10:00PM
Clad in pajamas, Leah kisses her mother on the cheek before heading to bed. In her room, she turns on her bedside lamp and waits. Hears her mother flush the toilet, hears her father tramp up the steps, and knows they’ve switched off the light. She continues to wait– plucking her eyebrows and eventually flicking through old books.
1:45AM
Leah flicks on the overhead light. She dons a bra– 32AA on the tag, which she cuts off, embarrassed of her bra size declaring itself in print. Panties, as cutely matching as her mother will allow her fifteen-year-old daughter, which means light pink polka-dotted to go with the slightly brighter pink
bra. In the full body mirror leaning against her closet door, her cropped shrunken tee and sweatpants make her look like she’s trying but not too much. Makes the night feel special but not too special.
2:05AM
Leah goes out the front, tiptoeing all the way and extra careful because she doesn’t yet know the house at 2:00AM well enough to know which floorboards should be avoided. She goes out the front, foolishly forgetting to turn the automatic porch light off. David has his car turned off two houses over, facing downhill so that when she gets in they can coast down and slide smoothly into drive.
Most sixteen-year-old boys don’t have the nerves to put their hand on their crushes’ legs, but David slides his right up to her thigh and asks, “Did you tell Rachel?”
Rachel, who turned scarlet at lunch yesterday when Leah asked her if she’d ever kissed a boy with tongue. “God, no, I didn’t tell Rachel. Did you tell Jonah?”
Jonah who would never stay up past 10:00PM unless it was on account of homework or the New Year’s ball dropping. David smirks, “Naw, no one else knows.”
2:30AM
Leah loses her virginity in the back seat of David’s car, the butt of the 32AA tag chafing against her abdomen.
One Day After Missed Period
The Women’s Clothing Section
Jonah, Rachel, and Leah linger in the clothing department of Target. Leah fumbles with an oversized tee hanging on the rack. She turns and picks a crop top up off a shelf. It unfolds in Leah’s hands and hangs in the space between her and Rachel.
“Oh my god, Leah, you cannot get that.”
“God, it’s just a crop top. Loosen up.” She tosses it back on the shelf, unfolded. Rachel looks, wants to refold it, but thinks better of it.
Leah nods toward the Pajama Section, which commingles with the lingerie seamlessly. “Let’s go over there. I can already see some clearance tags.”
Rachel’s eyes roll. “Jonah and I don’t want to.”
Leah looks at Jonah. With his hands in his pockets and his stature unsure of himself, he says, “I mean, whatever you guys want. I don’t care.”
“I’m joking, you guys. Why would I need to go in there?” And she’s thinking why would she want to go in there because David got what he wanted. And now it’s time for her period and the certainty of its clean slate. She has a tampon in her bag because she’s waiting for it. A super plus because young girls with light periods like to pretend it’s that immense. And for the first time in her life, the waiting is immense for more reasons than the childish fear of staining her light-wash jeans.
The Men’s Clothing Section
So, they flirt instead with the men’s section for Jonah, who pretends to contemplate pocket V necks and graphic tees that advertise classic TV he’s only seen the pilot of.
“Do you like this one?” Leah lifts an extra-large one for Seinfeld. The shirt itself is plain white, but Jerry and George pop with their ‘90s teals and reds. Elaine, of course, has her goldfish in its plastic bag, a sea creature just purchased.
Jonah doesn’t know it’s the one where they’re stuck inside the parking garage. “Not my size.”
The Baby Section
“So cute!” Rachel squeals pinching the soft shoulders of a size 1-2T unisex onesie.
Leah rolls her eyes, and then there’s another one, smaller, that Rachel must pinch, “Oh my gosh, I cannot.”
Leah crosses her arms and turns her head back to the men’s section where Jonah isstill fumbling with the T-shirts.
“Shut up, look at these!” Rachel says, pointing to a little bathrobe. Leah imagines her future baby, toddling around in this French terry cloth.
Leah thinks she feels it, hopes she feels it. She whispers to Rachel, “Check me.” “Check you?”
“Yeah.” Leah turns around, lifts her shirt up to the beltline of her jeans, and bends just a little. “You’re good. I don’t see anything.”
“Well, do you have a tampon? Give me one just in case.” She’s hoping she’ll need that super plus and then some. Rachel gives Leah an extra, extra tampon out of her bag because Leah hopes she’ll be needing it more than Rachel.
