Girls in Trouble: A Novel Read online

  She didn’t think anything of it when she missed one period, but when she missed the next one, she told Danny. “It’s just nerves. You can’t be pregnant,” he said. “We used condoms.”

  “Condoms don’t always work. What if I am? What are we going to do?”

  He shook his head. “It’s an impossibility. Please, please don’t look like that! Would I let something like that happen?”

  She couldn’t help it though. Every time she saw him, she wrapped herself under his arm, trying to convince herself that everything was the same, everything was fine. But his touch felt different on her skin, as if there were a whole extra layer between them. His eyes, when he looked at her, seemed as though they were seeing her through a screen. It’s nothing, she told herself.

  There were lots of reasons for missing a period, Sara knew. The stress of sneaking around. The dizziness of love. When her belly started to get rounder, her bra too tight, when she began to feel queasy, she blamed it on all the nervous eating she was doing. And then when she missed her third period in a row, she started to get scared. She shucked off all her clothes and stood in front of her mirror, staring at her changed silhouette, her hands on her belly. Swallowing she put her clothes back on, she kept her eyes shut. You could give yourself sore throats and headaches and asthma just by the power of your thought. Hadn’t she read about hysterical pregnancies? Women whose bellies and breasts grew tender and swollen with nothing but air? Hadn’t she read how the mind could create all sorts of false symptoms for the body? She breathed deep. Danny hadn’t seemed to notice anything different; he hadn’t commented. I’m fine, she told herself, I’m fine.

  Still, the next day, before Abby got home, she called Planned Parenthood, but as soon as a woman answered, she hung up. Fool, she berated herself. Idiot. She dialed again, determined. Knowledge was power. Better to know now what she might be facing than to bury it away. This time a different woman answered, but as soon as Sara mentioned she hadn’t had her period in three months, the woman wanted her to come in for an appointment right away, and panicked, Sara hung up again.

  What was she going to do? She couldn’t call back, not now, not after she had made a fool of herself. She couldn’t tell her parents, and if she called Danny, he’d just tell her not to worry again. She sat down and then stood up and sat down again. Pregnancy kits. She’d go and buy one.

  She walked a mile to the Thrift-T-Mart on the side of town where she knew no one, and looked at the pregnancy kits. Every one of them had a picture of a smiling woman, or a couple, locking eyes as if they shared a great and wonderful secret. Where were the girls who were all alone and so scared they could barely breathe? Where were the terrified expressions? The panic? Sara squinted at the price. Ten dollars. That was expensive. She’d have to cut back on things she wanted this week. She peered at the directions on the back and chose the one that seemed easiest—just a quick pee and a blue cross would appear. She didn’t look at the girl who rang it up, who put it into a brown paper bag. She told herself she’d tell Danny after she found out; it would be something they could joke about. Can you imagine my face when I saw the line wasn’t there, she could say. I whooped so loudly, the girl in the next stall must have thought I was crazy.

  She carried it around in her purse for two days before she could work up the courage.

  Last period. Honors history. She could be late, no one would notice. She waited until the halls were empty and then she slipped into the girls’ bathroom. Two girls she didn’t know were standing by the mirrors, leaning over the sinks, layering on mascara, peering at their reflections. “More?” one girl said, handing a mascara to her friend, and Sara went into a stall. She carefully opened the book, she peed on the long white tube. Three minutes. She’d have to wait three minutes.

  “Fuck him,” said one of the girls. “He thinks with his dick.”

  Sara flushed the toilet so the girls wouldn’t wonder what she was doing in there, and glanced at the tube. She stood there, terrified, her back against the stall. Three minutes, the package said, but already the line was turning into a brilliant blue cross.

  She didn’t know what to do, but she had all these thoughts in her head. She had to find Danny. He’d help her. She counted back the months. One and one make two, he said, but now one and one made three and all there was to do about it was to either have it or not have it, and either solution sounded like the worst thing in the world to her.

  The girls’ voices faded and then were gone.

