Immaculate

Too much. The idea of telling my mom was more than my mind could begin to comprehend, not when I’d only known the truth myself for a few entirely surreal minutes.

I pushed those thoughts to the furthest, blackest corner of my mind, and reached for my phone. I brushed past a few missed calls and messages from Nate, clearing my throat as I dialed Frankie’s. The phone rang five, six, seven times, and I exhaled in relief. A voice mail would be much easier and faster: no questions, no elaborating. Just as I expected the beep of the automated message, I heard a sharp click and a breathless gasp on the other end.

“Frankie and Friends’ Pizzeria. This is Jesse. How can I help you?”

“Oh, hey. Hi, Jesse,” I said, flustered. I had barely talked to him since the night we first met. A few necessary words here and there about when to clean, what to clean, but nothing that didn’t relate to dishes and mops and window spray. He was too intertwined with Iris in my mind. He was a witness—living, breathing, irrefutable proof that she had been at Frankie’s, that I had talked with her. That she existed at all and wasn’t a complete figment of my overactive imagination. Besides, I could only imagine what he thought of me afterward, ru

“Mina?”

I almost dropped the phone, startled that he’d recognized my voice so easily. “Yeah. Yes. It’s uh . . . me, Mina. I . . . I’m sick, Jesse. Really sick. Stomach bug or something. I was up all night puking, and I still am, actually, and really there’s no end in sight, I don’t think—” Ha

“Sure, no problem, Mina. I’ll help hold down the fort without you here. Feel better, okay?”

“Thanks, Jesse.” I hung up and fiddled with the phone, pecking at random keys to avoid the awful, frightening silence that hung in the air between us.

“Say something, Mina,” Ha

“I don’t know what else I can tell you,” I said, lifting my head up to face them. I refused to cry again. I refused to look away. “Iris . . . What Iris said to me is the only answer I can think of, and trust me, I know how absolutely crazy that sounds, I do. I really do. But I didn’t have sex, not with Nate, not with anyone. I didn’t have anything even remotely close to sex. That’s all that I know. That’s all the explanation I have.” I paused, grabbing, clawing at my mind for anything more I could give. “Maybe there’s another reason besides pregnancy that I’d get those results? Some sort of sickness or condition that would cause a false positive?” I said it, but I didn’t believe it. The words felt wrong, in my heart and on my tongue, but it was one small offering I could give them, however temporary.

Ha

“Say it, Isabelle,” I said out loud, surprising even myself with the sharpness of my voice. “Say whatever you’re thinking. Let’s just get it over with. In case you didn’t fully realize, I have a lot to deal with at the moment, so let’s get this conversation out of the way. Okay?”

She breathed in and out, balled her hands into fists, and turned her gaze toward me. For the first time in my life, I didn’t recognize the look I saw in her eyes. I didn’t see my Izzy. Her dark chestnut eyes were so cold and accusing, so hostile.

“Fine. You want to know what I’m thinking, Mina? You want to know what I’m really thinking?” She was yelling so loud that I worried my parents would hear all the way up at the house. “I think you’re a liar. I think for the first time in your perfect existence, you made a mistake. Mina Dietrich made a massive, ugly, undeniable mistake. And instead of just accepting it and admitting it and handling it like any sane, normal person would do, you’ve decided to make up the most outrageous story I’ve ever heard in my life to cover yourself. I can understand you not wanting other people to know the truth. I get that. But I can’t understand you looking your two best friends in the eye and telling them such a huge fucking lie. I can’t understand, and I won’t understand. You’re so obsessed with being this perfect Mina who everyone expects you to be, but you don’t have to act perfect for us. I don’t care about any of that Menius bullshit. I just care about you being real.”

She paused then, her eyes still drilling into mine, willing me to say something for myself. But there was nothing. She was wrong, but I had no way of making her believe that.

“Fine then,” she said, pushing herself up off of the blanket. “If you don’t want to make this our problem, you want to keep this to yourself, then great. You handle it. Best of luck, Mina. I’m out of this. Are you staying or leaving with me, Ha

Izzy had wasted no time in establishing the line, making it clear that there were two very separate, very distinct sides. There was her and there was me. There were the nonbelievers and the believers. There was no middle ground, no space to be found in between.

“I’m staying,” Ha

Izzy stomped off toward my driveway without another word or a backward glance. I lay down on the blanket, knees tucked into my chest, and rested my head on Ha

“Thank you.” I closed my eyes and burrowed more closely against her, breathing in the familiar scent of lavender perfume and plain Dove soap. “Thank you for being here.” She reached down and started stroking my head. We stayed like that for a long time: no talking, no analyzing out loud, just her hand weaving through my knotted hair, her occasional humming mixing with the soft ins and outs of our breathing.

I was just starting to nod off when Ha

“It’s my mom,” she said, glancing down at the screen, and I nodded, lifting myself from her lap. While she talked, I busied myself by packing up the food and the plates, accepting the inevitable reentrance into my real life waiting outside of our woods.