Immaculate

The walls, however, were our pride and joy, covered inch to inch in boy band posters and pages torn from glossy magazines that we’d slipped from our moms, our intricately hand-drawn maps of the woods, and other colorful drawings and photos that memorialized some of our greatest adventures together. I could have stayed up there for hours, poring over each page, each picture, remembering every detail of our past. But we weren’t just in the woods for a pleasant stroll down memory lane.

I sighed. “I think it’s time I head down and get this over with.”

The girls nodded, and we each gave one final glance around the house before making our way back down to the ground. Who knew how long until we’d all be up there again together? Years?

Maybe never.

We walked back over to the blanket, and I skimmed through the instructions again to be absolutely sure I had the steps down. It all seemed simple enough: remove the cap and put the tip in my stream of pee for at least five seconds, lay the test down flat to develop, and wait three minutes for the results. The three minutes of waiting would no doubt be the trickiest part of the process.

“All right, then,” I said, grabbing all four sticks from the boxes, two of each kind, and started toward the bank of the creek. “I guess you can just close your eyes or something? Or don’t. I don’t really care, to be honest. I’m just so glad you’re both here, because there’s no way I could be doing this by myself.” I was shaking as I said it, the plastic sticks tapping against one another in my hands.

“I’ll help you,” Ha

“Count me out,” Izzy said, her lips puckered in disgust. “I love you, Meen, don’t get me wrong, but I do have my limits.”

“Ha

“I want to do it. Don’t worry about it.” Her voice was so calm and sympathetic, the way my mother would have sounded if this had been a moment I could have shared with her.

I hoped that the next time I’d be taking a pregnancy test—some day in the very ridiculously distant future—I’d be ecstatic and overcome with happy, excited tears. I hoped that the next time, I’d be able to call my mom afterward and scream the good news to her over the phone.

But I had Ha

Ha

“Thanks, Ha

“Of course, Meen. Now we just have to think about something else for a few minutes.”

The three of us sat in silence, at a loss for what in the world we could possibly talk about for the next one hundred and eighty seconds besides those four sticks.

“So . . .” Ha

“Seriously?” Izzy choked out, her voice sputtering. “What happened to our pact to not be more than three hundred miles away from one another? What about our weekend road trips? I can’t exactly hop in my Jeep and drive to Mississippi for a night if I end up at Pe

I looked up at Ha

“I . . . I know we’ve always said that, guys, but I thought that was just us being scared. And naive. I would never discourage either of you from trying to go where you really wanted to go. You’re my best friends, no matter where we live for those four years. Nothing’s going to change that.”

“Yeah. Okay. Thanks so much for the heads-up,” Izzy said, refusing to look at her. “Has it been three minutes yet, Meen?”

I hadn’t let myself peek at the sticks once since I’d handed them to Ha

“So just a reminder: it’s a blue minus sign if you’re not pregnant, and a pink plus if you are. And the other test is pretty self-explanatory: pregnant, not pregnant,” Ha

I walked slowly, each footstep torn somewhere between ru

I opened my eyes.

Plus, plus, pregnant, pregnant.

chapter four

I was pregnant.

I, Mina Dietrich, an absolute and utter virgin, was pregnant.

Four tests couldn’t be wrong, could they? Not with all the other symptoms I’d had during the past few months, and not with my fears about Iris’s warning. But how could they not be wrong? How could any of this actually be happening to me?

“What should we do now?” Ha

“I need to let Frankie know that I can’t come in tonight,” I said without even pausing to reconsider. For some reason that was the first and only immediate reaction that came to mind. The only answer, the only step forward that made any sense. Even in the face of the most fantastical crisis imaginable, I could still be relied on not to forget to call out of work.

Under normal circumstances, Izzy would have made endless fun of me for being so dedicated to Frankie’s, but now she was ominously silent. I was afraid to look up at her face, to see whatever was lurking behind her eyes. Izzy couldn’t hide anything, not from me and Ha

“Let’s get you back to the blanket,” Ha

I gave a weak nod and let them pull me up and steer me. My stomach pinched at the sight of the leftover food, the basket that my mom had packed less than two hours ago for our special tree house picnic. My mom. My adoring, gracious, astoundingly perfect mom. How could I ever possibly tell her about this? How could she believe me? How could she keep trusting me and loving me and being proud of me?