Some Kind of Hell

by London Casey

  I didn’t feel it, not that I’d know what it felt like.

  Getting sick had become something normal for me. It happened to me at different times of the day. Sometimes I’d feel really sick, sometimes I’d just throw up and feel better.

  I froze and looked at the pregnancy tests.

  I never looked at pregnancy tests before. They came in all different kinds. Some with plus signs, some with the word pregnant on it. I didn’t know what to get so I got them all.

  Seriously.

  I had six pregnancy tests in my hands as I walked to the checkout.

  When I dropped the tests on the conveyor belt, the cashier looked at me with wide eyes. She was an elderly woman and slowly scanned the items one a time. It took so long and I looked around wondering if someone I knew was going to see me.

  That’s the last thing I needed, someone to see me and then let gossip get back to Logan.

  “Okay,” the woman said. “That’s a lot of tests…”

  Damn.

  Of course she’d say something.

  “College project,” I said and took out my credit card.

  I paid for the pregnancy tests and left. When I got into my car I opened one of the pregnancy tests and started reading.

  No way.

  I seriously had to pee on the thing?

  I had to stick a pregnancy test between my legs and pee? And then wait… with pee…

  I read the instructions twice, hoping there was a section for the people who didn’t want to piss on it.

  Yeah, right.

  I could hear the little voice in my head already.

  You should have thought about this before you and Logan…

  I shut my eyes and fought back tears. There was no need in losing it right then, was there? It could just be nothing. I had a crazy month and half going on, right? Lots of changes. Lots of stress. Everything with Jared, my grandfather, meeting Logan. Extra hours at work. Less sleep.

  Lots of unprotected sex with Logan.

  I threw the box to the floor and left the parking lot. I drove slower than I needed to, practicing everything I would do and say for both instances.

  For a negative… I’d get birth control. And say some kind of prayer.

  For a positive… I’d… have a baby?

  The thought made me shiver.

  DownCrash was just weeks away from having their demo professionally recorded. They’d be traveling to and from LA, or maybe they’d move there.

  What would I do?

  Go to LA and have a baby?

  With Logan in the studio, signed to a major deal, touring the world?

  I touched my stomach when I parked at the apartment and let out a cry.

  What the hell was happening with my life?

  I took the bag inside and Maggie ran at me at the door.

  “What the fuck? You don’t answer your phone?”

  “Don’t,” I said. “You can’t imagine…”

  I held the bag out and Maggie took it. She looked inside and gasped. “Just how pregnant do you think you are? You need all these?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I want to be sure.”

  “See a doctor then.”

  It was the hundredth time Maggie had suggested that already. I knew I’d need to see a doctor one way or another. I just wanted this to cure it. The tests in the bag. They’d somehow fix anything that was wrong.

  “Get started,” Maggie said and shook the bag. “You have a lot of peeing to do.”

  “I can’t believe I have to pee on these things,” I said. “Gross.”

  “That’s the least of your problems…”

  I grabbed the bag from Maggie and hurried to the bathroom. I filled a cup with water and started to drink.

  One glass.

  Two glasses.

  The third glass made my stomach hurt.

  I was so nervous, my nerves were bouncing and I couldn’t pee.

  I had the first two tests out ready to go. I wasn’t going to do this one by one. Two at a time. That was the plan. That would work. That would make this all go away.

  When the urge finally came, I followed the instructions. I closed my eyes as I peed on the pregnancy tests. Something about it made me feel terrible. This should have been an exciting moment, right? A moment between Logan and me - that was, if we were going to be together and have a family.

  I finished and waited the necessary time.

  The worst few minutes of my life.

  I set the microwave and when it beeped, Maggie took my wrist.

  “I’ll check,” she said.

  “No, it’s my mess.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Yeah. Maybe.”

  I went into the bathroom and looked.

  Maybe…

  I looked at the plus sign and my heart raced. I dropped the test and grabbed the other one.

  Digital.

