Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 63915 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 320(@200wpm)___ 256(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 63915 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 320(@200wpm)___ 256(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
She sets a paper bag on the counter. “Well, let’s see if soup helps. I brought Mom’s recipe — chicken and rice, extra ginger.”
The smell fills the kitchen, warm and familiar. I barely make it through two bites before my stomach turns. I run to the sink, gagging.
Jenni rushes over, rubbing my back. “Whoa, slow down. You okay?”
“I’m fine,” I lie, rinsing my mouth. My hands shake.
She studies me. “You been sick long?”
“Couple days.”
She tilts her head really watching me. “Jami… when’s the last time you had your period?”
The words hit like a slap. I freeze. “I don’t know,” I say quietly.
Her eyes widen. “You don’t know. How far back don’t you know.”
“I stopped tracking after—” I stop myself from finishing the sentence. After I started using again. After I stopped caring about calendars or consequences. I stopped my birth control after my money ran out because buying drugs was more important.
Jenni’s voice softens. “Could you be pregnant?”
I can’t breathe. The room spins. “No. No, that’s not.”
But the nausea, the fatigue, the way smells make me sick, it all fits.
Jenni’s already moving. “Get your shoes. We’re going to the pharmacy.”
The drive is a blur. I sit with my hands clenched in my lap, staring out the window. The world feels too bright, too loud. Jenni keeps one hand on the steering wheel and the other on my knee, grounding me like she’s done since we were kids.
Inside the store, everything feels surreal, fluorescent lights that are too bright, the hum of refrigerators that are too loud, a teenage cashier who doesn’t look old enough to know what heartbreak is.
Jenni grabs three boxes off the shelf — different brands, like she’s buying lottery tickets. “We’ll be sure,” she speaks but not to me particularly, maybe to herself.
I want to protest, to tell her it’s ridiculous, but the lump in my throat won’t let me speak.
At checkout, the cashier gives us a curious look. Jenni stares her down until she looks away.
Back in the car, the paper bag crinkles between us like a secret waiting to explode.
At home, I can’t make my hands work. Jenni reads the instructions out loud, her voice too calm, too clinical. I follow her to the bathroom like I’m sleepwalking. She hands me a cup, I fill it and let her take over from there.
Five minutes later, the world tilts.
Two pink lines. Test one.
Positive. Test two.
Then pregnant on the digital screen, test three.
Every single test says the same thing.
I sink to the floor, my legs giving out. The tiles are cold under my palms.
Jenni kneels beside me. “Hey, breathe. You’re okay.”
I shake my head. “No, I’m not. I can’t be.”
“Jami—”
I throw a hand up silencing her. “I don’t know how far along I am, Jenni. Don’t you see. I don’t know whose it is, Jenni.” The words rip out of me like glass. “I don’t know! I was high, I was gone, and I don’t know!” The last words come out in a full on screech.
She closes her eyes, pain flashing across her face. Then she pulls me into her arms. “You don’t have to know right now. You just have to breathe.”
I sob into her shoulder, the sound raw, animal. She holds on tighter.
When the storm finally breaks, she tilts my chin up. “You have to tell Tommy.”
“I can’t.”
“You have to.”
“He’ll hate me.”
“No,” she says fiercely. “He loves you. But he deserves the truth.”
I cover my face with my hands. “How do I even say it? ‘Hey, I might be carrying your child, or maybe the child of a monster who used me when I was too high to remember my own name?’”
Her voice softens again. “You don’t know that’s what happened.”
“I know enough.”
We sit there in silence, the ticking of the clock loud in the small room.
Finally, she says, “What do you want to do?”
The question echoes in my head. What do you want to do?
I want to run.
I want to disappear.
I want to find the numbness that used to hide the truth.
But then I think of the tiny heartbeat growing inside me. The part of me that’s still capable of creating life after everything that’s tried to destroy mine.
“I want to do better,” I whisper.
Jenni squeezes my hand. “Then start by staying clean. For you. For the baby.”
“I don’t even know if I can be a mom.”
“You can. You’re stronger than you think.”
I shake my head, tears blurring my vision. “I’m terrified.”
“Good,” she says. “Means you care.”
That night, I sit on the edge of the bed with my journal open.
I write my truth. I’m pregnant. I don’t know how to feel. I finish the page, the same way I have been since starting to journal: I didn’t use today.
I stare at the words until they stop shaking.
The cravings come hard — not just for drugs but for escape. I can almost feel the weight of it, that old familiar promise of silence. But there’s another voice now, small and steady inside me.