KATE
I look down at the four little white sticks in my hands, not believing what I’m seeing. I can’t be pregnant, but according to the instructions included in the box, two pink lines mean just that.
My body begins to shake and I can feel myself working into a full-on panic attack with tears streaming silently down my cheeks. I squeeze my eyes closed, willing this nightmare to go away, but it doesn’t.
“What does it say?” my friend Jazzy asks, but my mouth struggles to formulate a response. I’m in shock and it’s almost as if I’m frozen firmly in place yet still sobbing uncontrollably at the same time. She cracks the door open and peeks in before entering completely. Her arms wrap around me in a big hug.
Jazzy just holds me while I continue to cry. She tries her best to soothe me with phrases like ‘It’s going to be okay’ and ‘Don’t worry, we’ll figure this out’, but her words do little to help.
“It was my first time.” I grab a piece of tissue and blow my nose. “It wasn’t even enjoyable. It was painful and awkward and in the backseat of a car.” I toss the crinkled tissue into the wastebasket.
Jazzy sighs loudly and I know it’s because she’s unsure of what to say. I don’t blame her though because in our tiny, nothing-ever-happens town, things like pregnant teenagers just don’t happen.
It just had to be me, didn’t it? The preacher’s daughter. I’m a walking, talking cliché.
I know without a shadow of a doubt if my parents find out I’m pregnant, they’ll insist on me keeping the baby. I would probably be forced into marrying the father when I’m old enough too, because that’s the kind of parents they are.
I’m only sixteen. All I want to worry about is picking out a dress for prom and turning my college applications in on time. Getting fat and popping out an infant was never supposed to be part of that plan.
I slide down the wall and bury my head in my lap, trying my best to take deep breaths to calm my spike of raging nerves. I can’t do this; I’m not ready to take this big of a step.
I feel like such an idiot.
What am I going to do?
“Thank God your parents will be out of town for a while.” I look up into my best friend’s eyes as they gleam mischievously. “This calls for loads and loads of rocky road.”
I don’t protest. Drowning my sorrows in ice cream isn’t going to help in the grand scheme of things, but momentarily it’ll at least take my mind off the predicament that I’ve gotten myself into.
~*~
“Do you want to keep the baby?” Jazzy asks and I stare at my fingers in my lap, mulling over her question. Would I be a terrible person if I said I didn’t want it? There’s so much I have yet to do in my life; having a baby just seems wrong. My life won’t be my own anymore. My needs and wants would always take a backseat to my child.
It sounds awful.
“No.” I whisper quietly but I know she heard. She doesn’t say anything, just spoons another scoop of ice cream into her mouth. I can feel her eyes on me, but we’re at that weird point where something needs to be said and neither of us knows what exactly to say. “I don’t want this baby.”
Jazzy’s spoon drops into her bowl with an echoing clank. Her fingers wrap around mine and she doesn’t speak as a tear falls down my cheek and into my bowl of ice cream.
“Are you going to tell Ayden?” I can’t hold back the chuckle that almost bursts from my throat at that question.
“Nah, I don’t think so.” I pull my hand from hers and distract myself with a bite. “It was a one-time thing. He made it clear afterwards that he wasn’t interested in continuing it.”
“What?”
I know how it sounds and I know I should have known better, but when the most popular, gorgeous guy at school asks you out, you just go. When he starts kissing you, you don’t pull back. When it goes further, you just let it happen. I’m not proud; in fact, I’m ashamed that I let it happen because I really wasn’t ready, but in that moment, I didn’t know how to stop it. I froze, and it ended almost as quickly as it had begun.
“You’re saying the varsity quarterback slept with you, and then blew you off?” Jazzy’s voice raises an octave and I cringe at the image she’s painted with just one sentence. “I’m going to fucking castrate him.”
I stand up from the floor and set my bowl of melted rocky road on my desk before climbing into my oversized king bed.
“It’s not only his fault. I probably could have stopped it.” I sigh loudly, knowing that I wouldn’t have. I don’t like confrontation, never have. “I was caught off guard.”
Jazzy’s mouth snaps shut as if she’s holding back a snide comment. She climbs up beside me and, with the click of a button, the conversation ends; the voices of Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days filling the room.
A few hours tick by and, aside from the television sounds in the background, all I hear is my best friend snoring loudly beside me with chunks of her hair draped across her face.
The darkness from the rest of the house is eerie and a tad terrifying, but I’m aware of two things at this time. Hours of thinking it over have given me what I’d like to think is clarity.
First things first; I cannot give birth to a baby at my age, that much is clear. Getting an abortion is not an option either without parental consent, and my parents would never agree to that.
Second, I have to do something to fix this monstrosity of a mess I put myself in.
