But, of course, it wasn’t different. It was right there on the Planned Parenthood website: what to expect after a medical abortion. It sounded exactly like the lines Courtney had fed me, down to the way she’d slipped up and said “pills” instead of “potions.” She was lying. And she wasn’t just lying in the moment—she had that explanation handy. She had looked it up ahead of time, if not for me then for someone else. She’d found a plausible story, she’d memorized the symptoms that would fit, and she’d tried to get me to buy it. “What are you hiding, Courtney?” I whispered it to myself, and the
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