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We only speak to Brad en masse, now. I mean since he knocked all of us up. I mean all of us. Jenny, Suzy, Clara, Pam, Natalie, Karen, Kristin, and myself. All fucking eight of us. The entire fucking cheerleading squad.

Brad. A good looking quarterback with a football scholarship to Notre dame where he plans to study theology. Brad. With the planetary symbols tattooed up his spine. Brad. Who could kick ass at the pool table, blindfolded, like some version of Tommy, only with a cooler bar game. Brad. Who loved his mother and would call her on her birthday and quote her Shakespearean sonnets. Brad. How could we not all fall for him?

His requests for an abortion were denied. Eight times. Individually. This was before we spoke as a unit. We denied this idea because we'd done that last year, when we were sophomores, and all fell for Tony, much in the same manner. Tony. The Senior Linebacker with a National Merit Scholarship to UNC at Chapel Hill where he planned to study veterinary medicine. Tony. Etc, etc, etc. I needn't list the numerous good and attractive qualities of America's high school football players.

We'd had abortions, eight in total, as a unit, not individually. (We were only sixteen, for Christ's sake, what kind of stupid sluts do we look like?) We'd had abortions and we'd cried, and our mother's had held us. And we wrote bad poetry about it for English class, and we made bad, abstract, blood red and purple paintings about it for art class. We spoke about it emotionally and effectively in debate class, and one of us even performed a modern dance number about it for gym class. I'm not sure if it was the sympathy / pity factor, or if it was talent, or a mixture of both, but we all did very well with our grades that semester.

So when Brad asked us to have an abortion, we thought long and hard and figured that passing with an A- instead of a C wasn't worth the emotional and physical pain of another one of those icky, sticky trips to the clinic. You only needed a C average to stay on the cheerleading squad, and we all had a suspicion that Ms. Scelba, our cheerleading coach, had some sort of deal with the academic staff. I mean, we had all gotten this far in high school without learning much, well, anything, really. The cheerleading squad was about as dumb as a rock against a wall. Mrs. Scelba is a lesbian, so we didn't feel that it was appropriate to seek her advice in the matter. And our teen health teacher, Mr. Coffer, is a man, and we figured that his stance on condoms was typical of the opinions expressed on the same subject of our male colleagues. So you can see why soliciting his input as to the situation would be most problematic.

So when Brad asked us to have an abortion, we said, "No way, Brad" and "Fuck off, Brad," and "I'm going to have to get my dress for the prom altered. The prom is about 6 months from now. Do you still want to be my date, Brad?" and "Maybe we should get married, Brad." and "I hope it's twins, Brad," and "You're a lousy fucking quarterback, Brad," and "I'll name it 'Bradley Junior' regardless of whether it's a boy or a girl, Brad," and "No, Brad," respectively.

It occurred to us suddenly to be mad. And we weren't sure how. It came as a revelation in the locker room showers on afternoon.

"Suzy, you look angry."

"I'm pregnant, Jenny."

"No way, me too."

"Who then, Suzy?"

"Brad, Jenny."

"No way, me too."

I won't repeat the entire conversation, here, but you get the idea. Eventually we got tired of repeating ourselves seven times for every statement made, and figured that our voices would be much louder and more effective if we spoke, from then on, as a unit. The basic and most crucial conclusion of the conversation was that we had no idea how to go about being angry. Much like love, I guess, in that you can't have a predefined plan as to how you are supposed to behave. We didn't read feminist literature, then, and even if we had, we wouldn't have understood it.

We decided to stick with our home medium. Familiarity and skill with the process. We decided to do what we did best. We would cheer our anger. We decided to cheer to match the violence of the sport. No, no, that wasn't enough. We decided to cheer to match the violence of our last abortion. We decided to cheer to match the violence we anticipated in childbirth. In this, we thought, we would find our coveted catharsis.

Halftime, the next home game. Brad still isn't aware of the power of our combined anger, though he does wonder why we seem so much less affectionate.

"Gimme an F!" "F!" "Gimme a U!" "U!" "Gimme a C!" "C!" And the whole way through our first attempt at anger. What we now refer to as, "The 'Fuck Off, Brad' cheer." Ms. Scelba looked on with a puzzled look on her face.

We were worried at how our connection to Ms. Scelba seemed to deteriorate over the next three months, but as our bellies began to grow, our relationship grew stronger. Ms. Scelba, it seems, really knows how to be angry. She supported us with a dry cynicism that our mothers' didn't provide, and even helped us write a few cheers. Though hers were less pertinent to the situation, we cheered them anyway, a sign of our growing love for her.

The children were born healthy. An even split; four boys, four girls. We got Brad on eight statutory rape charges, and with our settlement from that, we bought a large house, close to a mansion, just outside of Fairfax, Virginia. The location was chosen on the quality of its elementary school system. We live quite comfortably on the alimony payments that come, for now, anyway, from Brad's parents, who are covering his responsibility, or lack thereof, while he finishes college. Ms. Scelba moved into a house up the road, and fills in as a babysitter on Wednesdays, while we're at yoga class.