Immaculate

I wound my fingers through the hair at the base of his neck and tilted his face down, pressing my lips hard against his. They were so sweet, so familiar. He moaned into me, and I started pulling him with me lower, to the ground, our bodies becoming tangled on the bed of old sleeping bags.

I can do this. I will do this.

But suddenly, just as I started to crawl on top of Nate, everything felt wrong. His skin became rough and coarse, like sandpaper scraping bits of me off with even the slightest brush of our bodies. His breathing and groaning was loud, too loud, so piercing and terrible that I wanted to put my hands against my ears and scream at the top of my lungs to hide the noise. When I opened my eyes, his face was entirely blurred and unrecognizable in the moonlight that spilled through the tree house window. Shapes, lines, colors that had just been Nate’s features, all shifting and transforming right in front of me.

I tried to push away, but Nate—or the boy who had been Nate at least, had looked like him on the surface—whispered that he loved me, wrapped his rough arms around me even tighter.

But did I really love him? Did I even know him at all?

My phone rattled against the nightstand and I jerked up from my pillow, my heart still thudding fast and heavy against my rib cage. A wave of chills swept up my spine, tingling along the back of my neck. The dream had been too real and three-dimensional, the senses all so magnified and heightened, swirling around me still as I lay shaking under my covers. The sounds, the smells, the heat. Suddenly the idea of touching Nate, of being with him like that, felt abhorrent. I was never more glad that whatever had happened—whatever was happening now, this little human kicking inside of me—hadn’t been confused with other potential explanations. If Nate had been the father, if he even just believed he was the father, I would have been tied to him forever, our lives sewn up for good. It scared me now, that I’d come so close. It scared me to think that just one night together could have changed everything. Nate could have been my first, and my last.

I pushed back the strands of sweaty hair that clung to my forehead and reached for the phone. Ha

“Han?” My throat croaked, and I realized how dry my entire mouth felt. The dream flashed in my memory, the horrible sounds, the screaming.

“Meen. Listen to me. Start getting ready, and I’m going to be at your house in ten minutes, okay? And I need you to promise me something really important.”

“What’s going on? What am I promising?”

“Seriously, please just trust me on this.”

“Okay. I’m playing along. I promise.”

“Thank you. Don’t touch your computer until I get there. Nothing, okay? I’ll be there soon.”

She hung up and I glanced over at the computer resting just a few feet away, the screen black in sleep mode. Why couldn’t I touch my computer? What couldn’t I see without Ha

I threw on a loose sweater and a pair of stretchy jeans, and ran a brush through my tangled hair. Without even a glance at the computer, I grabbed a pen and crossed out another day on the pregnancy countdown hanging above my desk—Friday, November 16. Sixteen weeks until my March 7 due date. It was a morning tradition I’d started when I’d realized just how quickly the days were flying away from me. I had my midpregnancy sonogram hanging above the calendar, a constant reminder that this was real. This was happening.

I still had time before Ha

There was a knock at the front door, and within seconds my mom was in the foyer, greeting Ha

Their footsteps started up the stairs, and I walked toward them, meeting my mom and Ha

“What is it? What’s happening?” I gripped the banister next to me.

“Let’s go into your bedroom, sweetie,” my mom said, her eyes blinking down at the carpet. “We’ll talk there, okay?”

I followed her numbly into my room and leaned against the edge of the bed. Ha

“So I was up pretty late last night, working on that essay for Sweeney’s class, and I was chatting with Elise, you know, the girl who sits behind me and always has a thousand questions.” She paused, twisting a spiral of hair so tightly around her finger, I could see the tip losing color. “Anyway, she asked if I’d heard about the website that everyone was talking about. The website . . . It’s about you, Mina. It was two a.m. when I saw it, so I decided I’d wait until this morning to tell you about it.”

“A website about me? What kind of website?” The words sounded ti

She sat down at my desk, typing on the keyboard as the computer flicked back to life.

“Here it is. I think you should come see for yourself.”

The first thing I could clearly make out was a picture of me at the top of the page, a photo from last year’s Halloween party at Peter’s house. Izzy had dressed as the devil and Ha

There was more just below it, a long paragraph. The letters were swimming in circles in my vision, and I closed my eyes.

“I’ll read it out loud to you,” Ha

All Hail the BLESSED VIRGIN MINA, the miraculous Mother Mary of the twenty-first century! At long last, after two thousand years of waiting . . . the promised second coming of the Messiah is upon us! (Repent, repent!) With his all-knowing wisdom, God has chosen Mina Dietrich of quaint but lovely Green Hill, Pe