  She couldn’t leave the tube here. It seemed too personal, too damning, so she tucked it into her pocket. She couldn’t bear the thought of going to her history class, so instead, she ran to find Danny, standing outside his class until he came out, pulling him outside. And then she told him, and the moment she did, his joy at seeing her faded. He took two steps back from her. “How do you know?” he asked.

  “I know.” She felt the tube, still in her pocket.

  “You can take care of it, can’t you?” he said. He pushed back his hair with his hand, over and over, as if he were sweating.

  She blinked at him. “Maybe it’s too late,” she said.

  “No,” he said, stunned. “Don’t say that. That can’t be right. I’ve heard of girls further along. You can fix it.”

  “Shouldn’t we talk about this?” she said. His mouth seesawed. If she didn’t know him so well, she’d say he was about to cry.

  “We just did,” he said.

  “What’s wrong? Are you mad at me?”

  “I’m mad at myself.” He leaned toward her and kissed her, but his kiss felt different to her, and she couldn’t pinpoint how. She needed to kiss his mouth again, but when she moved toward him, he turned from her. “Danny,” she said, and he started walking away. “Danny!” she said louder. Her hands flew to her mouth, and he pushed open the front door to the school and disappeared, and as he did, she realized that other than that last hasty kiss, he hadn’t touched her once, not the whole time they had been talking.

  She couldn’t move, not even when Robin walked by, and seeing her, Sara realized that more than anything what she wanted right now was a friend to talk to. She used to talk to Robin for hours. They used to confide in each other, but now Robin’s glance skimmed right over her as if Sara weren’t even there, making Sara feel a sudden chill. Well, Robin wasn’t her friend anymore. Judy hadn’t spoken to her since the day Sara had run to her house to use the phone. The one friend she counted on more than anything was the one who moments before had just walked away from her and wasn’t looking back.

  He stopped coming to school. The days got colder and darker and more wintry. She kept going over and over in her mind all the things he had said to her about how they’d always be together, she kept seeing the way he couldn’t walk down the street beside her without taking her hand, or touching her face, without some part of their bodies connecting. And no matter how she tried, she couldn’t understand what had happened, how and why he had changed and what might bring him back to her.

  At night, a noise made her bolt awake. It’s him, she thought, but when she went to the window, there was nothing there but all the closed doors, the blank windows of the neighborhood. “I’m not mad at you,” he had told her. She repeated it over and over to herself like a mantra.

  “Did anyone call?” she kept asking Abby. “Did anyone come by for me?” and even after Abby assured her that no one had, Sara stared at the phone and the door, stricken.

  She tried to prepare. She got as far as a clinic and then grabbed some pamphlets about abortion and fled before the nurse could ask her name. She stood out on the sidewalk reading. How could she afford this? “We recommend someone come with you,” the pamphlet said, but who would that be? Who could she dare to tell what was going on, let alone ask to help her?

  At the end of the week, she couldn’t stand it anymore, she waited until last period and then she ran to his house, around to the side where his window was, and she bent and threw stones and no one answered. The
n she rang the bell and no one answered there, either, and she stood on the stoop and tore a piece of paper from her notebook and wrote him a letter. Danny, please. We can be happy. Please just talk to me about the baby. I love you and I know you love me. Sara.

  She folded it up. She looked around for something she could use as an envelope, finally making one out of another piece of paper. She wrote his name on the front, addressing it like a letter. She marked it “Personal” and slid it through the slot, and then she went home, and all that day, she waited for him to call her, and when he didn’t, she called his house. To her surprise a woman answered, “Yes?” The voice was tired.

  “It’s Sara.”

  The woman was silent.

  “Please, is Danny there? It’s really important I speak with him.”

  “Who is this again?”

  “It’s Sara.”

  “Sara who?” the woman asked, and Sara felt stung.

  “Danny’s girlfriend.” It felt funny to say it. It’s true, she told herself. I swear it’s true.

