“Damn!  Damn! Damn!”, I muttered to myself.  I was in the downstairs bathroom of the off-campus house I shared with five white girls.  I was hoping to see some signs of blood.  My period was now officially four days late, and I was definitely worried.  How could I have been so stupid!  I knew better than to have unprotected sex, and yet, I had done it.  Not once, but twice in a weeks’ time.  And being pregnant was not the only thing to be concerned about.  There was the threat of STD’s as well.  How much did I know about either of the men I’d opened my legs to?  Trey I had only met a month before and I hadn’t seen Dennis in four years.  Who knows where either of them had been before I came along?

“Candi, are you going to be much longer?”  It was the voice of Lisa, one of my roommates. “Some of us have an 8:00 class, you know.”

Lisa and I had been roommates in the freshman dorm.  We got along great, and had shared many of our secrets with each other.  We’d gone through chemistry, calculus, and Mr. Hoff’s incredibly boring Western History class together.  I wasn’t ready to share this one with her, though.  “I’ll be out in a second!”   I brushed by Lisa on my way out, without saying anything.  I wasn’t up for any chit chat today. 

I didn’t have time to worry about this kind of foolishness.  I was taking classes in physics, differential equations, manufacturing processes, and engineering design this semester.  I had enough to worry about.  To top it all off, my dad hadn’t sent the three-hundred dollars he promised me, and the bogus tuition check I had written bounced all the way from Flint back to Columbus.

Why I had believed my father would send the money was beyond me.  He had never, in my lifetime, done one thing that he’d promised to do.  He was an alcoholic, who spent most of his time in bootleg joints.  He’d get sloppy drunk and, subsequently, someone would relieve him of all his money.  He was sometimes abusive when he drank.  A few times, mom was forced to go to work with a black eye or swollen lip.  She had to sue him for child support while he was still living with us because, on payday, he always came home broke.  Once I turned eighteen, and left for college, she decided that enough was enough.  She put him out and filed for divorce.  The last I had heard he was living with some girl my age.