I Don’t Want to be Stevie Nicks

Raelynn didn’t want to be pregnant. But she was. She was too old and she was pregnant. Six weeks. The what-you-call-it fetus now the size of a pea. Then it would be a small raspberry. Then a grape. She’d looked it up on the Internet. There were a lot of things about babies and fetuses and meconium on the Internet. You could really get lost in it all.

“I’m old,” she told her friend Lizzie on the phone. “I don’t want to have an abortion. My sister had an abortion. Stevie Nicks had an abortion. From Don Henley. She never had any kids. That was her one chance. Then she wrote a song about it. Don Henley is a dick. And I don’t want to be Stevie Nicks.”

Lizzie didn’t say anything at first. They’d known each other since high school. All the guys, all the crap, all the shared disappointments since then.

“You’re not that old,” said Lizzie. “There’s still time. You still could.”

Then a lime, a plum, a peach. Always compared to the size of a fruit or vegetable. Why food? Why not something else?

“I’m old enough,” said Raelynn. “And I feel old. God, do I feel old.”

She’d kept it to herself so far, thinking that withholding the information from the world somehow meant she was still free to change her mind. But she finally called Lizzie — it was too much, too big to hold inside. She was about to explode.

“You should tell him,” said Lizzie. “I know you won’t. But you should. He should know. Even if he’s no one to you. Even if he’s a dick like Don Henley.”

Lizzie the Lessie, they’d said in high school, the boys. So she, Lizzie, did more, gave more of herself than she should have. But Raelynn understood this. She did.

“At least Don Henley could play the drums and sing,” said Raelynn. “This guy can’t even spell his own name I don’t think.”

Then later it would be an avocado. Then a sweet potato. Then something else she couldn’t remember. And after that? She didn’t want to think about it. She didn’t want to know when, exactly, it would become something more than food.

“I haven’t cried yet,” Raelynn said.

“You can cry now,” said Lizzie.

But maybe the crying wouldn’t happen until later, after. And she wouldn’t write a song or anything, nothing dramatic, but just curl up in her bed and allow the tears to burn and let herself feel the empty inside and wonder how long it would last.