Anything but Normal by Melody Carlson Read Free Book Online Page B

and old looking. Maybe it really hadn’t worked properly. Was it possible that there was a shelf life or some kind of expiration date on a kit like this? Or that it really needed the full seven seconds to work properly? She wanted to try it again but knew that wasn’t going to work just yet. So she drank six glasses of water and just waited and waited and waited. But it just wasn’t working.
    Finally, feeling like a failure—like, how can someone be so dumb as to mess up a simple test like this?—she put everything from the kit back into the bag, not leaving a trace of it behind. She shoved it back into her purse and retreated to her room.
    Maybe the test was faulty. Maybe she’d done it wrong. Because whatever those two stripes were trying to shout at her,
    Sophie did not want to listen. She couldn’t believe it. And until she could do the test correctly or possibly get a new test, she refused to believe it. She would push the skewed test results from her mind and would focus on homework instead. The queen of denial still reigned.
    She went online to do some research for a journalism project, but soon she got distracted in researching home pregnancy tests and why they did or did not always work. To her relief, there seemed to be all kinds of reasons that her results truly were inaccurate. It seemed perfectly clear that her pregnancy test had not worked. Plain and simple, it was wrong. As far as she knew, she was NOT pregnant. Most definitely NOT. Really, God wouldn’t allow that to happen. He wouldn’t do that to her.
    Just to be sure, she prayed. She confessed and repented and begged God to forgive her, to wipe her slate clean, to make her new, to give her a fresh start. And she promised that she would never, never, never break her vow to him again. If he wanted, she would become a nun. Okay, she wasn’t even Catholic. But she could convert.

6
    It was about one in the morning when Sophie woke up with a strong urge to use the bathroom. As she was climbing out of bed, she remembered the pregnancy test. Seven seconds . . . Maybe she should just give it one more try. Hopefully it would work properly now. This time there would be only one stripe showing. And then she could rest easy.
    She fumbled in her purse, trying to keep the rustle of the paper bag quiet as she took out the kit and removed a test strip. Then she put the kit back in the bag, shoved it back in her purse, and hurried to the bathroom.
    Seven seconds was no problem this time. In fact, she probably could’ve done several strips. Satisfied with her effort, she set the damp strip on the edge of the bathtub again and then waited. And waited. She wasn’t sure if it had really been five minutes, but she decided to sneak a peek.
    Two stripes were showing again.
    Sophie stuck the telltale stick in the pocket of her T-shirt to deal with later as she flushed the toilet. She returned to her room, climbed back into bed, and cried herself to sleep.
    “Wake up, sleepyhead.” Her mom was gently shaking her shoulder. “You’ll be late for school.”
    Sophie jerked awake and stared up at her mom. Did she know? Had she found the kit? Was Sophie’s nightmare about to turn into a waking reality?
    Her mom smiled. “You must’ve been really tired. Did you know it’s ten minutes until eight?”
    “No way!” Sophie looked at her clock. “I better get moving.” “I’ll go toast you a bagel and you can eat it on your way to school,” Mom called as she hurried away.
    “Thanks, Mom.” Sophie threw back the covers. There, twisted in the sheets, was the stick from last night. The nasty, awful, horrible stick. What if Mom had seen it?
    Sophie slipped the stick in the bag that was still concealing the test kit. When no one was around to see, she would dump the whole works in a restroom trash can at school—get rid of the evidence. What she would do after that . . . well, she was pretty much clueless.
    She quickly dressed, grabbed up her homework things, then dashed