The Scarlet OMG

There were three of them. Beautiful, fashionable, terribly, terribly young. They were splitting a whole grain bagel with light cream cheese between them and each had a varied coffee contraption. I admit that the one with thin, skin tight leather pants caught my attention because I couldn't help but wonder how uncomfortable they must have been, sticking to legs with every movement so that your skin can't move naturally because you covered it with something else's skin. Something that is used to different movements, different musculature. She only served to draw my attention to the table, though.

The one in the leather pants was otherwise unremarkable. Very pretty, to be sure, but her hair was not quite perfectly curled and not quite perfectly pulled into a messy topknot, and her natural chestnut brown had been hastily highlighted. She didn't quite fit the magazine perfection. The other two, however, were picture perfect.

The brunette, who had accepted her beautiful chocolate brown hair for the dark, exotic power it gave her, was wearing a stylish white shirt with peephole shoulders delicately tied just off the collar bone and above the elbows. Her curl seemed more intentional, though still chaotic and mussed, but her make-up was flawless.

The third, however, caught and maintained my attention until the three of them proceeded in a gaggle to the bathroom. Her hair was platinum blond, flat and straight, and cut at seemingly random jagged edges that gave her an air of a supreme fashionista while at the same time had a perceptible in your face, fuck off type of appeal. She was perfectly maintained. Her midnight blue jeans were skin tight on her six foot frame, with black boots covering them up to the top of the shins.

She was the loudest and most vocal of the three. I don't know what started their conversation, but it was one I could not stop listening to, as if I were witnessing a train wreck happening in extreme slow motion. One that will last for the next seventy years.

"But seriously, guys," she protested to an unknown stimulus, "I am like, way against abortion. So if I am I, like, totally have to keep it."

Had they noticed me, which is nearly an impossibility considering their dispositions, they would have seen my features drop with sadness at their nonchalance and youthful hubris. I got lost in my own thoughts until she replied to something that the dirty blond said, which I can only assume had to do with the potential father.

"Oh, my god, I know! He would get in, like, so much trouble. I mean, that's like statutory, right? I could totally bring him down, you know? But I wouldn't do that."

Oh no. So they are not even eighteen. She continued to talk about her cousin who was forced by her parents to get married at seventeen when she got pregnant. I got the impression she was from a different state and that the boy was in his early twenties. What shocked me next was that she was willing to talk about the man that she was sleeping with. How they met was not covered in the conversation, but it became quite clear that he was married and significantly older than her. To her, it was a game. A sordid plot for her teenage soap opera. According to her melodramatic proclamations, she would never tell her parents who he was and they would, surely, send her away to a new school to have the baby to save themselves the embarrassment of her unfortunate condition.

She went on to explain that she would be "like that girl in the Scarlet Letter" who thinks of "him" every time she sees "that kid running around." Although she was also quite clear that she would have to raise it on her own and would not let him do it.

Young mothers have been successful in the past, accepting the consequences of their actions, and I would be the last to judge anyone who made such a difficult decision, but there is something more horrible about this than I can even express. It isn't that she was so young in years, but so immature. She was talking about the married man with which she was having an affair as if he were Robbie from third period gym class. It was as if she were twelve, not the seventeen I am hoping she actually was. This was proclaimed to the world. It would not have surprised me in the least if she had said his name in the midst of all of this, at her normal volume, as if it is all well and normal to begin with.

They were giggling and joking about the whole thing as they left the table and wandered off to the back of the restaurant. I watched as the busboy cleaned their table and realized how thrashed everything looked. There were napkins all over the table and beneath it, a random tea bag staining the sealed wood table top, and a good portion of the bagel left untouched, even though the three of them had been picking at it for some time. It made me wonder what the world will look like when this generation is done.