The moment that condom broke, the clock started ticking on the end of life as you knew it, even if you didn’t know it right then. I mean, you knew right away when the condom broke, because it’s not like you were in the throes of some steamy love affair. It was Ford, for God’s sake. You were looking at the knotty pine walls of the bedroom in Ford’s family’s hunting cabin, finding faces. Wasn’t it funny how the markings on knotty pine walls looked so much like little faces with angry eyebrows, watching you disapprovingly? 

And then it broke.

“Shit, sorry about that,” said Ford, flopping onto his back next to you.

“It’s fine,” you replied. And you figured that it was. It never occurred to you that it wouldn’t be. Not right then. Partly because it felt like all of this happened a long time ago, like Ford was already a person from your past, your first boyfriend, your “high school sweetheart” as old people, like your mom, liked to say. He certainly had no place in your future, you sure as hell knew that. In your mind, you were already in your car, heading towards college and whatever was going to happen after that. You couldn’t even picture it, to be honest. What did you know about college? But you tried to see it as best you could, imagining libraries with tall shelves of books, sitting around a table laughing with new friends, walking across campus with a backpack slung casually over one shoulder, maybe wearing a decorative scarf or a fedora. Something with flair. 

And Ford? Ford was already in your rearview mirror, getting smaller and smaller as you drove away, until he was just a tiny speck, and then he vanished completely.

 

Babycenter.com said that the fetus was the size of a poppy seed at four weeks, so what was it that night? Something four times smaller than a poppy seed? How did that compare to other things you’d lost?

 

Your dad had left right before the school year started, and you couldn’t blame him really. Your mom was so annoying to live with. Like how she always talked about “Grey’s,” meaning the TV show Grey’s Anatomy. “Grey’s this” and “Grey’s that” and you honestly could not give a flying fuck about Grey’s Anatomy, had never watched a single episode.

And then she started getting obsessed with that Noom app. She had done other stuff over the years—Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig. She was always talking about how fat she was. She had a whole wardrobe of what she called “fat clothes” and another whole wardrobe of “skinny clothes” and to be honest, none of them were great. You couldn’t remember a time when she wasn’t talking about her weight like it was the most important thing in the whole goddamned world. You also couldn’t remember a time when you didn’t equate size with value and knew deep in your bones that less was always, always more. 

So, she’d lose weight and then put it back on. But Noom was different. She lost a lot of weight fast and kept talking about how she’d finally “got her body back.” She’d go on and on. So fucking boring. She also started buying clothes from the junior’s department of TJ Maxx, which wasn’t cute on a forty-four-year-old, but you weren’t going to tell her that. And neither was your dad. They’d basically been fighting your whole growing-up, so it made sense when he left, and you actually wondered why it had taken him so long. You sort of stayed in touch with him—texted here and there. He was busy with work and being born again or whatever this new religious thing he was doing was, you didn’t really follow beyond the fact that it seemed time-consuming.

Your parents agreed that you and your mom would stay in the house until you graduated from high school, and then they’d sell the house and split the money – the whole thing wrapping up like a travelling show. Your childhood was ending, and they were going to take down the set, and the actors who had played the parts of your parents would move on to other gigs. Your mom seemed especially ready, like an actress at the end of a long and unsatisfying run playing a character she’d never really connected to. 

“It’s time for some me time,” she said one afternoon, as she counted almonds into a Ziplock bag, to take with her to her job at the local Ace Hardware. She was wearing her red Ace Hardware shirt and nametag and a pair of extremely low-rise jeans with a “Mudd” label on them that she said, repeatedly, she hadn’t been able to wear since high school. You wanted to tell her that just because somebody could wear something didn’t mean they should, but you thought better of it.

“That’s great, Mom,” you said, watching her consider a tenth almond, decide “why the fuck not?”, toss it into the bag and seal up the seam.

Needless to say, she was none too thrilled to hear that your period was late. There was a long pause after you told her, and you’d never forget what she said next.

“Let me ask you something,” she said. “Did you follow my advice to get yourself into this situation?”

You thought for a minute, unsure of where she was going with this.

