Girls on the Verge

by Sharon Biggs Waller

  She goes back to tagging the formula.

  “I’m home for the summer,” she says. Click, click, click.

  Go! Go now! Find another drugstore. “Oh, that makes sense. I was in the neighborhood, and I got thirsty, so I thought, you know, I’d get something to, uh, deal with that. The thirst.”

  “Aisle one.”

  “Cool, thanks.” I walk away from her toward aisle one, just in case Annabelle is watching, and pull my phone from my pocket.

  WHERE ARE YOU?

  I look over my shoulder at Annabelle, who’s gone back to tagging.

  “Hey, Annabelle.” A skinny guy with neck acne wanders down the aisle toward her. “The toilet overflowed in the bathroom.”

  “So clean it up,” she snaps.

  “Not me, dude. You’re on bathroom duty.”

  Annabelle shoves the tagger into the guy’s hands and heads off, disappearing through a pair of swinging doors at the back of the store.

  I make a U-turn to the feminine needs aisle. Just grab it and go! My heart is pounding, sweat starting to pool in my armpits.

  Tampons, personal lubrication, feminine wash, ovulation kits … Where are the pregnancy tests? I start at the beginning of the aisle again and stare the shelves up and down. Finally I find them tucked on top of the last shelf next to a dusty display of women-only vitamins and locked in a plastic box. PLEASE SEE AN ASSOCIATE FOR ASSISTANCE, a label on the box reads.

  Ding!

  CAMILLE. WHERE. ARE. YOU?

  I race to the checkout, and I get in line behind a woman buying six gallons of milk. There’s a candy rack nearby. I reach for a king-sized Hershey’s bar with almonds. I notice a stack of Altoids in the rack next to the chocolates. My stomach twists at the sight of the black lettering scribbled across the cheerful red-and-white tin boxes.

  The woman begins to argue with the cashier about her coupon.

  A man moves in behind me and stands so close, I can smell his breath: Beer Nuts and bourbon. I step forward and hold my breath, closing my eyes a little. The woman storms off, leaving the six milks on the counter.

  The cashier sighs. She’s maybe in her seventies with gray hair permed into tight curls. The perm must have been recent, judging from the ammonia scent wafting off her head. “Next,” she says, reaching over the milks for my chocolate bar. She smiles. “Oh, that used to be my favorite, darlin’, but I can’t eat it anymore. The almonds get stuck in my bridge.”

  “Yeah, me too. Um … I need some help with one of the products, ma’am,” I say, lowering my voice. “The pregnancy tests are locked up.”

  “The whats, honey?” she says, her fingers pausing over the register. “You’ll have to speak up, I’m a little hard of hearing.”

  I clear my throat and lean forward. “The pregnancy tests, ma’am. They are, uh, locked in a box?”

  “Oh, those are locked up because they get stolen a lot.” She sets the chocolate bar on the counter. “You’ll have to talk to the pharmacist.”

  The man behind me grumbles under his breath.

  “Oh, okay,” I say, trying to sound like it’s no big deal.

  “Do you still want that candy bar?”

  The guy reaches around me and tosses a Slim Jim on the counter. The bright red stick spins to a stop against the six milk jugs.

  I shake my head and walk to the back of the store to the pharmacist’s counter. There is a long line of people waiting to pick up their prescriptions, and I get in behind them. I hitch my bag over my shoulder and pretend to be interested in the nail polish display. The pink, green, blue, and gold colors blur into a rainbow through my sudden tears. I shove the sunglasses onto my head and rub dry my eyes with the palms of my hands.

  Finally, it’s my turn.

  “Next,” he says. He shoves a pen into the pocket on his white medical coat. The top of the pocket is dotted with blue ink stains.

  My cheeks instantly start to burn. “Um. I need a pregnancy test.” I wave my hand toward the feminine needs aisle. “You have them locked up down there.”

  He frowns so hard that the furrows on his brow squash together. “Is this for you?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Are you married?”

  “No.”

  “How old are you?” he asks, and not very nicely.

  “I’m, um, seventeen.”

  He draws his head back. “Seventeen? You’re seventeen and you’re asking for a pregnancy test?” He tuts.

