Free Anything but Normal by Melody Carlson

others. Maybe everyone left the pamphlets behind. Who would want to take that with them? Who would want anyone to know?
    “Sophie Ramsay?”
    Sophie jumped, then looked around. Who knew she was here?
    “Sophie?”
    Sophie realized it was the receptionist. “Yes?”
    “The counselor will see you now.” She nodded toward a hallway. “The second door down.”
    Sophie slowly stood, glancing left and right and wondering if she should just make a run for it. Get out of there before she was sorry. But she’d left her name and phone number on that form. What if they called her at home? What if they told her parents? Why hadn’t she thought of this sooner? She’d always heard that these places kept people’s names anonymous. But what if she was wrong? What if that was just a trick?
    “Excuse me.” She paused by the receptionist’s desk.
    “Yes?”
    “I forgot to ask you something.”
    “Well, the counselor is the best one to answer your—”
    “No, I mean about the form I filled out.”
    “Oh, was there a mistake?”
    “No. I mean, is it confidential?”
    The woman frowned. “Well, the counselor and the doctor will have to—”
    “No, I mean confidential outside of this office. Like will my parents be informed that I came—”
    “Oh, don’t worry about that, dear.”
    “Really? You don’t notify them at all?”
    “Not unless you ask us to.”
    “Honestly?”
    “Honestly. Your secret is safe with us.”
    Sophie sighed. “Okay.”
    “Don’t worry.”
    “Right.” Sophie nodded.
    “The counselor is waiting, dear.”
    She nodded again. As she walked down the hallway, she tried to grasp what she’d just heard. How was it possible that she, a minor, could undergo a surgical procedure that ended a human life while her parents remained totally clueless, yet just last spring when Sophie had gone to the school nurse due to menstrual cramps, the nurse had refused to administer Advil without calling Sophie’s mom first? Not that she’d wanted her parents to know exactly. But it just didn’t make sense that an abortion was perfectly permissible without parental consent when a simple over-the-counter pain reliever was not. It was actually kind of creepy when she thought about it.
    “Sophie Ramsay?” A short, dark-haired woman extended her hand. “I’m Mary.”
    “Hi.” Sophie attempted a weak smile.
    “Come into my office and let’s chat.”
    Chat? Sophie wasn’t really sure she wanted to chat. Mostly she just wanted to end this thing. But perhaps it was required to chat first.
    Mary sat down at a cluttered desk and looked at the form still on the clipboard. “You’re seventeen?”
    “Yes. Is that a problem?”
    Mary smiled faintly. “I guess it depends on your perspective.”
    “You mean seventeen and pregnant?”
    She nodded. “And you’re certain that you’re pregnant?”
    Sophie explained the test. How she did it once with only six seconds of flow, then did it again, and then did it a third time with another test. “But it was the same result every time—they were all positive. Do you think I did it wrong?”
    Mary just made another note.
    “I thought the first test was an old one. The box looked kind of old, and I got it from this weird little drugstore, and . . . well, I wondered, do those tests have some kind of a shelf life?”
    “Sometimes a test can be faulty.”
    “The second test, well, I accidentally dropped one wand in the toilet. And then the other one was, well, positive.”
    “It wouldn’t hurt to be retested.”
    “Like maybe I’m not really—”
    “When was your last period?” Mary skimmed the form, then pointed to the line that Sophie had filled in. “The first week of August?”
    “I think so. I wasn’t really paying attention, you know. But I’d been at this camp—a youth camp I worked at during August— for about a few days, I think.”
    “Uh-huh.” She read down the form. “And you were sexually active afterward?”
    “Well, I wouldn’t call it