Pregnancy

Pee.

Shake

Wait.

She counted out the seconds. Her periods had stopped, this much she knew. A month, and they had disappeared. Now the scattered husks of empty pregnancy test boxes laid scattered on her bed, pink and purple labels done up in elegant florid cursive with exclamation marks joyously enthusing ‘Pregnancy!’ all along the outside. They were the only place where joy was to be found in the room. The egg timer dinged, the small plastic dial clicking into place with the cheap plastic click of objects purchased under a median price range. She ran over to the sink and picked up the small plastic stick.

It wasn’t there yet. But slowly, surely, with the inevitable creeping of a glacier the pink dots slowly filled in. Dot, dot, dot, a dot off of the central minus sign, and then another, until finally the entire symbol was filled in: a plus. She turned the stick over in her hands, rotating the small cylinder with her thumb and forefingers. Her reflection looked up at her in the mirror, stared back with worried, sallow eyes, and then turned towards the door and moved back into her bedroom. She fell into the cold, stiff sheets of her comforter, the soft bounce of the mattress pushing her up a few inches before she finally settled down onto the bed. She stared blankly at the ceiling, thoughts swirling through her head. Over on the bedstand, her cellphone sounded out a small rattle as it vibrated on the table. She picked it up and took a look at what it said. “WELL?” it asked in large block letters. It was her sister. She flipped the phone open to the keypad, then flipped it close again, thumbing her fingers over the cold plasticine sheen of the touchscreen.

She let her arms fall to her sides and her phone dropped limply out of her hand, careening gently off the side of her bed and falling to the floor with a muted clatter. Well she thought. Her expression changed, and then she thought it again, a heavier tone in her mind, Well. She stared up at the blank whiteness of her ceiling, the faint up-side down mushroom shape of her ceiling lamp and lost herself into the emptiness, the cold muted pastels of the grey afternoon sky, the dank sodden rain that poured down around her as she imagined her room filling up with water until she swam around in the depths, swimming and drowning like a fish. She ran her fingers over her stomach, running her fingers underneath her shirt, feeling up and down along the contours of her navel. How odd, she thought to herself. She continued staring at the upside-down mushroom. It had as many answers as she did, she thought to herself ruefully. She didn’t want to get up. So for a few more minutes, she continued staring at the ceiling, the soft pastel greys of the overcast sky filtering softly through her window.