a conversation in the hall

I overheard Jamie in the hallway, she was freaking out and I wasn’t supposed to be
there but I was, so anyway Jamie was talking and talking and crying a little bit and
she was with Josh for the most part but he had this faraway look in his eyes; that
dreamer boy kind of look in his eyes and he wasn’t really looking at her until she
slapped him, she slapped him so damn hard that I swear he had a handprint, her
handprint branded on his face for a whole week (and you know in high school a week is
almost as long as a month which just as well may be a quarter, semester, or a whole
year, everybody talked about it for a year anyway.) Josh wasn’t looking at her because
he didn’t want to hear her. Because Jamie was sobbing and telling Josh that she was
pregnant with his baby and that she wanted to keep it. And I was supposed to be in class,
everybody was supposed to be in class, but I had to use the bathroom and I heard
everything and for the rest of my four years at that school I never told a soul what I
heard or saw in that hallway because it wasn’t none of my business. And nine months
later Jamie had a baby and Josh shot himself in the head because the baby wasn’t his,
and everyone told everyone that was why, and so everybody believed that and so everybody
was talking about it too, and he’d wasted his life on this baby. At least that’s what
everyone said, because he gave up full-ride, D1 college offers to play football at
Alabama for that baby.