Mothership Read Online Free Page A

baby. And the father.
    I swallow and return my focus to watching TV.
    “So,” Ducky says after we’ve been watching the infomercial for a while, and I can tell by his forced-casual tone that he’s been thinking pretty hard about what he wants to say next. “How’s your urine flow?”
    I cough so hard, a glob of pickle shoots across the roomand sticks just below the TV screen. “Excuse me?”
    “I’ve been checking out that new site I told you about,” Ducky says. He tosses another chip into his mouth while he says it, as though talking about my pee is what we always do with our after-school time. “They said you’re supposed to document how much you go, every day of the first trimester. I signed you up for a free online account so you can track it.”
    I didn’t want to tell Ducky I was pregnant. I did not . But I was starting to get hormonal and teary at, like, everything—big things like Cole skipping town, obvi, but also not-so-big things like accidentally oversteeping my tea. I guess what finally tipped him off was the unfortunate incident at my sixteenth birthday dinner, where Dad lopped the head off my panda cake and I cried for well over an hour. I was able to pass it off as normal girl hormones to my Dad, but Ducky was not so easily deceived. He wrung the truth out of me that night, and since then he’s quickly earned Best Bud of the Millennia status with how awesome and supportive he’s been. He comes with me to doctors’ appointments and spends time researching alternative birthing practices and prenatal nutrition. I’m really hoping he’ll go and get E. coli soon so I can donate my kidney and make it up to him, but so far he seems totally healthy. Which if you ask me is just being selfish.
    “Gee, thanks, a pee diary,” I say, grabbing a handful of pickle chips. I forgo the peanut butter, letting the tangy brine tickle my tongue.
    Ducky seems to have missed the I-don’t-really-want-to-talk-about-my-pregnancy tone in my voice. “Did you check out those vitamins I told you about? They’re chewy. You like chewy.”
    “I can’t get them without a prescription, and I can’t get a prescription without parental consent.” I reach for my milk shake to wash down my snack, but before I can get to it, Ducky puts his hand on top of mine.
    “You have to tell him, you know.” He’s giving me that sweet, deeply concerned look—the one that makes me want to punch him right in his sweet, deeply concerned face.
    I pull my hand away from Ducky’s and grab my phone, aiming it at the TV. “Wait, this is the best part,” I say, and turn up the volume.
    As the woman in the infomercial sprays atomized chili cheese fries onto the tongues of ten kilted Scotsmen, who spontaneously break into the world’s worst bagpipe rendition of the classic tune “Funky Cold Medina,” Ducky pokes me in the knee with his big toe, trying to get me to look at him. But I ignore him so long that he finally gives up.
    Ducky’s right, of course. Sooner or later I need to tell my dad about this thing in my uterus. Because he’s a pretty smart guy, and I’m thinking he just might notice when a baby blows out my girl parts six and a half months from now. But—call me crazy—I’m not exactly superstoked to tell my father that his only darling daughter went and got herself fertilized a week before her PSAT.
    The infomercial finally comes to an end, only to start all over again. And as I’m double-barreling the straws of my milk shake, giving myself serious brain freeze, that’s when I notice Ducky—pressing his finger into the bottom of the pickle bowl with this total puppy-dog look of concern as he studies the coffee table. It’s obvious that while I’ve been zoning out on junk TV, he’s been busy worrying about me.
    I know I shouldn’t think this, but part of me seriously wishes it were Ducky’s baby I was having, instead of Cole’s. Not because I’d want to, ew, do it with Ducky (Ducky is ruling the Friend Zone