After the second EPT stick showed me another plus sign, I paced all over the apartment. Me, Jodie Lynn Malone, pregnant? I was twenty-two and I worked the counter at a dry cleaner’s. I could barely keep myself in Honey Nut Cheerios. The milk in the fridge went sour faster than I could drink it. And to have some kid looking up at me, asking me what to do and why is the sky blue and what’s for dinner, and meanwhile, there goes my life? Thinking like this, I got an awful suffocating feeling and I had to shove up the courtyard window and stick my head out of it and breathe.
I went to Planned Parenthood—just for information. I hoped they’d tell me the EPT sticks were wrong. Nope. They gave me a lot of pamphlets, and I made an appointment, but for two weeks away. Maybe in the meantime I’d hit on some other plan.
