"Yes, you do." She flopped back against her pillow. It doesn't matter anyway. I'm not going back to that school. They are talking about sending me someplace else."
"Where?"
"A private place for disturbed teenagers like me." she replied. "I don't care. I'll miss Trent, though, even though he doesn't even know I exist."
"Maybe they won't send you away. Maybe you'll get better and you will return to our school," I said.
She looked like a deflated balloon that needed hope blown into her. She pressed her lips together and then slid down farther in her bed and looked up at the ceiling.
"I bet you want me to tell you about it, don't you?"
"About what?"
"About how I got pregnant. silly."
I shook my head. "No, you don't have to do that. I don't really want to know."
'Yes, you do. That's all anyone wants to know. How could I have let this happen?"
She stared at me a moment and then sat up and nodded at the wall on her left.
"My sister, especially, asks that, my perfect sister who was prom queen and who has never done anything wrong her whole life. She's the perfect student with the perfect boyfriend.
"And I know my father hates me, hates me and wishes I was never born."
"I'm sure that's not true. Autumn," I said.
"How can you be so sure? You just met us." she fired back at me.
Her hopping from one mood to another and then back again was a little frightening. but I didn't flinch.
"A father can't hate his own child, his own daughter," I said. I meant it I couldn't imagine my father ever wishing I wasn't born,
"A naval officer father can," she insisted, ''He would throw me overboard if he could."
I started to smile, but she turned away.
"It wasn't my fault. It wasn't! I couldn't help it. I didn't even know I had done anything bad," she said, still looking at the wall.
The air between us seemed to grow so still. It felt flammable, as if I could snap my fingers and start a fire.
"How could you not know that?" I asked despite my fear of treading on that ugly ground.
"They gave me Roofies." she wailed.
"Excuse me? Roofies? What's that?"
She pulled herself up a bit and swallowed. "It's something called Rohypnol, a drug that is illegal. You can't taste it in drinks, and part of the effect of it is it causes amnesia. I didn't even know anything had happened to me. I couldn't remember!"
"Who did this to you?"
"Same boys at school. Their names are being kept secret because they're not considered adults," she said bitterly. "They were having a party!" she cried, "And no one ever invites me to a party, so I went with another girl, Selma Dorman. It happened to her, too, only she was lucky. She didn't get pregnant. We were the only two girls there." she revealed. "And there were five boys. We should have known something wasn't right as soon as we got there, but they kept telling us more girls were coming soon."
"Where did this happen?"
"One of the boys had his house free. His parents had gone to New York City for the weekend. It was a big house with a gigantic television set and sophisticated sound equipment. It had a room just for parties with a bar as long as a destroyer. All I remember is I drank what I thought was just a harmless soda, and about four in the morning I woke up naked in one of the bedrooms. They had hidden my clothes for a joke. too.
"My father was on a special assignment at the time, or he would have one over there afterward and killed them all," she said. They finally gave me my clothes and drove me home. My mother was furious at me for coming home so late. so I didn't tell her what had happened to me. I didn't know the details. although I felt so violated. I had no idea what would happen inside me. I was even too frightened to tell her anything when I missed my period, but finally I thought I had better, so she took me right to the doctor, and he told her I was pregnant.