No Ordinary Love by Elaine Allen Read Free Book Online Page A

parents, or pretending that David never existed. It didn’t help at all, Catrina concluded on day ten, even as the tears streamed down her light-skinned face. She almost seemed pale against the deep red of her sheets.
    Restless, Catrina flipped onto her back to stare at the star covered ceiling. ‘Aim for the stars.’ She recalled her father saying the day he’d uncovered her remodeled room at thirteen. Catrina honestly doubted that this is what he had in mind for her at sixteen.
    Half of the room was painted sky blue with soft fluffy white clouds. The other half the room was painted midnight blue with silver stars creeping up to the ceiling to shine over her bed. There was a poster-sized black and white photo of Catrina blowing a kiss over her bare shoulder at her onlookers above the bed’s headboard. Above the picture silver painted letters arched to spell her name.
    Most of her things were color coded, separated and organized by type. There was nothing out of place. She was meticulously organized. Pictures of her family and friends decorated her desk and bookcase. Party favors she created for events that she’d planned were also out on display. Jewelry boxes were open to show off her prized collection of diamond earrings and bracelets.
    Catrina caught a glimpse of herself in the full length mirror mounted on her bedroom door and sighed. The two braids she’d put in her hair had begun to fray. Her eyes burned with redness. The full lips that were usually glossy from thick layers of lip gloss were dry. Catrina licked them and felt the quick burn from the small cracks in them.
    Hurt, she thought back to the way the on-call obstetrician had treated her, as if she were just another statistic. Some urban youth who got herself knocked up, one who’d been destined for nothing. It was in the way she spoke to her, the way she turned her nose up in the air.
    Though the thought made her uncomfortable, Catrina figured she had no way of knowing that she was a straight “A” student, or that she was one of the top students in the city. No, she had no way of knowing any of that, because all she knew was that a sixteen-year-old girl had shown up, losing a baby. How many times in this day and age did that happen?
    The reason, her family doctor informed her and her parents days later had been that during the cross-over of genes important information had been lost and without this information the pregnancy was doomed from the start. The baby had continued to grow until the needed information had come up missing, and at that moment, the baby inside her died without it.
    “You don’t know how I feel,” Catrina moaned at Casey’s insistence that everything would be okay.
    How did she know? Catrina wondered. She’d never lost a baby, a boyfriend, and two years of her life in the span of a week.
    After having read the do’s and don’ts of helping a loved one cope with miscarriage, Casey was pretty sure that saying, “No, I don’t, but I’m sure that everything will work out in the long run—” was okay.
    Catrina sucked her teeth. This moment in time was what she was currently concerned about. “Please don’t start that bullshit.”
    “Trina,” Casey gently pressed. “You can’t lay in the bed for the rest of your life.”
    Sighing heavily, Catrina pulled the covers up over her head. “Ahhhaaaaaaaa,” she yawned and stretched in a way that she hadn’t stretched in days. “I know.”
    Casey smiled a bit when her friend uncovered her head. “Aunt Tima suggested that I get you out of the house for a few hours.” Casey spoke of Catrina’s mother suggestion. “She actually said, ‘Peppa you and Spin take Salt out for a while to get her mind off things.’, ” She added doing an impression of Catima.
    “She would tell you that,” she laughed pitifully. To those who knew them they were affectionately called; Salt and Peppa after the all female rap group since they’d performed the group’s classic track Push It in