JUNE 30
“I am so glad I quit that night,” Annabelle says.
“That’s why you flipped the building the bird?” I ask.
She grins. “Oh, you saw that.”
“I saw you kick your apron, too. That was pretty classy, I have to say.”
“I’m all about the class.”
“I’m really sorry, Camille,” Bea says. “The pharmacist shouldn’t have treated you that way.”
“Well, dudes like that are, for the most part, jerks,” Annabelle responds. “Can you imagine how entitled you must be to spew out that crap to someone? I can’t imagine telling a girl she’s a chewed-up piece of gum. I couldn’t tell my worst enemy that.”
“Don’t let him hurt your feelings, Camille,” Bea says.
“It’s hard not to. He basically slut-shamed me, and right in front of the whole place.”
“That was his plan,” Annabelle puts in. “Public shaming. If he could have come out with a scarlet S, he would have. Stick you in the stocks and have people pelt rotten tomatoes at you.”
“You remember what Mr. Knight says when we get bad reviews?” Bea asks.
“Don’t take them personally.” All three of us say it together.
From the back seat, Bea pats my shoulder. “That jerk probably says that garbage to every woman who comes into that pharmacy, no matter how old she is.”
I can’t help but smile a little when Bea says that.
“Bea’s right,” Annabelle says. “Like bad reviews, that kind of thing can burrow its way into your head and you can’t get rid of it, you know?”
“But that day is like a movie in my mind that I can turn on and torture myself with.”
“Tammy told me to kick the dust off my feet and forget about those boys,” Bea says. “You do that, too, Camille. Kick the dust off your feet and forget about that pharmacist.”
“He didn’t win anyway,” I say. “I got the test, thanks to Annabelle.”
“What was it like, taking that test?” Bea asks. “I mean, was it like in Juno?”
“Yep, Camille drank all the SunnyD she could find,” Annabelle says.
I nudge her with my elbow.
“How do those tests even work?” Bea asks. “I mean, how can a stick say whether you’re pregnant or not? Wouldn’t it have been better to go to a doctor?”
Annabelle holds up her hand. “Really, Bea? Like what doctor?” she says.
Bea sits back in her seat and huffs.
“I had myself convinced that the test would say not pregnant, and this entire nightmare would be over. I could go to Willow, get Léo to fall in love with me, forget this ever happened.” My stomach pitches and nausea rolls over me at even the thought of it.
“But what happened?” Bea asks.
I look back at her, and she has this really earnest expression on her face. “So, my mom is pissed because I took the car without her permission. She has all these people over, and she punishes me by making me work the party. I have to wait for a moment when she’s not having me, like, fill up someone’s drink or bring out another tray of cheese. But finally, she releases me, and I race upstairs to the bathroom.” I remember how my heart pounded as I walked up the stairs.
“And?” Bea is leaning forward in her seat.
“Well, I take out the test and read the instructions, and then I sit on the toilet.” I pause, reliving the moment. “And all that’s going through my mind is, like, Please don’t be pregnant, please don’t be pregnant. You know?”
Annabelle nods, but she doesn’t take her eyes off the road.
“I’m sitting there, and I wait and wait, but I can’t go. I turn on the sink and hold my hand in the water for a solid minute. But it doesn’t work.”
“So, the exact opposite of who you’ve been this whole car ride?” Annabelle asks.
“Yes,” I say, shoving her gently. “I put the test back in the box and start guzzling water from the sink. Downstairs, my mom’s party is in full swing, and I hear one of the ladies scream out, ‘Bunco!’”
“What the hell is Bunco?” Annabelle asks.
“Oh my gosh, it’s so fun!” Bea replies. “We’ll teach you later. Camille, please go on.”
“So, finally, I feel like I have to pee. And this shot of fear pulses through me.”
Annabelle reaches over and squeezes my leg.
“I sit on the toilet and I put the stick under me, and this time a trickle of pee comes out. I’m not sure if it’s enough, or if it even hits the stick, but it looks damp when I pull it out. I put the stick on a piece of toilet paper on the sink and set the timer on my phone for three minutes. Which feels like forever, and you’ll recall, way longer than the sex I had. And I’m sitting there, wondering why the hell I even had sex with Dean. I was just so eager to lose my virginity, to have ‘the experience,’ to add it to my arsenal as an actress. To, I don’t know, be a woman.”
“I get that,” Annabelle says. “That’s how I felt when I did it for the first time.”
“I didn’t even consider the possibility I could get pregnant. I thought condoms were foolproof, you know?”
I look out the window at the streetlights zipping by.
“So then what happened?” Bea says it all quiet.
“The timer went off.” I grimace at the memory. “And there were two pink lines on the little screen.”
“What do two pink lines mean?”
“Jesus, Bea!” Annabelle says. “It meant that she was pregnant.”
“I was pregnant,” I say kind of softly to myself. The words still feel weird coming out of my mouth. A hush falls over the car.
“Bunco!” Annabelle suddenly shouts, startling the shit out of me. Bea actually screams.
Even though I find Annabelle’s behavior less than funny, her grin is a bit contagious.