I lie there still for a second, processing that statement, and trying to work out how invasive it is.
“How do you know that?”
“Because you always cry the days before it and then you go to bed with a hot water bottle, and you were crying at cute animal reels the other day, but you haven’t started hitting the Advil. You’re late.”
Serenity surprises me. I thought she was too busy guarding her closet against Eva to notice a detail like me not being on my period.
“I got you this,” she says. She hands me the paper bag.
I open it, and there’s a pregnancy test inside.
“No,” I say. “I can’t be.”
But I know I can be. I haven’t been thinking about it, because thinking about it is fucking terrifying on so many different levels.
“Go take it,” she says. “I won’t tell Mom.”
Sometimes she seems so grown up. Other times she talks like we can still be in trouble with Mom. I’m twenty years old. She’s eighteen. We’re both adults who are technically allowed to be pregnant if we want to be.
Do I want to be?
“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe I should wait a few more days. It might be too early to test right now.”
“When was your last period?”
She’s not going to give up on this. She’s going to badger me and talk about it, and by the time she’s done I know I’m going to have suffered way more than I would have if I’d just gone ahead and done as she demanded in the first place.
I go to the bathroom, open the test, and desecrate it according to the instructions. One line is not pregnant. Two lines is pregnant. I put the little cap on and I know that I can’t look for three minutes.
I glance at one minute.
There are two lines.
There are two. Fucking. Lines. And they only get darker. And darker. Okay. Maybe this one’s broken. Maybe it’s a false positive. It’s probably a false positive.
There’s another test in the box.
I take it again. I don’t know how much pee I’ve got on tap, but it’s enough for a second go.
It’s positive again, somehow even faster than last time.
I come out of the bathroom, and walk straight into my hyper curious sister, who takes one look at me and gasps with excitement, grabbing me by the hand and dragging me back into her room.
“Oh, my god!” Serenity squeals. “I’m going to be an aunt!”
“Shut up!” I say. “Mom will hear you.”
“Who is the dad? Is it Dave? He’s such a fucking idiot, but he might be a decent dad, maybe.”
“It’s not Dave,” I say.
She thinks about that for less than two seconds, and comes to the obvious conclusion.
“Oh, my god, is it the old man who came to the house?”
“He’s really not that old.”
“Oh, my god, it is!”
