They stop at a corner bus stop on the boulevard and Judy knows that they’re going to the mall. She pulls her scarf up around her ears to block her peripheral vision. In her eighth month of pregnancy, there are things she wants to tell Michele. She wants to tell her how good she thinks that she is. As the bus pulls up to the curb, Judy feels in her whole, stretched body, that it’s the beginning of the end.

Michele ascends the steps first, slower than ever, and when she teeters backward, compromising Judy’s balance, an elderly bus driver receives them, a man who rudely gawks but extends a hand. Michele doesn’t take it but yells, “I bet you’ve been useless your whole life!”

He shakes his head and hisses, “Disgraceful,” and removes his arm as Michele struggles up the last step. Judy expedites the process by nudging Michele’s lower back, and when Michele is free of the climb, Judy reaches out and takes the bus driver’s hand, shares a look with him and sees that he’s got a lot of good in him, but a lingering allegiance forces her to rip her hand from his. Once balanced, she gives him a scolding look.

Just like any other day they’ve taken the bus together, Michele navigates down the aisle first hitting everyone with what she calls her attitude face. She never cares about the expressions on anyone else’s face, or if they’re even looking. They catch the gaze of a teenaged girl who looks slightly older than the two with penciled-in cat eyes. Judy expects Michele to verbally attack her, but she doesn’t. They both continue to the back of the bus, and Judy notices that the stares are worse than usual. They’re almost the largest they’ll be. Maybe it’s because they seem unlikely, not one but two acts of random violence, simultaneously, in the same space. Judy feels sick for a moment realizing that each of these strangers has decided their pasts and futures. She wonders how many starkly different possibilities exist for her.

It is the time of the afternoon just before the rush, so they easily find seats next to each other in the very back. Michele looks down at the floor and when Judy sees this, she realizes that she’s never seen Michele so defeated. She asks, “What’s up with you? You didn’t even pick a fight.”

Michele raises her head and says, “I’m just too tired today, but we still got some time left in the day. Don’t worry. I’ll snap back.”

Judy says, “Michele, I don’t want to go to the mall.”

Michele snaps her head to face Judy, and decides, “Well, that’s where we’re going.”

Judy joins her gloved hands on top of her stomach and squeezes, wonders whether she could crush her own fingers if she really wanted to. She’s not going to the mall. She gazes out the window waiting for the right thing to whiz by, while Michele sits silently, gently rocking back and forth.

This is their last afternoon together. In a week, Michele will go into labor in the middle of the night. She’ll wake when her sisters remain asleep and quietly go into the bathroom. She’ll get into the tub and breathe like she’s read she’s supposed to, carefully singing a song until the pain is unbearable. Her mother will find her and call for an ambulance. They will both wait on the front stoop, Michele almost lying on the concrete while her mother paces up and down the front walk. By the time the ambulance comes, Michele’s mother will have finished five cigarettes and Michele will be nearly blinded with pain, fearful that her child, too, is in pain, although she knows that it’s not supposed to be that way. Her mother will not go with her, but as she gets wheeled into the ambulance she’ll tell her, “You gotta push real hard to get that thing outta ya, Chele! You can do it.”

Judy will wonder where Michele is when she doesn’t come by, but will consider the break imminent and practical. She will type a letter to her unborn child. The letter will not be very long, but will contain a quote from ‘Little Women’ about unconditional love that she’ll be sure she doesn’t understand, but will put it in there anyway. She will find out that Michele is a mother and decide to wait for her to get in touch. She won’t. Two weeks before Judy’s own expected due date her water will break in her art class while she stands in front of a bookshelf heavy with cans of paint. She will not move at first, but take inventory of the sensations in her body, wanting to notice every little thing that will inevitably render her a different shape, once again. A girl will slip on the wet floor which will cause everyone’s awareness and disgust, but Judy will keep her back to them as long as she can, blocking the voices that tell her what they want her to do, what they feel, what they think. When she does turn to face them, she will silence the room and be unable to hold the urge to violently cry out.

On the bus, almost at the stop where they get off to transfer to the bus that will take them to the mall, Judy struggles to her feet and grabs a pole to balance in the aisle. Michele orders, “Not yet.”

Judy looks out of the window at a strip mall where there’s a roller rink in the same lot. She takes steps away from Michele but then hears her huffing as she gets up to follow. Judy stops before the bus door, turns to Michele and says, “I don’t want to go to the mall.”