The Contract

The pen felt heavier than it should’ve.

I stared at the dotted line at the bottom of page twelve like it might burn my fingers. My name—Remy Vale—looked wrong there. Too small. Too permanent. Like signing it wouldn’t just end this meeting, but erase the girl I’d been before today. The one who still believed she had a say in what happened to her body.

“You gonna sign or what?” My father shifted in the cheap plastic chair, his knee bouncing like he couldn’t sit still. His hands were rough—calloused from years of odd jobs he never held long enough to matter—and his knuckles were split from the bar fight last Tuesday. He smelled like Old Spice and regret, but mostly just sweat and stale beer. He’d shaved this morning, combed his thinning hair, even ironed his shirt. He was trying to look like a responsible man. Like someone who deserved to be here.

I didn’t answer. I just folded my hands in my lap—nails bitten down, cuticles raw—and stared at the fake plant in the corner. Plastic leaves, dust-coated, one bent like it had given up pretending to be alive. The whole office felt like that: sterile, staged, full of things that looked real but weren’t. Like this contract. Like his concern.

“It’s clean,” he said again, softer this time, like he was trying to convince himself more than me. “Anonymous donor. Half a million dollars. You carry the baby, they take it at birth, you walk away. No strings.”

No strings. Like I was a package. Like my womb was a storage unit you could rent by the month.

I was nineteen. Still wore my mom’s old gray hoodie—the one with the hole in the elbow and the frayed cuffs—because it was the only thing that smelled like her. Still drank gas station coffee, black, no sugar, because it was ninety-nine cents and kept me awake through double shifts at Lou’s Diner. Still remembered the exact sound my mother made the night she left: a quiet, broken sob she tried to swallow before she kissed my forehead and walked out the door with nothing but a duffel bag and a one-way bus ticket to Bakersfield.

She had uterine fibroids the size of golf balls. No insurance. No savings. Just pain that made her double over in the kitchen some nights, gripping the counter like it was the only thing holding her up. She tried herbs, prayer, even acupuncture from a woman in the swap meet. Nothing worked. When the bleeding got bad, she sat in the bathtub for hours, silent tears tracking down her cheeks. One day, a trucker she met at the laundromat—older, quiet, kind-eyed—offered to pay for her surgery if she’d come with him. She didn’t love him. She just loved the idea of not hurting anymore. She sent money at first—crumpled twenties tucked in birthday cards with no return address. Then the cards stopped. I never blamed her. Poverty doesn’t just steal your money. It steals your choices. And sometimes, it steals your people.

Now here I was, sitting in a beige office with fluorescent lights buzzing like angry wasps, about to do the same thing—only that I wasn’t even getting the surgery. Just the scars.

“Remy.” My father’s voice cracked. Not angry. Tired. The kind of tired that lives in your bones. “We’re getting evicted next week. You know that, right?”

I did. The notice was taped to our door, curling at the edges from the humidity. I’d read it three times. Memorized the date. Counted the hours until I’d be dragging trash bags down the street with nowhere to go.

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, fingers tapping like he was nervous—or maybe just wired from the coffee he’d gulped in the car. “This ain’t forever. Six months. You gain some weight, sleep a lot, get paid. Then you’re free.”

Free. Like I’d ever been free.

I looked at the contract again.  

Section 4.2: Gestational carrier agrees to relinquish all parental rights upon live birth.

Section 7.1: No contact between carrier and biological parent(s) at any time.

Section 9.5: Breach of confidentiality results in immediate forfeiture of payment.

I wasn’t a person here. I was a clause. A vessel. A line item in someone else’s family plan. My DNA had a price. My silence had a price. My future had a price—and it was half a million dollars, minus the cut my father would take before I even saw a dime.

But what choice did I have?  

Say no, and we’re on the street by Friday.  

Say yes, and maybe—just maybe—I can save enough to finish my community college prerequisites. Become a physical therapist. Build something that’s mine. Something my mom would’ve been proud of. Something that doesn’t disappear when the rent’s late.

I took the pen.

My hand didn’t shake. Not yet.  

I wrote Remy Vale in my messy cursive—the same way I signed my name on my GED diploma, on my first paycheck from Lou’s, on the permission slip for the after-school program I used to attend when I was ten and still believed adults would protect you.

The lawyer—woman, late forties, silver streak in her black hair, no wedding ring—smiled like she’d won. “Excellent. The advance will be wired within twenty-four hours. You’ll be contacted for your first medical screening tomorrow. Please refrain from alcohol, caffeine, and sexual activity.”

I almost laughed. Like I had time for any of that.

My father stood up fast, like he couldn’t wait to leave. “Told you it was clean.”

Outside, the LA sun hit like a slap. I squinted, pulling my hoodie tighter even though it was eighty degrees. My stomach twisted—not from the pregnancy, not yet—but from the weight of what I’d just done. Like I’d swallowed a stone.

He clapped me on the shoulder. “You did good, kid.”

I didn’t say anything.  

Because I hadn’t done good.  

I’d just signed away the only thing I had left: my body. My future. My silence.

As we walked to the bus stop, he pulled out his phone. “Gonna call Benny. Tell him we’re good for the tab. Maybe get us a room at the Starlight for the weekend.”

The Starlight Motel. Where he went when he wanted to disappear for a few days with a bottle and a stranger who didn’t ask questions.

I stared at the cracked sidewalk.  

The donor was anonymous.  

The baby wasn’t mine.  

The money wasn’t really mine either—he’d take most of it. He always did. Last time, it was my tax refund. Before that, my birthday cash from Mrs. Ruiz next door.

But the nausea? That was mine.  

The fear curling in my ribs like smoke? Mine.  

The heartbeats I’d feel in a few weeks—those would be mine too.

Even if no one else ever knew.

Even if I never got to hold them.

I touched my stomach under my hoodie.  

You’re safe, I thought. As safe as I can make you.

Because in this world, love doesn’t pay rent.  

But it’s the only thing that keeps you from disappearing completely.

And I wasn’t disappearing.  

Not today.

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