The Promise by Chandra Sparks Taylor

Author:Chandra Sparks Taylor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kimani Press
Published: 2010-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

The sound of the doorbell awakened me. I sat up abruptly and glanced at the clock. It was three in the afternoon. I headed downstairs still half-asleep just as someone started pounding on the door.

“I’m coming,” I yelled and snatched the door open.

Bree was standing there looking worried. “What took you so long?” she asked, brushing past me. “I’ve been outside for five minutes.”

“How’d you get here?” I asked.

“I drove today.”

“Where’s Nathaniel?” They were practically joined at the hip, so I was surprised he wasn’t lurking outside.

“I told him we needed to take a break,” she said matter-of-factly.

I looked at her like she was crazy. “Why?”

Suddenly Bree’s cheerful facade crumbled. “I know you have a lot going on, but I really need to talk to you,” she said.

Something about her words scared me. I led her into the den and plopped beside her on the sofa. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

Bree sat staring at the floor. “Why’d you leave school early?” she asked.

“I didn’t make the team,” I said. “Stop stalling. What’s wrong?”

Bree took a deep breath then looked at me. “I think I’m pregnant.”

I started laughing. “Girl, why would you think something like that? To be pregnant you’d have to be having se…” My eyes grew big as the realization hit me. “You’ve been having sex and you didn’t tell me?”

She smiled through watery eyes. “What exactly was I supposed to say?”

There were a thousand questions running through my head, but I knew I would have to wait to ask them. I focused on my best friend and what she had said. “What makes you think you’re pregnant?”

“I haven’t had a period in, like, two months, I’m throwing up every five minutes, and my breasts hurt,” she said, rubbing one then wincing to emphasize her point.

“Have you taken a test?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I’m scared,” she said. “Courtland, what if I’m pregnant? I’m seventeen. I can’t have a baby.”

I hugged her and let her cry just like Daddy had done for me earlier. Before I could stop myself, I found myself saying, “Why didn’t you use a condom? Did you guys get tested before you started having sex? What if Nathaniel has AIDS or something?” I realized as soon as the words came out that they were the wrong thing to say, but it was too late to take them back. Bree cried even harder.

I knew I had to take control of the situation. “Come on,” I said, helping her up.

“Where are we going?” she asked as she followed me.

“We have to find out for sure.”

We headed first to Wal-Mart, but I remembered a few months earlier when I had gone in there and almost been busted by our adviser, Andrea, looking at condoms. I figured it would be too easy for someone who knew us to be in Wal-Mart, so instead I headed to Walgreens. With a boldness I didn’t feel, I marched into the store while Bree waited in the car, and I grabbed the first pregnancy test box I saw.

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