Page 62 of The Summer of ’98

“I suppose,” I mumbled, feeling a little more nervous now that I was actually about to do the test. Cass picked up her feet in an excited skip as she gripped my arm.

“It would be kind of cute if you were pregnant,” she held up her palm to silence me when I recoiled. “Like, not cool. But sort of. I could be Aunt Cass. I’d be that aunt. The one that drinks too much at events and embarrasses everyone. And of course, I’d be the fun aunt that the kid comes to when it wants to experience weed for the first time or the one it comes to when it runs away from home because Mom and Dad are lame.”

“Your imagination is something else,” I said. “I’d rather not talk hypothetically, though. None of that’s going to happen even if the test is positive.”

I looked both ways before I crossed the street and ignored Cass, who I could feel staring at me and not watching where she was walking at all. We weaved through a group of young kids who were trading cards outside the pharmacy and walked through the electric doors, into the cool air-conditioned store.

“You wouldn’t keep it?”

“No,” I said and scanned the shelves as we walked. “I’m not in a position to have a child right now. I haven’t studied. I don’t have a lot of money. I’m too young. There are a lot of factors, I suppose.”

“Yeah but—”

“Here it is,” I snatched the box off the shelf that was surrounded by other related products, such as prenatal vitamins, condoms, and lubricants. How ironic that it was all shelved together. “Come on. I want to get this done before we have to be back at the field.”

Cass followed along behind me while I paid for it. She suggested that I might need a bottle of water or something so that I could pee, but I already needed to. We both walked back to the school as fast as we could and as we approached the field, Cass steered me toward the gymnasium so that I could use the girls’ locker room toilets.

“Shit, it’s locked,” she slammed her fist on the wooden door. “The cheerleaders must keep the key on them.” She turned around and stared at the other side of the foyer before she looked at me with intent.

When it dawned on me that she was suggesting that I use the boys’ locker room toilets, I shook my head and tried the girls’ door again. “Gross, no. I am not using the boys’ room. The filth.”

“We don’t have time to be concerned about the labels on the doors. “She gripped my shoulders and pushed me across the wooden floor.

“It’s not the labels on the doors! It’s the piss on the toilet seats and the stench of body odor that might kill me!”

“I’ll come in with you,” she said, as if her presence made some sort of difference to the hygiene situation. She ignored my protests and pushed me inside where a wall of potent sweat and dirty laundry hit us and we both screwed our noses up as we shuffled toward the toilets.

I gagged when I pushed the stall door open. “This is feral.”

“Don’t be dramatic,” Cass said. “Don’t touch the seat. Just squat and pee.”

After I had unboxed the stick and scanned the instructions to make sure that I didn’t pee on the wrong end, I did what she said and squatted over the seat. I put the garbage into the box, flushed, and tucked the capped stick under my arm so that I could open the door.

I felt as though I was checked out and not entirely present while I went through the motions. I’d detached myself in order to evade a panic attack. “Where should I put this garbage?” I asked Cass when I opened the stall door. She was fluffing her hair in the mirror above the basin and held her hand out to receive the box.

Before I could stop her, she pulled a lighter out of her overall pocket and lit the box on fire, dropping it into the stainless steel sink. “Cass! Put it out!” I reached out to turn the faucet on, but she stopped me.

“Relax,” she ordered, keeping a hold on my wrists. “I do this all the time when I steal my test papers from the teachers.”

I gave her a concerned look and she elaborated. “Before they can give it back, I take it and write down what I did wrong. Burn the paper and then I re-sit the test to up my grade.”

“Does that work?”

“Every time.”

Once the box was charred, she turned the faucet on and soaked the hot bits of black cardboard that were soon washed down the drain. It was all a bit dramatic, but I appreciated her efforts to stop this from getting out. I had a feeling that she might have just enjoyed setting things on fire.

“Okay, let’s see that test.” She gave an encouraging nod. But all I could do was begin to feel panicked. I clamped my sweaty palms together and took a few deep breaths that didn’t help ease the anxiety at all. “Do you want me to look at it first?”

The stick tucked under my arm began to feel as though it weighed a solid ton. It seemed insane that such a small object had so much power. It could change everything in the snap of a moment, and I knew that I couldn’t avoid finding out what it said, but I still wanted to stall for as long as possible.

Reluctantly I nodded and let Cass take the test from me. I remained glued to the spot, my hands came up and rested in front of my chin as I waited with a pounding heart. She’d barely had a chance to look at it when I snatched it from her grasp. “Nope, forget it, I can’t risk you playing a prank and telling me the wrong result.”

She seemed baffled at the logic, but I ignored her and bit the bullet, reading the result in the little clear window. “Oh no . . .”

Cass stared at me with a dropped jaw, her expression an almost dead ringer for how I felt inside. “Are you sure?”

“It’s positive, Cass.”

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