, dark red hair. Like her daughters, Samantha had a gorgeous face. As I understood it, she had her twins not long after she graduated college so she was only in her early 40s but still looked at least 10 years younger. Samantha was also incredibly curvy. Her breasts cast a shadow on her abdomen and I had to fight myself not to look whenever she bent over. The three of them had only started living with us a few years ago and sharing the house with such attractive people was constantly surreal.

  “I heard your alarm go off. Why does it take you so long to get out of bed?” my dad asked, barely looking up from his newspaper. Lori and Tori both giggled, clearly coming up with an answer for themselves and I didn’t think I liked it.

  With a few big, defiant chews, I got through the rest of my cereal and downed my glass of orange juice. “There, done, ready to go to school,” I said. “Happy?”

  “Did you pack your bag?” Samantha asked, to which I had to drop my tone.

  “One second,” I said meekly, darting back to my room as Lori and Tori laughed again.

  It had just been my dad and me for most of my life. My mom left when I was about two or three and I don’t know the details behind it. I don’t even really have memories of her, or anything I do have is really foggy and doesn’t give me any comforting or nostalgic feeling.

  From then until a couple of years ago, it was only the two of us. My dad was kind of quiet and distant, though I can’t be sure if that’s unusual for dads since he’s the only one I’ve known. But when I was in, probably, elementary school, I remember making a mental note that other kids’ fathers were more talkative and outwardly kind. But it’s not a big deal. He’s raised me by himself and I appreciate all that.

  He met Samantha at some sort of charity event. He works in finance and she’s some sort of a doctor but she doesn’t see patients. From what I can tell, Samantha does experiments and research, that sort of thing. I never pried into my dad’s work and I took the same approach to Samantha.

  Why am I telling you all this now? It beats describing the car ride from my house to school. Long story short (and boring), Lori drove, Tori sat in the passenger side, I was in the back.

  Lori and Tori and I were all in the same grade – juniors about to be seniors. It was close to the end of the school year so things were mostly quiet in our classes. Just preparing for finals and making plans for the summer.

  I made my way to my locker and saw Natasha leaning next to it, a light smile on her face. “Cutting it kind of close today,” she remarked.

  “Eh, not in any hurry to get here,” I jabbed, smiling back at her. Natasha Ramos was my best friend in the whole world. I’d known her since elementary school and we both, fortunately, kept ending up at the same schools. Even now in private school, our parents ended up putting us here without knowing about the other. She had short, light black hair that stopped just at her ears, dark brown skin, and sharp green eyes. Natasha was a little shorter than me but had a habit of talking close to my face so she always seemed bigger than she really was. “Hear back from that school in D.C. yet?”

  Natasha shook her head and shrugged. “They said it’d be a few weeks but…” She gave me a small smile. “I have some other plans for the summer even if this doesn’t pan out.”

  I didn’t know what she meant but I didn’t want to press her either. “You’ll get in. You’re smarter than most of the teachers here when it comes to math.”

  “All but one,” she said, showing me the time on her phone. “Speaking of which.”

  “Speaking of which,” I said with a nod as we both headed to the classroom on the other end of the hall. Both of us had the same first period: pre-calculus with Ms. Briggs. Natasha, being the math whiz that she was, had no problem with the class but I had a harder time picking up the finer points of calculating in the realm of infinite sequences.

  But I worked hard in the class, not only because I wanted to make it up to Natasha who helped me so much with my studying, but also because of who the teacher was. I sat down at a table with Natasha as Ms. Briggs strode in, eyes slightly downcast and looking around.

  “Um…good morning everyone,” Ms. Briggs said, running one hand through her long, fluttering blonde hair. She looked like she belonged on the hood of a car in an 80s metal video. Ms. Briggs was tall, busty, blonde, had a faint tan, and big red lips. But she always seemed distracted or embarrassed, and to me, that made her absolutely adorable. Today, her blouse was awkwardly tucked into her skirt and she kept pacing at her desk. “So, your final is only a few weeks away and…” Her voice just trailed off.

