Class Novel: Chapter 13 by Carson Williford

It was Jack, Nat knew, who got her pregnant. Got her pregnant—as if she were powerless. She and Jack Cozier did it together back home in San Diego, had done it for the past three years, but never with results. She and Jack had met at Stanford, where she majored in film and media and Jack majored in business. They met junior year at a party and dated until Jack inherited his father’s business three months ago. At that point, Nat had been trying to sell the screen play she wrote for her undergraduate thesis. She pitched it to production companies and had her thesis advisor send it to a few connections, but all with no return, no luck, no pregnancy.

Jack would have to move from San Diego to Los Angeles to run his father’s business. Jack and Nat’s parents encouraged her to join him, to move on and find a job in production. Nat, however, was not ready to settle down. She thinks now that it may even have been her parents’ support of Jack that made her dislike the idea of moving in with him in LA. Not that she loved unconditionally otherwise. He had been encouraging her since her senior year to look for work outside of film. She convinced him to give her a year, one year to revise and sell the screenplay. He reluctantly agreed. After a year, though, when Jack had inherited his dad’s business and her parents were pressing her to go with him to Los Angeles, she still hadn’t made a deal and wasn’t ready to give up. She needed to make her film for her brother.

Jack was, of course, nonplussed. She thought some of this was put on to make her feel guilty. She told him that she the film and her brother meant more than their relationship and his father’s business. That was love’s end. Her parents at first refused to let her walk away from Jack and their history and his father’s business. The business, Nat thought, was the real reason her parents wanted her to stay with Jack—that, and that he would change their daughter, convince her to stop pursuing film and live like a normal person. In other words, Jack would do to Nat what her parents had tried to do to her brother: convince him that life was about settling down and making money and that dreams ought to be pursued only if they helped in this direction. That, in a way, is what killed her brother, what sent him up on the mountain where he never returned.

So she left Jack, left the past three years and her parents and after saving up ten thousand dollars to put toward production, came to Unalaska to film her screenplay herself. She did her research, gathered a crew and Susan, who she had met at Stanford, and flew out. She could not, however, leave Jack behind. No, she has his baby inside her. She can now see her stomach distended beyond, the bottom rounded and unforgiving. She’s given up on wearing tight tops and has become thankful for cold weather—opportunities to wear her baggy winter coat.

Nat talked to Susan throughout her break up with Jack. Susan had lived in Sacramento, where she worked as an editor for an app company. She told Nat about how miserable she felt working nine to five five days a week while she wanted to write for films. This made Nat even more so want to avoid entering what her classmates had called “the real world.” She had hated the term because it implied that big corporations and slaving for most daylight hours had a superior sense of reality, a dominance over the liberal arts aspirations of her liked to speak about. When Nat got the money to come to Unalaska and film, then, she made sure that Susan would be in the crew. They would film together, she thought. They would have the best of their lives, she thought.

Nat was more focused on the film than she thought she would be, though. On top of that, Susan quickly took to Cody. Because of this, Nat and Susan had not spoken personally about their lives since they arrived in Unalaska. Susan, then, thinks that Nat was sick because side effects of the drug trials.

                “Are you OK?” she has asked Nat several times. Nat always refers to the drug trials, to lingering symptoms of the past.

                The symptoms are beginning to show, though, and Nat is worried she won’t be able to keep them covered up before the film is completed. Recently, however, Nat’s worries have expanded beyond the film. She is worried that Cody will find out. When they rode in his car together on the way to the mountain, She made sure to keep her hands over her stomach. (She thought the whole time that she soon will not be able to hike up to the spot.) She kept her jacket over her bump and her hands over that. She knew he wouldn’t be able to see, but she felt compelled to hide it from him anyways. His eyes watched the rode, but she could feel his presence somehow pulling knowledge out of her, understanding her better than she was aware. She wanted to keep hidden the pregnancy from him and from the feelings she felt toward him, from the feelings she felt toward him and Susan.

When that night Cody walked Nat into the Grand Aleutian hotel, Susan was at the desk talking to Eugene. She was holding a cup of coffee, a gift that Eugene has only recently shared with Nat, who he knew much better.

                “Hey,” Eugene said, grinning.

                “Hey,” Susan said questioningly. “How was the day off?”

                “We went to the mountain,” Nat said.

                “Checking out spots to film still?” Eugene said.

                “We drove further than the planned spot. Just wanted to see what was out there, make sure we are far enough away that we don’t upset the community.”

                “Cody,” said Eugene, “You’re going to be famous.”

Cody had stayed behind Nat, tried to keep his attention on Eugene. He and Susan talked decently while on set for the film, but off set they simply avoided each other. Nat knew not the reason why.

                “Maybe. I’m getting better at my lines. Today Nat stopped me only four times.”

                “Oh—”

                “You rehearsed lines today?” Susan asked Nat. Eugene looked disappointed that she had interrupted him.

                “Well,” Nat started.

“She just wanted to see the setting in action,” Cody said. “I asked if I could recite my lines on the way up and she told me that I could only do it when I was in place.”

“Is that true?” Susan asked Nat. “He’s known to lie.” She had put her coffee on Eugene’s table and rested on her palm, hanging her fingers over the edge.

                “Susan,” Nat said, “we practiced some lines, nothing heavy. I think it was relaxing for both of us and we’ll be rejuvenated for tomorrow.”

                Susan picked up her coffee. “OK, I trust you.”

                “I should be going,” Cody said. “I’ll see you two tomorrow, 8 AM. Goodnight Eugene.”

                Cody walks out the door.

                “Is something going on between the two of you?” Susan said.

                “I need to take the garbage out,” Eugene said. Before he walked out the door he whispered to both of them, “Good luck.”

                “What?”

                “Do you and Cody have something going on?”

                “No. Susan, are you OK?” Susan hadn’t been this close to upset with her since Stanford.

                “I don’t know,” Susan said. She leaned onto Eugene’s table. “I just don’t know what to do about him.”

                “You never told me what happened between you.” Nat walked closer.

                “Uuuggggghhhhhh,” Susan said. “It’s so stupid.”

                “What?”

                “It’s just that we were together, and I started to like him more than I should have. He complimented me so much and made it seem like he wanted something serious. But then after we filmed the scene by the bay he told me that he thought we should step back because things were too serious.”

                “Really?”

                “Yeah. He said that he thought he acted too quickly and was especially attracted to me because I am knew.”
                “Shit,” Nat said.

                “That’s what he told me, at least,” Susan said. “I just feel like there’s more, like maybe there’s someone else.”

                “Shit,” Nat said.

                “Yeah, that’s why I reacted so harshly. Sorry.”

                At this point Eugene walked back and after whispering, “It went well,” poured both of them steaming cups of coffee.