These are your best friends, I reminded myself. Two people who I knew inside and outside as well as I knew myself. Maybe even better than I knew myself, at least lately. All of a sudden the need to keep it all a secret felt ridiculous. Unnecessary. A waste of precious time, as well as anxiety, that would have been much more manageable divided three ways. We faced everything together. Always.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I started, still looking down to avoid seeing their distressed faces. “I’ve been throwing up every morning for the past week—week and half, I guess—but it’s more than that. There have been lots of little things, things that I’ve tried to just ignore, but they keep piling up and I don’t know what to do . . .” My voice caught, and I pinched my eyes shut, fighting off more tears. I had to keep going—I needed them to know everything, and I needed them to worry with me. “My back’s been weirdly sore and achy. I have terrible headaches, and I can’t stop peeing. I get dizzy out of nowhere, my boobs hurt, and I’m just so tired—so tired no matter how much I sleep.”

“You have looked a little rough around the edges this week,” Izzy said. “I figured it was just all the manic college stressing, though, so I didn’t want to say anything that would upset you. You’ve had some seriously intense black circles.”

“Thanks, Iz,” I said, almost smiling. “Blunt as always. Very helpful.”

“You know you love me and my gloriously unfiltered mouth.” She squeezed my leg and leaned into me, her chin propped against my shoulder. I could feel her eyes on me, processing, evaluating, trying to come up with a rational explanation. Izzy always had answers. Her entire world was built on them.

“So do you have any ideas, Meen?” Hannah asked quietly.

“Not really, no. I’ve spent unhealthy amounts of time researching online and freaking myself out, but nothing seems to cover all the symptoms. Nothing I could find explains everything. Nothing makes sense.”

“What about your parents? Have you told them?”

“No. I mean, I’ve complained about being tired and my back hurting, but they’ve just written both off as the stress of senior year coming up and college applications and all the shifts I’ve had at Frankie’s lately. I didn’t want to tell them about everything else and get them all worked up, not yet . . . I keep hoping it’ll all just go away on its own. And it’s probably nothing, just a phase, so why scare them unnecessarily? Right?” I suddenly felt very hopeful. Ridiculous, actually, for ever feeling so worried.

“I don’t know, Meen,” Hannah said, grabbing my hand, her voice still unnervingly soft and whispery. “I’m no doctor, but it kind of doesn’t sound like nothing.”

The balloon of hope popped before it had moved even an inch off the ground. I shuddered as I felt another wave of sickness rise in my throat, yelling for Hannah and Izzy to move away. I grabbed the trash can and heaved out every last possible drop until I was convinced that there could be nothing left inside me but blood and veins and organs.

When I finally finished, the girls were still and quiet next to me. I wanted Hannah to wrap her arms around me and say something cheery and optimistic. I wanted Izzy to jump off the bed in disgust, to joke about how completely gross and appalling I looked.

“Mina . . .” Izzy started, and then stopped herself. She seemed nervous and hesitant, which was unsettling. Izzy was rarely nervous or hesitant about anything.

She took a deep breath and looked right at me, her eyes sharper, harder than I would have expected. I tensed, waiting for whatever terrible words were about to come out of her mouth.

“Mina, did you have sex with Nate and not tell us? Because I hate to say it, but everything you’re going through sounds pretty damn similar to what you’d be feeling if you were pregnant.”

I laughed. Shrieked, more accurately. Hannah flinched from the sound, but Izzy looked unfazed, cold and stiff.

Pregnant?

Ridiculous. Absurd! Entirely and insanely absurd. I kept laughing. I was shaking, crying from laughing so hard, while they both just watched, stunned by my reaction.

And then, with a pang so unexpected and so harsh that I gasped, choking on the last, frozen laugh, I thought of Iris. I thought of that night. And all her words, her strange and terrible words, flooded through my mind, bursting from that little back corner where I’d hidden them so carefully and neatly for the past two months.

“Meen?” Hannah asked slowly, cautious about pushing the question. “Is that a possibility? Because Izzy’s right: all the symptoms add up. You know my sister’s over eight months in, and this is all the stuff she complained about at the beginning.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Izzy broke in, loud and accusing. She jumped off the bed and stood, glaring, hands on her hips, as if she couldn’t bear to be any closer to me. “Seriously, Meen, I thought we told each other everything. Why would you hide having sex with your boyfriend you’ve been dating for two years? Do you really think we’d judge you? I don’t get it. I just really don’t get it.”

“I didn’t have sex with Nate, Izzy. I swear to God. Call him up and ask him right now. I’m a virgin. I promise, I’m still a virgin. I need you guys to believe that.”

“So you’re not pregnant, then?” Izzy asked, her voice only slightly less damning than before. “You’re saying there’s absolutely zero possibility that you’re pregnant right now?”

I wanted to say no, wanted to promise them that it would be physically impossible for a baby to be growing inside me. But all I could hear was Iris, her words playing on repeat, louder and clearer each time until I was sure my head was actually and literally going to explode all over Hannah’s pretty pink and lavender bedroom. Keeping you and the child safe is all that matters now. Your child, Mina. Your child. Spinning, twirling, looping, over and over and over: your child, Mina. Your child. I need your approval.

Yes, Iris! Yes. I’d said yes. I’d said yes to Iris. What did that mean? What had she been asking?

Why had I said yes?

This was crazy. I was crazy. Genuinely, certifiably, without a doubt crazy.

“I mean, no, I don’t think so, of course I don’t. But . . .” My voice cracked, my brain still resisting saying the words out loud.

“How is there a ‘but’ in this situation? Did you fool around with Nate? Get a little too close to be completely safe?” It was Hannah this time, probing, more critical than I’d ever heard her before, at least directed toward me.

“No, it’s not that at all,” I said, frustrated that I couldn’t make them understand what I needed to say. But really, who would understand? Who could take any of this seriously? I mean, I probably wouldn’t trust me if I were them.

I barely trusted me as it was.

A pregnant virgin? Unless I was an asexually mutated freak of a human, of course—some highly advanced form of the hydra we had learned about in biology—and a baby would just grow like a bud from my body and break away when it was fully mature, then quite frankly, the explanations for my pregnancy seemed a bit limited.

The fact that I was even considering the possibility only added to the inevitable diagnosis of psychosis and a future in a locked room covered in wall-to-wall white cushions. Maybe I had hallucinated that whole night with Iris; maybe she wasn’t real and I had made up that whole conversation in my head, just me and myself. Too many hours on my feet that day, too much heat pouring out from the brick oven, too many vapors from the cleaning solution we used to bleach the rags.

“Then what is it, Mina?” Izzy yelled, cutting through my fantasy, her cheeks glowing red with hurt and anger. “Because you won’t say you’re not pregnant, but you won’t admit to having sex, so what the fuck are you trying to say? We want to help you, but you’re making that pretty impossible right now. Stop speaking in code and just tell us the goddamn truth, or I’m leaving, because I’m supposed to be one of your best friends and I don’t deserve to be lied to.”