Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 69612 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69612 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 348(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
“Hi,” I say, eating the yogurt that is going to make Serenity lose her shit later if I don’t go out to replace it.
“You can go back to school today,” John says. “You don’t need to hide out in the house anymore.”
“Oh?”
“That teacher fuck was waiting outside your apartment,” he says. “We beat the brakes off him. Nobody fucks with my family.”
I am seeing a whole new side of this man.
“You beat him up? He’s famous.”
“Yeah, famous people got ribs and balls too. And if he comes near you again, I’ll cut the latter off. So you can go to school, or go back to your apartment, or do whatever the fuck you want. He’s not going to bother you anymore.”
“What did you do to him?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he says. “Just know he’s not going to fuck with you.”
I am skeptical. I feel as though there’s nothing anybody could do to Sam to make him afraid. Sam doesn’t seem to have a sense of fear as far as I can tell. But I also know that John showing up probably means that Sam knows I’m here now.
“How bad did you beat him up? Did you kill him?”
“Nah. He’s too famous to kill. But we ran him off. Don’t worry.”
I do worry, but I appreciate the effort. “Thank you,” I say. “That was really nice of you.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he says. “Go get back to living, okay?”
I go back to bed. That’s living.
A couple more days pass. I don’t go to class or work. I just don’t feel like it. I like being back home. Reminds me of when I was small and safe. I can’t be touched here. I know that, because Sam hasn’t come in through the window in the middle of the night like he did when I was in my apartment.
I hang out with my sisters, help Mom with the kids, and just generally let the notion of making something of myself slide away. I feel a bit seedy most days too, though I put that down to the fact my whole life has fallen apart.
“Get up,” Serenity says, sitting heavily down on my bed one afternoon. She’s looking at me very expectantly, and she’s carrying a brown paper bag in her hand.
“What do you want?”
“You haven’t gotten your period,” she tells me.
I lie there still for a second, processing that statement, and trying to work out how invasive it is.
“How do you know that?”
“Because you always cry the days before it and then you go to bed with a hot water bottle, and you were crying at cute animal reels the other day, but you haven’t started hitting the Advil. You’re late.”
Serenity surprises me. I thought she was too busy guarding her closet against Eva to notice a detail like me not being on my period.
“I got you this,” she says. She hands me the paper bag.
I open it, and there’s a pregnancy test inside.
“No,” I say. “I can’t be.”
But I know I can be. I haven’t been thinking about it, because thinking about it is fucking terrifying on so many different levels.
“Go take it,” she says. “I won’t tell Mom.”
Sometimes she seems so grown up. Other times she talks like we can still be in trouble with Mom. I’m twenty years old. She’s eighteen. We’re both adults who are technically allowed to be pregnant if we want to be.
Do I want to be?
“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe I should wait a few more days. It might be too early to test right now.”
“When was your last period?”
She’s not going to give up on this. She’s going to badger me and talk about it, and by the time she’s done I know I’m going to have suffered way more than I would have if I’d just gone ahead and done as she demanded in the first place.
I go to the bathroom, open the test, and desecrate it according to the instructions. One line is not pregnant. Two lines is pregnant. I put the little cap on and I know that I can’t look for three minutes.
I glance at one minute.
There are two lines.
There are two. Fucking. Lines. And they only get darker. And darker. Okay. Maybe this one’s broken. Maybe it’s a false positive. It’s probably a false positive.
There’s another test in the box.
I take it again. I don’t know how much pee I’ve got on tap, but it’s enough for a second go.
It’s positive again, somehow even faster than last time.
I come out of the bathroom, and walk straight into my hyper curious sister, who takes one look at me and gasps with excitement, grabbing me by the hand and dragging me back into her room.
“Oh, my god!” Serenity squeals. “I’m going to be an aunt!”
“Shut up!” I say. “Mom will hear you.”