It didn’t.
I found Dani alone in the apartment, sanding the wooden frame of a floor-length mirror. She’d been scavenging for things left in alleys and bringing them back for our apartment: old chairs, a coffee table, another couch, plant stands, and mismatched dishes. We hung tea towels up as curtains, painted the chairs and the wooden table in different bright colors, stenciled flower patterns onto the kitchen cabinets. Slowly but surely it was becoming home.
“Something’s wrong,” I said.
“With Court—Crystal?”
“It’s me.”
She frowned “You sick?”
“I haven’t had my period for a while.”
She looked at me. “What’s ‘a while’?”
I wanted to cry. “Not since … you know.”
She jerked back like I’d hit her, leaned the mirror against the counter carefully, then slowly walked over and collapsed into a chair.
“Shit,” she said.
We’d never talked about getting pregnant. I remembered the look of relief on Dani’s and Courtney’s faces when they came out of the bathroom the first month after we left Cash Creek, but neither of them had ever asked me about my period.
“We should get a test,” she said.
I put one on the table, the plastic spinning for a moment like a compass.
“Where did you get that?”
“Stole it.”
“You have to stop doing that—you’re going to get caught.”
“It was twenty dollars.”
“You could have gone to a doctor and they’d test you for free.”
I couldn’t believe she was giving me shit. Then I realized she was just freaked out.
“I didn’t know that,” I said.
“Have you taken it yet?”
“No. I’m scared.”
“Maybe with the stress you’re just late.”
I didn’t like the desperate, hopeful look on her face. The same expression I saw reflected back at me when I glanced in the mirror.
“Maybe.”
But the little line turned blue.
*
When Courtney came home that night, we told her. She sat down hard on the couch and looked up at us with a stunned expression.
“This is so fucked up. What are we going to do?”
Dani was sitting on the other couch, her feet under her knees. I was curled into its corner, my hand on my stomach, pressing down as though I could just squeeze the baby out of my body, feeling embarrassed, ashamed, like I had let us all down.
“Is it too late for an abortion?” Dani said.
“I don’t know,” Courtney said. “Don’t some places do it later?”
I didn’t like how they were talking about me as though I weren’t there, not even asking what I wanted to do. I studied my bare feet—small, like my mother’s, the baby toe with hardly any nail. I felt a sharp ache, wished I could speak to her.
“Maybe we should talk to someone,” I said.
*
We went to the free clinic the next day. A doctor examined me, took a blood test, and confirmed the pregnancy. I was sixteen weeks along, due the third week of April. I hated his hands on my body, the way he coldly asked about my period and the last time I had sex, most of all hated telling him it was a boy I’d met in the summer. I was glad Dani was in the exam room with me. She asked him about abortion, and I knew the deal by the warning tone of his first sentence, “Past the first trimester…” He handed Dani a bunch of brochures. We left.
At home I locked myself in my room and read the brochures cover to cover. Courtney and Dani were in the kitchen. I could hear them talking in low voices and knew that they were waiting for me to come out so we could make a plan. We’d barely spoken on the bus ride home. I couldn’t even look at them, hating the anxious look in their eyes, feeling their thoughts.
I walked into the kitchen, a blanket wrapped around me, and huddled at the table.
“Do you want something to eat?” Dani said. “Maybe some soup or tea?”
“No, thanks,” I said.
She sat down across from me. “That doctor was just a jerk. You’re still allowed to have an abortion. Courtney can ask her friend—”
“It’s the size of an avocado,” I said. “It can hear me.”
“What do you want to do, then?” Dani wasn’t freaking out, but I could feel her panic.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“We can’t keep it,” Courtney said. “We can barely afford ourselves. Patrick and Karen might throw us out.” Her voice rose, fear making it breathy. “What if it looks like him?”
“I need time to think,” I said.
“You don’t have much time,” Dani said. “You’re already sixteen weeks.”
“I know! I just need to think.” Doors were closing on me, slamming one after another.
“Jess, you can’t—”
“Leave me alone.” I got up from the table and went back to my room.