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It started with a phone call.

Mom was in the kitchen, rinsing out her coffee mug when the house phone rang. I barely glanced up from the couch, curled under a blanket and half-watching cartoons with the sound turned low. I figured it was a spam call or maybe someone from church.

But then I saw her expression change.

“Speaking,” she said, her voice tightening. Then a pause. “Yes, she’s here. Of course. One moment.”

She held the phone to her chest and looked at me. “Emily, it’s the police department. They need to speak with you.”

My heart dropped. “Me?”

She nodded, eyes searching mine. “They said it’s about the case.”

I sat up slowly, my hands already starting to shake as I took the phone.

“Hello?” My voice cracked a little.

“Hi, Emily. This is Detective Lin from the juvenile division. I’m calling with an update. The county attorney has requested DNA evidence to confirm paternity as part of the criminal investigation. A judge signed the order this morning. We need you to go in for a prenatal test.”

I swallowed hard. “A… DNA test? On the baby?”

“Yes. It’s called a non-invasive prenatal paternity test. It’s very safe. The hospital will just need a blood sample from you. The alleged father’s sample is already being handled by the detention center.”

“Oh,” I whispered. “Okay.”

“They’ll be expecting you tomorrow morning. We’ve already scheduled it—your mom will have the time and address in her email shortly. If you have any questions, feel free to call us. But this is standard procedure, and it’s important for moving forward with the case.”

“I understand.”

“Thank you, Emily. And… hang in there, okay?”

I nodded, even though they couldn’t see me. “Yeah. Thanks.”

I hung up and just sat there for a second, the dial tone echoing in my head. Mom didn’t say anything. She just came over and wrapped her arms around me, tight and warm.

It was Morning.

Neither of us talked much during the ride. The radio was off. The roads were quiet. My fingers kept tapping against my leg the whole way there—nervous energy I couldn’t seem to shake.

When we got to the clinic wing of the hospital, a nurse met us right away and led us through a side entrance, away from the main lobby.

“It’s policy for these kinds of cases,” she explained gently. “Private entry. Fewer questions.”

The room they brought us to wasn’t big. It was soft and clean and quiet, but nothing about it felt calm. A woman in a navy-blue lab coat walked in holding a tablet.

“Emily?” she asked.

I nodded.

“I’m Dr. Raines. I’ll be doing your non-invasive prenatal paternity test today. Since the court has authorized this, and you’re past ten weeks, we’re able to proceed. It’s a simple blood draw for you—and we’ll already have a sample from the alleged father collected at the juvenile detention center.”

I blinked. “So… no needles in my stomach?”

Dr. Raines gave a small, reassuring smile. “No. Nothing like that. We’re using the fetal DNA that’s already circulating in your bloodstream. It’s very safe.”

That let me breathe again—just a little.

I sat down in the chair and offered my arm as Mom stood beside me, holding my other hand.

The blood draw was fast. Just two vials.

But somehow, it felt like the longest five minutes of my life.

“All done,” Dr. Raines said, applying a bandage and labeling the vials. “We’ll send this to the lab right away. Results are typically ready within seven to ten days, but we’ve flagged this one as urgent under court order. You should hear something sooner.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

Mom helped me off the chair, her hand warm against my back.

As we walked out of the room, I felt lighter—and heavier—all at once.

Lighter, because it was done.

Heavier, because now we had to wait.

To make things feel like it would go faster, Jasmine and Mia spent more time at our house.

They didn’t say it outright, but I knew why—they didn’t want me sitting in my room, staring at the ceiling, counting down the hours until the test results came in.

When Mom and I pulled into the driveway after the hospital visit, I spotted both of them already sitting on the porch swing, a giant bag of snacks between them and a cooler full of sodas at their feet.

“Operation Distraction is in full effect,” Jasmine announced, tossing a pack of fruit snacks at me like it was a peace offering.