  “Danny’s girlfriend,” the woman said, more wearily. “Well, Danny’s gone.

  “What do you mean, he’s gone?” Sara wrapped the cord tightly around her hand.

  “Gone,” the woman said. “I don’t know where. He took half his things with him.”

  The cord around Sara’s hand tightened. “No, that’s not possible—” she said.

  “Well, he’s gone.”

  “Please, if he calls, will you tell him to call Sara? Will you tell him it’s important?”

  “Sure,” the woman said. “Sure, I’ll tell him,” and then she hung up.

  Sara told herself his mother was wrong. Danny wouldn’t leave her, not for good. Maybe he had just run off someplace to think, and any moment, he would be back.

  Every time the phone rang in her house, she jumped up, but her parents always got to it first, and it was never for her. She ran to the mailman before he even got to their house. She hadn’t heard from Danny in three weeks, even though she called his house every day, never getting anything more than a busy signal, or a line that rang and rang. How could he have changed so quickly? She felt torn in two. One jagged half. She tried to keep busy. She threw herself into her schoolwork again, trying not to think.

  He’ll come back, she told herself.

  She waited one more week, and then another. She didn’t care that it was freezing out. Every day she walked home from school, taking the long way, so she could go by Danny’s house, but it was always quiet, and empty, not even a flutter behind the curtains. Every day, she half-expected Danny to show up at school, to have an explanation for her, and every day, that chance seemed less and less likely. She spent forty dollars taking out an ad in the back of The Village Voice, a paper she knew Danny read. “Danny, call Sara. Important” The ad ran two weeks but he never called.

  He’ll come back, she told herself. He won’t leave me. Sara began to wear baggy sweaters as long as dresses, to layer things and joke about eating everything in sight even though she barely could manage crackers. Under her sweaters, she held her skirts together with safety pins, and by then the morning sickness became afternoon sickness.

  She was at the cafeteria, eating alone, when she heard someone say his name. “Slade,” a boy said, and Sara got up and walked over. The boy grinned at her.

  “Where’s Danny?” Sara asked.

  He leaned back in his chair, his whole body at an angle. “Last I heard, California,” he smirked. His eyes rolled up and down her body. “But baby, I’m right here,” he said.

  A wave of nausea roiled through Sara, and she barely made it to the girls’ room, throwing up in the toilet.

  She tried not to watch the calendar, not to keep track of all the time passing by her. Not until she was outside one day, so warm she took off her jacket, did she notice the day was cloudless and cool, hinting of spring. And only a fool, Sara realized, would think there was any reason to hang on to hope any longer. That day, when she got home from school, because there was nothing else to do now, she called Planned Parenthood asking about abortions. She’d beg her friends’ forgiveness and borrow money; she’d plead for one of them to come with her, swearing secrecy. She would even ask Danny’s mother if she had to. That was how desperate she had become. “How far along are you?” the clinic asked.

  Sara wet her lips. “Almost five months,” she said, and her voice sounded so far away to her, like a little girl’s.

  “You should have come to see us sooner,” the woman said. Her voice was soft, sympathetic. “You should still come in, but we can’t talk about abortions. It’s too late.”

  Panicking, Sara hung up the phone. She grabbed it up again, but there was just a dial tone. The sympathetic woman was gone, and even if she called back, who knew who would answer the phone, and what did it matter if the information was going to be the same? What was she going to do now? What would happen to her? She paced the living room, and then another wave of nausea hit her and she ran to the bathroom to throw up. She was still in there when she heard Abby’s key in the door. “Honey, are you home?” Abby called. Her mother’s voice was bright, full of bells, and Sara couldn’t help it. She began crying and crying, hunched over the toilet, her head in her hands so she wouldn’t have to face her mother. Her nose ran, her eyes pooled. She wanted to turn herself inside out. She wanted to grab the baby and fling it from her. She wanted to be anyone but herself, anywhere but here in this bathroom waiting for her mother to find her.

