Lucia came by later that evening. She brought a box of real tea—chamomile and honey.
“Are you okay?” she asked, sitting on the step beside me.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’m fifteen, I’m pregnant, and my family is broken.”
“Your family isn’t broken,” Lucia corrected me, looking toward the window where my dad was seen sitting next to my mom, holding her hand. “The rot is gone. Now you can actually grow.”
She handed me a small photograph. It was a picture of her sister from three years ago, smiling at a graduation.
“Don’t let them take your future, Valeria. That’s what they want. They want you to think you’re a ‘stain.’ But look at me. I stayed. I finished. And you will too.”
The First Step
That night, for the first time in weeks, I didn’t have “calming” tea. I ate a full meal. I sat at my desk and opened my math notebook. I took the positive pregnancy test out from between the pages of algebra equations.
