This can’t be real. Pregnant? Me. I look down at the test. This isn’t one of those one line or two line tests. What happens if one of them is faint? No, this test is pretty clear. The words appear in black and white.

Pregnant.

Pregnant!

Fucking pregnant!!!

I can’t breathe. My muscles seize up and no air comes in or out of my throat. A moment later, I start to cough. Little ripples thrust through my whole body, shaking me uncontrollably. Just when I think it’s over with, and I can finally catch my breath, I feel it come on again. The vomit. I lean over the toilet and spit out what is left of my insides.

This can’t be real. No, no, no. How can this happen? We were so careful. I am on the pill and I’ve been taking it religiously. It’s about the only thing I’ve been doing religiously. After brushing my teeth for what feels like the millionth time, I head into the kitchen and open the refrigerator. I feel like I want to eat something, but nothing looks good, or even mildly appetizing. No, it’s all so… gross. Somewhere in the back of the cupboard next to the stove, that Caroline and I referred to as our pantry, I find an opened pack of dry saltine crackers. Caroline, who has always been terrified of carbohydrates, as if they were poison, kept these stashed away in the back in case of emergencies. Alcohol poisoning, dry heaving, unable to get off the bathroom floor type of emergencies.

As I pop one in my mouth, tears start to stream down my face. Suddenly, I miss Caroline more than I ever missed anyone before. I want to see her. I need to talk to her. I don’t really have any other friends. She’s the only person I can really talk to about this. And Aiden? No, I’m not ready for that.

“Caroline,” I say out loud. My voice is slow and unsteady. I’ve never talked to a dead person before, but it feels good just to say her name again. “Caroline, I’m so, so sorry. I should’ve been here for you. I should’ve stuck around not just run off to the Caribbean with my boyfriend. I knew that you needed help and I just didn’t care.”

That’s not entirely true, of course. If Caroline would’ve told me how she felt or acted more out of it, I would’ve never gone. But she didn’t. She pretended to be fine. She acted as if everything was okay.

“You should’ve gone with me. I knew you wanted to. And we could’ve taken you out of your head. Then, maybe…you’d still be here.”

I wait for her to answer even though I know that I won’t hear anything. After a few minutes, I continue.

“And now? What the hell am I supposed to do now, Caroline? The test says I’m pregnant. But…that can’t be. I’m too young. I’m not ready. Aiden and I…well, I love him but that doesn’t mean I want to have a kid with him.”

I pace around the room aimlessly. Now, I’m no longer waiting for a response. No. Now, I’m just ranting out loud like a crazy person. But just putting my thoughts into words is making me feel a little better.

“Why the hell are you not here, Caroline? I need you. I need you to tell me what to do. And if not that, just to listen to me. I don’t know what to do, Caroline.” I break down and slump to the floor. Tears stream down my cheeks. “I don’t know what to do.”

I’m no longer able to speak. My voice cracks and disappears entirely. I wrap my arms around my knees and lie down in a fetal position and just cry until no more tears come. I cry for my best friend. I cry for myself. I cry for the unborn baby that I’m carrying within me. And at the end, I cry for Aiden. I don’t know what he will say, or do, in response to this, and I don’t want to find out.

I stay on the floor until I lose all sense of time. Seconds become minutes and then probably hours. The texture of the light that streams through my window changes, but I don’t recognize it as either morning, afternoon, evening, or night. And just as everything seems far away and lost forever, I turn over. My shoulders hurt from lying on the cold hard floor as I prop myself up with my hands and sit up.

“Okay, Ellie. You can do this,” I say to myself. I don’t really believe it, but then I manage to stand up.

Good job. Now, walk over to kitchen counter and make yourself some tea. Unlike a stream of consciousness, in which you barely acknowledge each word but just do things on instinct, these thoughts are completely different. They are actual, deliberate sentences with carefully chosen words. I have to say them to myself, otherwise, I couldn’t do it.

The water in the kettle boils and I dunk an herbal tea bag a few times, watching it as it first floats to the surface and then slowly sinks to the bottom of the cup. The hot water feels soothing going down my throat, and it helps me to focus. Right now, the problem is not that I have too many thoughts running through my mind, but actually the opposite. My mind is completely blank. It’s as if my brain is entirely empty and I need to think just to fill it with something, anything.

Before I go freaking out about the results of this pregnancy test, I need to make sure that I’m actually pregnant. Drug store tests are notorious for their false positives. Right? I heard that somewhere once. So, before I start imagining all sorts of eventualities and possible outcomes and decisions that I might have to make, I have to first make sure that this is accurate. Verifiable. True. And I have to get this confirmation before I tell Aiden. Because, as of right now, there’s nothing really to tell.