The walls, however, were our pride and joy, covered inch to inch in boy band posters and pages torn from glossy magazines that we’d slipped from our moms, our intricately hand-drawn maps of the woods, and other colorful drawings and photos that memorialized some of our greatest adventures together. I could have stayed up there for hours, poring over each page, each picture, remembering every detail of our past. But we weren’t just in the woods for a pleasant stroll down memory lane.
I sighed. “I think it’s time I head down and get this over with.”
The girls nodded, and we each gave one final glance around the house before making our way back down to the ground. Who knew how long until we’d all be up there again together? Years?
Maybe never.
We walked back over to the blanket, and I skimmed through the instructions again to be absolutely sure I had the steps down. It all seemed simple enough: remove the cap and put the tip in my stream of pee for at least five seconds, lay the test down flat to develop, and wait three minutes for the results. The three minutes of waiting would no doubt be the trickiest part of the process.
“All right, then,” I said, grabbing all four sticks from the boxes, two of each kind, and started toward the bank of the creek. “I guess you can just close your eyes or something? Or don’t. I don’t really care, to be honest. I’m just so glad you’re both here, because there’s no way I could be doing this by myself.” I was shaking as I said it, the plastic sticks tapping against one another in my hands.
“I’ll help you,” Hannah said, jumping up from the blanket. “I’ll grab the used sticks and hand you the new ones, make sure they’re set up flat afterward.”
“Count me out,” Izzy said, her lips puckered in disgust. “I love you, Meen, don’t get me wrong, but I do have my limits.”
“Hannah, are you sure you’re okay with that?” I asked, ignoring Izzy.
“I want to do it. Don’t worry about it.” Her voice was so calm and sympathetic, the way my mother would have sounded if this had been a moment I could have shared with her.
I hoped that the next time I’d be taking a pregnancy test—some day in the very ridiculously distant future—I’d be ecstatic and overcome with happy, excited tears. I hoped that the next time, I’d be able to call my mom afterward and scream the good news to her over the phone.
But I had Hannah and Izzy by my side, and in the moment they were more than enough. More than any girl in my predicament could have hoped for.
Hannah looked away and I squatted, willing it to happen despite the highly unusual circumstances. I held the first stick out as soon as I felt a trickle. Hannah grabbed it when I was done and handed me stick two, and between both of our efforts, there were four pink-tipped tests lying flat on top of their boxes before I even realized it had all happened.
“Thanks, Hannah.” I grabbed her hand as we made our way back to the blanket. “You made that much easier.”
“Of course, Meen. Now we just have to think about something else for a few minutes.”
The three of us sat in silence, at a loss for what in the world we could possibly talk about for the next one hundred and eighty seconds besides those four sticks.
“So . . .” Hannah started, an unfamiliar grin spreading over her face. “I’ve decided I’m definitely going to apply to Ole Miss this fall. I’m sure I probably won’t get in, and even if I do, I can’t honestly imagine being that far away from you guys . . . wherever you guys will be, that is . . . But don’t you think it would be fabulous to be surrounded by so many dashing Southern gentlemen? That’d be a nice change of scenery. And I’m pretty sure I could pass for a sweet little blonde Southern belle.”
“Seriously?” Izzy choked out, her voice sputtering. “What happened to our pact to not be more than three hundred miles away from one another? What about our weekend road trips? I can’t exactly hop in my Jeep and drive to Mississippi for a night if I end up at Penn State, can I?”
I looked up at Hannah, her cheeks blazing deep pink. I was just as surprised as Izzy. Hannah was supposed to be the predictable one, the stable one, the anchor of the trio. She wasn’t supposed to drop bombshells, not ever, and especially not in the middle of my own massive personal crisis.
“I . . . I know we’ve always said that, guys, but I thought that was just us being scared. And naive. I would never discourage either of you from trying to go where you really wanted to go. You’re my best friends, no matter where we live for those four years. Nothing’s going to change that.”
“Yeah. Okay. Thanks so much for the heads-up,” Izzy said, refusing to look at her. “Has it been three minutes yet, Meen?”
I hadn’t let myself peek at the sticks once since I’d handed them to Hannah. No easy feat, though Hannah’s shocking news had, at the very least, distracted me better than I could have imagined possible. A cold, clammy sweat prickled down my neck as I nodded and pushed myself up off the ground, turning back toward the bank where we’d laid the sticks.
“So just a reminder: it’s a blue minus sign if you’re not pregnant, and a pink plus if you are. And the other test is pretty self-explanatory: pregnant, not pregnant,” Hannah explained, her mothering instinct back in full force, as if the previous conversation hadn’t ever happened.
I walked slowly, each footstep torn somewhere between running and freezing. I wanted the answer as much as I didn’t want the answer. I could see the tests right below me, waiting to be read, but I didn’t let my eyes focus at first, keeping the indicators a blurry haze. I closed my eyes and squatted down, taking a deep breath.
I opened my eyes.
Plus, plus, pregnant, pregnant.
I was pregnant.
I, Mina Dietrich, an absolute and utter virgin, was pregnant.
Four tests couldn’t be wrong, could they? Not with all the other symptoms I’d had during the past few months, and not with my fears about Iris’s warning. But how could they not be wrong? How could any of this actually be happening to me?
“What should we do now?” Hannah whispered. She and Izzy were hovering over me, staring down at the evidence in front of us.
“I need to let Frankie know that I can’t come in tonight,” I said without even pausing to reconsider. For some reason that was the first and only immediate reaction that came to mind. The only answer, the only step forward that made any sense. Even in the face of the most fantastical crisis imaginable, I could still be relied on not to forget to call out of work.
Under normal circumstances, Izzy would have made endless fun of me for being so dedicated to Frankie’s, but now she was ominously silent. I was afraid to look up at her face, to see whatever was lurking behind her eyes. Izzy couldn’t hide anything, not from me and Hannah, no matter how hard she sometimes tried. Her eyes always insisted on telling us everything we needed to know.
“Let’s get you back to the blanket,” Hannah said, reaching for my hand. “Your cell phone is there in your purse, and then you can lie down while we . . . while we process everything.”
I gave a weak nod and let them pull me up and steer me. My stomach pinched at the sight of the leftover food, the basket that my mom had packed less than two hours ago for our special tree house picnic. My mom. My adoring, gracious, astoundingly perfect mom. How could I ever possibly tell her about this? How could she believe me? How could she keep trusting me and loving me and being proud of me?