Mia stood and opened her backpack dramatically. “I have a plan,” she said with a smirk. “A terrible, wonderful plan.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Oh no. Not another awful movie.”

“Oh yes,” she said proudly. “I’ve been saving this one. It’s so bad it makes ‘Birdemic’ look like an Oscar winner.”

I groaned as we all walked inside. “You really think that’s gonna help?”

Mia grinned. “If it doesn’t distract you, at least we’ll all suffer together.”

Jasmine elbowed me gently. “Come on. Bad movies. Questionable acting. Ridiculous plot. You know the drill.”

And the truth was—yeah, I did.

As we kicked off our shoes, grabbed blankets, and turned down the lights in the living room, I felt something loosen in my chest. The pressure didn’t go away completely, but at least for a little while…

…I didn’t have to think about test results.

I just had to survive Mia’s movie pick.

Mia pulled out the DVD case with a dramatic flourish. “Behold… Plan 9 from Outer Space.”

Jasmine squinted at the cover. “Wait—isn’t that the one with aliens, zombies, and… something about resurrecting the dead?”

Mia nodded proudly. “Yes. It has everything—bad special effects, flying saucers that are clearly hubcaps, and actors who look like they’d rather be literally anywhere else.”

I stared at her. “And you think this will cheer me up?”

“No,” Mia said. “I think it’ll destroy your faith in cinema so thoroughly that everything else will feel like a blessing.”

We all laughed, which was kind of the point.

We sprawled out in the living room—me on the couch with a pillow against my stomach, Jasmine curled up in the armchair, Mia stretched across the rug like she was holding court. The opening credits rolled, complete with spooky organ music and narration that sounded like it came from someone reading a Halloween decoration out loud.

We were only five minutes into Plan 9 from Outer Space when Jasmine paused the movie.

“Okay,” she said, pointing at the screen. “We need to establish some ground rules. One: we’re allowed to scream ‘WHAT?!’ every time something makes zero sense.”

“So… constantly?” I asked.

“Correct,” Mia grinned. “Also, rule two: we rate every special effect on a scale from ‘embarrassing’ to ‘my cat could’ve done better.’”

Jasmine hit play.

The movie opened with a funeral scene.

A weird, overly dramatic narrator with no eyebrows started talking about “future events that will affect us in the future.”

“Wow,” Mia deadpanned. “So deep. This script has layers.”

Mom peeked in, holding a plate.

“I figured you might need these after surviving whatever that was,” she said, stepping inside.

Chocolate chip cookies.

Still warm. The smell hit instantly—brown sugar, vanilla, and melty chocolate. The whole room went quiet for a second as she set the plate down on the coffee table.

“Fresh from the oven,” she added with a wink. “And yes, Emily, I brought ketchup-free snacks.”

I groaned. “Thank you.”

Jasmine grabbed one immediately. “You’re a lifesaver, Mrs. Blake.”

“These are amazing,” Mia mumbled through a mouthful.

Even Lily reached for one, still looking a little emotionally scarred from the movie. “These are way better than alien raisins or whatever those things were supposed to be.”

Mom smiled as she ruffled my hair gently. “You girls just keep laughing. That’s the best sound I’ve heard all day.”

And as she stepped out again, the room filled with soft chewing, shared grins

We kept watching the movie. A woman in a long black dress appeared, sobbing over a coffin.

“She’s very sad,” Jasmine said. “Possibly because her husband died, possibly because she just read this script.”

Cut to: an airplane cockpit.

“Those are clearly cardboard walls,” I whispered.

“And that guy is definitely holding a toy steering wheel from a kid’s ride-on car,” Mia added.

The pilot and copilot began talking in the most bored voices imaginable.

“Aliens? Weird lights? Whatever,” Jasmine mimicked. “Anyway, want a sandwich?”

When the aliens arrived—via flying saucers that looked suspiciously like pie tins on strings—Lily, who had quietly snuck into the room with popcorn, gasped.