  I don’t say a word.

  “You haven’t been treating your body well, young lady, if it’s a pregnancy test you’re after. You know, the more boys you allow to have their way with you, the less you’ll have to offer your husband. No one wants a piece of chewed-up gum, now do they?”

  I feel tears prickling at my eyes again. I don’t want him to see me cry. But it’s too late.

  “Can you just—”

  “Do your parents know what you’re up to?”

  “No,” I say. “I mean…” I don’t know what to say now.

  “Go on home and talk to your parents. My conscience won’t let me sell something like that to you without their knowing. I’m a father myself, and I wouldn’t like it if my daughter could buy pregnancy tests or contraception or anything else like that without my knowledge.”

  I see people looking at me, watching the show. I step back against the shelves, as if the bottles of vitamins and pain relievers will protect me from their stares.

  The pharmacist rubs his chin; I hear the scratching of his stubble under his hand.

  A man behind me pipes up. “When I was your age, young lady, girls used aspirin as birth control. Hold an aspirin between your legs and you’ll never get pregnant.”

  My tears are falling now, fast and heavy. I duck my head and turn to leave.

  And there stands Annabelle Ponsonby, a mop and bucket in her hand, watching me with a look of shock on her face.

  I bolt for the car.

  I lay my forehead on the steering wheel. What now?

  I hold my hand flat against my stomach. What is going on in there? I can almost feel cells dividing. An image of me pregnant flashes into my head. My stomach poking out while everyone else heads off to begin their lives. I think about my parents helping me raise a baby, and I can barely breathe.

  No. That won’t happen. I can’t let it happen.

  I sit with my head against the steering wheel, when a tap on the window makes me jump. I look up to see Annabelle, gesturing for me to roll the window down.

  I start the car and hit the window button. “Annabelle,” I say. “What—”

  “Here,” she says. She tosses something through the window. First Response pregnancy test.

  Annabelle turns and trudges across the parking lot, pulling off her smock as she goes. She drops it on the ground and kicks it. She flips the building the bird and then climbs into a beat-up Ford Focus. I watch as she screeches out of the parking lot, barely pausing at the stop sign and disappearing around the corner.

  My phone starts to ring. Mom lights up the screen. I don’t answer it. I shove the box and my phone in my purse, start the car, and drive home, staring at the road through a waterfall of tears.

  THIRTEEN

  JUNE 30

  “I am so glad I quit that night,” Annabelle says.

  “That’s why you flipped the building the bird?” I ask.

  She grins. “Oh, you saw that.”

  “I saw you kick your apron, too. That was pretty classy, I have to say.”

  “I’m all about the class.”

  “I’m really sorry, Camille,” Bea says. “The pharmacist shouldn’t have treated you that way.”

  “Well, dudes like that are, for the most part, jerks,” Annabelle responds. “Can you imagine how entitled you must be to spew out that crap to someone? I can’t imagine telling a girl she’s a chewed-up piece of gum. I couldn’t tell my worst enemy that.”

  “Don’t let him hurt your feelings, Camille,” Bea says.

  �
��It’s hard not to. He basically slut-shamed me, and right in front of the whole place.”

  “That was his plan,” Annabelle puts in. “Public shaming. If he could have come out with a scarlet S, he would have. Stick you in the stocks and have people pelt rotten tomatoes at you.”

  “You remember what Mr. Knight says when we get bad reviews?” Bea asks.

  “Don’t take them personally.” All three of us say it together.

  From the back seat, Bea pats my shoulder. “That jerk probably says that garbage to every woman who comes into that pharmacy, no matter how old she is.”

  I can’t help but smile a little when Bea says that.

  “Bea’s right,” Annabelle says. “Like bad reviews, that kind of thing can burrow its way into your head and you can’t get rid of it, you know?”

  “But that day is like a movie in my mind that I can turn on and torture myself with.”

  “Tammy told me to kick the dust off my feet and forget about those boys,” Bea says. “You do that, too, Camille. Kick the dust off your feet and forget about that pharmacist.”

  “He didn’t win anyway,” I say. “I got the test, thanks to Annabelle.”

