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  The large accessible stall was thick with air freshener. Cassidy pulled down her pants and sat on the toilet as her mind narrowed to this moment—dirty tile floors, the bag crinkling and floating to the ground, her fingers ripping the box. She read the small print of the instructions: five seconds in urine, three minutes for results. There would be two lines or there would be one. How was she supposed to collect the pee? Her eyes moved back to the box and she shifted to one side of the toilet, lifting her other cheek and holding it under her.

  She moved quickly, still reaching awkwardly under herself, to extract a few drops of urine with the dropper before it all soaked through the soggy, torn box into the toilet.

  “Dammit,” she cursed as a drop spilled on her jeans.

  She squeezed one, two, three, four, five drops onto the test window. There would be one line or two.

  She shoved the dripping box into the metal trash can, set the plastic stick on top of the lid, and waited.

  One Mississippi, two Mississippi. One line or two.

  At “ten Mississippi,” Cassidy wiped and stood.

  Eleven Mississippi, twelve Mississippi. She pulled up her pants and underwear.

  Thirteen Mississippi. Fourteen Mississippi. She leaned her back against the door and squinted at the test, unable to see the little window. She wouldn’t look early, she promised herself. If she looked too soon, there might be a second line that wouldn’t have been there otherwise, and that would make it true by virtue of being seen.

  Thirty Mississippi. Thirty-one Mississippi. Thirty-two Mississippi. She retrieved the bag from the floor and balled it in her fists.

  Thirty-three Mississippi. Thirty-four Mississippi. By the time she reached sixty, the idea of doing it two more times seemed unreasonable. She rushed across the stall to the trash can and looked down. One line or two.

  Two. There were two lines. The line that indicated a positive was a garishly dark pink. If Cassidy were in a movie, she would buy another test. She’d buy ten different tests and stare at them all in disbelief. But she wasn’t in a movie, and she didn’t need another test. She knew it was true.

  She was surprised that a small part of her fluttered with something like excitement. It wasn’t at the idea of pregnancy. It definitely was not at the idea of a baby. It was the drama of something big, the same manic tingle that had gripped her when she’d first decided to stay. But Cassidy didn’t need big. There’d been too much big lately. This wasn’t even going to be big. It wasn’t going to be fun or exciting. It wasn’t going to be anything except sad and expensive, and maybe painful.

  Cassidy uncrumpled the bag in her hands and put the test inside, then stuffed it into the trash can on top of the pee-soaked box. She swung open the door of the stall. As she reached for the metal handle of the bathroom door, she hesitated and dropped her hand to her side. With one eye on the door, Cassidy rushed back to the stall, pulled the bag out of the trash can, retrieved the positive test, and put it in her pocket. She stuffed the bag back into the trash and speed-walked out of the stall, out of the bathroom, and out of the huge store.

  Cassidy didn’t think about her period. She didn’t think about babies. She didn’t think about her body. She thought about the classmate she’d seen and how she had aged, how she looked like a real adult—how she was a real adult. Cassidy was a child. She’d done nothing and she would do nothing, even if she’d fooled people here by moving to California. But now she was back, with nothing to show, and she had to take care of this before they knew the extent of her failure. She’d ask Manny for the money tonight.

  Even more humiliating was Paloma, who’d been witness to Cassidy’s failures forever. Every time she threw a fit over something dumb. Every time she got a B when Paloma would have gotten an A. Cassidy suddenly remembered the first time she’d masturbated, holding her breath, determined to be silent, thinking of Gwen Stefani in the “Rich Girl” video. Afterward, with the blood rushing in her ears, she’d been sure her mom could hear her in the kitchen below. Paloma kept all of it, every mortifying thing, barely restrained in her voice even when she praised her. Her acceptance was all an act to show how tolerant she was of her disgusting, embarrassing daughter.

  Cassidy couldn’t tell her. She wouldn’t tell anybody.

  Cassidy

  The Upshur-Buckhannon Health Department was committed to protecting the privacy of the poor and the perverted. The blinds of the unassuming brick building were always shut, adding to the sense that only shameful things happened inside.

