Chapter 11

“Stacy?” I was stunned that he asked that. I hadn’t realized he didn’t know about that. “Okay, you’re serious. Stacy Hope is sort of Sammy’s girlfriend.”

I didn’t see much of any emotion on his face as he asked, “What kind of person is she? Is she nice?”

I shrugged, “From what Sammy has said about her. I wouldn’t know personally I don’t think I’ve ever met her. Although Sammy says that Stacy thinks I’m nice.”

“Do you think Sammy will be okay if I met her girlfriend? If not I’d at least like for you to meet her,” Dad asked. I had been lost in thought and didn’t hear his question so he snapped his fingers and asked, “What’s going on?”

“Sorry I have a lot on my mind. I was thinking back to when we first found out that Sammy was your daughter and my sister. How Carmen said her divorce was about to be finalized. And how they were fighting for custody over Sammy. I find it weird that I forgot about that. I mean Carmen and Nathan stayed together for a while. Why did I forget that? Sorry, that was a bit off-topic. I think Sammy would love for us to meet Stacy. It’s just that Stacy is nervous about meeting us.”

He looked carefully at me then said, “Maybe your memory was affected by that chemical spill or something else. Maybe you’re just under some stress. I mean I almost forgot about that too. I think we both lived our lives like it wasn’t happening. We should probably set up an appointment for us to get checkups. But my insurance won’t kick in for a while yet. So to afford it we’ll have to be careful about how we spend our money.”

I spent the rest of the night worrying about Carmen and Sammy that stuff I talked about to Dad wasn’t the only thing I remembered from that day. Would Nathan really leave Sammy alone after he slept with me? What I knew about him and his family ways made me wonder if sleeping with him had been the right thing to do after all. Around noon the next day Sammy and I were planning a school project when her Mom came over.

In the morning I found Sammy standing in the doorway in the living room I asked, “Who’s there Sammy?”

She moved away and I saw Carmen. She smiled at me and said, “Hi Erica. Is your Dad home?”

I scratched my head, wondering why the Principal was here, “Judging from your smile you’re not here because one of us is in trouble at school.”

“Heavens no, I’m not here as your Principal. But I do have really good news. I’d like to tell everyone at once. “ Carmen told us.

I tried to figure out what to say but every time I tried to say something I had images of me having sex with Nathan. I didn’t want that to come out. Not like this.

“Dad should be back shortly. He went to get groceries. Saturdays are his days to do that,” Sammy stated.

We invited Carmen into our home and we had fun talking until our Dad got back. The entire time we waited, I could tell that she was excited about something. She really wanted to talk about her news. Half an hour after she arrived our Dad came home. He seemed really surprised to see Carmen there.

He sat down in his favorite chair looking at Carmen for a good twenty seconds before he said, “I can tell you’re really excited. There’s no need to wait. Just tell us your news.”

At first, Carmen looked nervous then upset but as she went on she looked happier with every word, “Nathan came to see me today. Along with his lawyer. Well, my lawyer was there too. He’s changed his mind. He’s making this an easy divorce. I keep everything that I worked hard to make and earn. And he’ll leave us alone. Completely alone.”

“We?” was all that my Dad could say.

Carmen nodded her head like a really excited child then said, “He’s letting me have full custody of Sammy. He told me that he’ll talk with his family and if they want him to still fight to keep Sammy even though she isn’t his biological daughter then he’ll take the responsibility and he’ll make sure that they’ll leave us alone too.” A few deep breaths later, “I still have no idea how he found out that Sammy wasn’t his.”

“Who cares how he found out Mom. The good news is we’re free.” It was then that the doorbell rang. Sammy looked excited and ran to the door. “Stacy! You have perfect timing.”

“Thanks for inviting me over. When you called you seemed unsure about if I should come. But now you seem happy. Or was I misreading things?” Stacy asked.

Sammy moved out of the way of the door and said, “No you read things correctly. I wanted you to meet my family. Come on in.”

When Sammy moved out of the way I saw the bored girl from the Extreme Animal Husbandry program.

When she saw me she smiled and said, “Erica, it’s nice to see you again. Do you remember me? We’ve only met once or twice.”

I looked around us and because we were alone, I said, “Yeah, I remember you. You’re the girl that questioned if I was telling the truth about having lost my virginity to a dog or not.”

She still looked bored as she said, “Sorry about that. My Sam tells me you helped her get over her fear of having sex with dogs.”

We heard Carmen laughing and both hers and my Dad’s voices were now audible so I whispered, “I only helped a little bit. But please let’s not talk about that or anything to do with that program with our parents around. They know about that stuff but still.”

“If you say so,” Stacy said.

After dinner, Carmen said, “Carl and I were talking earlier and he had mentioned something about the family needing a check-up. I told him that he didn’t need to spend the money on going to the doctors. Since our school has some unorthodox experiments that the school board has the rule that we need to set up thorough examinations for the faculty, students, and their families. And the checkups are free of charge.”

“So our school is doing the checkups soon? When?” I asked.

“In two weeks,” Stacy said. We all looked at her. “What? I like to keep track of these kinds of things.”

“Won’t that be kind of late in case ... I may need some kind of ... There may be something going on with me that I need to know sooner than two weeks,” I stated.

She nodded, “There is a basic test that can be given to you to check for anything negative in your system. If it shows anything wrong then we’ll get that taken care of immediately.”

I ended up taking the test and it showed nothing was wrong with me. Two weeks later I was at a special facility. I was told that I was the last person from the school to have the test taken. That was partially because I had been running late.

While there I heard a beautiful voice, “Thank you for your help.”

“I’m sorry about what happened. Your family will help you out with your pregnancy. Miss Grant. They are wonderful and understanding people.”

“It’s not my family I’m worried about. My boyfriend will be pissed. He’ll dump me for sure. He never wanted to be a father,” the girl said. As she was saying the last words she came into view. I was shocked at who it was. And from the look on her face, she was just as shocked if not more so than I was. “Erica? I thought I was the only one from school here.

“How can you be pregnant Kevin? Was it the Genetic Manipulation Program?” I asked.

She looked all around us and led me by the arm to one of the chairs in the waiting room.

She breathed heavily and said, “It’s not because of some genetic play. I was actually...” another deep breath, “born a girl. My father had really wanted a boy. He had been so sure I was going to be a boy that he had a named picked out. And when I was born, he wasn’t going to give up on that name. I was picked on since kindergarten for being a girl with a boy’s name. When we moved here I saw my opportunity to pose as a boy that had a sex change. I even changed my voice into a more male-like voice to pull off the charade. I met a nice boy that I had feelings for. He just turned out to be gay so I couldn’t tell him. When we started to have sex I had asked him to put on protection. When I did that he questioned why. I told him I was just curious ... He liked that I had been able to go through with a sex change. It was something that he had always wanted to do. Oh, God, he’s going to kill me. How was I supposed to know that some of those chemicals canceled out the birth control pills?”