THE FIRST RING
LIAM FOUND THE POSITIVE PREGNANCY TEST IN MY BATHROOM TRASH CANin May of our junior year, and a week later he proposed.
“No one will love you like I do,” he told me, looking up from one knee. He was holding a ring: a simple gold band with a tiny setting containing an amber-hued stone that I realized was a citrine. “I know all your flaws, all your sins, all your brokenness, and I still love you, Sybil.”
His happiness about the pregnancy was directly inverse to my terror about it. It would mean a total recalibration of my life’s trajectory. But Liam had a plan: we would get married. We would live with his parents until we had enough money for an apartment. He’d picked out the citrine ring specifically because he thought if I was 12 weeks pregnant, the baby would be born in November, and citrine would be his or herbirthstone. This was exactly the kind of thing Liam loved to do; on the surface it seemed so thoughtful, but in reality, it felt liketoomuch thought, too much anticipation, too much control. But his plan went on: when we graduated from high school, he would go to school a few blocks away at SMU while I would stay home with the baby. All the things I wanted to do and places I wanted to visit would be closed to me.
It was overwhelming, but our relationship had evolved so fast, I felt powerless to it, like a tide had overtaken me. When we’d first started dating, it had been such a high. Before then, I’d seen myself as a square-shaped peg trying to fit into a round hole all the time; a free spirit with weird ideas and big, spontaneous outbursts of emotion, who everyone liked enough, yet no one really understood. But when Liam started paying attention to me, everything changed. He was a pastor’s son and the hot guy that all the other girls in our school had crushes on. When I was with him, everyone saw me in a whole new light—including my family, who justadoredhim. It felt likeIfinally made sense, like I finally fit somewhere.
But over the months we dated, something turned. I couldn’t put my finger on when I’d started feeling so claustrophobic, but soon, I found myself constantly on eggshells with Liam. In groups, he was charismatic, always remembering people’s birthdays and high-fiving them after a football win, but when it was just us, he would go from hot to cold in a second. He’d praise me and then throw hurtful barbs with a casual laugh. I was too young and inexperienced to realize this was toxic; I thought I was doing something to make him mad, and that if I could just figure out what that was and stop it, things would go back to being perfect.
But it had only gotten worse; he’d taken to coming into my room even when I wasn’t home and finding “evidence” of ways I had betrayed him or kept secrets from him. That was how he’d found the pregnancy test. I had always wanted to get married and start a family, but not at seventeen!
Then, three days after Liam proposed, I started bleeding. Heavily. It was the day of junior prom, and I was supposed to be getting ready then heading to Liam’s for pre-prom photos with some of his church friends. Instead, I hid my physical pain and picked a fight with my parents, saying it would be lame for them to come to the Russells’ house for pictures and that I was getting a ride with a friend anyway. They were clearly hurt, but didn’t want to deal with another Sybil meltdown. They let me walk out of the house with a garment bag over my arm and a sweatshirt tied around my waist to hide any possible bloodstains.
I couldn’t tell my parents what I suspected was happening to me, because that would mean I’d have to admit I’d been having sex with Liam, much less that I’d gotten pregnant.
And when I thought about calling Liam himself, all I could hear were his usual complaints about how this would ruin his prom night, how I was always causing drama and making things about me.
Of course, I know now that if I had dialed Willow or Emma, they would have been there in a heartbeat. But my all-consuming relationship with Liam had chipped away at those friendships. They didn’t know how bad things really were with him, and the thought of reaching out to them in that moment, when I was at my lowest, filled me with shame.
So when I got a few blocks away from my house, I called a cab to take me to the emergency room.
At the hospital, I took another pregnancy test, but this time it came back negative. “It might have been a chemical pregnancy, or it might have been a false positive,” the resident said. “It’s rare, but certain medications can impact an at-home-test’s accuracy. Are you taking any antianxiety meds, or an antihistamine?” I nodded. I had terrible spring allergies. “Well, that could be it. What about your periods. Are they generally regular?”
I told her that no, my periods were actually pretty erratic. Some months it didn’t come at all, and then would be super heavy when it finally arrived. I saw her make a note about that. Then she looked me in the eye and said calmly, “It’s possible you miscarried. It’s also possible you were never pregnant. But I can confirm either way that you are not pregnant now. Here, take some pads. You might have heavier bleeding for a few more days.”
Despite a few cramps roiling in my abdomen, the sweet and cool relief that I hadn’t dared to hope for rushed through me, and I felt my life open back up before me. In the waiting room, I called Liam to tell him the news.
“Thank god, right?”
And I genuinely meant it.
“How can you say that?” Liam said in horror. “How can you be happy our child died?”
“We don’t even know if there ever was a baby,” I pleaded. “We have our whole lives now.” But Liam hung up on me. I tried to call him back. And tried and tried. But it was clear that Liam was furious with me.
“Miss Rain, could you come back here for a minute, please?”
Numbly, I walked back to the receptionist’s desk, where she told me that the doctor had just finished looking at my results more fully and wanted to talk to me again. That’s when they explained that they wanted to run an ultrasound on my ovaries. Before the results even came in, the doctor told me that they were looking for signs of PCOS. It would explain my frequently late periods… But there was something else. PCOS could also mean I might have trouble getting pregnant—or at least staying pregnant—down the road.
I felt the crush of conflicting emotions. While I didn’t want to be pregnantnow, the thought that I might not be able to have a babyeverwas devastating.
When the doctor released me, I tried Liam one last time, but got voicemail again. I was just about to redial the cab company when I heard someone calling my name.
“Sybil, is that you?”
I turned to find Finn Hughes, Emma’s debate team friend. They were supposed to be having their first date that very night at junior prom. Finn told me he was here at the hospital with his dad, who had been going through cancer treatments. He looked like a wreck, and it seemed like prom was far from his mind.
“What are you doing here?” he asked me.
I didn’t mean to, but in a jumble of raw emotions, I broke down right there in the hospital lobby and told everything to Finn, who’d pressed his car keys into my hand and told me it was all going to be okay.
When I got home from the hospital, my parents had gone out. Their absence felt like a blessing. Like a chance for me totruly pretend this day had never happened. So I finished my hair and makeup, put on my dress, and changed my pad. The bleeding began to taper off, and I folded up all my thoughts and tucked them into a box in the back of my mind.
For a while after prom, Liam completely froze me out. I think he was trying to punish me. But eventually, he must have felt me starting to slip away.
One day early in the fall of senior year, he let himself into my house, and I found him in my room. “I know I’ve been distant lately. I’ve had a lot to work through. It’s been a hard couple of months for me. Really hard.”
