Page 37 of Harper

I can’t have a baby.

I can’t! I can’t!

The thought hammers in my head as I reach up weakly to flush.

Despite how achy and sluggish my body feels, my mind is sharp, racing with increasing panic; with this fast-spreading, breath-catching, all-encompassing dread.

I’m only twenty years old.

I’m too young.

I’m not ready.

The tears slide down my cheeks in twin rivers, and I let them fall.

I can’t be someone’s mom.

I have no one to help me.

I have no one to teach me how.

“M-Mama,” I sob, feeling more alone than I ever have in my entire life. “I m-miss you, Mama. I n-need you.”

I’m so frightened.

I feel so alone.

My phone rings again, and Joe’s handsome face fills the screen. I turn off the ringer and flip the phone over as more tears fill my eyes.

Joe. Oh my god. Joe.

I love him. I love him so much.

But I can’t have his baby.

Not now. Not yet.

I place my palm over my abdomen. It’s still flat. Totally flat.

How can there be a baby in there?

How did this happen?

Sitting up against the bathroom wall, I remember back to our last night together. We spent the evening on our favorite little spit of sand at the north end of Lower Dewey, where we’d made love for the very first time after graduation.

Our relationship had taken a little hit when I suggested we break up three years earlier, but the solution we’d settled on before leaving for freshman year was that our relationship would be “open”—in a don’t-ask-don’t-tell style—while we were at school. If we wanted to date someone or make out with someone, we could. But then, whenever we were home, as long as we still wanted to be with each other, we’d be a couple again.

This last summer? The one between junior and senior years? It was our best. We were growing up, me and Joe. We were maturing. Timing that once felt off to me was gettingbetter. What we wanted out of life was aligning. I was getting more ready to commit to Joe for life, and he’d relaxed his white-knuckled grip on our future.

Joe had already gotten into several law schools in Washington and Oregon, and while he wasn’t sure if he wanted to become a lawyer or figure out another way to build a life in law enforcement, he was happy that he’d gotten in. And I was well on the way to earning my degree in business, which I planned to apply to a career in travel and tourism before returning home to Skagway someday.

After this last summer, we’d decided to “close the door” on our once “open door” relationship and return to our respective schools in a fully committed, monogamous relationship with each other. I could finally see me and Joe maybe moving in together after college graduation, and Joe’s once-meager list of places he wanted to visit around the world was getting longer. After a few years of traveling and working together, I could even see us getting engaged. When I told Joe that, he’d lifted me into his arms, laughing with happiness and kissing me until I was breathless.

He’d made us a campfire that last night, and we’d roasted hot dogs, then toasted marshmallows. When we’d made love, our cries had echoed over the surface of the lake like the hundreds of stones I’d skipped on that glassy water over the years. The condom we’d used had broken, and Joe had started to freak out, but I said I’d grab Plan B on my way to the airport in the morning.

Except I hadn’t grabbed it.

In the rush of packing and saying goodbye to my family, I’d forgotten.

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