Chapter 8
Dolores tugged on the collar of her coat and fluffed her scarf to guard her neck against the cold December wind which was making her walk to school dreary and miserable. But then again, ever since that night at the cabin two months ago, pretty much everything seemed dreary and miserable to her. She never reported the rape. She didn't tell her parents; they were mad enough that she came home smelling like booze and vomit, and she was afraid they'd never believe her, or even worse, blame her for what happened. And she certainly didn't tell the police. Like the boys said, who would the cops believe? She didn't even tell her best friend Sandy Malone, whose house she was approaching on her way to school.
Sandy was a good friend to Dolores. They had met in the third grade when Sandy and her parents moved into the huge Victorian home on Hampton Street next door to Rev. Chambers'. Much like the other old houses in Allardale it was in desperate need of repairs after having been converted from a single family home into two apartments many years before. The years of neglectful tenants, and even more neglectful landlords, had taken its toll on the once stately home. But Mr. Malone was an excellent carpenter, and he and Mrs. Malone had big plans for the renovation. It took them nearly ten years, but they finally had returned the house to its prior glory, with wrought iron gates and all.
Dolores had reached the stairs of the porch when Sandy came bounding out of the front door, her blonde hair bouncing in a pony tail behind her.
“Hey Dory!” she said cheerfully. “I can't believe it's almost Christmas already. I love, love, love the winter. Doesn't get much better than this.”
“It's freezing out. Are you nuts?”
“Nah, this is the best time of year. Just wait till we get a decent amount of snow, it looks prettier all covered in white.”
“I guess.” Dolores looked around. The town seemed dead to her. The trees had long ago shed their leaves, and all of the grass was brown. She found it depressing, much like everything else since that night in the cabin.
“You okay? You seem, like, out of it or something.” Sandy had noticed the sudden change in her friend two months ago but hadn't said anything, assuming she would tell her when she was ready.
“Yeah, I'm just kinda sick.”
“Oh, well there is a cold going around. Everybody's got the sniffles in my Girl Scout troop. Even Haley, and she never gets sick.”
“No, it's not a cold. I'm just sick at my stomach. I dunno what it is. Maybe I ate something. I dunno, it doesn't matter.”
Sandy decided to finally get nosy. “Look, Dory, I don't know what's bothering you, but you've been a real Debby Downer for a while now. I'm your best friend, if something's bothering you, I should know about it. I can't help you if you won't let me.”
Dolores looked at her and back down at the ground. She wanted to tell her about Lane, Skeeter and the boys but she couldn't. She didn't even know how to begin.
“I feel your pain.” Sandy said in her best impression of Bill Clinton. Dolores usually laughed heartily when Sandy did impressions, but this time she could only manage a chuckle. Her stomach was churning, which reminded her of the last time she threw up.
“Okay, you don't wanna tell me. That's your business. But I'm here if you need me, you know that.”
“Thanks, Sandy.” Dolores said and left it at that. She instantly regretted not coming clean to her about being raped. She didn't know how her friend would react, and she didn't want to risk losing a good friend.
The two girls reached the high school and parted ways once inside to go toward their respective lockers. Dolores never arrived at hers; her stomach wouldn't allow it. She darted toward the girls' room, dropped her books onto the floor, and heaved into the toilet. The English teacher, Mrs. Carson, was in the restroom and heard Dolores in the stall. She knocked on the stall door.
“Are you okay, in there?”
Dolores spit to get rid of the remnants of breakfast from her mouth and quickly unrolled some toilet paper to clean up. “Yeah, I'll be fine,” she gasped as she gathered her books and opened the stall door.
“Why don't you go on down to office and wait for the nurse. She'll be here in about a half hour?”
“No, really, I'll be okay. I've got a midterm in Geography that I can't afford to miss. I'm fine.” But she wasn't. Another wave of nausea hit her, and she shoved her books at Mrs. Carson and ran back into the stall for another round of heaving, gasping, and spitting.
When the noise from the flushing toilet quieted down, she said, “Dolores, you really should go to the office. You can't take a test in this condition, and if you're sick, you don't want to pass it on to anyone else.”
Dolores mulled over the idea for a minute while she cleaned up and decided that it was probably for the best to go see the nurse.
Dolores was uncomfortable in the office. Besides having an upset stomach, she could count on one hand the number of times she had been in the office, so the unfamiliarity of the room bothered her. Her gaze shifted from the motivational posters on the wall to the scuffs on her sneakers to the secretary who was stamping some type of forms while talking on the phone. After what seemed like an eternity the school nurse, Mrs. Bellamy came through the door. Without missing a beat in her conversation, the secretary motioned toward Dolores.
“C'mon back, hon. We'll take a look-see.” she said, and Dolores followed her.
The nurses office was even more unfamiliar to Dolores than the school office. She rarely, if ever, got sick. She hadn't even missed a single day of school since the fifth grade when she had to take off two days for a tonsillectomy. The walls were covered in medical posters showing the muscle structure of the human body and various pictures of cross sections of organs, as well as posters advising students to not use drugs or smoke. Another had a black and white image of police at the scene of an auto accident. Beneath the picture in big red letters it simply read, “Don't Drink and Drive.”
