Molly

“I’m sorry, minivan means WHAT? And how do you even know this?” Charlotte asks loudly.

A few people in the waiting room look in our direction and mom shushes us. I lean in closer to Charlotte, speaking as softly as I can.

“When I walked back into the house the other night, I heard Uncle Drew explaining it to Marco. I can’t even repeat it, just look it up on Urban Dictionary,” I explain.

Of course she immediately pulls her phone out of her purse, goes to that stupid website, and starts reading the definition out loud.

“The act of putting two fingers in the vagina and a fist up the ass. Called the minivan because you can fit two in the front and five in the back.”

I shudder just imagining it, and Charlotte can’t decide between being disgusted along with me or laughing, the noise she makes coming out as some sort of gag-snort-cough that makes everyone look at us again.

“Sorry!” she apologizes loudly. “Just discussing minivans and their amazing rear capacity!”

I smack her in the arm and she tucks her phone back in her purse, still laughing.

“That still doesn’t explain why dad, Uncle Carter, and Uncle Drew keep calling Marco, Mo and then laughing like idiots the rest of the night,” she says in confusion as she turns to face me.

I sigh, thinking about all the abuse Marco took the other night and realizing it’s probably why he hasn’t called since then.

“Not Mo, like the name. M. O. – M period, O period, for Minivan Operator.”

Charlotte giggles and I glance down at my phone instead of punching her for laughing at poor Marco. This is the hundredth time I’ve checked my phone today and I try not to feel like an idiot for doing so when I don’t see any new messages or missed calls. I will not be like one of those stupid girls who powers the phone off and on just to make sure it’s working. And not because I already called Charlotte four times in the last half hour and made her call me twice to confirm I can in fact still receive incoming calls, but because I have more dignity than that, dammit.

It’s bad enough I have that whole minivan fisting image in my head, now I have to deal with anxiety about not hearing from Marco since the text he sent me yesterday morning, the day after the strangest day of my life that ended with my dad and uncles daring Marco to eat a quart-sized Ziploc bag of hot dogs in under a minute to prove some point I didn’t even want to ask about. On top of not hearing from him since he texted me to say he now knew what the meat sweats were and he’d been puking up hot dogs since he got home from my house, I’ve been forced to go to the doctor to confirm my fake pregnancy.

“I can’t believe it’s taking this long,” Mom complains as she flips through an old magazine. “When I called to make the appointment they told me they had a bunch of cancellations and could get you right in today.”

Yes, my wonderful, loving mother took it upon herself to call up the doctor and make an appointment for me without my knowledge, informing me when I woke up this morning that I had fifteen minutes to get dressed and get out the door. Thank God Charlotte answered her phone on the first ring as I raced around my bedroom getting dressed and trying not to panic. She got to the doctor’s office before we did and mom only seemed a little bit surprised when I told her I asked Charlotte to come for moral support.

“He’ll call, don’t worry,” Charlotte whispers while I stare in annoyance at my phone.

I quickly shove it into my front pant’s pocket and roll my eyes. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Charlotte snickers. “Nice try. You might be pretty good faking a pregnancy, but you suck faking noninterest in a guy.”

I glance nervously at Mom sitting across from us and see she’s still engrossed in the magazine, not paying any attention to us or preparing to ask a hundred questions about what we’re whispering about. She’s got to wonder why Charlotte and I are suddenly spending more time together considering we’ve never kept it a secret that we haven’t been able to stand each other for most of our lives. Even though I’ve always felt like an outsider with my two sisters and have nothing in common with them, I’ve always been a little closer to Ava. She has the same sarcastic, brash attitude that I do and it’s just easier to talk to her than Charlotte. I have no idea why our mother hasn’t asked why Charlotte is the one I called for the supposed moral support today, but I guess I should be glad that it’s one less thing I have to lie about.

“I’m not faking noninterest in Marco,” I tell Charlotte. “I just don’t want to be one of those girls who drops everything for a guy and acts stupid whenever he’s around. This isn’t exactly how I pictured us together the first time he finally noticed me and it’s confusing and weird and I don’t like it.”

Charlotte laughs softly and shakes her head at me. “I’m pretty sure this is not the first time he’s noticed you. He definitely has much stronger feelings for you than you realize. No guy would go through all of the shit he’s gone through in one day for a girl he just ‘likes’. You need to have more faith in yourself, Molls. You’re smart and beautiful and talented. If he hasn’t noticed those things long before now, he never would have set foot in Mom and Dad’s house the other day, let alone put up with all that torture from Dad and the guys.”

I’m pretty sure I still remember the last time my sister said anything this nice to me. I was seven and she was nine; it was the first day of school and mom forced me to wear this frilly pink dress that I hated. Charlotte stared for a few seconds and then said, “It’s fine. You don’t look that gross.”

These compliments throw me for a loop, and it’s not until Mom gets up from her chair and leans across the coffee table to tap my knee, that I realize the nurse was calling my name.

“Molly Gilmore?”

I raise my hand meekly and the nurse smiles. “You can come on back. You’re family is welcome to join you.”

Shit! How the hell do we keep Mom out of the room?

Before I can go into a full-blown panic trying to come up with a plausible reason to give my mother on why she needs to be blindfolded and wear earplugs, Charlotte quickly speaks up.

“Mom, if you don’t mind, can I go back with Molly alone?” she asks so sweetly that I start to wonder if that baby inside of her has some sort of magical powers. “It’s just…I know I haven’t been the best sister to her growing up, and I’d really like to do something important like this with her, just the two of us.”

Mom practically melts into a puddle of goo right on the floor of the waiting room, her eyes filling with tears as she looks back and forth between the two of us.

“I’ve been waiting twenty years for you two to stop being assholes to each other and all it took was one of you getting knocked up,” she sniffles. “If only getting pregnant when you’re a teenager wasn’t frowned upon, we could have solved this problem years ago.”

The nurse gives her a funny look and Mom rolls her eyes. “Oh, don’t judge me. You try giving birth to three spawns of Satan who constantly try to kill each other.”

With those parting words to the shocked nurse, Mom wipes a stray tear from her cheek and waves us away, sitting back down in her chair and grabbing the magazine she previously tossed onto the coffee table.

Charlotte and I leave her in the waiting room and follow the nurse down the hall. She weighs me on the scale in the hallway and takes my temperature with an ear thermometer before leading us further down the hall, pushing open a door and handing me a small plastic cup with an orange lid.

“I just need you to give us a urine sample. I’ll be right over there at the nurse’s station so you can bring it out when you’re finished,” she explains with a smile before looking at Charlotte. “If you’d like to come with me, I can show you to the exam room and you can wait for her to finish.”

I quickly grab Charlotte’s arm and the cup from the nurse.

“It’s okay, she can come in with me. I need her to hold the cup for me,” I blurt without thinking.

The nurse gives me a quizzical look, and I laugh nervously. “I’m a little freaked out and my hands are shaking and if I try and hold the cup I’ll probably pee all over the place so I need someone with steady hands and Charlotte’s are rock steady. She’ll make sure the pee goes where it needs to go.”