  When Cassidy was sixteen and had refused, in spite of much prodding, to come out, Paloma had taken her to get birth control. “I don’t need to know if you’re having sex, Cassidy,” she’d said. “But they do.”

  Cassidy felt just as embarrassed to be here now. A receptionist whose name placard read Mary greeted her from behind a window in the wall just to the right of the door, smiling a bored but kind smile as she pointed to a clipboard. “Just a first name is fine,” she said.

  Cassidy wrote Dee and placed the clipboard back on the desk with a small clatter, then found a seat and tried not to make eye contact with the other waiting people, instead staring at the wood-paneled walls.

  A woman on the other side of the room twitched her pale legs and Cassidy looked at her shoes—old jelly sandals, the glitter long faded. The hem of her jeans only reached her anklebones. The woman was impossibly skinny, her ribs showing through her tight white T-shirt, a large yellow stain at the collar. Cassidy glanced at her face, which was pale and sallow. Her greasy hair was pulled into a messy ponytail and she was staring off into the distance, her dark eyes serious.

  Another woman, probably in her sixties, sat a few seats down in an oversized Garfield sweatshirt and gray sweatpants. Beside her, a little girl of about four stared at a phone, her eyes zombielike. “Okay, Clarissa, give me that back now,” the woman said, taking her phone.

  “But, Mamaw,” the girl protested halfheartedly. The older woman proceeded to look at the phone herself and the little girl, resigned, jumped down from her seat and bounced over to Cassidy.

  “My name’s Clarissa.”

  “Hi, Clarissa.” Cassidy looked to the receptionist’s window. Mary was filing.

  “What’s your name?” the little girl asked. Up close like this, Cassidy could see how dirty she was—a layer of snot and grime covering her cheeks, her nose crusty, some kind of red rash on the side of her neck, her filthy fingernails untrimmed.

  “Dee,” Cassidy said, breaking eye contact. She’d almost said C, the name she used on cam. Why was it harder to lie to a little kid?

  Clarissa scratched her head vigorously and scrunched up her tiny nose. “My mamaw comes here every day,” she said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah, we have to check her blood pressure. We walk over cause we live in the apartments on the Island.” She motioned in the direction of the railroad tracks, to the part of town surrounded by a loop of the river.

  “Oh.”

  “Why are you here?” the girl asked.

  “Clarissa, that ain’t none a’ your business!” her grandmother shouted, and the child shifted her weight, more annoyed than embarrassed. She scratched her head again hard, and Cassidy nearly jumped out of her seat when she looked at the child’s scalp and saw it was so infested with lice that her stringy black hair appeared to be moving, the strands covered in small white nits.

  “We’re ready for you, Brenda, honey,” a nurse said, opening a door next to the receptionists’ window, and Cassidy exhaled in relief as the older woman rose slowly and the girl followed her back.

  They emerged again after a few minutes, and the little girl waved to Cassidy as they exited through the glass door to the parking lot. Cassidy waved back, wanting her wave to mean something—to help the little girl somehow, but she knew it wouldn’t. She scratched her own scalp as, outside, it began to rain.

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sp; The woman in jelly sandals was next. “Shawntell,” the nurse announced, looking at her clipboard. She was in the back longer, at least ten minutes, and was still there when the nurse appeared in the doorway again and said, “Dee?”

  Cassidy followed her through the door and down a long hall, where the nurse then directed her to a small exam room. Posters on the wall advertised a medical debt relief program, an opioid recovery group, and a single mothers’ support circle. Though she was better off than most of the patients here, Cassidy knew the nurse saw her as a charity case, like everyone else.

  She climbed the metal step to the table. Its papered surface crinkled as she sat, and she felt the plastic test in her pocket poking her.

  “What are we here for today, honey?” the nurse asked.

  “I, uh, think I’m pregnant,” Cassidy said.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because I had a positive pregnancy test.”

  “Are you on any kind of birth control?”

  “No.” She was like every one of the dumb teenagers who came in.

  “Okay, honey.” The nurse wrote something on her clipboard. “Can you go to the bathroom?”