The Toy Section
“I used to have one like this!” Jonah lifts a plush Barney.
“Me too.” Leah reaches past Rachel and presses Barney’s hand. I love you, you love me. We’re a happy family. With a great big hug, and a kiss from me to you, won’t you say you love me too?
Rachel’s scarlet– peeking around, embarrassed by the possible attention they’ve attracted because Barney’s I love you sounds a thousand times louder on a Saturday in the toy department of Target.
Barney has stopped singing– finished asking for hugs and kisses and love– but Jonah still holds him.
“Let’s buy it, Jonah!”
Rachel’s scarlet is fading to a slight blush. “Guys, put it down, you’re not actually gonna buy it.”
The Home Decor Section
“You have to get this, Jonah.” Rachel points to blown glass about the size of a fist in the shape of a fish with a tiny man blown up into its belly.
“Why would he want that?” Leah’s over it now, wants to go home and curl up in bed and hope and hope and hope for the pain from her period.
“It’s Jonah and the Whale.”
Leah picks up the glass fish. “I don’t know what that is.” She wants to ask Rachel to check her again. Wants to pretend she’s deathly afraid of bleeding through her light wash jeans when she’s really can’t stand the thought of the stain never coming. But Rachel doesn’t know that.
“My mom’s already gotten me so much Jonah and the Whale stuff. You have no idea.”
Leah presses her finger into the small indent that the blown Jonah caused on the whale’s underside. She looks up at Jonah, “What is it?”
“It’s this story from the Bible where God told a prophet named Jonah to go to this place called Ninevah, but he didn’t go, so he was swallowed by a fish.”
“So he died?”
“No, the fish spit him back out.”
“Ew.” Leah laughs still feeling the indent where Jonah is still blown into the belly of the fish. She looks across the center aisle—the cosmetics section. Wants to buy a whole box of super pluses to live in this moment of waiting for—even expecting—the cramping to begin before the certainty of it never coming sets in.
Rachel eyes the glass in Leah’s hands. “Jonah was a prophet?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
Leah balances the indented glass on her pointer finger, teasingly letting go with her other hand for seconds at a time. She’s letting go and looking away toward the wall of tampons across the center aisle. She’ll buy the super expensive organic ones.
Rachel’s still watching Leah’s hands. “How can he be a prophet if he didn’t even do what God told him to?”
Jonah shrugs. “I don’t know.”
Rachel takes her eyes off the fish and looks at Leah’s face just long enough to say, “Leah, stop it. You’re gonna break it.”
Leah looks at her and lets go, allowing it to balance on nothing but the pointer finger beneath the blown Jonah. Then, it comes to her. Something that will stop the waiting before the slow bleed and cramps. Something with two-minute results that she found in her mother’s bathroom garbage just before they’d given her a silly “big sis” t-shirt. She stares across at the cosmetics section wondering if she can see the tests from where she inadequately supports the blown Jonah. She wants to give Rachel a taste of the risk she now knows.
When it falls, Rachel gasps, turns scarlet, looks around for the attention attracted, and all the like. Leah holds in a laugh with her eyes wide.
“I told you you were gonna break it, Leah!” She looks to Jonah for back up, but he just stares at his namesake’s shattered representation with his hands stuffed into his pockets.
Leah laughing, “Shut up, Rachel. Everyone’s gonna hear you. Let’s go.”
“We can’t just leave it.”
“I’m not paying for it.”
The Cosmetics Section
“Okay, let’s have some fun.” Leah walks slowly through the aisle with her arms crossed scanning the shelves up and down as she goes.
Rachel’s still looking around like the cops are after them. Jonah follows Leah down the aisle with his hands still in his pockets.
“Loosen up, Rachel.” It’s the supplement aisle, which Leah knows turns into feminine hygiene somewhere toward the end. “Oh my god! Let’s take these!”
“What? Leah, no. I am not doing that.” Rachel’s scarlet deepens.
“Why not? Got something to hide? Don’t know how to pee on a stick?”
Rachel glares. First at Leah, then at Jonah for his silence, then back and forth between the two. “Rachel, please, I just wanna have some fun.”
Jonah finally speaks. The lack of confidence in his voice matches his slightly slumped stance which works to minimize his presence. “Rachel, just do it. You know she’s not gonna give up until we do.”
Leah smiles Rachel’s way because they both know Jonah’s right. She grabs three of the cheap ones that don’t seem to be much higher quality than a plastic spoon.
