Priceless Inspirations by Antonia Carter Read Free Book Online Page A

telling me about the consequences.
    “Guys change after sex,” they said. “As soon as he gets what he wants he’s gonna move on to the next girl.”
    I was happy to be with Dream, but I was also worried and afraid about our future. Would what my aunts said be true for me, too? Would Dream lose interest in me now that he’d “had me”? Would he stop calling me, stop talking to me, and not want to see me? Would it start right away? Would it start tomorrow morning when he woke up?
    To my relief, it didn’t happen the next morning. He was the same sweet guy. He was also the same sweet guy the next day and the next day and the next. Several weeks rolled by and there wasn’t any difference in how he treated me. My aunties’ warnings faded to the back my mind. Dream was making me believe that what they’d said wasn’t true, or at least it wouldn’t be for me.
    In the end, though, he did change. He changed because his career took off and he was hot. He was traveling and doing things, meeting all kinds of women, more women who would do anything to say they were with him. He changed because fame changes you, and he changed because I changed.
    I changed in a way that I never expected.
    I missed my period, and a few weeks later, after a pregnancy test at a local clinic, I knew I was pregnant.
    It was 1998, and I was 14.
    The Mistake I Made That You Shouldn’t
     
    I won’t make a big speech about waiting to have sex. Everyone tells girls to wait, and most of us don’t. It’s hard to wait when everyone else is having sex, especially if you’re with a boy you like.
    I wish I had waited, and I hope my daughter will. The bigger mistake I made was not using protection. After a certain point, I knew I was going to have sex. I’d even started talking about it. I told my cousin, Akeeli, and she was really helpful.
    “Let me know when you’re ready and I’ll take you to the clinic for birth control pills.”
    She did take me just like she promised, but it was after Dream and I had had sex, not before.
    I didn’t tell her that. She didn’t know we’d already done it when I asked if she would go with me to get birth control. We went down to the clinic and the doctor did an exam before writing the prescription. They had already given me a supply of pills and we were just about ready to go when the doctor asked,
    “Have we given her a pregnancy test?”
    I guess the doctor knew from the exam that I probably wasn’t a virgin like I’d been saying. Still, I wasn’t worried. Dream and I had only had sex once. I just didn’t think I could possibly be pregnant after only one time. I was wrong.
    When the test came back positive, Akeeli sat down and started to cry.
    “You lied to me!” she kept saying over and over. “You lied to me!”
    The nurse snatched the birth control pills out of my hands. The look on her face was like “You won’t be needing these, you nasty little girl.”
    I don’t think I’ve ever felt so low in my life.
    Akeeli just kept crying. She’d been trying to help me, and I hadn’t been honest with her. Now, I’d made her, and myself, look like a fool. It felt like everyone in the clinic was staring at us and judging us. It was awful.
    Somehow, I persuaded Akeeli not to tell, while I figured out what to say to my family. That lasted about a day, and then she told her sister. Her sister told their mother, my aunt. My aunt told my other aunts, and one of them told my grandmother. Within days it had gone all around the family. Everyone knew, and things were really messed up.
    The only good part came when I told Dream. He seemed really happy. He started talking about marriage, about being a family, and about him and me having a real life together. His mom promised to help me, too. She even seemed excited by the idea of being a grandmother. I thought, and I hoped, everything might be okay.
    It wasn’t.
    When my aunts found out I was pregnant, they were disgusted with me. I heard them talking about me,