I shake my head. “I guess it’s the stress of being locked up all this time. My body is rebelling against me.”
I sip my ginger ale, and Marla’s face shifts from mild confusion to… to something else. Fear, perhaps?
“What?”
She takes a moment, biting her lip as if trying to find the right words. “Tati… when you and Viktor, um, out together that one time, you did use raincoats, right?”
I snicker. “What are you talking…?” Then it hits me. The one thing she can’t ask me outright. Not in my father’s house. “Oh, um…oh.”
“So,” Marla says as she stands up quickly, “I just realized I forgot something at the store. Some peppermints? You’re not going anywhere, right?”
I have nothing, so I just shake my head.
“I’ll be right back.”
I nod, and she rushes out. When we were teenagers, there were things that we couldn’t discuss around our parents. Words that my father and her mother might blow their tops if they heard us saying. We replaced most of them with other, more benign things.
Like Peppermint. Code for pregnant.
It takesMarla about twenty minutes to come back with the test. In the meantime, I’d been sitting up in this room going over the potential fallout of a pregnancy.
My father would hit the roof. And murder Viktor. I don’t even think I would have to tell him he was the father. Even though he’s only been around me for a few hours at a time, he’s the one man other than Yanov who has the most access to me at the moment, and even he knows Yanov wouldn’t touch me with a ten-foot pole.
Once she arrives, we waste no time in getting me and the test in the bathroom. After the deed is done, the two of us sit inmy bedroom… and wait. For a few minutes, we’re both stuck because we don’t dare speak the reality of what’s happening aloud. I cannot risk anyone overhearing a conversation about this.
I nod toward her purse as I reach for my phone. We can text one another. I’m pretty sure my phone is still safe. She gets the message immediately, rushes over to her purse, left discarded on my dresser when she came in, and pulls out her phone.
What the hell am I going to do, Marla? I can’t be pregnant right now.
She reads the message and sighs, then texts back.
Maybe you’re not. We don’t know anything yet.
I read her text and take that in. She’s right. I don’t know anything for sure. Being nauseous and missing my period. That could be stress. It probably is stress. This hasn’t been the easiest two months in the world.
Even though we don’t know anything yet, it might help to talk things out a little. Just to wrap your head around things if the worst happens.
I scowl at her.
I already know what will happen. My father will kill Viktor and stick me in a convent. If I’m pregnant, he can’t know.
She pauses, her fingers tracing the screen for a second. Then,
What about Viktor? Are you going to tell him?
I have to think about that for a second. I don’t actually know the answer to that. I don’t know anything about Viktor or whether or not he would want to be a father. There’s a very real chance thathe’ll tell me to abort it. Of course, I don’t even know if I would disagree with him. I’m not sure I want to be a mother, either.
I don’t know, I text honestly.I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it, I guess.
Do you want to have this baby, Tati?
I shrug. It’s all I can do. My eyes start to sting, so I swallow to keep the tears away.
I guess I’ll decide once I know one way or the other.
We wait in silence for the rest of the five minutes. When the time is up, both Marla and I just stare at one another, waiting for the other to speak. Finally, Marla says, “Let’s go.”
We both get up and go to the bathroom. I close the door behind me and turn on the fan in the hopes of drowning out any noise we make. The test is sitting on the sink, a little stick with a little window in it. Such a simple, innocent thing that’s about to decide my whole future.
