Five minutes later, hands trembling, Sasha dropped the stick into the toilet bowl and spent five more minutes banging through the cabinets, looking for a rubber glove. Finally, she reached barehanded into the pee laden toilet bowl and grabbed the stick. Light headed and grief stricken, she held the little white stick in her hand and squinted at the window with the word PREGNANT in black letters on a neon pink background. She shook her head to clear it and squinted again.
“No,” Sasha said the word loudly, still shocked down to her toes. She shook the stick as she had watched her mother do with an old-fashioned thermometer, as though she could shake the fever down, and looked at it again.
Still pregnant. Wailing like a child, Sasha clutched the stick in her hand. She slumped back against the wall and slid down to sit on the bathroom floor.
‘Oh no, no, nooo…’
While she wept her own personal Armageddon, she didn’t call on God anymore, because he wasn’t listening.
September
Brielle
The first day of school dawned sunny and warm. Brielle was excited. She bounced out of bed and rushed into the shower, careful to cover her freshly pressed hair before jumping under the water. The hairdresser had put some sort of lemon and strawberry scented oil in her hair and it smelled fabulous. This was going to be a great year. She could feel it. First, she’d just turned sixteen on August fifteenth. Her grandmother and aunt had thrown a backyard sweet sixteen bash for Brielle and Kyzie. All of her friends had come and it had turned out just great.
Second, she could finally officially date. That is, as soon as a boy actually asked her out. Until this past summer, not only had Brielle been too young according to her parents, most of the boys in her school met her eye to bust line. But something magical had happened over the summer. Almost all of the boys had grown, and most of them were nearing six feet in height, if not topping her by a fraction of an inch. Brielle was ecstatic. Third, she was on the varsity swim team and they were going to be awesome this year. Brielle had been swimming all summer and her times were dropping wonderfully. She was expecting to take state championship in the fifty and one hundred freestyle this year and she had been learning the butterfly stroke this summer, so that she could get stronger and compete in more than one stroke. Wimberley High’s freestyle relay was going to dominate if Brielle had anything to say about it.
Last, Damon Hamilton was going to be at her school and she’d be able to look at him and dream. He was like a rock star in her mind. She’d be satisfied with a smile and his autograph.
She got out of the shower and put on her favorite strawberries and cream lotion and then slid on her brand new underwear and matching bra. Today’s set was teal blue, Brielle’s second favorite color behind purple. She pulled on a teal t-shirt and coordinated Capri pants. She slid her long slender feet into teal and purple print slip on sneakers and then reached up to take the rollers out of her hair. She combed the curls to her satisfaction and smiled in the mirror at her reflection. Since she was a swimmer, her hair would be in some braided style for the rest of the year, but she wanted her school pictures to show off her bouncing curls and her beautiful fly style. With her hair down, she looked like a deep chocolate, taller, slightly more built version of her willowy mother. Her friend Sammie called Brielle ‘the Black Swan’, and today Brielle felt like one. She grabbed her multi-colored coach purse and strolled down the hall towards the stairs, pausing to knock on her twin sister’s door.
“Kyzie,” she called. “Time to get up.” She kept walking but could hear her sister groan in response. Downstairs in the kitchen, her mother was fixing breakfast, frying eggs and making toast.
“Good morning, Brielle,” she said, when Brielle breezed into the kitchen.
“Morning, mommy,” said Brielle. Brielle went directly to the refrigerator, pulled out the carton of orange juice, and set it on the counter. She got two glasses out of the cabinet and set them on the counter, too. She poured a glass for herself and Kyzie and set them on the table. Then she grabbed a bagel and two cheese sticks to put into her purse for snacks later. She didn’t have time to come home before swim practice and she would be starving and unable to concentrate on her laps if she didn’t put something on her stomach. She hunted in the cabinet and found the peanut butter. She spread a little on the bagel halves, slapped them back together and put them in a zip lock bag. She also grabbed a banana from the fruit bin.
“Is your sister up?” Mommy asked Brielle.
“I think so,” said Brielle. “At least, I knocked on her door and she groaned in response.” Brielle shot her mother a quick grin as her mother rolled her eyes. It was a running joke in the house, that unless there was a fire, Kyzie struggled to get up in the morning.
“Are you ready for the eleventh grade?” asked mommy.
“It’s going to be a fabulous year,” said Brielle. “I can feel it.”
“Well,” said Mommy, smiling. “That’s optimistic. Any particular reason why?”
“Cause Damon Hamilton transferred to our school,” said Kyzie, strolling into the kitchen. “Morning, mommy.”
“Shut up,” said Brielle. Kyzie stuck her tongue out in retaliation. Kyzie was slender and willowy and looked exactly like the ballerina that she was. Her natural hair was pulled up and pinned on top of her head in a bun and she was wearing jeans, a
