Madi opened her mouth. Nothing came out. So she just held up the plastic stick.
The plastic stick on the edge of the sink had two pink lines. Madi Collins stared at them until her vision blurred, as if the lines might rearrange themselves into a single, negative line if she just concentrated hard enough. They didn’t. The cheap linoleum floor of the gas station bathroom felt cold even through the soles of her sneakers. She was eighteen years old, three weeks past high school graduation, and according to this $12 test from the drugstore, her entire future had just split into two distinct paths.
The nurse placed a warm, squirming bundle on Madi’s chest. A girl. Six pounds, seven ounces, with a shock of dark hair and Leo’s crooked frown. Madi looked down at that small, wrinkled face and felt something crack open inside her—not her ribs, but something deeper. Something she didn’t have a name for. madi collins 18 and pregnant
She went into labor on a rainy Thursday, two weeks early. Leo was at work. Cheryl drove, running red lights, her nurse’s calm barely containing a mother’s panic. The hospital room was white and sterile, and Madi held her mom’s hand through twelve hours of pain she couldn’t have imagined in her worst nightmares.
Leo nodded slowly. “Okay. Then I need to talk to my boss about a raise.” Madi opened her mouth
“Okay,” Cheryl whispered into Madi’s hair. “Okay. We figure this out. One thing at a time.”
For a long, terrible second, Cheryl’s face went completely blank. Then the emotions flickered across it like a storm: shock, anger, disappointment, and finally—settling in like a stone—fear. But not for herself. For Madi. The plastic stick on the edge of the sink had two pink lines
She looked down at Emma’s face, peaceful in sleep, and thought about the girl she used to be. The one who panicked in a gas station bathroom. That girl was still in there somewhere, but she’d been joined by someone new. Someone tougher. Someone who had learned that plans are just wishes you write in pencil, and that real life happens in the messy, unscripted spaces between them.