Was she really pregnant?

The director explains:


Alan J. Pakula: The reason that college kids make Pookie feel isolated has to do with Pookie only. Pookie's fantasies become realer than reality... If she wants to think something about the other kids, that becomes the reality to her. When she makes believe she's pregnant, then that becomes a very real experience. Jerry, on the other hand, is smug... Pookie opens him up to life. He is a boy from a place that has happy endings. When Pookie says that she's afraid of what will happen, Jerry can answer only 'I love you.' Pookie is the kind of person who creates her own unhappy endings.

[Regarding the inconclusive ending:] That was deliberate... I wanted a frustrating ending. At one point, we had considered a suicide attempt with sleeping pills. But what we have is truer to life. Relationships often are inconclusive. It is very painful when something between people is over, and there you are, still together. I suppose that what interested me most in the film was the awareness that some people don't make it in life. This is what Jerry learns.


Nothing like Pookie's feigned pregnancy occurs anywhere in John Nichol's novel. This was invented for the movie, for whatever reason.