Summary

The short story “Weightless and Hysterical” by Amanda Miska begins with the narrator and her friends Mariel, Kelly, and Becca volunteering on a Saturday in front of a pregnancy clinic. The girls attend a Christian high school, where a graduation requirement is for girls to display anti-abortion signs in front of a pregnancy clinic. Mariel tells the narrator that fetuses feel pain, but the narrator does not think so. While Kelly and Becca are waiting for their boyfriends, the narrator thinks about her secret boyfriend, Jordan.

The narrator met Jordan, who is twenty-three years old, at the pet cemetery where the narrator buried her childhood dog. They usually meet at the cemetery, inside a shed, where they often engage in oral sex or masturbate. The narrator recalls her first orgasm and considers whether she would go to hell for wishing she would feel ecstatic like that again. 

The story then focuses on Mariel, the narrator’s friend, who is a closeted lesbian. The narrator recalls childhood games in which she and Mariel often kissed, and thinks that Mariel is in love with her. That Saturday, the four girls see a couple entering the pregnancy clinic, and all except for the narrator accuse them of bein...