How It Ends by Catherine Lo (classic novels to read .txt) 📗

her face. She made a beeline through the foyer, cutting off kids as if she didn’t even see them.

She grabbed me by the arm and leaned into me. “Thank God you’re here. I’ve been dying to talk to you all morning.” She looked panic-stricken, and my mind got tangled up between relief that she was happy to see me and fear over the look in her eyes.

“What’s wrong?”

“In here,” she hissed, dragging me into the bathroom by the arm. “I need your help.” She held up a finger for silence while the bathroom emptied of the between-classes crowd.

I felt lighter. Annie chose me. She had a problem and she was turning to me.

“Promise you won’t tell anyone?” She sounded excited. Her words were vibrating with an unnerving mixture of hope and dread. She pulled a plastic bag out of her backpack and clutched it to her chest. With her eyes wide and cheeks pink she looked like my Annie again. She looked like the first day of school.

“Of course not!”

“Okay . . .” She dragged out the word like she was about to reveal something wondrous, and my eyes widened with expectation.

But what she pulled out of the bag was a red and white box that took my breath away. The room swam around me as though we’d suddenly been plunged underwater.

“I know!” she practically shouted, and I looked reflexively toward the door, afraid we’d get caught. “I know it’s terrible and awful, and I should be crying and freaking out . . . and I’m not exactly happy about it or anything. God, I don’t even really believe it could be true . . . but I’m late, Jess. I’m late and I’m freaking, and I just have to know, you know?”

She finally stopped talking and looked at me, waiting for me to say something. Waiting for me to reassure her. To put my arm around her and tell her everything would be okay. I could see the scene unfolding the way she wanted it to, but I just couldn’t make myself cooperate.

Instead, I blurted, “You had sex!” I’d meant it to be a question, but it came out an accusation.

“Duh.”

“What were you thinking?” I had suddenly become my mother. I knew I was handling it all wrong. I didn’t really care so much that she’d had sex, beyond being insanely jealous and enormously curious. What really bothered me . . . what still cuts me so deep that I can barely breathe, is that she did it without talking to me. She thought about it, debated it, made her decision, and did it without ever, not even once, mentioning it to me.

“Jesus, Jess! I need help, not a lecture.”

I took a deep breath and tried to focus my thoughts. “Okay. Let’s think about this logically. You still have a week before your period is due.”

“What?”

“Your period. It’s due next week.”

“I don’t even want to know how you know that, but I’m late from the one before.”

“You’re three weeks late and just noticing now?”

“I don’t keep track of these things!”

I eyed the box. “You haven’t taken the test yet, right?”

She shook her head.

“Let’s do it, then,” I said, slinging my backpack into the corner. “It’s not like either of us will be able to focus in class until we know.”

Annie disappeared into a stall, and I heard the package rip open. A moment later, a little folded booklet came skidding out from under the stall. “Read that! I’m too nervous.”

I scanned the pamphlet, my hands shaking. “Sounds pretty easy. Take the cap off, pee on the ‘absorbent tip,’ and then put the cap back on. We should know in three minutes.”

We shared a giggle at the term absorbent tip before the bathroom fell silent. When I heard Annie peeing, I got so scared I thought I might throw up. What the hell were we going to do?

She came out of the stall holding the stick in front of her as if it were a weapon. She set it on the edge of the sink, and we stared at my watch as the seconds ticked by. Neither of us peeked at the test.

At two minutes and seventeen seconds, we heard the bathroom door pull open. We both moved to block the test from view. A nervous-looking girl peered at us, obviously curious about why we’d formed a human wall in front of one of the sinks, but she thought better of asking. We stayed motionless, not even talking, until she finished, washed her hands, and left.

“Three minutes have definitely passed.” Now that it was time to look, I wanted to run away.

Annie looked at me for a long moment. “Thanks for this, Jess,” she breathed.

I nodded at her, and we both turned around at the same time. In front of us was the white plastic stick. There were two pink lines in the little window.

“I don’t suppose two lines means negative?” she asked.

I didn’t answer. I just passed her the booklet that contained the bad news. Two lines meant pregnant. Two lines meant a baby.

Annie picked up the pregnancy test and tossed it into the garbage. “Well, fuck . . .” she said awkwardly, not meeting my eyes.

“I won’t tell anyone,” I reassured her. “And we’ll fix this, I promise. We just need information. We can go to a guidance counselor if you want . . . or maybe your family doctor? I’ll go with you. We can find out where to get it done there.”

She was nodding her head along with what I was saying, until I got to my last sentence. Then she stopped and looked at me, confused. “Get what done?”

“You know, the . . . procedure.”

She was still looking at me blankly.

“The thing . . . the abortion.” I whispered the last word, feeling the crushing weight of it in my chest.

“Jess!” Her eyes widened in shock, and she backed away from me as though I were something monstrous. “Who said anything about an abortion?” Like me, she couldn’t say the word without whispering.

“Well, it’s not like you can keep it!”

“This is