In Trouble Read Online Free PDF

up?” I pictured Elaine twisting the lock of hair behind her right ear. She did that whenever she was anxious and didn’t have a napkin to shred.
    She talked with an urgency I’d never heard in her voice before.
    “It’s not regular putting-on-weight,” she said. “I . . .” her voice shook, “I think I’m pregnant.”
    “ Pregnant! ”
    “I’m late.”
    “Are you sure?”
    Silence.
    “How late?”
    She spoke so softly I had to press the phone against my ear. “I’ve missed it a couple of times.”
    “A couple of times!”
    We’ve been best friends, but we’d never talked about periods except when we first got it. After that you only said something if you had cramps. Even if you got it at school and needed a pad, you went to the nurse’s office.
    The rest was too . . . I don’t know . . . specific.
    Her voice sank to a whisper. “Beginning of last year when I had that thyroid thing and my mom took me to the doctor, I’d missed four months in a row. The doctor said I had ‘low thyroid’—whatever that is—and the medi-cine fixed it and I got my period. So this time . . .” now I could hear her twisting her hair, “. . . I figured the thyroid thing had come back.”
    I don’t know where the thyroid is, and I didn’t ask.
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    “Well, I’m never exact,” I said finally. “I can be a week late.”
    “This is months, Jamie.” She started to cry.
    Months! I was too afraid to ask how many.
    “Well maybe when you, you know, after you . . . well, maybe it changes something. Maybe you get less regular.
    Maybe . . .” I had no idea what I was talking about. “You said Neil told you about counting days. In the film they showed us, you start counting from the first day of your last period, and two weeks later is when the egg—”
    “I don’t know and I don’t care about eggs! I don’t have my period!” She took a deep breath. “And I’ve been wearing a girdle.”
    I desperately wanted to hang up.
    “What will you do?”
    She didn’t say anything.
    “Elaine, you have to do something before it’s too late.
    You’ve got to think this through.”
    “What can I do? My father will kill me. My mother’s face is tighter than usual. She’s working overtime not to guess.”
    “Why would she think it?”
    “I didn’t want to go to the doctor with her, you know, that exam they do to see if something’s wrong, and then I know he’d tell her, you know what I mean. So I didn’t say anything. I rolled up pads and threw them out a couple of months in a row. She makes me a special tea whenever I get cramps, and this month I forgot to say 41

    anything. I forgot everything, cramps, tea, pads, everything. And I saw her checking the Kotex box. I think she was counting.”
    I couldn’t decide if counting how many pads were left was nuts or super smart. I pictured Mrs. Reilly’s face.
    Very small. Very sad.
    “I think I know somebody who could help,” I said.
    Elaine coughed.
    “I don’t know, I don’t know,” she moaned.
    “Well, I do,” I said with an authority that surprised me. “And my cousin Lois does.” That also surprised me.
    I haven’t talked to Lois in a couple of months and don’t want to. But this is an emergency.
    We were both silent. “Look, I know you’re trying to help,” she said, “but it’s helpless.”
    “You mean hopeless? It isn’t. I’ll call Lois and call you back.”
    I hung up.
    Pregnant!
    I wanted to yell, How could you be so stupid! In class they had told us about counting and that it wasn’t exact, only a way to try to figure the right time to do it if you wanted a baby, and of course the opposite, when you had to be careful. I know it’s ridiculous, but all I could think about was that Elaine was lousy in math.
    I dug into my bag for my leather address book with its red cover. I’ve had it since eighth grade and it’s nearly full.
    I turned to the L ’s.
    42

    Lois. Lois would—must—know what Elaine should do. I dialed and waited through