“You really should have asked Mom to come with you.”

I shot my sister a death glare. “I swear, Jenna, if you breathe a word of this to her—”

“I won’t, I won’t,” she interrupted quickly. “But you should. Soon. Like, before your next doctor’s appointment.” Jenna shuddered and made a face.

“Oh, stop it, it’s not like you’re getting on the table.”

“Still. Doctor’s offices give me the creeps.”

“All you have to do is sit there.”

“And listen to them tell you just how soon your life is gonna be over.”

“Gee, thanks. Your support means the world to me.” I crossed my arms and slouched low in the passenger seat, glowering out the window.

Jenna sighed. “Look, I’m sorry. I just don’t understand how you could be so irresponsible. Why the hell didn’t you use a condom?”

“We did! Clearly, they’re not always guaranteed to be effective.”

“They’re pretty reliable when used properly…”

“Can you stop? It’s not like any of this is going to change what happened.”

Jenna rolled her eyes and turned into the parking lot.

“How are you even judging me right now?” I wailed. “You don’t even have to worry about stuff like this!”

“If—God forbid—I was ever alone on an island with only men to sleep with, I would still have the good sense to use protection—and use it properly.”

“The only protection you need is the look on your face when you see a naked man.”

Jenna wrinkled her nose in disgust, displaying the exact look I was talking about.

“Ugh. Let’s get this over with.”

I checked in with the receptionist and sat down beside Jenna to wait. She sat primly in the chair, reading an outdated magazine with an air of utterly detached boredom. Disinterest was her shield against mortal dangers, and doctors and sticky substances were at the top of her list. When the nurse stepped out and called my name, I saw the hairs stand up across Jenna’s arms and I stifled a laugh.

“Shut up,” she muttered out the side of her mouth as we followed the nurse back. “I will leave you here.”

I straightened my face because there was a solid chance that she actually would—at least temporarily—and I really needed her there for moral support, no matter what form it took.

After the weigh-in and vitals, I found myself sitting bare-assed on a cold table, waiting for my doctor. Jenna perched on a chair, reading a different magazine. I watched her read the same page three times.

“You know, the words aren’t going to change, no matter how many times you read them,” I told her.

“Yeah, I have no idea what I just read.” She sighed and set the magazine in her lap, leaning her head back against the wall. “I don’t know why I’m so nervous; it’s not my uterus.”

“Exactly. So calm down. If I have to comfort you through this whole ordeal it kind of defeats the purpose of bringing moral support with me.”

“Is that what I’m supposed to be?”

“Well, I was hoping.”

“Moral support it is, then,” she sighed as she got up out of the chair.

The doctor came in at the same moment.

“Shelley! So nice to see you again. I hear you’re pregnant! Congratulations, or condolences—take one or both; I’m feeling generous,” she said warmly, her eyes widening as she spotted my sister standing behind me.

“Jenna! This is a surprise. I hope you’ll be making an appointment for your very, very late annual while you’re here. Unless you’ve found a different doctor?”

Jenna went pale and offered a grim smile. “Am I overdue?” she asked weakly.

“Extremely. You must need birth control by now, at the very least.”

“I’m covered.”

“Over the counter?”

“Lesbianism.”

“Oh, that’s right. I’m sorry; I can be forgetful. Anyway, sorry, Shelley, I’ll let you badger your sister into attending to her lady health some other time. For now, let’s take a look at that baby!”

Doctor Snow booted up her machine as I lay flat on the bed. The gel was almost too hot, and I’d braced for it to be cold, which didn’t help my general baseline of uncomfortable confusion. She hummed little thinking noises while she moved the wand around on my belly and clicked things on the screen.

“Hm…mhm…ah!”

“What is it—what’s wrong?” Jenna asked quickly.

“That, my dear, is entirely a matter of perspective. There might not be anything wrong at all; it could be a dream come true.”

“What did you say ‘ah’ about?” I asked, beginning to lose patience with both Jenna’s neurotic anxiety and Dr. Snow’s rambling communication.

“Here, let me show you. This is your uterus here. It’s just the slightest bit heart-shaped, see? And here’s your cervix, which looks nice and healthy from here. And over here…you see that little flutter? That’s your baby’s heartbeat. But, surprise! Move over this way, and there’s another heartbeat!”

“You have a mirror in your uterus?” Jenna asked shakily.

Dr. Snow shot her an annoyed look. “No, dear. Shelley’s having twins! They both look nice and healthy so far. You’re about six or seven weeks along, I’d say.”

No surprise there…

“How big are they right now?” I asked.

“Oh, about…this big. Just barely smaller than a blueberry, and they’re shaped like shrimp. Ooh, I still have that leftover scampi in the fridge—what time is it? Oh, good, lunchtime. As soon as I’ve answered all of your questions of course; I’m not going to shove you out of here in favor of scampi—” An audible growl from her stomach interrupted her, and she looked at me apologetically. “Do you have any questions?”