“No?” you responded.

“That’s right,” she answered. “No, you did not. And if you didn’t need my advice to get into this mess, you sure as hell don’t need my advice to get out of it.”

She gave you a smile that involved only her mouth, in no way reaching her eyes, and left for work. 

Okay then. You can’t say you were too surprised. She’d never been someone you could depend on for anything. 

Telling your dad was out of the question. You didn’t understand much about his newfound religious awakening, but you were pretty sure a sunny outlook on premarital sex wasn’t part of it. 

Well, that left Ford, who, after all, was just as responsible for this situation as you were. You two and the fine people at Trojan.

“Shit,” said Ford. “Really?”

You nodded. 

He took off his baseball cap and ran his fingers through his dark, curly hair. 

“Well, I mean, okay.”

“Okay what, Ford?”

“Okay, I mean, I love you. I always assumed we’d get married. We’re kind of young, especially you, but I mean, okay.”

He got a strange expression on his face and his eyes looked sort of misty. 

Oh Christ, you thought. You’ve got to be kidding me.

“Ford, I’m leaving for college, I can’t have a baby.”

“Well,” he said. “There’s no reason you have to go.”

“I know I don’t have to go; I want to go. I worked my ass off all through high school to get a full scholarship for college.”

You start tearing up here, much to your embarrassment. But it’s true. You worked so hard, studied so much, all with the intention of getting out, of having a place to go that wasn’t with your mom or your dad or Ford’s family. Where people listened to you. Where you said important things worth listening to. 

“Well, I mean, you worked your ass off at a shitty high school in the middle of East Bumblefuck, Texas,” said Ford. “You’re like Texas smart, babe, not like college smart.”

He laughed.

You kind of wanted to scratch his eyes out. Or cut his dick off. You knew one thing: this motherfucker was not going to be your future. No way. He was rearview mirror material. Now you wish you hadn’t told him at all. 

“Okay, I guess we’ll figure something out,” you said. To buy time.

You wouldn’t say you were the type of person to have good girlfriends and you couldn’t quite put your finger on why. It felt like somewhere around the sixth or seventh grade, everyone had formed these friend groups, and like a game of musical chairs, the music had stopped, and you’d been standing, looking at all these other people sitting in tight groups, with not a spare chair in sight. It’s part of why you had spent so much time with Ford, even after he’d graduated two years before. You had kind of been friends with Cassidy though, at least before high school, like maybe middle school? Or at least the end of elementary school? You were pretty sure about that. 

So, you texted her to see if she’d want to meet up at Starbucks after school one afternoon, and she replied “yassss queen can’t wait to talk prom witchoo.” You sat outside and got pink bubbly drinks that Cassidy said she’d seen on TikTok. 

“Can you believe we’re graduating high school?” she said, tossing a handful of her naturally curly blonde hair over one shoulder, her blue eyes sparkling in the afternoon sun. 

“I know, it’s crazy,” you replied, taking a sip of your drink and adjusting the elastic around your wrist, the one you had read online helped with nausea. You couldn’t tell if the nausea was from the pregnancy or from the leaden sense of dread and anxiety you felt each morning when you woke up and realized you were still in this body, in this situation. 

“Ford must be so sad you’re leaving,” said Cassidy, making an exaggerated sad face with her lips puckered and fiddling with the silver cross she wore around her neck. “Do you think you guys are going to try to stay together?” 

“I don’t know,” you replied, feigning a breezy tone as all the molecules inside you stage whispered, No fucking way.

You talked about prom and where Cassidy was getting her dress. She’d already gone shopping with her mom several times and was ordering two dresses. She wasn’t sure if she’d wear both, like do a wardrobe change at some point, or just pick one when they arrived and sell the other one on eBay. She went into a long description of the two dresses from shape to color to sleeve type. Phrases like “tea length,” “mermaid,” and “completely open back” were used, and as they washed over you, you realized you could never ask Cassidy for help with this problem of yours. To do so would be like hurling a newborn puppy in a mudpuddle. You also realized that this right here was exactly why you had never had good girl friends.

Your last resort was Charlotte. 

