Allie pulled her panties down and saw white cotton, not even one drop of dried blood. She remembered that poem Leo’s mom wrote when she found out her body and pulled a mean fast one on her. And that part about her breasts being tender to touch, her cycle going up the river. Gosh. Allie wondered if she’d pulled a mean fast one on her own self. She had been late once or twice before, but her breasts didn’t feel bruised like they do now. She knew what her mother would say about all this: “Oh Allie, how awfully, awfully foolish of you.” Then Allie could count on being driven to whatever doctor-no matter how far away— who got rid of problems such as this.

She thought of that line she’d written down last week from Fables of Conquest by Vega Menudo about how average men look at all things as a blessing or a curse while to the warrior all things are a challenge. That was more like it. That was how she felt. This wasn’t a problem yet. She rested her hand on her belly, so flat, and she imagined it swollen and ripe with new life. That would mean wearing dresses instead of jeans. Maybe she could just leave her pants unbuttoned and wear one of her dad’s shirts. No, that was out; Daddy was strong but he was still small. How would he think of that? Thirty-nine and a grandfather. A super fine picture came into her head. She would run off until her eighth or ninth month, then walk through the front door of her house big as two women, a wide smile on her face as her mom and dad—but primarily her dad—soaked it all up, that his little girl had things going, big plans, something he couldn’t not look at, no matter what the world was up to.

He would want her to get married, of course. Which was strange, really. He had her read a book about labor organizers at the turn of the century, when that doomed Swedish songwriter Joe Hill was hopping trains all over the country, and a lot of them didn’t believe in marriage. Daddy did, though. At least he seemed to, being married and all. Then she started to think of Leo again and she thought it sort of odd that she wasn’t really imagining him being a part of all this. Except as a lover. It was easy to see him that way. Thursday afternoon in his room, while it rained outside, as she gripped his long sweating back, thunder had rolled from her knees to her face and when it got to her ears, she lifted her butt off the bed and everything let go in a downward fall right out her toes. She could have said I love you like she’d said it before, and meant it like she meant it before, but her breathing was short and anyway how could she have felt all that if she didn’t truly love him, so why say it a second time when he hadn’t really said it to her once yet?