“They’re not even TRYING,” she said.

“It's bold, really,” Jasmine said. “It takes confidence to show your UFO budget was $3 and some fishing wire.”

Then came the resurrection scene.

A guy in a cape raised his arms dramatically while the camera cut between static shots of tombstones and people slowly rising from the ground.

“That zombie just tripped over the grass,” I pointed out.

“And he’s wearing dress shoes,” Mia added. “Very spooky.”

“I think one of those tombstones is a pizza box,” Jasmine said.

They cut to a scene of the aliens in their spaceship—a cardboard room with blinking Christmas lights and a shower curtain in the back.

“Welcome to our intergalactic dorm room,” Mia said in a robot voice. “Please ignore the tinsel. We’re very evil.”

“The alien leader just insulted all humans by saying, and I quote: ‘You’re stupid. Stupid! STUPID!’” Jasmine laughed. “Okay, that’s fair.”

Sam walked by just as a skeleton hand popped out of the ground. “Wow. Who gave them a film budget? I’ve seen school projects with better editing.”

“Don’t insult school projects like that,” Mia said.

Every scene that followed somehow managed to get worse.

At one point, a character literally looked into the camera and flubbed his line… and they left it in.

“Cut? Never heard of it,” Jasmine said.

And then—like it was trying to win a prize for worst continuity—a character who had clearly died earlier in the movie reappeared, now played by a completely different actor holding a cape over his face.

“They just… recast him mid-movie,” I said.

“They didn’t even TRY to hide it!” Mia cackled. “It’s just some other dude in a Dracula cape.”

By the end, the aliens had been defeated, the zombies disappeared without explanation, and the narrator returned to warn us once again about the future... in the future.

The credits rolled.

No one moved.

“I have so many questions,” I finally said.

“You won’t get answers,” Mia replied. “Plan 9 doesn’t give answers. It takes your brain cells and leaves you confused and afraid.”

Lily blinked. “I think I forgot how movies are supposed to work.”

And then we all started laughing.

The kind of deep, stomach-aching laughter that comes when you really need it.

By the time the cookie plate was empty and our cheeks hurt from laughing, we’d all migrated to the living room floor—blankets and pillows piled everywhere like a mini campsite.

The TV was still on, now playing some random late-night cartoon none of us were paying attention to. The overhead lights were off, replaced by the soft glow of a lamp and the occasional flicker of the muted screen.

“Mia, you have a phone call,” mom said from the other room.

Mia sprawled on her stomach, one leg kicking lazily in the air, holding the house phone up to her ear.

“Hi, Mom. Yeah, I’m still alive,” she said, rolling her eyes with a small grin. “No, we didn’t summon aliens. Unless you count bad movie-induced brain damage.”

Jasmine and I snorted from the couch cushions.

Mia shot me a look, covering the receiver. “She’s asking if I brushed my teeth.”

“You didn’t,” Jasmine muttered.

Mia narrowed her eyes. “Traitor.”

She turned her attention back to the call. “Yes, I will. I promise. No, I’m not drinking soda. I’m drinking water. Hydration, Mother.”

I giggled quietly as Lily, already in her pajamas, curled up under one of my arms with her stuffed frog.

Mia nodded a few times, said a quick, “Love you,” and hung up. She immediately tossed the phone toward the charger like it was about to explode.

“Your mom still makes you check in?” Jasmine asked, pulling a blanket over her legs.

“She thinks I’ll turn into a delinquent the second I step out of the house,” Mia said with mock seriousness. “Like one minute I’m eating cookies, the next I’m robbing a bank in a ski mask.”

“Cookies are a gateway,” I added, smirking.

We all laughed again, the kind of sleepy giggles that start once the sugar wears off and the weight of the day starts to settle in.

Outside, the cicadas hummed. Inside, the laughter quieted into whispers.

And for the first time in a while, I didn’t dread what tomorrow might bring.

Because tonight, I had this.