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She opened her bottle of water and took a sip, swallowing one of her birth control pills. Then she went outside and joined Meggie.
Meggie had her fanny pack’s contents spread out next to her on the truck bed. There was her camo wallet, two tampons, an empty pack of cigarettes with a book of matches tucked into its cellophane wrapper, a deck of cards in a plastic box, and some receipts in a little stack, held from blowing away by a large bottle of liquid foundation that looked like it was from ten or fifteen years ago.
“I’m cleaning out my fanny pack,” she said, wadding up a straw wrapper and tossing it over the side of the truck.
“Here’s your water,” Abby told her.
“Thanks. So, are you and Chuck camping here or what?”
“Yeah, I guess so. You and Rake are going back home tonight, though, right?”
“Who knows? It’s up to Rake, not me.” She took a long drink from her bottle of water. “Ahhhh. That’s good! I don’t usually drink plain water. I forgot how good it tastes.”
“What do you drink?”
“Normal stuff. Mountain Dew and beer. Say, do those birth control pills I got you work?”
“Yeah. Why wouldn’t they? They’re real, aren’t they?”
“Yeah, of course they’re real. I had to get an exam and everything to get those.”
“The way you asked made me wonder.”
“Where did you think he got them?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t think about it.”
“Well, whatever. They are from me, and they’re on account of my getting a full-fledged examination, but I never bothered with them pills myself. I know a lot of people who use them and they don’t work. Not a hundred percent, anyway. I guess they work better than nothing at all, but anyone I know who’s used them still ends up getting pregnant.”
“You have to be really diligent about taking them every day,” Abby said.
“Well, yeah,” said Meggie. She took another drink.
Abby looked down the dirt road. As far as she could see in any direction there was nothing. They were in a little bit of a dip in the landscape, so she was unsure what was beyond where they sat.
“So how far are we from town?” Abby asked.
“Depends which town you mean. Maybe four or five miles from Grove, I guess, but there’s nothing there. You have to go farther if you want to go to Walmart or anyplace like that.”
“So, do you think they went to Grove? Or someplace else?”
“Why would anyone go to Grove? Of course they went someplace else. You know that pills like that cost a lot of money if you have to pay for them, right?”
“You said you got them at the free clinic.”
Meggie had put everything back in her fanny pack, and now she was reattaching it to her waist. “I did. But they’re still worth something.”
“Didn’t Charlie give you anything for doing that?”
“Ten bucks.”
“That’s all?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll ask him to give you some more money.”
“Okay. That would be the polite thing to do. That’s all I was asking for. You want to play slapjacks?”