  “Ms. Briggs?” one student asked, raising her hand. “Did you grade our practice packets yet?”

  “Oh, right, those,” Ms. Briggs said in her distant, breathy voice, tapping at her teeth with her pinkie finger. “You’ll get those…soon. Today…everyone take a study day.”

  There were quiet sighs of relief around me as other students put down their textbooks and hid their phones in the pages. Ms. Briggs slumped down at her desk and pull
ed out a wild jumble of papers. I turned to Natasha and we both shrugged. “Do you want to look over my practice packet?” I asked with a chuckle.

  “Sure, beats studying for my history final,” she replied, pulling out a bunch of sheets of paper. “Here, want to look over my essay?”

  “What’s it on?” I asked, taking the stack of pages.

  “You know this part on the top where it says ‘Impact of Global Alliances on Meiji-Era Japan?’” Natasha said, tapping her finger on the title. “That means my paper’s on the impact of global alliances on-”

  “Okay, okay, I get it,” I groaned, pulling her paper away from her. “You’re lucky you picked a topic I know something about.” Natasha was smart overall, not just in mathematics, but she had a hard time organizing her thoughts properly when it came to writing papers.

  “I can’t believe I got assigned a paper for the week before finals,” Natasha grumbled, looking over a copy of my pre-calculus test prep. “That’s crazy, right?”

  “I think logarithms are crazy so we’re even. How about that?” I said before turning my attention to Natasha’s paper and began making notes. Every now and then, I would look over at Ms. Briggs sitting at her desk, grading papers with a distinctly sad look on her face. She often looked aloof or nervous but never like this. “What do you think’s going on with Ms. Briggs?” I whispered to Natasha.

  “Dunno,” Natasha whispered back, gazing up for a moment before turning back to my homework. “If I looked as good as her, I’d be pretty cheery.”

  The truth was, Natasha was already good looking. Big where it counted, slim everywhere else. She did cross country in the fall and kept in good shape but quit after the first two years because she said it was “too boring.” I didn’t blame her. The only thing keeping me from going to the gym is how dull it must be to just stand around and lift weights or run on a treadmill. I mean, that and it’s hard and I’m a wimp.

  After a little less than an hour, class ended and Natasha and I split up to go to our respective classes. Next I had English, which I shared with Tori. Our usual teacher, Mrs. Duncan, was out and a sleepy-eyed substitute with a red beard and small glasses sat at the front of the room.

  “Your teacher’s notes say you have a paper due on the last book you read in class before your finals,” he said, reading off of his laptop. “So just, y’know, pick a classmate, read over each other’s papers, and exchange notes.”

  Everyone got up and walked around, with most people trying to find their friend and switch off on papers that way. Thing was, I didn’t have any friends in the class. So I headed toward Tori, who was also walking toward me. “Want to look over this paper?” she asked, flapping a couple of stapled pages at me.

  “Sure,” I said, reaching my hand out to take it from her. Before I could hand her mine, Tori let go and darted away.

  “Yoink!” she laughed as she found another student. Confused, I turned over the paper she’d given me and everything made sense when I saw the name of the author.

  Glenna MacLake.

  No sooner had I seen her name then I heard Glenna’s signature impatient throat clearing. I looked up and saw Glenna staring back at me, arms crossed and a big frown on her face. “So? Aren’t you going to give me your report too?”

  I sighed and handed it off to her. Glenna MacLake was an extremely aggravating person. She dressed like a grandma at a PTA meeting causing trouble, with an ugly yellow sweater vest over a beige blouse and a long, dark, heavy skirt down to her ankles. She had on thick glasses and not the kind cool baristas wear. Glenna’s brown hair was absurdly curly and was held back with a little ribbon.