  Pregnant.

  Fuck.

  I dropped that one too.

  I turned and Maggie stood there. She judged my face and threw her arms around me. She squeezed and whispered into my ear.

  “It’ll be okay.”

  “Fuck,” I whispered. “I need to take more. I have four more.”

  “Okay,” Maggie said.

  I took three the next time. Change the number and get a different result. That would take care of it.

  It didn’t.

  They came up pregnant too.

  With the last one I walked from the bathroom and dropped it to the table.

  “Skipping that one?” Maggie asked.

  “You take it,” I said.

  “Me? I’m not pregnant.”

  “Prove it.”

  “Oh… you can’t…”

  “Do it,” I said.

  “You really think you grabbed six defective tests?”

  “Take the test,” I said.

  My voice was robotic, drained, my eyes lost somewhere else.

  I honestly waited to wake up from the nightmare I was obviously having.

  In fact, the nightmare only got worse when Maggie came from the bathroom and set the timer again. It went off and I pointed at her. I didn’t need to say a word. She just sat and waited.

  I had to see it.

  I had to see it first.

  It had to say pregnant.

  It had to.

  Because if it said pregnant and Maggie wasn’t, then I wasn’t either.

  It was a mistake.

  A problem.

  Something I could fix.

  Something to laugh at.

  Something to…

  Not pregnant.

  That’s what the test said.

  The last fucking test.

  It said Maggie wasn’t pregnant.

  The other five tests were in the sink.

  They were all pregnant.

  Well, they weren’t pregnant.

  I was pregnant.

  I was pregnant.

  “I’m pregnant,” I whispered.

  I stared at the sink because I feared looking at myself in the mirror. When I finally got the courage to do so, I looked like hell. My stomach flipped, but it had nothing to do with being sick.

  I’d have to face the world.

  Maggie knocked on the bathroom door. “Annie? Can I come in?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  She came into the bathroom and touched my back. Once. Then it was gone. The touch was gone. I looked at her and the look on her face said it all. Said what everyone else would say.

  How could it happen?

  “I’m pregnant,” I said.

  “You’re pregnant,” Maggie replied. “I mean… this isn’t bad.”

  “It’s bad.”

  “No. Maybe bad timing. But not bad. Okay?”

  “It’s not okay. What do I do?”

  “Go see a doctor.”

  “Logan!” I cried out. “What the fuck do I do?”

  Maggie sighed and leaned against the wall. As much as I wanted to cry I also wanted to
hug Maggie and thank her for at least being honest with the way she looked and acted right then. She didn’t try to lie to me.

  “The band,” she said.

  “DownCrash. I can’t hurt them.”

  “This isn’t hurting,” Maggie said. “It’s just… fuck.”

  “Fuck.”

  “You have to tell Logan,” Maggie said.

  “I’ll tell him after I see a doctor. So it’s definite.”

  Maggie pushed from the wall. She took all the pregnancy tests from the sink and dropped them one by one. She paused a few seconds in between each drop, making her point more and more clear.

  “Five,” she said. “You’re late. And you didn’t have protection.”

  “Shut up,” I said.

  “What do you think this is then?”

  “I can wait,” I said. “I’ll wait until their next show. I’ll see the doctor.”

  “Annie, you’re being dumb right now.”

  “Dumb? I’m fucking pregnant.”

  “If you believe that, tell Logan. Let it sink in and maybe he’ll go to the doctor with you.”

  “In between tour dates? In between recording a demo? In between fucking signing a deal?”

  My voice rose and I reached into the sink and threw the pregnancy tests out.

  I refused it. Or I wanted to refuse it. I stormed from the bathroom and ran into my bedroom. I tried to slam the door but Maggie was hot on my tail, keeping the door from slamming.

  “You have every right to be upset,” Maggie said. “I’m not going to lie to you about anything. But if you don’t tell Logan… that’s…”

  “What?” I snapped. “Wrong? Hurtful? Am I bitch? A slut?”