Charlotte had an abortion freshman year of high school—everyone found out about it. She broke up with her boyfriend, Braeden, right afterwards and he told all his friends that that was why. Actually, first he told everyone that she was a lesbian but then later, he told everyone that she’d had an abortion. He had text messages from her about it which he screenshotted and sent to a huge text string of his teammates on the varsity football team, so, there was no denying it. You didn’t know Charlotte very well, but you always thought it was badass that she never addressed it at all and just went about her business. When people asked her if what Braeden said was true, she always answered, “Braeden who?” with a look that clearly communicated that was the end of the conversation.

You and Charlotte had always been friendly at school—you’d often pair up together as lab partners in Chemistry junior year. You weren’t out-of-school-friends, but then, you didn’t really have any out of-school-friends, did you? And you thought that maybe Charlotte didn’t either.

You still had Charlotte’s number from when you had worked together on a chemistry project and you texted her to see if she’d meet up. You picked the playground in town because no one your age went there, and you didn’t want to be seen with Charlotte—you thought it might be too obvious. The playground was completely empty when you arrived at the appointed time. It was a gray, drizzly day, and you were sitting alone on a rusty, damp swing when Charlotte walked up.

“Hey,” she said, plopping down on the swing next to yours.

“Hey,” you replied.

And then you just launched in. The broken condom, your dad moving out and his religious affiliations, Noom, Ford. You let it rip. Charlotte just listened.

“How far along are you?” she asked.

“I think like four or five weeks? I’m not exactly sure.”

“Well, you might already be fucked then,” she said, in a tone more sympathetic than her words would indicate.

“What do you mean?” you asked.

“Shit’s gotten crazy. It’s hard to do anything about it at this point—unless you have enough money for a plane flight and a hotel stay.”

You had no idea what either of those things might cost, but even without knowing, you knew it was more than you could afford.

This, right here, is the first time you feel really afraid. Like, actual fear. Panic. How could it already be too late? If you’re four or five weeks at this point, it’s somewhere between a poppy seed and an apple seed. But even at nine weeks it’s only the size of a green olive. You had your appendix out when you were nine, and surely that was bigger than an apple seed or an olive. Granted, your appendix wasn’t going to be able to vote someday, but still.

Charlotte had one idea, God bless her. She asked if you had a car, and you said yes, a shitty one. She said she’d make some calls and get back to you. You peeled your asses off the swings and hugged, which was weird, because you never hugged anyone.

Charlotte texted later that night and said she found “a clinic-type-place, semi-legit” in Santa Fe, New Mexico, that could help you out. It was an eight or ninehour drive. This seemed like your best and, actually, your only option. In your mind, you focused on those shelves of books, those new friends you hadn’t met yet laughing around a table, the scarf or fedora, that other you that you still might get to be.

Charlotte offered to go with you and said you could stay the night at her house because her mom worked nights anyway, which seemed like just about the nicest thing in the whole world. You had to tell your mom you were going away with Ford’s family to the cabin, and you had to tell Ford you were going prom dress shopping with your mom all day. You told him the two of you were going to head into Austin and make a day of it, have dinner at a nice restaurant and stay over at a hotel. You kind of got into this story once you started telling it and liked to imagine afterwards that it had happened. 

Your dad was the only one who ever looked at your car, and he was going to notice the extra roughly five hundred miles on your odometer at some point, but you’d find a way to deal with that later. 

It was still dark when you picked Charlotte up around 5:00 a.m. that morning. 

You got coffees at a McDonalds, you figured it was fine to drink the caffeine now and you needed to stay awake. You drove in silence for a long while.

“Does it hurt?” you asked Charlotte.

“It’s not too bad—kind of like a really crampy period,” she said. 

“Okay.”

“You’ll be fine, really,” said Charlotte. “And I’m happy to drive home if you want to sleep.”

You nodded.

“It’s funny,” she said. “If guys were the ones to get pregnant, you could probably have just gotten an abortion at that McDonalds drive-thru we just went to. ‘Two Big Mac’s and a month’s supply of Plan B, please.’”

You laughed. She was right about that. It was funny and it also pissed you the fuck off to no end.