I had nothing but questions. Two little shrimp-shaped blueberries were about to change my whole life. “Um, when will they be born?”

“Good question! Let me pull my little calculator up on here, and…six weeks, first pregnancy, twins, October fourteenth would make it August twenty-third…variables in, push the button…right! Your little nuggets are due on May sixteenth, but I don’t expect them to hang out in there past April eighteenth.”

“Why?” I asked anxiously.

“Twins tend to come early because of the extra strain they put on your body. And it’s not really early early; most kids are ready to go at thirty-six weeks and use the extra four weeks to fatten up and lose their fur—”

“Fur?”

“Not really fur fur, just peach fuzz to protect them from the amniotic fluid. It can get a little acidic—”

“They’re going to be floating in acid?!”

The doctor’s stomach growled again and she winced.

“Tell you what. I’ll give you a present.” She wheeled her chair across the floor and bounced out of it to open a cupboard, then took two books from the top shelf and handed them to me.

“What to Expect When You’re Expecting Twins, and Gestation in Humans. The first one’s written for moms and the second is written for doctors, but you’re smart and curious. I’m sure you’ll be able to get through it. Read up, enjoy, and whatever questions come to you while you’re reading, write them down, and we’ll have a nice long talk next time. Sound good?”

“Yes,” I said gratefully as I took the books from her. “Thank you, Dr. Snow.”

“You are most welcome. Now, I really need to get to that scampi before I collapse. I swear, my metabolism is convinced that I spend all my time running!” She hurried out of the room, waving merrily at us as she went.

“Running her mouth, maybe,” Jenna grumbled.

“You’re just annoyed because you hate doctors,” I said absently as I skimmed the back covers of the books. “I can’t believe she gave me homework.”

“You seemed happy about it,” Jenna pointed out.

“Oh, I am! I need these. I’m just surprised she had them on hand to give out.”

The massive dump of information was slowly being sorted by my brain, kept apart from my emotions by a bubble of nameless anxiety. It was only after we were back in the car and on the road that the full weight of it all hit me.

“I’m having twins.”

“Yep.”

“That’s two babies, Jenna! How am I going to finish school with two babies? How am I going to work or live or anything? Remember that kitten I had? I couldn’t even keep my room clean with just a kitten to mess it up! Cats are clean creatures—way cleaner than babies—how am I going to keep a place sanitary with two babies and no sleep? I have to call Miles; he needs to know that it’s twins. He’ll change his mind—”

“Drop the phone. Drop it. Now, Shelley!”

I slammed the phone into my lap. I took a few deep breaths to calm down.

“You’re right,” I said. “I can’t call him. I’ll just get Nate again. I have to go out there. I’ll loiter around the office until he’s done for the day, then I’ll casually, accidentally-on-purpose run into him and say, hey! Thought you might like to know that the baby I told you about is actually two babies, and see if he can still brush me off in person! Ha! I wonder if he even really knows about it. I never actually talked to him, just Nate, and then he emailed me. But it’s just email; it’s not like nobody can type ‘sincerely, Miles Lane’ except—”

“Shelley! Good lord, you’re as bad as Dr. Snow,” Jenna interjected. “Look, squirt, I feel your pain. I do. This whole thing sucks and it’s terrible and he’s terrible for not being around to see you through it. But look at it logically. Would he be sending you thousands of dollars a month if he had any interest at all in being involved?”

“Maybe it was an impulsive decision,” I argued weakly. “Like, maybe he panicked and did the only thing he could think of in the heat of the moment?”

“Even for a millionaire, that’s too much money to commit to on a whim. He’s not interested, honey. You’re not going to be able to force him to be a father to his kids or a partner to you. I hate to say it, but that’s just the way it is.”

Anxiety and despair clutched at my chest, battling for dominance but only managing to get swallowed by each other.

“Jenna, what am I going to do?” I whispered. “Five thousand a month might be enough to keep a roof over our heads, but it isn’t going to help me maintain that roof. Or sneak in a nap. Or make sure I’m getting enough to eat. Damn it, Jenna, parenting is a two-person deal for a reason!”

My sister didn’t say anything. I didn’t expect her to.

I pressed my forehead against the cool window and allowed the full burden of the situation to fall squarely on my shoulders. I was going to be a single mother. A young single mother with no degree, living on hush money. It was too much.

“Gotta say, I never thought that you would be the one to live the soap opera life,” Jenna chuckled.

“I know, right? I keep expecting Evil Miles to pop up and say that he’s really the father, and then Good Miles to show up and defeat him in a sword fight, only to succumb to a brain aneurysm.”

