FIVE
BLAIR
Baby is the size of a fence staple.
Senior year was kicking my butt. Actually, the first half of senior year wasn’t even that bad, just this last semester.
My romp with the tattooed rodeo star back in February was, apparently, the last bit of brightness life had in store for me for a while.
Since then, it’s been hit after hit after hit.
The stress of trying to figure out what I’m going to do after graduating—when my housing is no longer government-funded by my foster kid scholarship and I have to get a real job with the degree it paid for—combined with catching what I can only assume was the flu a few weeks ago and now a stomach virus to boot?
It seems like God is under some misunderstanding that I’m one of his strongest soldiers or something, because these battles are ridiculous.
I’m twenty-one. The only reason I should be hugging a toilet bowl like this is from drinking too much at a frat party, but I haven’t even had time to go to any lately.
Someone knocks on the bathroom door and I’ve never really been one for violence until right at this moment.
Chelsey risks her life by sticking her head in.
I don’t even have to look at her to know she’s wearing that same sympathetic smile she’s been wearing all week while I’ve been puking my guts out.
I want so badly to tell her to get out, but I’ve been pretty mean recently, so I bite my tongue and rest my forehead against my arm instead.
Is draping my arm across the toilet bowl the most sanitary thing in the world? No. But if anything kills me, it’ll be whatever I picked up that caused this illness, not bacteria from the toilet Stephanie has been obsessively cleaning lately anyway.
“Stephanie and I were talking?—”
“No, Chelsey was talking!” Stephanie shouts from the other room.
Chelsey sighs and sits on the edge of the bathtub like I invited her to the front row of one of the most disgusting moments of my life.
“Stephanie and I were talking,” she says again, much quieter this time.
Not that it helps, because Stephanie comes through the door Chelsey left open and corrects her again. “ Chelsey was talking. I was minding my business.”
“I don’t really care who was talking. If we’re being honest, I wish neither of you were right now.”
That shocks them silent for long enough I run the words back through my mind and realize how mean I sound. Normally, I’m a much kinder person.
“Sorry. I just feel like crap,” I groan, using Chelsey’s knee to push myself up. I close the lid of the toilet, flushing it and taking a seat, head in my hands.
My hair is a greasy mess, piled up in a bun on top of my head. I should wash it. I should shower in general. But getting out of bed to puke has used up 98% of my energy for the day already.
“I think maybe it’s time to start considering this may not be a stomach virus,” Chelsey says quietly .
I snort. “Well, I’ve been throwing up for like… two weeks, so I don’t know what else it could be.”
More silence. Really heavy, loaded silence that I’m not a huge fan of.
“When was your last period, Blair?” Stephanie asks, just as gently.
Regardless of how gently she tosses the grenade, it still blows apart my life just the same.
“I just had one. In… March, I think.” I think back, stomach dropping. “Yeah, the second week of March. Right before spring break.”
Stephanie’s lips twist and she looks at Chelsey so I follow her gaze. Chelsey’s biting her lip, looking at Stephanie like they’re having a secret conversation I don’t get to be privy to. I don’t really appreciate that, all things considered.
“It’s April 15th?—”
“Okay, and?”
“And I remember you mentioned your period was really light last month,” Chelsey continues like I didn’t interrupt her. “Like, it only lasted for a day and barely filled a tampon.”
“So? I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth,” I argue, standing up and heading to the sink to brush my teeth. “Besides, my period isn’t always regular.”
I watch in the mirror as they exchange another one of those loaded glances. Stephanie sighs. “A light period in March, no period in April, throwing up, moodiness, sleeping all the time?—”
“I’m stressed!” I garble around the toothbrush. There’s a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that has absolutely nothing to do with this not-a-stomach-virus.
“You’re pregnant,” Chelsey argues, finally cutting to the chase.
I spit my mouthful of foam into the sink, but Stephanie speaks up before I can yell at our roommate.
“ Or you really are just sick, but we think you should take a test to check. Best case scenario, we’re both wrong and you’re just annoyed with us for a little while.”
“Worst-case scenario, we visit the clinic so you can exercise one of your rights as a woman in the wonderful state of California!” Chelsey adds, in an overly cheerful voice.
I glare at both of them. I’m not pregnant. If I were pregnant, I’d know.
Besides, I hadn’t had sex since the cowboy from the rodeo and that was months ago. I would’ve definitely known by now.
And we used protection. Two kinds, actually, since I had the shot and he’d also worn a condom. Sure, neither method was 100% effective, but both methods together? The odds of me being pregnant were so laughably small that it was much more likely I was just dying of the plague.
Right?
“I don’t have time for this. I’ve already missed Analytics and I’m going to be late for Research if I don’t finish getting ready,” I say, pushing past them.
After three and a half years together, Chelsey and Stephanie are used to my stubbornness, so they don’t continue to press—though the disappointed sigh I hear while I shove my notebooks in my tote bag tells me they’re only tabling the discussion, not dropping it for good.
I’m not pregnant.
There’s literally no way I could be.
With everything in me, I ignore the part of me that knows Chelsey and Stephanie are right. I shove her deep down in a box surrounded by soundproof foam so I can’t hear her screaming at me.
It’s pouring down rain by the time I get to my Marketing Research class. I spend most of it researching possible illnesses that my symptoms could be contributing to besides pregnancy.