He She It

twenty one: the elasticity of the female genitalia

"Don't you dare walk away from me, Eve!"

Eve glanced over her shoulder to see Grace marching towards her, parting the corridors like a heavily-pregnant, slightly more attractive Moses and giving anybody that failed to respond to her as such a death glare of biblical proportions. Eve sighed and stopped in her tracks, not because she necessarily wanted to have to explain again why she was returning to badly-fitting trousers and football for the time being, but because she valued her life enough not to ignore Grace Hammond in the ninth month of her pregnancy. The girl behind her slammed right into her back, her eyes fixed to her phone screen.

"Shit, I'm so-" she started, and then stopped as soon as she glanced up from her Facebook newsfeed (she had reached 2012 on Joe's profile, Eve noticed, and didn't know whether to tell Joe to change his privacy settings or the girl to change her standards). "Oh my God, it's you!"

Eve raised her eyebrows and leant back against the lockers, out of the way of the throng of students heading out of school. The girl did the same, and Grace joined them a moment later - grimacing slightly and breathing so heavily Eve thought for a moment she might actually be giving birth.

Her thumbs up assured Eve that no, her baby was not currently attempting to escape her womb, and so she gave Grace a smile and turned back to Joe's one and only admirer - save for his own mother.

"Yeah, it's me," she said, shrugging. "Why?"

"It's nothing," the girl said, sliding her phone back into her pocket and giving Eve what was quite possibly the world's biggest grin - dimples and all. "I'm just new here, and people have been talking about you a lot. I'm Aspen, by the way."

Eve hesitated for a moment. "I'm Adam," she said, and Grace snapped her head around at a speed that was almost non-human (and certainly not healthy). "Or Eve. I - I'm kind of figuring that out, right now."

Aspen's smile didn't falter for a second, and Eve was now more sure than ever that she could aim a thousand times higher than Joe, whose main claim to being a decent person was that he'd once helped his Grandma wash the dishes for £5. "That's cool," she said. "I hope you figure it out soon."

"So do I," Grace muttered, still bent over slightly, her hands resting on her stomach. "Christ, this hurts."

"Are you okay?" Aspen asked, drawing her eyebrows together. "Do you want the nurse, or...?"

Grace waved her off. "No, no, I'm fi - holy shit - I'm fine," she said, straightening up and shouldering her bag. "It was nice meeting you, Aspen, but me and Eve really have to get going."

"We do?"

"Yes, we do," Grace replied through gritted teeth. Eve shrugged, retrieving her own bag from the floor and muttering a goodbye. "See you, Aspen."

"You too."

As soon as they were out of school, Grace stopped to lean against a wall, still sounding very much like a girl who was about to have a baby. She took Eve's hand, her nails digging into her palm, and gave her the very same look that she'd given the doctor when he'd confirmed that she was, in fact, pregnant with her ex-boyfriend's baby - a look that conveyed just how fucked she was better than any panicked screams ever could.

"I really need to talk to you about Lilly," she said, her grip tightening. "And I will. But first, I need you to call an ambulance, because I think I'm having a baby."

***

Grace had thought right, and Eve had the nail marks all the way up her forearms and a look of utter horror on her face to prove it.