  “Nobody said that. Wow. Calm down.”

  “You realize what this is, right? What this all fucking is?”

  Maggie sat on the very edge of my bed. “Annie…”

  “I’m the idiot now,” I said. “Jared got someone pregnant. Then I go out and get knocked up by the first guy I meet. Do you understand how that looks?”

  “How that looks?” Maggie asked. “Who cares? Christ, Annie, you…”

  “I can’t deal with this,” I said. I closed my eyes and nothing was going to change. I knew that but it didn’t matter.

  This was what I had to face.

  This was my life.

  “Maggie, I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I need a minute or a month alone right now.” I looked at Maggie and blinked a tear away. “You know I’d do the right thing, right?”

  “I know,” she said. “You’ll tell him. I’ll just bother you about it.”

  “Okay.”

  Silence fell and just as I tried to let it process through my mind, my cell phone rang. I looked at it and wanted to drop dead.

  “It’s Logan,” I said. “I can’t talk to him right now.”

  “Annie…”

  “He’ll hear it in my voice. Fuck. Maggie.” I took the phone and held it out. “Answer it. Make up an excuse… just nothing about me being sick. Or pregnant.”

  Pregnant.

  Fuck.

  Maggie took the phone and stared at it.

  “Hurry,” I said. “Answer it.”

  “Annie… I’m not good at lying…”

  “Do it. Please. I can’t…”

  Maggie pressed a button and closed her eyes. “Hey Logan. Annie is in the sho…”

  “What?”

  It was just a single word, a single question. When I heard nothing else coming from Maggie’s mouth I looked at her. She had her eyes shut, her free hand reaching out looking for balance. She stumbled back and hit a wall. She touched her mouth and instantly began to shake.

  “I… I…”

  Her lips trembled and when she opened her eyes and looked at me, they were glazed over with tears.

  I jumped from the bed.

  Maggie shook her head and my mind told me something bad happened to Logan.

  Something really bad.

  “Okay,” Maggie whispered. “Okay.”

  She took the phone away and let it fall to the floor. She reached for me and started to hug me like I was the one who knew whatever was going on. As she let out a cry, I hugged her back.

  “Maggie, what’s going on?” I asked, my voice already shaking.

  “Annie… oh, Annie…”

  “Maggie!” I cried out.

  I was scared then. Petrified, to be honest.

  I broke our hug and held her away from me as she shook her head.

  “This is bad,” she whispered.

  “Maggie…”

  She took a snot filled breath and looked at me, collecting herself for a second. She looked at me.

  “Logan… Logan’s grandfather died last night…”

  18

  The first thing I did was picture what Logan had told me. Logan in the hospital, by himself. I never met his parents and I never met his grandfather, so my imagination had to work to make it all up. I saw his father as a tall and skinny guy, wearing a grey suit, black hair parted to the side, thin black glasses. He held a briefcase in one hand and a white coffee mug in the other. He drank, looked at his watch, and left. His mother… almost the same. She had a maroon dress on, her hair pulled back and up. She leaned down and kissed Logan’s head, then was gone.

  Logan all alone in the hospital room.

  As a kid.

  How scary.

  Then I pictured whistling. Shaky notes but happy notes. I saw Logan’s grandfather as an old man with a big mustache. Carrying an old guitar case, breaking out an old guitar, strumming chords, singing to his grandson.

  Thinking about it made it hurt worse.

  I called Logan again, the third time in the hour.

  It went to voicemail.

  I felt helpless and hopeless.

  Maggie came into my room with a glass of ice water for me and put it on my desk. She turned and looked at my phone.

  “Nothing?”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Here, call Tatum,” Maggie said. “Talk to him.”

  “How did he sound?” I asked. “When you talked to him.”

  “Annie…”

  “Just tell me.”

  “He sounded numb.”

