Looking For Space // Josh Kiszka

XXII

Happy Friday, my loves ~~

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"I'm taking it mostly as a joke," I told Kirsti as I pulled my pants and underwear down in the bathroom stall, a First Response box in my hand. "I still have the IUD, but better safe than sorry right?"

"Taking a pregnancy test in a Walmart bathroom," she noted from beyond the stall. "Really cute. How late is it?"

"Like, nine days? Ten?" I replied and opened the box, taking out the stick and positioning it under me. After I was done, I shook the stick and let it sit on the ledge of the wastebasket atop a piece of toilet paper.

"Could you imagine?" Kirsti's disembodied voice asked. "Mom would freak out."

"Mom would never know about either result," I replied, staring at the little box on the stick. It really was just a joke--a joke and a precaution--but there was still a looming part of me that was nervous because what if?

But after the minutes passed and the two tiny pink lines formed in the box, my heart swelled into my throat and panic instantly flooded my mind, swallowing up any true thoughts. I stared at it for another moment before gathering my senses enough to pull my pants back up, then stared at it again before taking it and emerging from the stall.

"What?" Kirsti asked, eyeing me warily as I continued to look down at it silently.

I cocked my head to the side, not taking my eyes off the two pink lines. It had to be a mistake. There was no way. There was no way this was happening.

"I'm--pregnant?" I answered shrilly, finally looking at my sister.

She looked as confused as me, then reached for it. "Let me see," she demanded and grabbed my arm, pulling the test down in her view. She also stared at it for a moment then muttered, "Shit."

"This has to be a mistake," I protested to no one, though I knew that the chances of it being a mistake were about as slim as the chances of me getting pregnant in the first place. "I mean--just--how?"

Kirsti opened her mouth, shaking her head. "I mean--it happens?"

I went to wash my hands, leaving the test next to me on the counter. "Jesus Christ. This isn't real."

"What are you gonna do?"

I exhaled, looking in the mirror. "I'm gonna buy more tests. I'm gonna take them all," I told her. "It could be a false reading."

"You could just wait and get a blood test--"

"I'll get a blood test," I interrupted. "But I just--I need to see."

Kirsti nodded. "Okay, more tests--might as well. But I have to go back to work soon--will you be okay?"

I sighed and looked back down at the test. "Yeah, I'll be okay. Fuck, what am I gonna do?"

She took the test from me and dropped it in the same plastic bag it had come in. "No matter what, you'll know what to do," she assured me and wrapped her arm around my shoulder. "Let's get some more."

Only Kirsti's declaration of "We're trying to get pregnant" to the cashier who'd eyed us so overtly as she scanned each of the eight additional pregnancy tests and put them in another bag got me to laugh. When she hugged be before she got in her own car to head back to work, my heart swelled again and I sank down in the driver's seat, hands gripping the steering wheel so tight my knuckles turned white, heat blasting over me and only my shuddering, angry and frightened breaths cutting the sound of the air flow.