  “What was it like, taking that test?” Bea asks. “I mean, was it like in Juno?”

  “Yep, Camille drank all the SunnyD she could find,” Annabelle says.

  I nudge her with my elbow.

  “How do those tests even work?” Bea asks. “I mean, how can a stick say whether you’re pregnant or not? Wouldn’t it have been better to go to a doctor?”

  Annabelle holds up her hand. “Really, Bea? Like what doctor?” she says.

  Bea sits back in her seat and huffs.

  “I had myself convinced that the test would say not pregnant, and this entire nightmare would be over. I could go to Willow, get Léo to fall in love with me, forget this ever happened.” My stomach pitches and nausea rolls over me at even the thought of it.

  “But what happened?” Bea asks.

  I look back at her, and she has this really earnest expression on her face. “So, my mom is pissed because I took the car without her permission. She has all these people over, and she punishes me by making me work the party. I have to wait for a moment when she’s not having me, like, fill up someone’s drink or bring out another tray of cheese. But finally, she releases me, and I race upstairs to the bathroom.” I remember how my heart pounded as I walked up the stairs.

  “And?” Bea is leaning forward in her seat.

  “Well, I take out the test and read the instructions, and then I sit on the toilet.” I pause, reliving the moment. “And all that’s going through my mind is, like, Please don’t be pregnant, please don’t be pregnant. You know?”

  Annabelle nods, but she doesn’t take her eyes off the road.

  “I’m sitting there, and I wait and wait, but I can’t go. I turn on the sink and hold my hand in the water for a solid minute. But it doesn’t work.”

  “So, the exact opposite of who you’ve been this whole car ride?” Annabelle asks.

  “Yes,” I say, shoving her gently. “I put the test back in the box and start guzzling water from the sink. Downstairs, my mom’s party is in full swing, and I hear one of the ladies scream out, ‘Bunco!’”

  “What the hell is Bunco?” Annabelle asks.

  “Oh my gosh, it’s so fun!” Bea replies. “We’ll teach you later. Camille, please go on.”

  “So, finally, I feel like I have to pee. And this shot of fear pulses through me.”

  Annabelle reaches over and squeezes my leg.

  “I sit on the toilet and I put the stick under me, and this time a trickle of pee comes out. I’m not sure if it’s enough, or if it even hits the stick, but it looks damp when I pull it out. I put the stick on a piece of toilet paper on the sink and set the timer on my phone for three minutes. Which feels like forever, and you’ll recall, way longer than the sex I had. And I’m sitting there, wondering why the hell I even had sex with Dean. I was just so eager to lose my virginity, to have ‘the experience,’ to add it to my arsenal as an actress. To, I don’t know, be a woman.”

  “I get that,” Annabelle says. “That’s how I felt when I did it for the first time.”

  “I didn’t even consider the possibility I could get pregnant. I thought condoms were foolproof, you know?”

  I look out the window at the streetlights zipping by.

  “So then what happened?” Bea says it all quiet.

  “The timer went off.” I grimace at the memory. “And there were two pink lines on the little screen.”

  “What do two pink lines mean?”

  “Jesus, Bea!” Annabelle says. “It meant that she was pregnant.”

  “I was pregnant,” I say kind of softly to myself. The words still feel weird coming out of my mouth. A hush falls over the car.

  “Bunco!” Annabelle suddenly shouts, startling the shit out of me. Bea actually screams.

  Even though I find Annabelle’s behavior less than funny, her grin is a bit contagious.

  FOURTEEN

  We drive in silence for what feels like an eternity. Bea falls asleep in the back seat. The radio gets staticky, and Annabelle turns it off. The sudden silence confuses me. The day has been so loud, so active. I wonder what everyone else is doing; I wonder if there are any posts from the kids at Willow. I look at my phone, my thumb hovering on the Instagram app.

  “Don’t do it,” Annabelle says, shooting a look at me. “That way lie dragons, and I’m not kidding.”

  “I just wanted to—”

  “Yeah, well, maybe you just wanted to, but I’m telling you that you’ll drop down a hole of suck you won’t be able to crawl out of.”