  “I think so.”

  The nurse pulled a specimen cup from a cupboard and directed Cassidy to a bathroom across the hall. How many women had peed in cups here? She could hear the ghosts of their prayers in the hum of the air conditioner.

  Cassidy returned with the cup, warm now, and the nurse took it out of the room. Cassidy didn’t count this time. She didn’t need to. She felt calm and purposeful, waiting for what would happen next.

  “You are definitely pregnant,” the nurse said when she returned a few minutes later. She asked lots of questions, then—sexual partners, health history, last missed period.

  “I don’t remember,” Cassidy said, and the nurse frowned. “So I . . .” Cassidy paused. “I was hoping there was a pill. The, uh, medical abortion.” She looked past the nurse at a model pelvis.

  “We don’t have that here, honey. We have Plan B, but that’s for just a few days after unprotected sex.” Her tone was kind, with no hint of judgment.

  Cassidy’s eyes snapped back to the nurse’s face, down to her Minnie Mouse scrubs, and then to her own hands in her lap. “So,” she started, her heart beating in the small dip of her throat.

  “The closest place is in Charleston. The only place in the state, actually.”

  Cassidy gaped. The blue-white lights overhead made the room sparkle, giving her a sudden feeling of dissociation. Charleston. It was going to be a whole thing.

  “Is there anything else I can help you with?” the nurse asked kindly. “I can get you that number if that’s something you need.”

  “Yes, please.” Cassidy rose from the table, her legs slightly shaky as she stepped back down to the floor.

  Charleston was two hours away. What did people do if they didn’t have a car or couldn’t take time off of work or had other kids? What did teenagers do? She walked unsteadily back toward the lobby, wondering what she could tell Paloma and Grandma Jane. What could she tell Simon? She couldn’t ask him to come with her. He had enough to deal with with his mom and brother. She couldn’t be another burden to him, another problem he was responsible for. Could she really ask Manny for the money? She couldn’t tell the other guys, that was for sure. This wasn’t a sexy problem, and even if Manny sent her the funds, it would break something between them, acknowledging that she’d had sex for real—the illusion that he was something special in her life. It would give him the wrong impression, though, because the reality was that Cassidy was totally, utterly alone.

  The nurse came out to the lobby and handed Cassidy a number on a Post-it. Cassidy thanked her and left, cold rain pummeling her on the way to the car. By the time she’d buckled her seat belt, the drops had become flakes. Instead of going home, she sat and let the car warm up as she made an appointment, thanking gods she didn’t believe in for the half bar of service that let the call go through. She would go straight there, enjoy some time alone, check out some bookstores, maybe go to a nice restaurant. She’d buy herself a shirt from Kin Ship Goods, the “304 for All” one she always saw on Instagram, and if anyone asked, she’d say it was a spur-of-the-moment vacation. Cassidy hung up and checked her bank account, finding $474, which was enough to cover the pill, but not enough for rent in Rancho if Noeli couldn’t find a subletter soon. She sighed. She’d worry about that in a couple of weeks. She really didn’t want to divulge the tiny secret she held behind her pubic bone to Manny.

  Everything around her felt so tenuous, so shaky, and now she was going to lose someone else. No, it wasn’t even a “someone” yet, she reminded herself and tried to picture her classmate with the dirty kids and the dinosaur nuggets. It was a bunch of cells. She had no obligation to a bunch of cells. Cassidy pressed her palms into her eyes and saw snowflakes in her vision that matched the ones outside.

  She opened her eyes and turned them toward the rearview mirror, but she couldn’t see her face until the dark sparkles dissipated. It emerged looking stunned and tired. “I’m going to Charleston to have an abortion,” she told herself aloud, then started the car.

  She dreaded all the stuff they would make her do before, the ultrasound and counseling. It would be easier in California, where she could go to a local clinic. But she wasn’t in California; she was here. Cassidy imagined what it would be like to leave—to say goodbye to her grandma, to carry this pregnancy across the country on an airplane, to go to a Planned Parenthood in a strip mall that looked like every other Planned Parenthood in every other strip mall, to go back to her apartment that looked like every other apartment, and start doing shows every night again like nothing had happened. She would be empty. She would be so far away.