  If Glenna dressed like a regular high school student, that would only make her, like, 1% less annoying. She was the most conservative, straight-laced person I had ever met, student or adult. Everything had to be just so, she appeared to have a deeply-held aversion to fun, and she led a Christian student coalition that was extreme to an often shocking extent. Together, Glenna and her religious club managed to be both persistently frustrating with constant demonstrations and protests while also being painfully boring as they sucked the life out of any school event they got involved in.

  In silence, we read each other’s papers. As I expected, much of Glenna’s report on “The Great Gatsby” was on her evaluation of moral decay in modern society and how the book shows the roots of this problem in the Gilded Age.

  “What are your comments?” Glenna suddenly said in her usual, booming voice. I looked up to see her seated in a tight position, eyes right on me.

  “Well…it’s well-written,” I started off by saying. “You cite all your arguments properly, kinda, though I don’t know if Mrs. Duncan would appreciate all the Bible quotes.”

  “She’s never brought up the issue before,” Glenna said.

  I’m sure she hasn’t, I thought to myself. If I was in Mrs. Duncan’s position, I wouldn’t want to talk to Glenna any longer than I had to. “Maybe if you diversify your argument,” I said. “A lot of this is about morality. You could talk about other types of corruption that are just as relevant in ‘Gatsby,’ like abuse by the wealthy elite.”

  “Ugh, seriously? The ‘wealthy elite?’” Glenna scoffed. “You always have to make everything so political.”

  “I’m not the one talking about abortion in a ‘Great Gatsby’ paper,” I muttered under my breath.

  At lunch, Natasha and I sat outside on the steps of our school’s arts building. “Did you see the link I sent you?” Natasha asked.

  “Nuh uh,” I said with a mouth full of food. I whipped out my phone and clicked what she’d sent me without double checking. Next thing I knew, I was on a gossip news site with a picture of a celebrity in a bikini, her pregnant belly in her hands. “Jeez, Natty!” I yelped as I quickly closed out of it and pocketed my phone.

  She was laughing loudly. “I thought you’d appreciate it.”

  I smirked, blushing some. “S-sure but that doesn’t mean I want to open it up at school.” Natasha was the only person I’d ever told about my pregnancy fetish. I don’t even know what compelled me to bring it up but I asked Natasha, as part of an impromptu discussion between the two of us about dating advice, if girls would find that weird.

  After she finished laughing, she told me it was a little weird but not that bad. “Don’t bring it up on a first date,” she advised. And I still followed her advice, mainly because I had yet to go on a first date.

  Telling Natasha ended up being a good choice on my part. Having someone to tell about issues related to my affection for pregnant women relieved a lot of internal pressure and sometimes she would even send me little articles like she did that day at school, mostly because she got a kick out of it.

  “She was massive, wasn’t she?” Natasha asked with a big grin.

  I shrugged. “She wasn’t that big.”

  “Not that big?” she said with shock. “She was huge!”

  “We’re working with different criteria,” I chuckled.

  Natasha groaned and rolled her eyes. “I think you’re just greedy.”

  “Yeah, that too,” I said, finishing off my lunch and standing up. I noticed that Natasha’s lunch was already small to begin with but she’d barely eaten much of it. “Aren’t you done yet? We only have five minutes left.”

  “I’m not that hungry,” Natasha said with a shrug, packing her lunch back up. “I’d be more worried about you: going to P.E. right after eating.”

  “Somehow I’ll manage,” I said, throwing away a napkin and heading for the school gym. The main downside to not playing any sports at school was that it meant I couldn’t skip Phys. Ed.

  A pair of shorts and a plain white shirt were waiting for me in my locker as I changed and switched my shoes for regular sneakers. The coaches would always give us a hard time if we tracked dirt and grass inside. As I pulled my shirt over my head, my friend Louis Ting turned to me. We never spent any time together outside of Phys. Ed. but we got along and it was good to have someone to
talk to during class. Sometimes he could be a little tiring but he was nice overall. Plus, he was more athletic than me and staying close to him took the gym teacher’s heat off of me.