Crank

The next few days pass in a haze of confusion. Kristina stops using drugs. She visualizes her pregnancy as a baby boy floating in a sea. She does not know if she should keep the pregnancy or terminate it.

Kristina is hit by morning sickness and withdrawal at the same time. She spends the day throwing up and then calls Chase and Planned Parenthood.

Chase takes Kristina to Planned Parenthood. On the way, he proposes to Kristina, offering to take care of her and the baby. Kristina doesn’t know what to say.

At Planned Parenthood, Kristina is a bundle of nerves until her name is called. The name she gives is Bree. Chase tells her he prefers Kristina.

Mrs. Sweetwater, the counselor at Planned Parenthood, asks Kristina for the date of her last period to calculate the stage of the pregnancy. As Kristina remembers the date, she realizes the father is not Chase, but Brendan.

The realization is so terrible that Kristina feels like she has been electrocuted. She faints.

Kristina floats in blackness, reluctant to open her eyes and face reality.

As she comes to, she hears the concerned voices of Chase, a doctor, a nurse, and Mrs. Sweetwater asking if she is fine.

Kristina sarcastically notes that she is fine, considering she is pregnant from a rape. She wants meth but can’t have any. She thinks that Chase will forgive her for anything, but she is still afraid to tell him the truth.

On the way back from Planned Parenthood, Kristina tells Chase that Brendan is the father. Chase promises her everything will be fine, but Kristina sees both concern and jealousy in his eyes.

Chase tells Kristina she can take her time deciding whether to keep the pregnancy, but Kristina knows that she must decide soon as she is already six weeks pregnant. Kristina reflects that men never have to make such a tough decision.

When Chase suggests Kristina ask Marie for advice, Kristina is flabbergasted. She doesn’t even know how she will find the nerve to tell her mom everything without consuming crank.

Kristina goes into the kitchen, which smells of baking. The scent reminds her of a time when she adored her mother. It was just Kristina, Marie, and Leigh back then, “the trinity.” Kristina wonders if her child will love her as much as she once loved Marie.

Marie gives Kristina fresh oatmeal cookies and asks her for Christmas present ideas. Kristina tries to work up the courage to talk to her mother.

Just as Kristina begins to tell Marie, Scott enters the kitchen, complaining about his boss’s decision to introduce cutbacks.

Kristina thinks that Scott’s entry is a sign that she shouldn’t tell her mother about the pregnancy. She leaves the kitchen and tries calling her father. She gets his answering machine. She calls Adam, who tells Kristina he is back with Lynx and they are expecting a baby.

If Kristina tells Leigh, Leigh will tell Marie. Instead, Kristina calls up Robyn. Robyn tells her a cautionary tale about a girl who decided to raise her baby alone and, enraged by its crying, “shut the baby up / for good” (513).

It begins to snow, and the landscape turns beautiful.

Stranded at home as it snows relentlessly, Kristina reads the newspaper. The lead news item is about Roberto being busted. There are companion pieces on the crank epidemic and how meth addiction is almost impossible to break. Meth alters one’s brain permanently and causes birth defects in babies.

Kristina feels that her only choice is abortion. To work up the courage to follow through on her plan, she sniffs a little bit of meth.

Robyn agrees to drive Kristina to Planned Parenthood. The other thing Kristina needs is money. She asks Chase for $500 for the termination, but Chase refuses as he does not support Kristina’s choice. Kristina ends up asking Brendan, who reluctantly agrees to provide the money.

Kristina wonders if she has the courage to follow through with her decision.

The night before the scheduled abortion, Kristina doesn’t sleep at all, wishing she could reverse everything that has happened.

The wait at the clinic seems interminably long. Suddenly, Kristina feels a flutter in her belly, as if the fetus moved. Kristina takes this as a sign that she should not terminate the pregnancy and leaves the clinic.

Though Kristina has made many bad choices, she feels that keeping her baby is the right choice. She tells Marie, who first scolds her but then softens. Scott and Marie agree to shelter Kristina as long as she attends school. Chase offers to work two jobs to support Kristina and the baby, but Kristina asks him to go to the University of South California. Kristina stays off meth except a couple of times.

Kristina doesn’t want to bore the reader with too many details of her pregnancy, so she provides two top-10 lists of highlights and lowlights.

Highlights include seeing the fetus’s heartbeat on the ultrasound and learning it is a boy. Kristina’s high school generously organizes a home-study program for her so she can graduate on schedule. Kristina expected her grandmother to scold her for the pregnancy, but her grandmother tells her every baby is an angel. Kristina chooses to name the baby Hunter.

The biggest highlight is holding Hunter for the first time. Everything feels right in that moment.

Lows include morning sickness and going to school pregnant, which alienates her from her peers. The long letters from Chase about his life at college make Kristina wish she could go to college too. Her father’s silence about the pregnancy hurts her.

The worst thing of all is fighting against her constant, gnawing need for meth.

There is no neat resolution to Kristina’s story. She loves Hunter and loves watching Marie bond with him. At the same time, Kristina is only 17 and feels overwhelmed by the responsibilities of parenthood. Only one thing can make her feel happy, and that is the monster. Life dealing with meth addiction is all about fighting each individual day. Today, the monster’s call is particularly strong, and she feels like walking toward it.