I stared at the little red “x” in the top right-hand corner of January 29 on my desk calendar. I glanced at my cell phone: February 9. I looked at the “x” again. Then I looked at my cell phone again. I squeezed my breasts gently. Not sore. Normally they were sore and swollen before my period.
“It’s fine,” I lied to myself. I wasn’t sure if I should call Mark or Avery.
“Eleven days?” Avery asked over the phone. She sounded mildly concerned. “Are you on-the-day regular?”
“Well, no. Usually a day or two before or after I’m scheduled to start,” I replied.
“Hmmm. You’re in a gray area, for sure,” Avery said.
My heart dropped.
“You’re gonna have to take a test,” she said.
And then I burst out crying.
“Cadence, I’m sure everything’s fine.”
“Stop lying to me! You know we didn’t use a condom!” I wailed.
“Well, were you ovulating?”
“I don’t fucking know!” I sobbed.
Avery sighed patiently. “You ovulate on the fourteenth day between your cycles. Normally.”
“I know when I ovulate!” I snapped and looked at my calendar once more. I dried my eyes, mostly so that I could see what I was doing, and counted back the days to when Mark and I had sex in his classroom closet. Unprotected. No birth control. No condom. No sense whatsoever.
January 15.
“I’m gonna be sick,” I gasped.
“No, you’re not. You’re gonna be fine,” Avery said. There was a tenderness in her voice I’d never heard.
“I can’t go to school!” I was beside myself with panic.
“Cadence, take a deep breath. You haven’t even taken a test yet. You’re freaking out prematurely.”
“I can’t have a baby, Avery! I don’t know anything about babies! Oh my God! My life is over!!”
“Calm! Down!” Avery shouted through the phone. “You’ll come home with me after school, and we’ll sort this all out. If—and this is a huge if—you are pregnant, we’ll deal, okay? But I think this is just a weird glitch in your body. I think you’re fine.”
I tried to focus on Avery’s words: “We’ll deal.” Like she and I were in it together. Maybe she felt responsible in some way, though I’m not sure why. She didn’t have unprotected sex with me and maybe get me pregnant.
“I’ve gotta go puke before school,” I said, and hung up before she replied.
I screamed when I saw Oliver standing in my doorway. I didn’t hear him at all.
“What are you doing?!” I screeched.
“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head quickly side to side.
“What did you hear?!”
“I don’t know.” His eyes were practically bugging out of his head.
I grabbed his arm and pulled him inside my room, slamming the door. I don’t know why. Both Mom and Dad were already gone to work.
“What did you hear, Oliver?” I asked patiently.
“Just something about ovulation and how you might be pregnant,” he replied.
I hung my head and started crying all over again.
“Please,” I whispered.
“Please what?” he asked. “Don’t tell Mom and Dad? Do you really think for a second I would?”
I looked at him, tears streaming down my face.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m gonna do.” I collapsed on my bed, and he sat beside me.
“It’s okay,” he said. He patted my shoulder awkwardly.
I wiped my eyes.
“Cay, how did this happen?”
I knew what he meant, but I burst out laughing anyway. It was exactly the question I needed to hear.
“Well, Oliver, when two people love each other, they—”
“Shut up. You know what I mean. Why are you having sex? And with whom?”
“Like I’d tell you that. And it’s not your business why I’m having sex.”
“It’s a sin, Cadence,” Oliver said softly.
“Not to me it’s not,” I replied.
Oliver looked shocked. “It’s, like, in the Bible and stuff, Cadence. Not to have sex before you’re married.”
“Is it?”
Oliver furrowed his brows. “Well, yeah. Isn’t it?”
“I’ve never read about it,” I replied.
“But, it’s, like, what we’ve been taught,” Oliver said.
“I know what I’ve been taught, Ollie.”
“Then why aren’t you following the rules?” he asked.
“Because I don’t believe them, okay?” I snapped.
Oliver reared back, looking at me like I was a stranger.
“You don’t believe in God?” he breathed.
“Of course I believe in God,” I huffed. “Will you just calm down?”
“You don’t believe what’s in the Bible?”
“Of course I do. Maybe I just interpret things differently from you. I’m sorry if you’re bothered by the fact that I don’t have a problem with premarital sex.”
“Well, you should. You might be pregnant,” Oliver said.
“Fuck you.”
“Cadence!”
“I don’t need your pious, condescending bullshit right now, okay?”
“Cay, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I’m just trying to understand.”
“I’m eighteen, Oliver! I’m an adult! I can have sex, okay? It doesn’t make me a bad person because I have sex outside of marriage? I don’t want to get married until I’m, like, thirty. Am I supposed to wait until I’m thirty to have sex?”
Oliver shrugged. “Well, according to the Bible—”
“Shut up about the Bible!” I screamed. “I don’t need to hear it! And anyway, people were getting married at, like, twelve years old back then! It freaking doesn’t even count.”
“But Cadence, don’t you feel guilty at all?”
“Do you feel guilty every time you jerk off?”
“Cadence!”
“Come talk to me about sexual immorality when you stop playing with yourself, Oliver,” I said, putting “sexual immorality” in air quotes.