Even with Charlotte along, and she was surprisingly good company, the ride took forever. It seemed somehow unreal that you had to drive eight plus hours to get two pills. 

But that’s all it was. They said you should take the two pills twenty-four hours apart, but they also said you could take them at the same time with pretty much the same result, and so you did that. It wasn’t long before the cramps started in. You drove home with a bunch of pads, which you hadn’t used since middle school, and stopped a few times along the way to change them.

It was dark again when Charlotte drove your car into her driveway. You had been dozing off and on for the last hour or so. You took a really hot shower and some Advil and fell asleep in Charlotte’s bed before she’d even gotten in next to you. 

The next morning, you awkwardly thanked her, and she said it was no big deal. You hugged again, which officially made her the person you had hugged the most that month.

You got in your car and drove home and even though you were still crampy and bleeding, the warm feeling of relief that washed over you was so complete, so overwhelming, that you were laughing and then crying and then laughing again. It was over. You were going to get the chance to be that other girl, the one lost in thought, striding across campus. The one people listened to.

You told Ford that you miscarried. You said it was too painful to talk about and since not talking about things was Ford’s MO, that worked out. Or you thought it did.

Your dad noticed the odometer and seemed to not buy your explanation that you had been making a lot of trips to Ford’s family’s cabin. The cabin wasn’t that far away, and Ford had a much nicer car than you and loved to drive. “Mom and I also went prom dress shopping in Austin and I drove,” you said. Lying to him about her was risky because they did occasionally talk, but you were a risky person these days, weren’t you?

Your mom noticed via the bathroom trashcan that you were using pads and not tampons, which she thought was odd. “What are you, twelve?” she asked. “I ran out,” you told her. “I’ll get more this week.” She rolled her eyes and went off to film her workout and post it on Facebook.

You never really spoke to Cassidy again, but she looked pristine in the prom pictures she posted on Snap Chat and appeared to have gone with the mermaid dress. She saw you talking with Charlotte a few times in school and gave you a weird look or maybe you imagined that part.

 

So, it could have been any of them that ratted you out. Or none of them. Hard to know. Especially because some “pro-life” group, not a named individual, had brought the lawsuit against Charlotte. There was a website where you could go and accuse anyone of aiding or abetting an abortion. You had to give this group your name and contact info and if they won in court, you’d get some of the money, but you could remain anonymous throughout the process. 

So, your suspicions stayed just that.

Charlotte was scared at first, and you felt like shit, of course. A few days before you were leaving for college, she let you know about the papers she’d gotten. But the thing was, her mom was dating this personal injury lawyer at the time, and he was a pain in the ass, but he was the right kind of pain in the ass for this particular situation. He said these fuckers were amateurs, and it turned out they pretty much were. They were filing so many lawsuits that a lot of them just ended up never getting followed up on and thankfully yours—or Charlotte’s—was one that just went away. The personal injury lawyer guy made it more hassle than it was worth for them. Easier for them to go after the people who had no one at all to defend them, not even a soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend-of-your-mom-ambulance-chaser-who-knows-just-enough-about-the-law-to-be-a-pain-in-the-ass.

It always seemed strange to you that as the person who got the abortion, you were never in danger of being sued. The law wasn’t written that way. They were looking for the helpers. They wanted to punish anyone who dared to help. They wanted to create circumstances where you had no other choice but to be alone in your predicament. Or take a pregnancy you didn’t want to term, be a mom, even if it was the last thing on earth you wanted to do. That always seemed ass-backwards to you, having had a mom who really didn’t want to be one, and knowing it was an experience you would most certainly not recommend to others. 

 

Within a few weeks of being at college, you heard from Charlotte that the whole thing was pretty much fine and put to bed and you exhaled a breath you didn’t know you had been holding in. You never did go “home” again. There probably wouldn’t have been a place for you to stay anyway. Avoiding that town for the rest of your life seemed like a wise decision, or not really a decision at all. It was more like it never occurred to you to go back. You had escaped – barely. There was nothing for you there. And the more you thought about it, the more you realized, there never really had been.