and she was the girl who sat in your puddle of blood and claimed it as her own.

It was an unlikely match, her intimidating makeup and feathered hair to your sad skirts and weak chin. But during the final class of the day, she plopped down next to you, basketball shorts from the Lost & Found rolled to mid thigh, and told you it was so warm that even she believed it was hers.

For her, there were boys in backseats. For you, there were sleepovers where she told you what happened in backseats, hands buried in your hair to demonstrate.

Later, you'd both find the genesis of your friendship mildly ironic because by twenty, she hadn't gotten a single period. It wasn't funny two years after, when she finally went to the clinic and found two uteruses inside, neither of them functional.

You talked about doing it Handmaid style, but the cool, consensual way. She split your thighs with her knees and told you to make a list of all the things you hated in a man. But before you did, you were twenty-five, stomach swollen fat like a tick.

The pregnancy was difficult, made you want to end things you didn't. She's beautiful, she said, when it was done. I hope you make mine at least as well.

You should have smiled, but instead you told her you'd never do it again. You felt her face turn toward yours, and your bladder unzipped. Pissed yourself right there.

Before she was removed, she spat in your face, and you sat there letting it slide from your chin, marinating in the mess you both made.
 


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