Jenny

Ten.

Pregnant?

(I laughed so hard at this gif bc relevance. Sorry, guys, if I'm about to ruin your life <3)

 

Jenny's mother wasn't home. According to Jenny, Mrs. McRives was 'God knows where.' It was storming harder now, so Jenny asked me to come inside the house with her until it slowed. Jenny sat beside the kitchen sink, smoking yet another cigarette, staring out the window as the lightning lit up the darkened sky. She flinched every time the thunder came after the lightning, even though she expected it was coming.

"No party tonight I hope?" I asked her. I really was hoping she wasn't planning on going out to party in this weather. Slippery roads and drunk girls just didn't mix well for drives home.

Jenny laughed and took a drag from her cigarette. She blew the smoke from her lips long and slowly before answering my question. "None that I plan to attend, that is, Rowie." She jumped slightly as thunder shook the house.

Goosebumps were visible along Jenny's arms and legs, due to her shorts and tank top in the air conditioned house. Even I was cold in a cheap hoodie and jeans. I realized Jenny must be freezing. "Are you cold?"

Jenny rubbed her legs then to spread the warmth from her hands. "Yeah. It's freezing in here and mum won't let me touch the AC controls. I almost got kicked out for changing it from 65 to 70." Jenny sighed and smiled. "That was a fun day. Um, could you maybe be the bestest friend ever, Rowie and go upstairs and get my sweater? I think it's on the bed."

I got up from where I sat. "Yeah." I made my way up the stairs to where Jenny's room was.

The staircase had a lot of pictures along the wall. Three year old Jenny grinned at the camera at the base of the stairs. Six year old Jenny, missing her two front teeth, smiled at me with her mother and father standing beside her. Her father's face, though, had been scribbled over with black sharpie. I assumed it was her mother's post-divorce rage that was the culprit of the headless man in the picture. Next was a twelve year old Jenny frowning at the camera, standing in front of our middle school on the first day of sixth grade. At the top of the stairs, sixteen year old Jenny glared at me while standing in front of her first car. The car was a piece of crap, and as I remember, it was only a month before she totaled it in an intersection, coming out of the accident unscathed and drunk. Her mother hadn't gotten her another car after that, and that was the point on in which Jenny started getting rides from me.

Jenny's room was the first one and it was quite hard to miss. I pushed open the cracked door slowly and awkwardly, feeling as if I were invading on her privacy. The room was dark, so I flipped on the light switch. It was different since the last time I had seen it, but the last time I had been in there, we were fourteen. She got rid of the pink comforter and purple rugs on the hardwood floor. On the bed sat her green sweater.

I sprinted across the room to grab it and sprinted back to the door. It was much too odd to spend too much time taking inventory on her bedroom appliances.

I was about to close the door and take the sweater downstairs when something in the small trash bin by her door caught my eye. The white box and bright pink lettering was hard to miss. I moved closer to read it more clearly, as if my eyes couldn't possibly be right about what they saw. But they were.

My heart and the sweater in my hand dropped to the floor. I couldn't move. I couldn't think. I couldn't breathe. This tiny box in the trashcan took everything away from me.

"Rowie, did you find the sweater yet?" Jenny yelled from the bottom of the stairs.

Yeah. I found some other great stuff too. "Yeah. I—I'm coming."

She had snapped me out of my daze and I picked the sweater off the floor. I was turning to leave again, but I decided I couldn't just leave the box behind. I needed to ask Jenny about it. I pulled it out of the trash and headed back downstairs, my heart beating unnaturally fast.

Jenny turned around when I walked behind her, but when she saw that the sweater wasn't the only thing in my hands, her face turned chalk white and her expression went slack. She tried to form words, but came up blank.

I spoke for her, holding up the pregnancy box in my fingers as if it were toxic. "Please, Jenny, tell me you're not pregnant." I didn't mean to, but there was anger clear in my tone.

She continued trying to form words, and eventually she just spat out, "It was negative."

The cloudy anger deep inside of me floated away to pour rain somewhere else. "Negative?" was all I could say.

Jenny nodded. "It just... when I was late I thought... but—but it was just a false alarm. I'm okay."

There was a silence between us like a brick wall as I thought for a moment. "Who's would it have been?"

Jenny was silent for a moment. "Justin's. But it doesn't matter. I'm not... pregnant."

I didn't say anything in that moment, but when she spoke those words, I knew in an instant she was lying.