Author: Brenna Crotty

“Jerry is curled around the steering wheel, his head pivoting back and forth as he contemplates passing. He edges closer and closer to the truck’s rear bumper, when an errant rock dislodges from behind its left mudflap. The rock hits their windshield like spit in the face. “Motherfucker,” Jerry mutters. To Miriam, it looks like practically nothing, just a faint indent in the glass, but she knows that by tomorrow it will have spread across the windshield. Somebody will have to repair it.” 

“Say you thought you were pregnant. But you’re eighteen, newbie freshman on campus, hours from your boyfriend, hours from home. Wise enough to bring a couple of pregnancy tests with you to school, ones you made the boyfriend purchase at a drugstore miles from your hometown because, you know, people talk. But this is 1979, and those tests don’t work until you’re a few weeks along. It’s not like today, where you blink and find out you’re pregnant before you even miss a period. If you’re retro enough to still be menstruating.” 

“Gauging others’ happiness by her own preference for company, Will’s mom took Will’s introversion for depression. Her mom always nudged her to make friends. Meet boys. Make boyfriends. Will wondered if teen pregnancy would’ve set her mom at ease, convinced her of Will’s joie de vivre and put to rest her insistence on the pixie cut.”