Jonah stares at them. “Wait, three of them? I’m not taking one.”
His voice cracks slightly as he tries to emphasize the “I’m not,” which forces Leah to stifle a laugh. “Jonah, you have to! Haven’t you ever wanted to try it.” She glances between the tests in her hands and some slightly more expensive ones on the shelf. Both boxes say “97% success rate” in large, bold Arial font and in smaller beneath “when taken one day after missed period.” She puts the cheap-o ones back, though. “And just for you, Jonah, I’m gonna get these nicer ones.” Still not top shelf but granting her the most peace of mind possible without stirring question. Even though Rachel would be naive to it— could never possibly get to that question on her own in the first place without understanding the risk that Leah had given her a taste of with the shard of blown glass still sprinkling the floor across the center aisle where Jonah’s name-twin narrative had been relayed and played out.
The Self-Checks
Leah pays for all three and a box of tampons with sizes regular and light– doesn’t want to push her luck. Until thirty-two, she will forever buy a box of regulars and lights with her middle-shelf pregnancy tests.
The Girls’ Bathroom
Rachel’s Stall
She slams the stall door as hard as possible without attracting attention. Her face has been scarlet since Jonah volun-told her to humor Leah. She refused to stand with them at the self-checks– bought a pack of gum at a different register, instead. She unpackages it– opening it slowly so that no one hears the crinkling paper. She pees on it for five seconds of steady stream– gets a little on her finger which might be her new biggest secret. She sets the test on the toilet paper dispenser, then realizes it’s stupid to wait the five instructed minutes. If it’s positive, she’s the Virgin Mary.
But it’s not, and she’ll always be Rachel. Rachel who will be twenty-two when she meets the love of her life in the accounting department at work. He’s been married two years, though, and for five more he’ll stay with his wife and have baby boys, for whom she’ll finally become the stepmother at twenty nine, seven years after she met him. Every time she has to pick her stepsons up from their mom’s, she’ll turn scarlet, figuring there must be some whale-sized tension between them.
The Boys’ Bathroom
Jonah’s Stall
Girls always take longer in the bathroom, which, in the past, hasleft him waiting by the shopping carts with his hands in his pockets and his posture unsure of who he’s waiting for. So, he takes his time in the stall. Rips the packaging open and sets everything but the test and the instructions on the toilet paper dispenser. He pees on it standing up, scanning the instructions as he does. He has always been a little curious.
Pregnancy Test Instructions
1. Remove the plastic cap to expose the absorbent window.
2. Point the absorbent tip (with 5 small openings) directly into the urine stream. Take the sample for at least 7-10 seconds, to ensure that an adequate sample is collected by the testing device. (Another technique is to collect the urine into a clean container and dip half of the absorbent pad for at least 10 seconds.)
3. Re-cap the device and place it horizontally on a clean, flat surface. Wait 5 minutes for the test to finish processing.
Two and a half minutes of tapping the test against the side of his leg, he absentmindedly scans instructions and curiously examines. Good enough.
He crinkles the paper instructions into a ball and lifts the test, flipping it around in his fingers. Two blue stripes.
False positives happen, of course, and they usually keep the unexpecting mother up at night or tapping the steering wheel nervously on her way to school with the radio volume turned down.
This one keeps Jonah up at night, too. Has him tapping the steering wheel nervously as he drives Rachel and Leah home from Target with Leah’s aux-queued music turned as low as she’ll allow. Because, what the hell?
What the hell, he tells his mom. And, what the hell, his mom makes him tell the doctor, too. Because, what the hell, apparently Google says one percent of boys carry what are usually pregnancy hormones but is, in this case, breast cancer. So, one percent of boys have to get chemo and eventually surgery, depending on how much it’s spread.
And next year, he’ll sleep through the last New Year’s ball, which counts down and drops on the TV in his hospital room. This year, of the one percent of men with breast cancer, Jonah’s become one of the eighteen percent whose mother has to wear black in a church on a temperate Sunday afternoon.
The Girls’ Bathroom
Leah’s Stall
It could’ve been positive. Maybe you wanted it to be positive. She expected it to be positive. But she watches the New Year’s ball drop in Jonah’s hospital room with a flat stomach and a new birth control prescription on the floor of her bedroom next to the mirror that leans against her closet door, reflecting only her unmade bed and strewn clothes. Reflecting only her absence, caught by the moonlight, as she sits across town with Jonah.
