“Kinda the same,” said the other Hannah. “I thought me and my boyfriend were cool because my period was really regular so I could work around ovulation, but I screwed up the math by a day or two.”

That led to a third girl, Janeen, a pretty, petite black girl with elbow-length box braids and a red pullover hoodie nodding in agreement. “I didn’t want to ask my mother for condoms ’cause she would have flipped on me. I should have gone to the free clinic but I was lazy. So if you’re dumb, I’m real dumb.”

“I hate that word, dumb. For lots of reasons,” Marie said, smiling at all of us. “But people make mistakes. It’s part of growing. Maybe you made a choice you’d do differently if you could turn back time, but that’s not how life works. You’re young people conquering something a lot of people don’t have to worry about until later, when they’re more financially independent and have a little more experience under their belts. But just because it’s hard doesn’t mean you can’t do it.”

Amanda smiled at all of us. “Because you can. Marie and I teach this class because we had babies young, too. Life isn’t over. It’s just out of order from most everyone else, and you might need a little more help than other moms, and that’s okay.”

That minute, right there, with tears popping up in my eyes I really hadn’t asked for, was when I knew I’d stay in the stupid flour-diaper-baby class after all.

“When you say you stabbed the flour baby a lot, do you mean on purpose because it made you angry?”

Mom grinned below the pink-framed sunglasses that ate up half of her face. We were on the highway, heading home from group, the windows cracked in the car because New England was weird. Two days before it had been thirty-six degrees. It was almost seventy and I was sweating to death. I peeled off my sweatshirt, not caring that my Legend of Zelda T-shirt was stretched so taut over my belly that Link looked like Jabba the Hutt.

“Very funny, smart-ass,” I said.

“Hey! Be nice to your mother. It took thirty-seven and a half hours to push you out. I sincerely hope Cass is kinder on your hooha, pumpkinhead.”

“You’re rude.” I fished around in my hoodie for my cell before throwing the sweatshirt in the back seat. Phones were forbidden during teen preggo class for obvious reasons, which is how I missed the party that had started in my messages at twelve past one in the afternoon.

The party being Devi’s near frantic texts.

girl

srsly grl

where are you

call me now

Sara

Serendipity.

Dude.

I FOUND JACK. BABY DADDY WORKING @ GAS STATION ON CORNER OF ELM AND NORTH IN CHESHIREVILLE. IANELLI’S GARAGE.