a false positive.

She lied to Wes, which in itself was a terrible idea, but she thought it was the lesser of two evils. Asking Wes to drop her off at the chemist so she could buy pregnancy tests also didn't seem like a good idea.

JJ told her that they could drop her off at her house, but she gave a half-hearted smile and made a comment about needing the exercise.

Googling the nearest chemist as she hadn't needed to go to it thus far and followed the directions, albeit badly as she ended up going im the complete wrong direction numerous times.

Once she reached it she walked inside, her hands gripped the straps of her backpack tightly.

It was pretty full, people mingled around getting whatever people buy at the chemist.

She was acutely aware how fast news travelled in towns like this, everyone would know before she even walked out the damn chemist.

A highschooler buying a pregnancy test? That was stop tier gossip.

Walking down the isles Otto eventually found what she was looking for, grabbing two different kinds of tests she walked up to the counter as confidently as possible.

The lady at the till looked down at the tests and back up at Otto.

It was full of judgement and Otto simply couldn't be bothered, "Something the matter?" She asked, the woman seemed to snap out if her judgement induced haze and she scanned the items and told Otto the total.

She stashed them in her bag and walked home, thankfully she didn't see anyone she knew.

Once she got home she thanked her lucky stars that her parents weren't home, heading straight up to her room she began chugging water. She tried watching TV while she waited for her bladder to fill. Once it did she grabbed the two boxes and brought them to the bathroom.

Not bothering to read the instructions in detail, it couldn't be that hard, she skimmed the most important bits.

After peeing on the sticks she sat them on the counter and started a timer on her phone.

Turns out no matter what you do the ten minutes you wait for a pregnancy test result is the longest ten minutes you will ever experience. It felt like minutes stretched out into hours. The timer went off and she stood up from her seat on the toilet.

The first one had two bold lines.

A false positive, they happen all the time.

She looked at the second one, there was a stupid, obnoxious and quite frankly presumptuous smiley face on the screen.

Not every pregnancy is good news.

Otto stared at the two tests. The likelihood of two false positives on two different branded tests seemed slim.

The teenager never had good coping mechanisms and right now wasn't really the right time to started building them.

She began laughing, quietly at first, but as the realisation sunk it they quickly turned hysterical, tears came out if her eyes dye to how stupid the situation was.

Otto calmed down after a while.

She had maths to do. She'd slept with two people in the last few months, with one she had no clue if they used protection and the other she knew they used protection every time.

Scrolling through her phone on a period trzlacker app she hadn't touched in a while, she saw it had to have been him.

It had to be JJ.

Neither of them were good options.

JJ was a train wreck, constantly stoned and a little drunk and he lived in his dead friend's dilapidated house. She didn't even know about how he grew up, what his role models were. She had no clue about how reckless he was, he was completely unhinged.

And Wes was cocky, pomous, abusive and all-round shitty human.

But if she was to chose she would have chosen JJ. He didn't seem the type to hit her.

Her worries turned from the paternity of the baby to rumours. When would people start to talk, when would it been to circulate through the entire island, when would her parents find out, and somehow more importantly, when would Wes find out?

She would have hell to pay for getting pregnant in the first place, he was so meticulous about not getting her pregnant.

If he could wear two condoms he would.

Otto cringed at the thought of telling him it wasn't his baby.

And Otto also cringed at the thought she may have to tell JJ it was his baby.

Then she thought beyond that, would there be a baby. She had options. It wasn't like as soon as she saw the lines and the taunting smiley face she just knew, she had no clue what she wanted.

She thought about telling her parents, but when she saw them having breakfast at the table outside she just couldn't. They looked so happy, her mother was smiling brightly and her father looked like he had just stopped laughing hysterically.

She couldnt bring herself to ruin the moment.

So she didn't.

Then she got into the Twinkie and had to sit among her friends, one of which had half his DNA in her stomach. She was quiet but they all brushed it off.

She wasn't really the same after Wes dragged her out if the Chateau, she was still herself but slightly stripped back.

There was less sarcastic comments and judgemental eyebrow raises.

At lunch Kie and Otto walked together alone, people stared at the pair.

Kie thought it was because of what happened the summer prior, and Otto thought it was because of the pregnancy tests.

Both of them were right.

When they sat down at the table no one else had arrived, she thought about telling Kie then but she couldn't get the words out. They got caught in the tip of her tongue.

Saying it would make it so much more real.

Somehow if she just kept it in her head she would convince herself it was all made up.

Otto didn't tell Kie, and when she got dropped off at her house she avoided the kitchen, not wanting to see her parents because she felt guilt eating at her stomach.

She swung the door open to her bedroom, her mum sat on her bed and was staring at the chest of drawers.

Otto looked from her mum to the set of drawers and saw two tests sitting on top.

The cat was officially out of the bag.

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