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We sat in the car in silence. Rita from time-to-time would look at me and smile. I would do the same with her. The only noise was her GPS directing the way. Only twenty minutes until we arrived at my house and it felt like a lifetime just clutching ahold of my backpack and wondering if going home was the best solution. I picked up my cell which was turned off and debated whether to put it on.
I threw it in my bag and then looked out of the window. I just wanted to think about something else rather than my situation. Anything was better than that.
“Rita,” I whispered, but she didn’t hear me so I said it louder. “Rita, do you think that you’ll get over it eventually?”
She didn’t need me to elaborate. She knew exactly what I meant by that statement. “I’m healing slowly. Being at home. Working in the pharmacy, even if it’s not the most thrilling job in the world has helped.”
I nodded. “And your friends, do you think that you’ll get them back?”
She shook her head. “I found out that they were my friends when I was popular and I was some kind of status symbol to them. When I became broken, they didn’t want to know me. And the ones in college—” She laughed, “I don’t even remember their faces. All we did was party, get high or get drunk. I wouldn’t really class them as friends.”
I sighed, “I suppose.”
Her fate seemed so sad and I wondered if mine would be the same.
“But I did get some new friends when I went to rehab. Ones that I could connect with and I wouldn’t swap them for a bottle of gin any day.”
That made me laugh, she had a way of making the most dire situation, funny.
“What about you? What about your friends?”
I cleared my throat. “Apart from Chanel, she’s my bestie, and Hazel and Rebecca, I don’t have that many friends.”
She laughed, “You have three and one’s a bestie. That’s a lot more than most. You see your problem, Adele? You need to look at the positives more than the negatives. That’s the only way that you‘re going to get through this thing. Trust me.”
I took a deep breath as she pointed and said, “Is that it?”
I nodded as I thought about my home. The one where I’d find out if I was going to be a mom or not.
“Yes.” I wrapped my arms around her as I quickly let go off the seatbelt. “Rita, I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
She laughed, “You would have been stuck in New Moon City without me.” Rita pulled me back and said, “Anything you need, just give me a call. Okay?”
“Are you sure that you’re not my fairy Godmother?”
She sighed, “No, someone helped me just the way that I helped you, and I always used to chase after them. Giving them things, like cakes. Biscuits. Anything to show my gratitude and then one day they said to me, ‘You know how you can help me the most?’”
I shook my head, but a chill ran down my spine listening to her story.
“‘Pay it forward. Do the same for someone else. Help someone the same way that I’ve helped you.'”
I wanted to know more about this person, did they work in a pharmacy too? I shook my head at the idea of it. It wasn’t the point of the story. The main point was what she had just said, she was helping someone the same way that someone had done with her when she needed it. I could do that, but then for now I had to help myself.
“Rita…”
“Adele, it’s going to be okay.”
I nodded as I grabbed my bag off the floor and then opened the door. I closed the door and stood on my drive as she waved at me and her car went into the distance. I didn’t know what to do, until I thought about Mom not being at home. There was only one thing that I had to do and it meant peeing on a stick and finding out the truth. Back at the diner I could have done it, at least Rita would have been there to comfort me for those initial freaking out moments. Now, I was alone. I hated the idea of knowing. The thing that rushed me into the house was the need to pee. I dropped my bag by the door and then ran up the stairs with the test in my hand. I was going to find out one way or another. My heart started beating out of control. I couldn’t get over how scared I was, but then it had nothing to do with just finding out if I was pregnant. It had more to do with what I was going to do after it confirmed what I already knew.
***
Somehow getting up to the bathroom holding the test in my hand had dried up my pee. I was dying to go before, but once there, I wasn’t able to do it. Call me crazy, but it was like the test had dried up all my pee. I paced up and down thinking that I should go downstairs and get my bag. I shook my head knowing that I was just delaying the inevitable.
I managed to open the packet, read the instructions, and then I decided to pee. I sat on the toilet waiting for the flow.
Nothing!
Then someone rang the doorbell like crazy!
