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"Which is more reason to worry and be careful," Trisha said. "Didn't your mother ever talk to you about these things?"

Which mother? I thought. Momma Longchamp always thought me too young to know about sex, and by the time I was old enough to know, she was too sick and worried about other things. I was sure my real mother would turn blue and go into a faint if I so much as brought up the subject. And she wasn't anyone to talk to anyway, I thought.

I shook my head, the tears beginning to trickle down my cheeks.

"Oh Trisha, I can't be pregnant. I just can't. Not now. I'm not," I said with determination. "It's just a stomach flu. You'll see." I nodded, forcing myself to believe it.

Trisha squeezed my hand and smiled.

"Maybe you're right; maybe it's just a little stomach flu," she said. "Let's not panic just yet."

I nodded and bit down on my emotions. I had little appetite at breakfast, but that could have been because of my nervousness as much as it was my earlier nausea. I walked about with the weight of worry on my shoulders all day. I didn't have vocal music so Michael didn't see me and I didn't want him to see me when I looked and felt this way.

I was very tired that night and went to sleep early. The next morning, I woke with the same spell of nausea and vomited again. I saw that Trisha was becoming increasingly worried and frightened for me, so I made it sound as if it hadn't been as bad as the day before.

"I think it is the flu," I told her. "And I'm getting better."

When Michael finally saw me in general music class, however, he said I looked a little peaked and tired, but I didn't say anything except I hadn't been sleeping well. Before he could ask why, there were other students around us, making it hard for us to talk.

Later in the afternoon, I went to the library and read about pregnancy so I knew what to look for when I went home. I took off my sweater and bra and examined my breasts in the mirror. I quickly realized that what I had thought was happening because I was maturing was happening for other reasons. My breasts were enlarged and my nipples, besides becoming larger, were darker in color. Tiny new blood vessels were visible just under my skin. Verification of the symptoms made my blood run cold. There was no denying what I saw and what it meant.

I bowed my head in defeat. Love had made me foolish and careless. Why didn't I think? Michael's love for me and my love for him had turned me into a woman very quickly. I had felt a woman's passion; I had kissed and had made love to him as a grown woman would, and I had captured his heart only the way a mature woman could. Why hadn't I realized that I could also suffer a woman's possible consequences when I threw myself into Michael's embrace with abandon?

"What are you going to do?" Trisha asked me after I returned to our bedroom and described all my symptoms and what it surely meant. "Maybe you should call your mother."

"My mother? I went to her when Grandmother Cutler was insisting I change my name to Eugenia, which was the name they supposedly first gave me."

"Eugenia?"

"It was the name of one of Grandmother Cutler's sisters, one who had died from small pox. When I complained to my mother, she almost went into a coma. The slightest tension drives her into a panic. She's useless. Of course," I added bitterly, "she just puts it on so that everyone will leave her alone and pity her."

"Well, you'll tell Allan, won't you? You would have thought a mature man would have been more careful and would have thought about this as much as you should have. After all, he has been married and everything."

I didn't say anything. I was afraid to tell Michael, afraid of what this would do to all our wonderful plans . . . my being on the Broadway stage, our being together forever and ever.

"Maybe he just didn't care," Trisha said, but her hard expression softened immediately. "I'm sorry if I sound harsh, Dawn," she added quickly.

"No, no," I said. "It's not that he doesn't care. He is just so much in love with me and love can blind you when it's that bright," I said. "You don't think; you lose yourself in the ecstasy. You heard the way some of those girls talk in the locker room, how they have trouble keeping their boyfriends from going too far, and those are just . . . just teenage romances."

"Well, you have no choice, you have to tell him," she said.

"Yes, yes, of course, I'll tell him. I'm just afraid he'll be quite upset."

"He has to share in the responsibility," Trisha snapped. "My mother always says, 'It takes two to tango.' "

"Yes," I said, fingering my locket nervously. "I know."

I didn't say it, but this was a dance I would have rather sat out.

10

BITTER FRUIT

I paused at the bottom of the staircase on our way to dinner.

"Trisha, tell Agnes I'll be right there," I said. She saw where I was heading: the sitting room where we had a telephone.

"You're going to call Allan now and tell him?" she asked, her eyes wide in anticipation.