Summary: "I never liked the color pink. Pink always reminds me of silly things like bubble gum and cotton candy and those frilly, lacy dresses my mom used to make me wear when I was little." A character's thoughts as she waits for something important.

One-shot

Pink

I never liked the color pink. Pink always reminds me of silly things like bubble gum and cotton candy and those frilly, lacy dresses my mom used to make me wear when I was little. I don't really have anything against the color pink – it's just not me.

I like the color pink even less as I sit here on the side of the bathtub, praying that a pink line does not appear on the little stick I have sitting on the edge of the sink. I sit here, waiting, with the directions clasped in my hand, trying to focus on thinking about anything but what the color pink would mean.

I only just turned 16, and I'm still only just a kid. I'm not ready for the choices and decisions and responsibilities that come with a pink line on the stick sitting on the edge of the sink. A part of me wants to throw the stick away – to never look – and to go on trying to pretend that my reason for buying that little box sitting in the garbage isn't real. That it was all just a nightmare I had one night, and I would go back to being a kid again.

Why did I choose to do this alone? I certainly couldn't tell my mom what I was currently hoping and praying wasn't true. I could have asked a friend to come, but some part of me didn't want to voice my fear, because voicing my fear would make it that much closer to coming true. I couldn't tell J.T. -- he's even less ready for the responsibilities that would come with that pink line than I am.

How did this happen to me? I was the supposed to be the smart, responsible girl. So, we discussed and planned everything about our first time together, and we were as prepared as we could be. I couldn't get the pill, because I didn't want to tell my mom, but we used a condom. We always used a condom. But that's the one thing about condoms everyone always forgets – sometimes they break. It's those little accidents of fate that make a fool of even the smartest of us.

I sit here, waiting, listening to the slow ticking of the timer, waiting for the inevitable ring to signal the time to look at my fate. Never has time seemed to go so slow as it is at this moment. The thoughts that are racing through my head – all the what ifs and what will I do's – are creating in me the need to run. All I want to do is run as far as possible away from this bathroom and that little stick.

What will I do? I don't even feel ready to think about the choices, let alone make one. It's like looking at millions of forks in the road, all leading to a one-way path to nowhere. And I was never meant to be the girl who went nowhere. I was meant to be somebody. I was the girl who was going somewhere. But everything I am is now at the mercy of that little white stick.

Who would have ever thought that I, Liberty Van Zant, would be the girl sitting in the bathroom at the mercy of that little white stick? I could list 20 girls who should be here instead of me with their entire life on hold waiting for the ding of a timer.

The sound of the timer ringing startles me. I don't want to look, but I have to. I get up off of the edge of the bathtub, and slowly walk over to the sink, towards that little white stick. The sound of my footsteps, going slowly over the green tiles of the bathroom floor, is the only sound to be heard, besides the pumping of my heart, pounding in my ears. So many ideas are going through my head – I want to run out the door and try to forget I even bought that little white stick. I don't want to look.

I stand in front of the mirror, looking at my reflection, as I try not to look down at that stick on the edge of the sink in front of me. I can't look, I keep thinking, as my eyes are drawn downwards, against my will. I don't want to see, I think, as my hand picks up the white stick, and I close my eyes. I have to do this. I open my eyes and look.

I never liked the color pink.

The End