While Sam and Luna were at the store, Lincoln was stuck at home with his younger sisters. All of the older girls were out so that made him the defacto man in charge. He wasn't unaccustomed to filling this role, but sometimes he resented it. His younger sisters were a handful and they usually went out of their way to make his life a living hell when he was alone with them. He was also starting to get impatient. How long does it take to run down to the store buy one thing, and then come back? He got that Luna's mobility was limited these days but they'd been gone well over an hour. You could crawl to Walgreens and back in that time. He decided to watch TV until they got back, and was just starting to lose himself in an episode of Spongebob when a commotion broke out upstairs. He sighed, got up, and climbed the steps. In the bathroom, Lana and Lola were playing a rousing game of tug of war with a pink towel.
"It's mine," Lola said.
"No, it's mine," Lana said. "I use it for Izzy."
She yanked, and Lola fell to the floor, knocking the trashcan over. "Hey," Lincoln said sharply, "will you guys knock it off? There's an extra pink towel in the basement. You can -"
Lana and Lola both blew past him in a race to get to the basement first, and Lincoln sighed. " - get it after you pick up the trash."
Getting down on one knee, Lincoln started putting the trash back into the can. He stopped when he came to a small plastic stick like device. There was a little read out with two solid lines. At first, he thought it was a thermometer, then he realized what it really was.
A pregnancy test.
Lincoln's stomach tightened. Here, once and for all, was the answer to the question as to whether or not Luna was pregnant. The only problem was that he didn't know how to read it.
In his room, he sat down at his desk and turned his laptop on. He brought up Google, typed in HOW TO READ A PREGNANCY TEST, and hit search. He scrolled through a bunch of results until he found one that looked promising. His heart knocked in anticipation and he realized he was breathing heavily.
He found an easy to read chart and looked down at the test in his hand.
It was positive.
Luna was pregnant.
A thousand thoughts and questions flashed instantly through his mind. He checked the chart again to make double sure, and there was no mistaking it. Luna was going to have a baby. She was, as Pop Pop might put it, in the family way.
That explained a lot.
No, actually it didn't. It raised way more questions than it answered. Like how the heck did it happen so fast? Luna went from being her normal self to virtually dwarfing the house in a matter of hours. Lincoln liked to think he was smart, and while he didn't know much about pregnancy, he did know that a girl doesn't show that fast.
There was only one thing to do now.
Five minutes later, he was in Lisa's room, the door firmly closed and locked behind him. Lisa was bent over her lab mixing chemicals. "I can't tell you what my current project is," Lisa said. He hadn't asked. "All I can say is that it relates to the government's disastrous Trioxin 2-4-5 experiment of the 1960s. In other words, this mixture is extremely volatile and could very well turn you into a walking corpse if you come into contact with it."
Yeah, okay, zombies, got it. "Can you keep a secret?" he asked.
"I've kept many secrets in my short life, Lincoln. Some of them passed down by the government. Secrets that not even the president is privy to. Whatever petty secret you have to impart, I'm sure I can keep it to myself."
Walking forward, he sat the pregnancy test on the table. "Look at this."
Lisa glanced at the test and did a double take. "Where did you get this?"
"The bathroom trash," Lincoln said. "One guess who it belongs to."
"Dear God," Lisa muttered.
"Luna's pregnant. And I think your experiment made her that way."
Lisa turned in her chair and fixed Lincoln was a pitying look. "That was a communications experiment, Lincoln. You were there. I assumed, that being of average intelligence, you understood quite well what was happening. There is no way it could have made her pregnant."
"Then how?" Lincoln asked and threw up his arms. He began to nervously pace back and forth, chewing his thumbnail. "She ballooned overnight. Something had to do it and I don't think she did it the old fashion way. If you know what I mean." He stopped as a terrible thought occurred to him. "You were trying to make first contact. Your device. That's what it was." He swallowed. "What if it worked? What if -?"
Cutting him off, Lisa said, "Don't be foolish, Lincoln. There's got to be some other explaination. I grant you that the circumstances are bizarre. I'll look into it further and find out what is going on. Now if you'll excuse me." She turned back to her potions and started to mix them again.
Lincooln sighed and went back downstairs, where he waited for Sam and Luna in a state of suspense.
Where are you guys? he wondered.
Sam's house, that's where. Luna was tired and wanted some peace and quiet before heading back home, so they went there. It was only a few blocks out of the way. By the time they got there, it was almost 4:30 and Luna's back and feet were both aching. After the walk, she needed to sit down, and plopped down onto the couch, sitting with her legs spread far apart. Sam sat beside her and offered to give her a back rub, but since her stomach was so big, she couldn't lean forward, so she settled for a foot massage. She sat her feet across Sam's lao and Sam kneaded them. It felt really good and Luna almost fell asleep. After about ten minutes, her stomach rumbled. "I'm hungry," Luna said.
"On it," Sam grinned.
Half an hour later, just as Luna was becoming delirious with hunger, the door bell rang and Sam went to get it. She came back a minute later with a pizza in one hand and a bag of Chinese in the other. She laid it all out on the coffee table and then fetched a bowl of ice cream from the kitchen. Luan looked at the smorgasbord before her and licked her lips. To save time, she wrapped an egg roll in a slice of pizza and crammed it into her mouth. Sam sat there and watched, going to the kitchen and bringing condiments back at Luna's request. She piled mayo and sprinkles on pizza, dipped moo shu pork in chocolate sauce, bathed a hot wing in peanut butter and slurped the meat from the bone. Sam watched, face red and teeth brushing her bottom lip. Her arousal was impossible to mistake and it started to turn Luna on.
When the food was gone, Sam slides up to her and they began to make out, their hands all over each other. Luna's face was smeared with food and some of it rubbed off on Sam's lips and chin. Sam traced her tongue around Luna's mouth, capturing bits of chicken and chocolate. She slipped her hand under Luna's shirt and caressed her stomach.
And that's when it happened. Deep in Luna's depths, something shifted. At first, she thought it was simply a gas bubble, but then it happened again, harder this time. Sam gasped and they both looked at her stomach. Something pressed against it from the inside and made her flesh ripple. They both stared at it in shock. Her skin pushed out here and there as though something were trying to get out. Sam counted one, two, three, four somethings prodding and poking Luna's stomach from the inside and Luna shuddered.
What the fuck was going on?
That killed the mood real quick, and a little while later, Sam walked Luna home. Both of them were quiet, neither wanting to speak or even think about what had just happened back at the house. On the porch, Sam rubbed the back of her neck and both girls looked awkwardly at their feet. Well, Luna looked at her stomach, since it blotted out her feet. She could barely remember being able to see them.
"So, um, I'll see you at school tomorrow," Sam said.
"Yeah," Luna replied.
Sam hesitated, then pecked Luna's lips. "Bye."
She went down the steps and disappeared into the gathering gloom. Luna watched her until she was gone, then turned to go inside. The ghost baby - who was certainly there but wouldn't show up on ultrasound - gave a kick, and she laid her hand on her stomach. "What are you?" Luna asked.
Then again.
"What are you?"