  Annabelle is right. Seeing pics of Willow, especially selfies from the kids from the Globe, would end me.

  Instead, I text my mom to tell her I’m still alive. She replies with a thumbs-up, which suits me fine.

  Around ten or so, Annabelle yawns.

  “Do you want to stop for coffee?” I ask.

  She grips the wheel, blinking. “No, I don’t want to waste more time. I’m okay.”

  “You sure? I mean, you’re basically fueled by the stuff.”

  She looks in the side mirror and changes lanes. “I’m fine.”

  I go back to playing Candy Crush. Two seconds later the car weaves to the right, almost into the other lane. A car honks, swerving away from Buzzi. Annabelle’s eyes are half-closed.

  “Annabelle!” I shove her.

  She opens her eyes and jerks the car back on the road. “Shit!”

  Bea wakes up. “What’s going on?”

  “That was close,” I say. Adrenaline is pumping through my body. “We nearly hit that car.”

  “We’d better stop somewhere,” Annabelle says. She leans forward over the steering wheel, staring at the road, shaking her head and blinking.

  “On it,” Bea says.

  I look at Maps to see what hotels and motels are near. There are four. Bea and I split the calls between us.

  “All booked up,” I say.

  “Same,” Bea says. “What now?”

  “I don’t think I can keep driving anymore,” Annabelle says. “I think we’ll have to find a parking lot and sleep in the car.”

  “Okay,” I say slowly, not loving that idea at all.

  Bea hooks her elbows over the seat. “Sleeping in the car is dangerous. I’ve listened to enough true-crime podcasts to know. The Murder and Mayhem girls talk about that all the time.”

  “I just need, like, twenty minutes to rest,” Annabelle says curtly. “I’m sure we won’t get killed in twenty minutes.”

  Bea doesn’t stop talking. “Some creep will attack us while we’re sleeping. Think of those stories about serial murderers getting people in their cars. What about that killer’s hook dangling from those people’s car handle?”

  “You can stay awake and watch for monsters, how about that?” Annabelle snaps.

  “I think you should stop listening t
o the Murder and Mayhem girls,” I say. I twist around in my seat and give her a look that tells her to shut up because she’s freaking out Annabelle. “That hook thing is an urban myth.”

  “Hey, I learn a lot on that podcast.”

  “Walmarts let you park overnight,” I say.

  “I don’t know,” Annabelle says. “I’m not thrilled with the idea of parking next to other people. Seems like prime creep territory to me.”

  “Ted Bundy picked up girls in his Volkswagen,” Bea says, continuing with her ghoulish comments. “He was handsome and charming and girls got right in his car, no questions. He murdered every single one of them.”

  “We’re not getting in anyone’s car!” Annabelle screeches.

  “Jeez, Bea!” I say. “Seriously.”

  “I’m just sayin’,” Bea mumbles.

  Annabelle takes the next exit and into a town that’s seen better days. It’s a ghost town. There’s a twenty-four-hour fish fry restaurant with a lit parking lot, but we pass by because a bunch of guys are hanging out front. Same with the two-pump gas station and the Cigs and Smokes shop.

  “Jesus,” Annabelle says. “Those guys look like they’re up to no good.”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  Bea sinks lower in her seat.

  Annabelle slows down in front of a janky, boarded-up strip club. A burned-out neon sign hangs over the door that says THE BOOBIE BUNGALOW. The Os are painted in with pink breasts.

  She gives me a long look and I shrug.

  “The Boobie Bungalow it is, then.”

  From the back seat, Bea whimpers.

  We drive into the cracked parking lot as close to the Boobie Bungalow as we can, as if it could protect us. We lock all the doors.

  “The Boobie Bungalow?” Bea says. “Are they serious right now?”

  “That’s the most original name I have ever heard for a strip joint,” Annabelle says, studying the sign. “Gotta give them credit for that one.”

  “Gets right to the point, for sure,” I say.

  “There’s one in England called the Cinnamon Tortoise,” she says. “That’s really reaching, if you ask me. I suppose all the good names were taken.”

  “What would you call a strip club?” I ask. “I mean, if you owned one.”