I grab my laptop from inside the nightstand and pull up Google. My heart pounds against the inside of my chest as I read over ways to self-induce an abortion or miscarriage. Every option sounds dangerous, but I’m desperate and, aside from Jazzy, I don’t want anyone else to know that I’ve gotten knocked up. The town we live in is far worse than a gossip blog; everyone knows everything about everyone.
I need this to end, and I need it to end now.
I slide from my bed soundlessly, trying to make small enough movements that it doesn’t wake Jazzy in the process. Once I’ve tiptoed out my bedroom door, I take large, quiet steps until I get to my parents’ closet. I reach out and grab the one instrument that is going to restore my life to normality-- a wire hanger.
JAZZY
I wake up and realize I’m all alone. I climb from the bed and go in search of Kate, knowing she’s probably curled up somewhere, crying. Hell, what she’s going through fucking sucks and I can’t imagine being thrust into that position myself.
With the way her parents are, it isn’t a surprise that she’s terrified for them to find out. They’re helicopter parents and they hover way more than any parents should. It’s embarrassing, really. The first time Kate expressed interest in a boy, her father grounded her and kept her from my 10th birthday party because I’d invited my entire class and the boy just so happened to be in it. What did he really think would happen in a room full of 22 ten-year-olds?
I walk past the bathroom and see the light shining from beneath the crack in the door. I rap on the door lightly with my knuckles. “Kay, it’s me. Can I come in?”
I wait a few more seconds before knocking again, but the only thing that follows is silence--the dead kind of silence that hangs in the air like a bad stench. I turn the knob and open the door, not expecting to see what I see--my best friend pale and lying in a pool of blood, unconscious, with her hand wrapped around a bloodied wire hanger.
A squeaky scream escapes my lips as I grab her phone, which is sitting on top of the bathroom counter, and rush to her side. I type in three little numbers, desperate for help--9-1-1. I quickly dispose of the bloody hanger and send up a quick prayer.
Dear God, please let her be okay. I can’t lose my best friend, my sister.
Kate, why?
KATE
I can barely keep my eyes open to register my surroundings, but I see the white of the walls and hear the beeping of machines. My mouth wants to form words, but the pain is unbearable. I can’t do anything but let out an unladylike moan.
“Kay, I’m here.” My eyes flutter open and I take in my best friend, a look of worry and panic in her features. Her hair is sitting in a tangled mess at the base of her head and she has makeup lines scattered down her cheeks.
“D-Did—” I gulp, trying to push the pain away, but it doesn’t help. “—it work?” Jazzy just looks at me, but doesn’t speak a word as more tears begin to well in her eyes as she fights to keep them from falling.
I’m in a wrenching pain from the waist down and, while I want to focus on that, I just can’t. I cannot stop wondering whether I succeeded in getting rid of the baby. I need to know that I’m going to have a chance at a future without needing to raise a child at my young age. Part of me feels guilty for feeling this way, but an even stronger part of me just wants this nightmare to be over.
Jazzy buries her head in my hair and begins to cry silent, gut-wrenching sobs, her shoulders shaking slightly in the process. I want to console her, but that’s another thing I can’t do right now in my state. My eyelids begin to droop, but I force them open.
I need to know.
“Tell—” I breathe deeply, “—me.”
She sits up, then wipes the moisture from her cheeks before reaching over and hitting the red button attached to my bed. Her mouth is sitting in a tight line and her eyes are looking anywhere but at me. We’ve never beat around the bush before in our 14 years of friendship; I didn’t expect her to now.
A man in a white doctor’s coat appears in my room with a clipboard resting comfortably in his hands. “Hello, Kathryn Sanders.” I glance over at Jazz, not at all surprised she’d given them my fake ID. She knows as well as I do what would happen if anyone knew I was underage.
I nod, clearing my throat. “The baby?” Only two words, but enough to get the conversation finally moving to what I want and need to hear. It’s time.
“When you were brought in, there was some minor scarring to the inside of your uterine walls, which caused an abnormal amount of bleeding.” I can hear my best friend sniffling, but I keep my eyes planted directly upon the doctor. “When we went in to control the blood loss, we were forced to perform a dilation & curettage to treat the bleeding and clear the uterine lining. Unfortunately, the embryo was partially detached from your uterine walls, so it could not be saved. We didn’t have any choice except to remove it.”
“Huh?”
I understood maybe two percent of the words that came out of his mouth. Why do doctors always feel the need to use big words?
“In other words, Miss Sanders, we removed the fetus, but due to the scarring on your uterine walls, the chance of you being able to conceive in the future is extremely slim. Now, that’s not to say it’s completely impossible, just that it’s highly unlikely.”
“I’ll never have another baby, not even when I’m older?”
“No, I don’t believe you will.” His eyes fill with pity, but I don’t want it. In a way, even though I’ve heard some not so good news, I’m still relieved. Because right now, I did what was right for me, and my parents will never have to know what I’ve done.
My life can go back to normal, right?