“But the aneurysm doesn’t actually kill him, it just puts him in a really long coma while his evil business partner resurrects his twin,” Jenna added enthusiastically.

“And then their mother shows up to declare that neither of them is the real Miles, they’re both evil clones!”

Laughter felt good. Hanging out with Jenna felt good, too. For all the time I’d spent trying to get away from home and Mom and Jenna, they felt like anchors right now. I needed an anchor, or three.

Reluctantly resigning myself to single parenthood, I invited Jenna up to my apartment.

“What are you going to do about your degree?” Jenna asked.

I paused. “Well…I have until April, right? If I double up on a couple of classes, I’m sure I can get enough credits to graduate by then.”

“Right. You’re going to double up on classes when you’ve missed the last entire week because you can’t stop puking and sleeping long enough to go. Have you even been going to work?”

“Sort of,” I mumbled. “I clock in and everything, but I spend most of my shift with my head in the toilet. It’s not pretty.”

“Exactly. This isn’t going to be easy, Shelley.”

“Well, hell, I didn’t expect it to be easy, but I didn’t think it would be this damn hard!”

I burst into tears with no warning, another delightful little quirk of this whole pregnancy thing. I felt like my heart was breaking all over again.

“I have to make a phone call,” I said between sobs. “Stay, have a drink. Have all the drinks. I can’t touch booze for like a million years.”

Jenna gave me a worried look but took me up on the offer, pouring herself a generous glass of my favorite red wine.

“You better not be calling Miles,” she said, giving me that over-the-glasses serious squint which made her look just like our mother.

“Nope,” I sighed, wiping my eyes as I began to dial. “But this call could be just as bad. Hi, Mom?”

Jenna’s eyes widened.

“Shelley!” My mom sounded concerned. “How are you, is everything okay? Do you need money?”

Why is everybody trying to fix my life with money?

“No, I’m fine on money. Um…but there’s something I need to tell you, and a really big question I need to ask you, and I just…are you sitting down? Please sit down.”

“Oh, no. All right, I’m sitting. What’s going on, Shell? You sound like you’re crying. Are you crying?”

Her question just made me cry harder. I took a deep breath to calm my voice. It almost worked.

“I, um…I made a mistake. A little, tiny, huge, massive, ridiculous mistake. I messed everything up.”

“What happened, Shelley? Whatever it is, we can fix it.”

I sobbed and sniffled, mopping my face with a tissue.

“I’m pregnant,” I confessed in a sigh. “With twins, and the father wants nothing to do with us. I’m so sick—I didn’t know people got this sick—and there’s no way I can get my degree before the babies come, and the bar isn’t good for me with all the smoke and the unpredictable drunk guys, and I spend my whole shift throwing up anyway… Mom, can I come home?”

I sounded like a little kid to myself, calling home from summer camp. Might as well have been summer camp, for as long as I’d managed to make it on my own. I rolled my eyes at myself, disgusted with my own failure.

“You? You’re pregnant?” Mom sounded shocked and hesitant, as if she were waiting for me to say April Fool’s.

“Yes, me,” I said more forcefully than I had intended to. “Pregnant and unmarried and unloved and scared and I don’t know what to do and…I give up.”

She chuckled sympathetically, which made me feel better.

“All right, honey. You’re allowed to give up, and you can come give up at home. I’ll get your room ready. When do you want to come down?”

“I don’t know,” I sniffled. “A month? No, six weeks. I have to give a month’s notice on the apartment and I don’t want to pay for time I’m not going to use. That’ll give me time to wrap everything up here and get down there before I turn into a whole planet.”

“Planning always did make you feel better. Planning and reading. Do as much of that kind of thing as you can, okay? Trust me, it’ll help. I remember being your age, pregnant with Jenna…I completely forgot to do anything that made me feel calm and happy. I spent all my time feeling. Feelings are great and all, but they aren’t very good for your sanity. Protect your sanity, sweetheart, you’re going to need it. Twins! How exciting!”

“You’re thinking about buying matching sets of cutesy baby things, aren’t you?”

“What are grandmas for? Oh, grandma! God, that sounds terrible. We’ll come up with something else. I am entirely too young and spritely to be called that.”

“You just used ‘spritely’ in a sentence. I’m pretty sure that means you’re older than dirt.”

“A broad vocabulary never aged anybody,” she sniffed. “Now, go call your sister and have a good cry. I have preparations to make. Love you, sweetheart.”

“Love you too, and I’m two steps ahead of you. I’ll see you the first of December.”

“Can’t wait. See you soon, sweetheart.”

I wiped my face again as I hung up the phone. The tears seemed to have a mind of their own, flowing as they pleased with no consideration for the actual intensity of my feelings.

“Well,” Jenna said, raising her brows in surprise. “That went better than expected.”

“Yeah, it did,” I replied, smiling through my tears. “It really did.”