  I bit my lip and shook my head harder. “And I ignored him. I should have answered it. He wanted to tell me. And I ignored him. Because of…” I looked down at my stomach. There was no visible physical signs I was pregnant, but the five tests in the trashcan would argue that.

  “Okay, don’t start that game,” Maggie said. “Call Tatum.”

  Maggie pressed a button on her phone and handed it to me.

  It was dialing Tatum.

  He picked up on the second ring.

  “Tatum,” I said.

  “Maggie?”

  “No, it’s Annie.”

  “Oh.”

  Oh.

  His voice was filled with sympathy already. Filled with that tone telling me that I was in store for a long and winding road. And that’s before anyone in DownCrash knew I was pregnant.

  Fuck.

  “Where is he?” I asked. “I’ve been calling…”

  “He went to his apartment,” Tatum said. “To get some stuff. He’s coming back here within the hour. Annie, he really needs you.”

  “I know. I should’ve answered the call,” I said. “I feel so guilty, Tatum.”

  “Don’t. It happens. This is… this is bad.”

  “What happened?”

  “Hold up,” Tatum said.

  We were silent and I listened to the sound of a door opening and shutting. Then the thuds of Tatum’s feet on wood and then on gravel. He was walking from Tripp’s house to the garage. Another door opened and shut.

  “Okay,” he said, his voice carrying with a small echo telling me he was in the garage.

  The practice garage.

  Where DownCrash wrote music.

  “He had a heart attack,” Tatum said.

  “Heart attack? After beating can
cer…”

  “I know,” Tatum said. “That’s the fuck of it, right? The guy beats cancer, gets better, and then… it’s just over.”

  “When did it happen?”

  “Last night I guess. Logan stayed here at Tripp’s and got the call this morning. I wasn’t here but Tripp said he heard Logan screaming like he was dying. Found him in his room on the floor punching his cell phone.”

  My heart ached. My body ached. My stomach felt different too.

  “I need to see him,” I said. “If I can help him…”

  “Nobody can help him, Annie,” Tatum said. “But you can at least be there. To keep him grounded a little so he doesn’t flip out.”

  Flip out?

  What would happen when I told him I was pregnant.

  “I’m sorry, Tatum,” I said, not sure what I was apologizing for.

  For Logan?

  For the problem in the band?

  For me getting pregnant?

  For something I could sense in the future?

  “I’m sorry too,” Tatum said. “This is bad timing. But I’d be an asshole if I focused on it that way, right?”

  “No,” I said. “But I’ll be there. Even just to stand there, with him. Near him. I’ll be there, Tatum.”

  “Okay, Annie.”

  The call ended and I handed Maggie her phone back. We didn’t need to speak a word to leave the house. I left the glass of ice water on my desk, knowing it was going to sweat and leave a ring on the desk. It would ruin that part of the wood. Funny how something like that would have bothered me a couple months ago… but now… I was pregnant and Logan’s grandfather was dead.

  There were bigger problems in life.

  And something told me the problems were only going to get bigger.

  When we got to the garage, I saw Logan’s car and my body went into full panic mode. I opened the door as Maggie still turned into the gravel driveway. She yelled for me and hurried to slam the brakes. I didn’t care. I was out of the car and running towards the garage. I opened the door and saw Tripp and Tatum standing there. Scarlett sat on the edge of the couch. The mood was quiet and somber. The silence of instruments though was perhaps the worst part of it all.

  Tatum had his arms crossed and Tripp had his hands in his pockets.

  They both looked at me, not smiling.

  “Where is he?” I asked.

  “In the house,” Tripp said.

  I turned and Tatum called for me. I looked over my shoulder.

  “He really needs you,” Tatum said. “I’ve never… I’ve never seen him like this.”

  I blasted through the garage door and ran on the gravel. My mind took the opportunity to tease me that in a few months I wouldn’t be able to run. And that in about, oh, say seven months, I wouldn’t even fit through the door to the garage. That I’d have to open the actual big garage door to get inside.