I wiped my sweaty palms on my jeans and rested my forehead on my purse hanging from the stall door in front of me. I tried to remember to breathe.
“Everything’s gonna be okay,” I told myself. “It will all be okay.”
Desiree was pacing outside of the stall. “Do you need me in there?”
“No, no,” I said, a little too calmly. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”
I felt the presence of at least five other girls in the bathroom with us. I looked at my phone. Two in the afternoon on a Wednesday at school. It was club hour or whatever they called it. No one had class. I had decided to take a pregnancy test in the bathroom on the second floor during club hour? Great!
The tips of Desiree’s toes were under the stall door. “What does it say?”
“I’m doing it now.”
I took in one deep breath, lifted my head, rolled my shoulders back, and pulled the EPT box out of my purse. I ran my fingers over the small box that would tell me my fate. I thought about my visit with Dr. Marco two months earlier when we’d gone over birth control options. I told him that I couldn’t have any procedures done, because my mom would have to know about it. That meant the IUD and that ring thing were out the question, so I had no choice but pills. I remembered keeping the prescription in my wallet for a week before I figured out what to do with it.
One day, Lucas picked me up around the corner from my house to take me to the bowling alley where I worked part-time. I handed the prescription to him.
“Can you fill this in a pharmacy around your house?” I asked him.
“I don’t think so. It has your name on it. Why can’t you do it yourself?”
“After my mom got Lupus, she became best friends with every pharmacist in the neighborhood. There’s no way I could walk into one around my house without them telling her that they saw me.”
“And?”
“And I don’t want her to know that we’re having sex. Hello!”
“You’re nineteen and you’re afraid to talk to your mom about sex?”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re nineteen, too. You’re telling me your mom knows that we’re doing it?”
“That’s different.”
“I’m sure it is. Just fill the damn thing for me, okay?”
“You know, we were talking about birth control pills in my health class today. My professor said that they cause all kinds of bad stuff like kidney failure and stroke. Aren’t your kidneys already bad as it is?”
“I need the pills, Lucas. Please just fill the prescription.”
“I just don’t want you to get sick.”
He didn’t want me to get sick, but wasn’t being pregnant pretty awful too?
“Are you pregnant?” Desiree’s bubble gum pink nails gripped the top of the stall door.
I ripped the box open, skimmed the instructions then shoved them into my purse. I pulled the plastic cap off the EPT test, squatted over the toilet and peed on the stick. There were probably ten girls in the bathroom at this point, but my ears only heard my heartbeat.
I gripped the stick with one sweaty palm and held onto the toilet paper role with the other; eyes squeezed shut, trying to maintain control over my legs. I breathed deeply to push my nausea down.
“No need to be nervous,” I chanted. “No need to be nervous.”
“What?” Desiree yelled, “Is it positive?”
I opened one eye and looked down at the stick. There was one bold blue horizontal line, and one very faint vertical one. I opened both eyes, stood up straight, and yanked the instructions out of my bag.
“Is she taking a pregnancy test?” I heard an unfamiliar voice ask.
Desiree must have nodded.
“Don’t be nervous, honey!” The girl called to me, “I take one of those at least once a month.”
The instructions said that one line meant negative and two meant positive. But the second line was so light… It couldn’t be positive.
“What the hell does the damn thing say?” Desiree yelled at me.
“I don’t know. I can’t tell.”
“Come out so I can see it.”
I grabbed my bag off the hook and, as soon as I opened he stall door, Desiree yanked the pregnancy test out of my hand, saying, “Give me the instructions.”
“Hand it to me. I don’t need the instructions.” The strange voice from earlier belong to a tall, skinny girl with short hair, big glasses, and balloons tattooed on her forearm. She snatched the test and with one quick glanced declared, “You’re pregnant! I can give you the number to a great clinic where you can take care of that.”
“What?” Desiree yanked the test back.
A petite Asian girl waiting to use a stall asked, “Is that a pregnancy test?”
“I take those all the time,” said a heavy-set Hispanic girl with a head full of curls behind her.
“We know you do, Mo,” said her short black friend.
“Shut up.” Mo giggled. “Can I see it?”
Desiree passed the test over. It seemed like everyone had an opinion on the contents of my uterus at that moment.
Mo shook her head. “She’s not pregnant.”
“Yes, she is,” said the first girl. She turned to me. “You should go get that taken care of today and stop wasting time.”
Desiree barked at me, “Give me the damn instructions so I can figure this thing out!”
Before I was able to wash my hands, about seven girls had touched my pee stick. I gave Desiree the instructions, walked over to the sink, and began rinsing my face with cold water to battle my nausea.
“Is that a pregnancy test?” I heard yet another voice. This was a small Russian girl who’d just come into the bathroom. “I work at a GYN’s office. I have, like, ten pregnancy tests on me from the clinic.”
“Right now?” Desiree asked.
“Yeah. I just take them. I mean they’re just laying around and you never know when you’ll need one right?”
“You should take one of those,” Mo said. She threw the EPT test in the garbage. “Not these cheap things.”
“Cheap?” Desiree looked like she almost wanted to dumpster dive for it. “I paid almost forty dollars for that!”
“Do you have any more pee?” the Russia girl asked me over the crowd.
I must have given her a crazy look because she cleared her throat and started again.
“Sorry. My name is Yana. Do you want to take a pregnancy test from the doctor’s office?”
“How many did you say you have?” I asked her.
“Like ten.”
“Anybody have a cup?” I asked the crowd.
The Asian girl held up an expensive looking thermos.
“I usually carry my tea in here, but its just water right now. You can use it and throw it out if you want. I have more.”
“Are you sure?” I asked her.
“Yeah, sure. Have it,” she said thrusting it at me.
“Give me four tests.” I said to Yana.
“Four?”
“Should I take more?”
“No, no. Four is more than enough.”
The girl with the balloon tattoo handed me a bottle of water. I downed it without stopping for air once, and went back into a stall.
I realized that the girls who were waiting to use the bathroom had let me go in first. They all lingered outside of the stall and swapped stories about their own pregnancy scares for about ten minutes, until I managed to get the smallest tinkle out.
I went back out into the crowd with the cup, and dipped the edges of all four pregnancy tests into the pee in front of the girls. Yana took them from me one at a time and read the verdict.
“Positive,” she announced for the first one.
“Told you,” Balloons said to Mo, who rolled her eyes.
“Positive,” Yana announced for the second.
I felt a wave of heat wash over me. Desiree was biting her nails.
“Positive,” she said for the third time.
“You don’t even have to read the fourth one,” said Balloons, reaching into her bag for paper and pen. “I’m gonna write down that number for you.”
“Do you want me to read the fourth one?” Yana asked with a look of concern.
I couldn’t speak. I felt the blood drain from my face. My stomach lurched.
“Read it,” Desiree said. “You never know.”
“Pos–”
I lunged for the sink and threw up.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR – Amanda Nesbot lives in NYC. She loves pretending to be a tourist in her city and escaping into fantasy novels. Since the age of 12, she’s dreamed of dorming at Hogwarts. Read more of Amanda’s work at amandanesbot.com.