“Why don’t you?” asked Linda innocently.
Shasta took a deep breath. “Well, because of soccer mostly. It takes the ultimate in concentration. It’s not a collisional sport, you know. A lot of people don’t realize the mental stress. Plus, I’ve always got guys out there on the field trying to mark me. Like last year. Just before the injury, I had . . .”
He hung his head.
“Been with a girl?”
“Yeah,” said Shasta, “and she broke my heart, too. She didn’t go to Ridgemont High, so you don’t know her. But she took my mind off the game. And I don’t want that to ever happen again. I’m really counting on getting that Yale scholarship.” He paused. “College is really important to me. It may not be to everybody else, but it is to me.”
Linda Barrett leaned over and kissed him.
“I really like you,” said Shasta. “I always have. I just want to remember you after I graduate. Always.”
“But Steve, it’s only March.”
Shasta reached out and crooked his hand around her neck. He pushed her head gently downward. And she went willingly. Like so many before her.
Test Answers
The next day was Tuesday, and that meant Stacy had first-period biology. She slept past the point her clock radio clicked on. Her mother had to wake her up at 7:20.
“You’re late, Stacy!”
“Okay okay,” Stacy yelled at the door.
“Don’t yell at me, young lady!”
These days Stacy was always late. Running slow, running behind.
She was late for biology. Late for P.E., where it was Rape Protection Week and Ms. Zix was taking attendance all of a sudden. She was even late for the Child Development test-answers session in the 200 Building girls’ bathroom.
Test-answers meetings had to move quickly, especially if you had the class before lunch. This meant you had exactly eight minutes to receive and memorize the answers.
Stacy arrived three minutes late.
“. . . And she asks a lot of cooking terms,” a girl was saying. “She asks about garnish and simmering . . . let’s see, and sifting. And blending and basting.”
“What’s the definition of basting?”
“To moisten food, while cooking, with melted butter or pan drippings.”
“What else?” asked Stacy. “What else?”
But the talk had already shifted to Tina Dellacorte.
“There’s this picture of her in Graphic Arts,” said one girl. “Just her in her bikini underwear. And she’s holding a hose with the water turned on. And she’s got this raunchy look on her face, with the water running out of her mouth . . .”
“Who took the picture?”
“Greg Gardner.”
“Greg Gardner!”
“Come on. Come on. Anything else for Child Development?”
“That’s it, Stacy.” Back to the story. “Now a girl like her, she knows when she goes out with a guy what she’s gonna do. She’s gonna get down. She just plans for it. That’s part of the evening, and she always schedules it in. She’s such a slut.”
“Why,” said Stacy, “because she gets laid?”
“I just think she’s a slut for doing that.” Pause. “Maybe you don’t . . .”
“Why don’t you just shut up,” said Stacy. She walked out of the bathroom to Child Development.
She was sick of the school and the people in the school. She was sick of Mike Damone and his Mr. Stud routine. She was sick of work at Swenson’s and getting up in the mornings and . . .
And if that wasn’t enough, Stacy Hamilton began to let another thought take hold. It began as an itch in the back of her head. Sick in the mornings. Backaches. Why shouldn’t her birth control pills, those wonderful Norinyl 1 Plus 50s, be like everything else—leaving her on the two-percent side of everything ninety-eight-percent effective.
She found Linda Barrett after class.
“Hey,” she said, “I want to talk to you later.”
“What’s it about?”
“I’ll call you tonight, okay?”
She called Linda later that evening.
“Linda,” she said, “I think I want to go down to the free clinic and take one of those tests. I don’t feel right.”
“Did you remember to take your pills?”
“Sure.” Pause. “I think so. Sure.”
“It’s easy to forget.’
“I’m sure I took them.”
“Okay,” said Linda, “let’s go down there day after tomorrow, because tomorrow is swimming practice. Don’t you want to go down there and check it out?”
“I don’t think so, Linda.”
Fridays were the free clinic’s busiest day. There was an hour-and-a-half wait just to take a blood and urine test; to check pregnancy they had the girls sit through more lectures. More nurses parading more facts for you. More of those cutaway diagrams, like in Mrs. Melon’s class. More of those meaningless statistics where every one girl in some low number got pregnant or contracted venereal disease. Or how 2,000 girls got pregnant while you came in.
Just give me the test, she thought.
They sat Stacy down with another nurse, who asked her more questions.
“How often do you have your periods? Regularly?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever used any form of birth control?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember the name?”
“Norinyl 1 Plus 50s.”
“Have you ever been pregnant?”
“No.”
Finally, they gave her the pregnancy test.
“You can call us on Monday morning for the results,” said the nurse. “Have a nice weekend!”
A Late-Night Phone Conversation
“There’s one thing you didn’t tell me about guys,” said Stacy Hamilton. “You didn’t tell me that they can be so nice, so great . . . but then you sleep with them, and they start acting like they’re about five years old.”
“You’re right,” said Linda. “I didn’t tell you about that.”
The Abortion
“Good morning, Miss Hamilton,” said the nurse’s voice over the telephone. “We received your test results from the lab, and they show that you are pregnant.”
“I am pregnant?”
“You are pregnant.”
“Oh.” Her head fell downward.
“Have you made plans for the baby?”
“Yes.”
“What plans have you made?”
“I mean no. I haven’t made plans for the baby.”
“Did you want to get pregnant?”
“No. It was a mistake.”
“Have you told your boyfriend?”
“No”
“Well, I’m sure he’ll be very happy and excited about it.” It sounded to Stacy like the nurse said that a lot.
She walked over to Linda’s house in a daze.
“I can’t believe it,” Linda said. “Hadn’t you been taking the pill?”
“I guess I forgot.”
They sat in glum silence.
“I knew I was pregnant. They didn’t even have to tell me. I felt all different. The thing is—when they first told me, I was happy that I could get pregnant, and that Mike could do it. I really was. I didn’t think about it as an abortion until the nurse kept asking me about what plans I’d made.”