  Abby knocked on the door. “Honey, what’s going on?” Abby said, and opened the door Sara had forgotten to lock, and as soon as she saw Sara, the swelling belly Sara had been hiding under big clothes, Abby’s hands darted up. “Oh Jesus,” Abby said.

  “Mommy,” Sara said, a name she hadn’t called her mother since she was ten, and then she looked up and saw that Abby was crying, and it made her so ashamed, so terrified of what might come next, that she hid her head, she curled herself up into a ball.

  There were days of terrible fights, of accusations. How could Sara be so stupid? How could she have waited so long? Did she want to ruin her life? “What do you think is going to happen now?” Abby demanded. “What kind of a future are you going to have?”

  She thought her father would shout more, but instead he sat sorrowfully on the couch, shaking his head, looking as if he had aged a thousand years in just the time it took her to tell him. He kept repeating, “I could kill that boy,” but Sara knew what he meant was: I could kill you. “And he better not ever come back around here again if he knows what’s what,” Jack said. Sara put her hands over her ears, afraid that if her father kept saying that, it would come true, Danny would never come back, not to the house, not to her.

  “He’s gone,” Sara said, bursting into tears. She sat down, too, crying, and then she felt her mother beside her, her mother’s hand stroking her back, soothing her hair. “Good,” Abby said vehemently. “I’m glad he’s gone. We’ll handle this without him.”

  “We’ll figure this out,” her father said, and when Sara dared to look at him, he was looking out the window, and not at her.

  They sat at the dinner table in silence, no one really eating. After dinner, she went to her room and shut the door. She lay in bed with her eyes wide open, her hands clasped across her chest as if she were praying, and listened to her parents talking late into the night. “Why didn’t we know?” Abby asked Jack. “How could we be so blind?”

  “Don’t you remember that girl who gave birth in the stall at her prom?” Jack said. “It was in all the papers. A good student. From a good family. Her parents didn’t know.”

  “Oh God, our poor baby,” Abby said. “When I think of that young unspoiled body getting all blown out of shape—she’s too young! She’s just too young! She’s a baby having a baby! No one should even think of having a child until they’re thirty, until they’ve got everything already in place!”

  “Abby. Don’t do this.”

  “Pregnancy sho
uld be beautiful, like some badge of honor, but every time I look at her all I see is everyone’s failure. Was it mv fault? Was it yours? Her school’s?”

  “It doesn’t matter whose fault it is. Maybe it’s no one’s fault, maybe it’s God’s. It doesn’t matter. It’s done.”

  Their voices rose and fell and then were still. Sara’s eyes stayed open.

  The next day, while Sara stayed around the house, unsure what to do, Abby went out by herself and came back that afternoon with a huge bag of books. Sara was used to her mother’s stash—books on business management or medicine or sometimes the classics, anything that Abby thought might help her better herself. “It’s to keep up with you,” Abby said.

  Abby set the bag down, but her usual delight in a book purchase was gone. “Take a look at some of these,” she said, lifting books out, handing a few to Sara. Adoption: The Right Choice. The Adoption Sourcebook. The Birth Mother’s Handbook.

  Stung, Sara put the book down. “It’s always better to educate yourself,” Abby said quietly. She pulled out a notebook and some Post-its and held them up. “We’re all in this together,” Abby said, handing them to Sara.

  All that afternoon, Abby sat reading. Her forehead creased, her focus strained. The pages were littered with yellow Post-its sticking out of the pages. When Jack came home, he leafed through one of the books rapidly. “Gently!” Abby said, and Jack looked down.

  “I ripped a page,” he said, astonished, putting the book down.

  The books found their way all over the house. In the bathroom with a page turned back. In the kitchen by the bread box, Post-its crowding the pages. Sara avoided them, too paralyzed to touch even a cover, too afraid if she did, she might help to set something in motion she could never stop.

  It was Abby who found the adoption agency, who took Sara over there with her. It was Abby who got Sara a good doctor and drove her to all her appointments.