Excerpt from The Blondes by Emily Schultz, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Clutching the paper bag, I opened the door to the hall. A black-haired, trench-coated woman was standing opposite, cursing under her breath and struggling with her room key, an immense backpack hunched on her thin shoulders. My neighbour in 306, the one the landlady had mentioned. I didn't say anything, just shoved the bag behind my back and stood there, blinking. I hadn't run into many guests in the twenty-eight days I'd been living in the hotel. When I had, it was usually in the stairwell or downstairs at the check-in desk. There were some foreigners who made apologies in stilted English as we shuffled past one another, and a gay couple returning from a night of clubbing, speaking too loudly then suddenly silencing their giddiness as they rounded a corner and realized they weren't alone. This woman was different-our two rooms were joined by an intimate hallway, about the size of a closet. At the end of it sat the bathroom, which, now that she had arrived, we were to share.

"Didn't mean to disturb you, just can't quite..." the woman began, and then the top lock turned. "Oh!" She laughed. It was a guffaw that was almost musical. She leaned into the room, pack-first. "Let me-" There was a thud like a body falling. "There."

"It's all right," I told her. She had a golden complexion and small dark freckles like someone had flicked black paint at her. She had a wide everything except for her frame: wide nose, wide mouth with dimples at the corners, thick lips, large eyes. Or perhaps it only seemed that way because her neck was so thin and her hair so dark, coiled, and choppy.

I told her I hadn't known she was there and gestured to the open restroom door.

"Of course!" She grinned. It caught me off guard, and not just because of what I was about to do. "At least now there's space for you to get by. I'm Moira, by the way." She held out her hand.

I looked at it. I was holding the pregnancy test in my right.

Either she sensed my urgency or I struck her as weird, because she moved inside her own room, muttering, "Sorry, sorry, of course, of course."

I tried to smile, but it was too late. I do that quite frequently, you'll learn once you meet me: fall out of beat with others and respond too late. I'm not awkward, really. I just take an extra moment, that's all. I hope it's not a trait you'll inherit.

Moira missed the smile. She'd bent down for the gigantic rucksack at her feet.

"I'm Hazel," I said as I sidled by.

"Hazel, Hazel," she repeated from inside the room, as if she were storing the name for later. "Hello, Hazel."

I went into the bathroom and closed and locked the door. It didn't take the full minute the pregnancy test promised-more like fifteen seconds. A little pink cross marked the place my life as I knew it ended.

* * *

Never had the colour pink so disturbed me. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, but it was the colour of girlie drinks and girlie-drink puke, peeling sunburns, and Grandma's bathroom. The pregnancy test was called First Response, as if an emergency were already waiting for me inside the pink box. Little pink firefighters with little pink ladders waiting to climb up me.

The oblong pink window of the test contained a plus sign. My urine had seeped across and revealed it, like some kind of secret code. I felt I had not been pregnant before that moment, although of course I had. I'd been exhausted and short of breath, falling asleep early, waking late, becoming increasingly greasy-skinned, and intent on chowing down New York bagels and pizza slices on every corner. My symptoms I had attributed to travel, to my new environment, and perhaps to "low-level depression," a phrase of Larissa's that felt more comfortable than labeling what I'd been feeling as heartbreak. At that moment, though, I realized my true label: wholly and undeniably pregnant.

How can I say this? And yet I am saying it-the thought of a fetus inside me clung to my mind like a brown swimming leech, which was probably about the size of you then. I thought about my body breaking open and tearing down, and something screaming and bloody the size of a football emerging, and I fell to my knees-yes, fell-and vomited into the toilet. I had just peed into it, and the smell of urine combined with regurgitated breakfast made me heave again, but this time nothing came up. I tapped the handle and flushed it all down.

Excerpted from The Blondes by Emily Schultz. Copyright © 2015 by Emily Schultz. Excerpted by permission of Thomas Dunne Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.