Mrs. Bellamy placed her coat on the coat rack and locked her purse in a cabinet under the drawer labeled “Bandages”. “Go ahead and have a seat. What brings you in?” she said as she washed her hands.
“I'm sick. I threw up twice this morning before the bell even rang.”
“Well, that's no good. Let me check your temperature.” she said as she placed the back of her hand against Dolores' forehead. “No fever. What did you have to eat for breakfast?”
“Just a bowl of cereal. But the milk was good, I checked the date.”
“Hmm. What about last night? What did you have for dinner? Any fish or shrimp or anything?” she asked as she felt the sides on Dolores neck.
“No just chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans.”
“Okay, well I'm running out of ideas here. Might just be a bug that's been going around. There is one other... has your period been regular?”
Dolores blushed. “No, it didn't come in November. Usually it's toward the end of the month, but I figured it was just late.”
“Well, honey, I suggest that if you're sexually active you go to your doctor and get checked. You might be pregnant.” she said with a frown.
Panic shot through Dolores' body. She had been trying so hard for the last two months to forget about the rape that she hadn't even considered the possibility of a pregnancy resulting from it. The next thought she had was fear. Her mother would definitely freak out if she asked to go to the doctor for a pregnancy test, and the questions which would result would be too much to answer.
“Okay, I will.” she said dismissively, imagining that the nurse assumes she is promiscuous.
“But for today, you should probably just head home, drink plenty of liquids, and get some rest. You can use the phone up front to call your folks to pick you up.”
“They're at work. Can I just walk home?”
“If you're gonna do that, you need to stay in the office for a while so we can make sure you don't get any worse. Don't w
ant you passing out or anything on the way home.”
Dolores waited in the hard plastic chairs in the waiting area of the office. Her stomach was empty but she periodically felt the urge to heave and held her breath to try to make it abate. She waited until two minutes before the bell, then she put her hand to her mouth as if she was going to vomit and ran toward the bathroom. When she got toward the end of the hallway, out of sight of the school secretary, she walked past the bathroom and turned left down the science hallway toward the classroom from which Sandy was about to be released. She poked her head toward the small window in the door and looked around the class for her. Sandy saw Dolores, looked at the clock on the wall, and held up one finger before returning her attention to the teacher.
Soon the bell rang, and students began filing out of the door to the class. Dolores grabbed Sandy by the arm and pulled her aside.
“I need to borrow some money, no questions asked.”
“Now, you know I'm gonna ask questions.” Sandy smiled and rolled her eyes.
“No, I mean it. I'll pay you back, I swear, I just really, REALLY need to borrow ten bucks, pleeeeease?”
Sandy rummaged through her purse, and pulled out a twenty dollar bill. She extended it to Dolores, then pulled it back. “You don't have to pay me back if you tell me what the heck is going on.”
“I will, I promise. Just not now.”
“You're not in trouble?”
Dolores looked around, and stepped closer to Sandy.
“Sandy, if tell you something, can you PROMISE not to say anything to anyone?”
“Dory, c'mon, I'm gonna be late to class.”
“Okay, if you swear not to tell anyone... I think I might be pregnant, and I need to buy one of those pregnancy test thingies that you pee on.”
Sandy's jaw dropped. “Ooooooh! I knew it, I knew it! Something was different about you. Here, I gotta get to class,” she said as she shoved the twenty into Dolores' hands, “but you owe me an explanation later.” She added as she walked away, “WITH DETAILS!”
Dolores tucked the money into her pocket and walked back to the office to get her books. The secretary glanced at her over her glasses.
Dolores avoided eye contact, gathered her books, signed herself out on the clipboard, and headed toward the drug store.
At the store she hung out by the magazines for nearly two hours, thumbing slowly through each one, waiting for the cashier to go on break. The cashier, Ethel Myers, knew her mother, and even worse, she was a horribly nosy old woman. If you needed to get the word out about something to the entire population of Allardale as soon as humanly possible, you would go see Ethel. Between her quilting club, bridge club, women's club at the church, and the other blue hairs who meet her weekly at the salon, Dolores figured her mother would be calling the house before she even got home with the test kit.
When she saw the old woman leave the register and walk to the back room, she felt the time was right, and Dolores darted toward the aisle where the pregnancy tests were. She stood back to weigh her options, quickly decided on the brand with the plus or minus sign, and walked toward the register, her eyes ever vigilant for any sign of Ethel.
She paid for the test, stuffed it into her purse, grabbed the change, and ran home. Once home, she sprinted to the bathroom and tore into the box. She read the instructions twice, went to the kitchen and drank two glasses of water, then back to the bathroom to read the instructions yet again and wait for the urge to go. When she could no longer hold it in, she took the test according to the instructions and carefully placed the test on the box on the bathroom counter, and then she waited. And waited. After what seemed like an eternity, a faint blue plus sign slowly began to appear. Dolores slumped onto the edge of the tub and sobbed into her hands, a million thoughts racing through her mind.
When she was done, Dolores gathered the test, the empty box and the instructions, crushed them into a ball, wrapped it in foil so as to hide the evidence from her parents, and tucked it into the bottom of the trash can in the garage. She wasn't sure what she would do next, who she would tell, or how she would tell them, but she knew eventually she would have to tell her parents, and that scared her more than anything.