  In the still-cold car, Cassidy could feel the presence in her belly—a conspicuous something that contrasted with the chilly air blowing through the vents. It wasn’t someone, but it was something. Cassidy’s toes were cold. Her arms were cold. Her nose was cold. Her belly was warm. She touched her palm to the car window and the cold went through her like a jolt of electricity. She was chilled to her very core now, frozen, except for that spot, a pinprick in her lower belly. Grandma Jane’s words surged through Cassidy on the wings of this jolt, through her palm, up her arm, across her chest, and through her body—It was something. It was love. There was part of Cassidy’s daddy in this baby.

  The snow swirled faster now, filling in cracks of color—a coloring book in reverse. A leaf hanging over the parking lot drooped under the final snowflake it could hold. Cassidy put the car in drive and headed toward Charleston.

  It felt like Christmas as Cassidy drove through Buckhannon; everything was so quiet and still, the snow falling. It felt like Christmas in that tangible way—the way you feel in your stomach—the warmth of a fireplace and the anticipation of presents all mixed up in the cold air. It was strange how excitement and nervousness felt the same in her body. She slipped a hand under her puffy winter coat, the one she’d had since high school, which had hung untouched on the hook by the door since she’d returned from her final semester at WVU, and let it rest on her lower abdomen, just over her seat belt. She’d left Ken’s jacket at the farm. His scent had left it already.

  The snow let up as she drove west on 33, out of Upshur County, and into Lewis, where she passed an almost abandoned strip mall. A Go-Mart, a tractor supply store, and a Shoe Show were all that remained. Once there had been a movie theater. Ken had taken Cassidy there to see Nacho Libre and they’d both cracked up the whole time. Once, there had been a little salon where Paloma had taken Cassidy after months of begging for a belly button piercing, one more failed attempt to fit in. Once there had been a Fashion Bug where Jane had taken Cassidy to find an outfit for the New Year’s party she and Simon had planned, where they’d stayed up until midnight eating Wheat Thins and a cheeseball and pretending to be fancy.<
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  Now the lot looked huge and lonely, so full of potential and the absence of what used to be there. Cassidy told herself she couldn’t seriously be considering the idea of having a baby. If she had a baby, she would be like this lot—a shell that used to hold whatever else she could have done.

  Past the shopping complex, Cassidy took the swooping entrance ramp to 79, and the snow thickened again, descending in sheets as she made her way south. Cassidy slowed as the downpour obscured her vision. The interstate was almost empty. Cassidy slowed further, then further, down to a crawl, barely ten miles an hour.

  She would have to tell her mom, not to mention Grandma Jane.

  The right thing would be taking a pill and being done with it all, but Cassidy had never wanted the right thing. She thought again about the lack of access and the restrictive laws and how effective they were, how this was precisely their purpose—to make women reconsider. She didn’t know whether to be mad at the laws or mad at herself for being a sucker.

  But maybe they were right. If she was going to change her mind with time, maybe people should take more time. She pictured Noeli before her, hand on her hip, getting ready to rant. Noeli would tell her that if she had been able to take the pill, she would have been relieved. She should have been able to take the pill. It was the time to think that even made it a potential someone—that made it a dilemma. Cassidy promised herself that even if she had this baby, she would never be thankful for laws that made actual someones’ lives more difficult.

  There was no one else on the road now. As the snow floated down and the lines on the road became less and less visible, she tried to concentrate on driving, but her mind reeled.

  It wasn’t the money. She wouldn’t have to worry about rent. She could grow a lot of their food, like Paloma. But no, she had to be real. She’d killed her succulent. She could make enough camming for food that they wouldn’t starve, but how would she cam pregnant? Sure, there was a market for it, but the idea felt gross. It wasn’t the childcare. Paloma could babysit, like Grandma Jane, but that would mean not only telling Paloma, but making peace with her, and asking for a huge, never-ending favor.