“I hope I didn’t ruin your first day back at school,” said Lydia.
“This isn’t exactly what I was hoping for, but, really, it’s not your fault.”
Alice had known from her dull headache earlier in the day that her period might be starting soon. Now the evidence collected in her abdomen, a slight ache that quickly transformed into a wrenching pain, what Alice imagined as two snakes wrapping themselves together and trying to squeeze the life out of each other.
“Oh, my God,” she said. She squinted and folded her arms, each hand clutching the elbow of the other arm.
“Have we just changed the subject?”
“You might say that,” Alice groaned. “Have you got a quarter?”
Of all times for a Nancy Swifty, Lydia had one: “‘Is that a period I see?’ Nancy questioned.”
“Stop,” said Alice. “This really hurts. Don’t make me laugh.”
Lydia stared at her and winced too. One of the beauties of her friendship with Lydia was that Lydia knew when it was time for the humor to stop and when the quick exchanges of their minds needed to give way to the greater needs of the moment.
“You’ve got bad cramps, don’t you?” Lydia asked without a hint of humor in her voice.
“Really really really bad,” said Alice.
Alice saw in Lydia’s expression that she was absorbing the misery, maybe from her own memories of this pain, but now her big blue eyes were sending out a steady stream of empathy.
“I’d take half your pain if I could,” she said.
“I know,” said Alice. “I think you already have.”
They exited for the women’s room.
“Here’s a quarter,” said Lydia.
Lydia stood outside the booth to wait for Alice. A minute passed and then Lydia asked, “Are you all right in there?”
“I’m all right,” said Alice. “I just want to stay here for a while until the pain lets up a bit. Let’s read some Shakespeare.”
“You’re kidding.”
But Alice wasn’t kidding: she opened her Shakespeare book and laid it on the floor. She came to a passage that fit the moment. She pounded on the wall of her stall and read, “‘Thou wall, O wall, O Sweet and lovely wall, / Show me thy chink to blink through with mine eyne!’”
“You’re amazing,” said Lydia, “Where’s that?”
“Page eighteen.” Alice read another line: “‘O wicked wall, through whom I see no bliss.’”
“You’re funny,” said Lydia. “May I laugh now?”
“Laugh all you want,” said Alice.
There was a pause on Lydia’s side of the wall as she seemed to be paging through her Shakespeare text. Then a sweet but dramatic version of Lydia’s stage voice floated through the air: “‘Thinks’t thou this pain upon all womanhood befalls?’”
Alice knew that was a Lydia creation, not Shakespeare’s. She quickly considered some follow-up line that would rhyme with “befalls”: “beach balls, death shawls, overalls, cat calls, bathroom walls”—and then the perfect line leapt into her mind: “Until the voice of motherhood upon us calls.”
“Jackpot! Jackpot!” screamed Lydia. “That was a rhymed couplet!”
Alice stepped smiling from the stall. “‘We’re a rhymed couplet,’ Nancy said identically.”
They stood and looked at each other the way mutual winners in a big sports event look at each other after the game. Their glee smothered Alice’s pain and they hugged each other tight.
“Do you realize what we just did together?” asked Alice.
“We made some Nancy Swifties and some other funnies.”
“And a rhymed couplet à la Shakespeare.”
“And we did it fast.”
“I know. My brain works like a smooth machine when I’m with you.”
“Greased lightning. We inspire each other.”
“I know. We’re both really smart. I couldn’t say that to anyone but you.”
“I wouldn’t put up with it from anyone but you.”
“We’re the only two in this school who could have done that.”
“I know. Don’t tell anyone.”
“I won’t,” said Alice. “Too big a price to pay.”
“But there is something else I have to tell you,” said Lydia. “Remember how last year we often started our periods on the same day?”
“It was a pretty bizarre coincidence,” said Alice. “Sort of a sisterly thing, you think? Are you getting symptoms now? Am I making you start your period?”
“Afraid not,” said Lydia. “I’ll be on a different schedule this month because I’ve gone on the pill.”
Alice absorbed the announcement. She whispered, as if she was afraid that someone might overhear: “You’re going on the pill?”
Alice trusted Lydia more than anyone, but she already knew that Lydia had not been totally open with her about the fact that she had been seeing the same guy since July, a twenty-year-old who was attending the vocational college in Shellhorn about twenty miles from Dutch Center.
“You look shocked,” said Lydia.
“I am shocked. I knew you were seeing somebody, but I had no idea you were heading in that direction. Who is it?”
“Randy Ver Sloot.”
“Do your folks know?”
“Of course not.”
“Are you going to tell them?”
“Of course not.”
“What if your mom finds the pills?”
“My mom doesn’t snoop in my room.”
“What if you forget to take one?”
“I won’t,” she said.
“Whew,” said Alice. “This is a big one.”
“You’re not going to disown me, are you?”
“I just wasn’t expecting anything like this while you were still in high school. And with this guy Ralph.”
“Randy. Would you rather I hadn’t told you?”
“Is he a Christian?”
“Yes,” she said. “He didn’t go to Christian