#thinking about 15-year-old Tara getting attacked by a psycho in a Ghostface mask. Calling out mom when Sam stumbles upon the scene

[krikeymate]

I'm thinking about a bigger age gap.

Sam's 10 years old and spoilt rotten when her mother discovers she's pregnant. She doesn't realise for the longest time, never really shows much signs until the end, and by the time she does, it's too late. She doesn't know who the father is, it could be her husband, it could be... well, there were others. The baby's small, comes out early, and who's to say when she was conceived. She has her mother's complexion, her dark hair and dark eyes, and Christina gets to keep on lying.

Sam's not sure about the baby at first, everyone made it sound like things would change so much once it got here. But things don't really change at all. Her mother still always has time for her, and she isn't kept awake all night from screaming. Her parents are a little more tense, but it doesn't seem to change anything for Sam at all.

One night, Sam can't sleep. She's awake thinking of all they learned in class. About pregnancies, and babies, and all their needs and how to look after them. She can't stop thinking about it, there's just this voice in the back of her head nagging her, telling her there was something wrong, but she can't quite figure it out. It feels important.

Her feet find her way to the baby's room.

It's cold, the window's open, the room lit up from a nearby streetlamp. The tiny thing is awake with its hand in her mouth, big brown eyes staring up at her. Sam finds she can't look at them for long, it makes something in her chest ache. She doesn't know why.

She reaches out to touch the baby instead, she's icy cold. Sam thinks of what they learned in class, how much babies cry to tell us what they need, how often they need to eat, how they can't regulate their body temperature. She drags her fingers down its chest and thinks of how quiet it always is, how it never cries. How little her parents seem to feed her compared to how much her teacher said they should.

The thing whimpers when she draws her hand away, and in an instant, her hand is back on its chest, fingers spread against the bare skin, the cold suffocating out her warmth. She doesn't know what possesses her to do it, but she picks the baby up, careful to support her head the way they taught her in class. It's so small and light in her arms, she almost feels like a doll.

She watches the way it suckles on its own fingers and wonders when she was last fed. Mother fed her at breakfast, and again at dinner. She wonders if there was anything in between, there's a heaviness in her stomach as her brain goes no. She doesn't know what mother does when she's at school, but something inside of her is certain she knows what the answer isn't.

So Sam carefully creeps down the stairs, baby in her arms, determined to feed it. She's watched her mother make the formula before, curious, she thinks she can manage it. She puts the baby on the armchair, and takes the blanket from the back of the couch to wrap around her, making a nest so the baby can't fall. It whines again when Sam puts her down, but Sam hushes her softly and tells her she'll be right back. The baby can't understand, but it felt right to say.

She makes up a bottle, and checks the temperature, and returns to the armchair. She picks the baby up and settles herself down and tugs the blanket over her lap. The baby drinks the bottle so fast that Sam's worried it might choke, the way she does when she chugs down her own drinks. But the baby finishes the bottle and it feels like there's a balloon in her chest when it yawns and nuzzles against her chest, tiny hand tangling in her t-shirt.

Maybe the baby isn't so bad, she thinks, curling herself into the seat. She doesn't want to take the baby back upstairs to her cold lonely room. No, she can sleep right here in her arms, safe and warm. It feels right. She'll tell her mother in the morning about what they learned in class, remind her the baby needs to be fed more and that she's too cold. Maybe she just doesn't know. She ignores the voice in her head that says she knows.