Roxanne wanted to keep the baby, and that was fine. I should mention that I'm pro-choice: I believe women should be able to make their own decisions about what they do with their bodies and that there should be healthcare options available for whatever decision they make, whether they want to go through with the pregnancy or terminate it. While I thought that was pretty amazing, I was less happy with how things went from there.
Even now, it's rare to see abortion being brought up as a viable option in fiction featuring unexpected pregnancy, unless it's an “issue” book specifically meant to deal with that topic. When Roxanne found out she was pregnant, I was surprised when her doctor, without appearing to judge her in any way, mentioned abortion as one of her options. You'd think a book that so openly featured abortion would have stuck with me, but I guess not. The cover was familiar, as were Betty Sue's abilities, and that was about it. This was one of my nostalgia rereads, although, to be honest, I remembered almost nothing about it. It's Stan who figures out the common denominator tying them all together: Betty Sue, a girl at their school who killed herself four weeks ago. The only other people Roxanne and Pepper find are three other teens: Helter, a hothead who believes in shooting first and asking questions later Leslie, the school beauty and Stan, the overweight smart kid who's already taking college-level math. The whole town is deserted, and even radios and telephones don't work. She and Pepper head back to Salem, at which time things begin to get weird. At the clinic, however, Roxanne changes her mind. She'd like to keep the baby, but Pepper convinces her to have an abortion. They start dating, have sex, and Roxanne discovers she's pregnant four weeks or so later.
Roxanne and Pepper are two high school students in Salem, Arizona who try their best to look cool and unaffected by the world. Oh yes, and there's some fat person stereotyping. Also, at one point, the heroine consoles herself after her decision to have an abortion by telling herself that “Our child probably would have been retarded” (22), because both she and the father didn't do very well in school. It has multiple references to rape (one instance where the word is used and a few others where it isn't). This book features abortion and treats it as murder. I'll start this off with a laundry list of warnings.
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