Blooming

I hopped out of the car as fast as I possibly could and raced into the local Quick-E-Mart, the door dinging as I passed through. Behind me, my best friend, Lucille, sped after me. After about the longest three minutes of my life, in search of something that would forever decide my fate, Lucille yelled to me from across the tiny store.

“Over here!” she shouted.

I didn’t think my heart rate could go any faster. In fact, I was seriously afraid of a heart attack at that point.

I ran over to Lucy in isle three, knocking down a display of Huggies along the way. It seemed that world was taunting me.

When I reached my best friend, she had every brand of pregnancy tests imaginable in her embrace.

“You think this’ll do?” she asked. I nodded, because I couldn’t speak. “Good. Let’s go.”

Just to be safe, I took several more off the shelf. These things were always wrong.... Weren’t they?

Lucy and I quickly started racing to the check out. We could see there was no line, in small towns like Riverson, though, this wasn’t rare. In fact, other than the cashier, we were the only ones in the store. At least the world let me have some privacy in doing this.

Lucy jumped over the diaper display that I so kindly destroyed but missed her footing and tripped. But she was up in a heartbeat and we were at the cash register seconds later. Together, we spread out the pregnancy tests across the counter and watched as the cashier, a boy we went to school with, Riley, stared at us suspiciously. I prayed he wouldn’t tell anyone at school but knew he probably would.

Lucy noticed his wide-eyed stare.

“Could we skip the part where this is awkward so you can hurry and ring these up?” she yelled. Lucy was always doing things like this for me. I couldn’t have asked for a better friend.

Riley looked away and finished ringing up the tests. He took a deep breath before answering.

“Twenty-eight ninety-five.” he said.

Lucy placed thirty dollars in front of him. We each took a bag and headed out the door. But as we were leaving, I looked back at Riley. There was a look of fear on his face but whether it was for me I wasn’t sure. Maybe it was for me. Or maybe it was for Darren. Or maybe it was for the person who could very well have been living inside me.

“Come on!” Lucy screamed. I followed her out the door and back into her Chevy.

“You don’t think he’ll say anything, do you?” I asked, my voice cracking as tears swelled in my eyes. Lucy started the car and started back to her house.

“Forget him.” she said simply knowing quite well that I wouldn’t. “It’ll be okay. Promise.” I nodded, although I didn’t believe her.

It was a cool night in October, raining yet again. It seemed that the constant amount of rain fall we’d been getting here lately was slowing everyone down. But now it had never been more true.

“Step on it.” I said. I couldn’t take it anymore. We had to get to her house. We had to.

Once we’d finally reached her house, we grabbed the bags of pregnancy tests and raced upstairs to her room. Her parents were working late again and for this, at least, I was thankful.

Once in her room, she dumped out the tests all over her bed, studied each one for a moment, then handed me four.

“Take these first.” she said handing them to me. I took them in my own shaky hands but couldn’t move any further. My feet, it seemed, were glued to the ground.

I looked up at Lucy. She smiled a painful smile.

“Whatever happens, happens. You’re not going into this alone.”

I took a deep breath and stepped into the bathroom across the hall, my best friend behind me. Then, I quickly shut the door before I had time to back out.