Side Effects May Vary by Julie Murphy Page B

voice, interrupting my pharmaceutically induced sleep. “She just went to the teachers’ lounge.”
    â€œI don’t want to do it,” said another voice. “I don’t want to know.”
    â€œOh,” said the first voice, “and you’d rather wait and find out when your clothes don’t fit in six months and you can’t see your freaking toes?”
    From the other side of the curtain I heard a whimper.
    â€œCome on,” said the first voice again. “You’re probably not even pregnant.”
    My eyes flew open, my mind suddenly registering that this wasn’t a dream.
    â€œOkay.” It was the second voice. “But you’ll keep an eye out, right?” The voice was panicked, but familiar.
    â€œMindi, yes. Of course I will.” Mindi. It was Celeste and Mindi. I held my breath, trying my best not to make a sound. Holy shit. Mindi might be pregnant. Quietly, I let my chest fall.
    â€œYou’re the one who didn’t want to take the test in one of the main bathrooms.”
    â€œI can’t pee in public bathrooms like that,” said Mindi. “I have a shy bladder. You know that.”
    I heard a zipper and papers rustling. “Here.”
    â€œDo I just pee on it?” asked Mindi.
    â€œI think you can use a cup if you want.” A cabinet door creaked open. I closed my eyes and could practically see them standing right there outside Miss Shelly’s bathroom, next to the cabinets full of supplies. “Pee in this if you want.”
    â€œHow much was the test?”
    â€œI didn’t pay for it,” said Celeste.
    â€œYou stole it?”
    â€œUh, yeah, I did. I wasn’t about to be seen buying that thing. Hurry up.”
    The door to the bathroom closed and opened again a few minutes later.
    â€œI used the cup,” said Mindi.
    â€œNow we let it sit for ten minutes.”
    â€œTen minutes? Are you serious? I can video chat someone in Russia in real time and it takes ten minutes for a stick to tell me if I’m pregnant?”
    â€œLike five minutes ago you didn’t even want to know,” said Celeste. “Come on. Sit down.”
    Mindi sighed as one of Miss Shelly’s stools creaked, and they sat in silence for a few minutes.
    I hadn’t pegged Celeste as the type to risk stealing a pregnancy test for a friend in need. I never really had a girlfriend like that, though. Growing up, I was always sort of friendly with Celeste because we went to school together and spent so much time together at dance class, but as we got older, the competitive tension between us swelled. A month before freshman year and a few weeks before quitting ballet, Mindi invited all the girls from dance class to a slumber party for her birthday. After her parents had gone to bed, we all piled up on the couch with liters of soda and bags of jawbreakers. We flipped through channels until we found Carrie . For the most part, we laughed and made fun of the clothes, until the prom scene at the end where those skanks drop the pig’s blood on Carrie. We watched, our jaws slack, as the high school gym went up in flames and Carrie turned everyone else’s joke into their nightmare.
    After the movie, I found Celeste in the kitchen, tears spilling down her cheeks as she held her phone to her ear. When I asked her who she was calling, she told me she was asking her mom to pick her up. The movie had freaked her out and she wanted to go home. I told her that if she left, none of the girls would ever let her live it down. After a few seconds, she nodded and hung up the phone. And that was it.
    I was the first to fall asleep. And when I woke up the next morning, I was covered in shaving cream and permanent marker. Celeste had been the ringleader. I guess she was ashamed of how I’d found her in the kitchen. It took me hours to rinse off the permanent marker so that my parents wouldn’t see what had happened. That day changed