"But I am not happy looking at you like this. Why is this fever?" sitting in a chair nearby, Jasmine asked her.

"I cannot say. I don't know. Why fevers come to anyone? Typhoid, malaria ...." Ragini tried to say something.

"If it is something like that it would have been known in blood tests. I think all the blood tests have been done so far. What the doctor is saying?"

"Doctor is saying it is nothing like that. Surprisingly he also does not know why I am suffering like this." with a feeble smile, Ragini said.

There was some painful silence and Mounika preferred to break it.

"But I am thinking you know why you are suffering like this." Mounika said slowly but firmly.

"What do you mean?" frowns gathered on Ragini's forehead.

"I mean what I said." Mounika's voice was still firm with a rise in it. "You are torturing yourself with some thinking. What is it?"

"I am not suffering with any thinking. You are wrong." Ragini closed her eyes.

"Ragini, we both are your close friends. We have with only one intention that is to help you. Please tell us what that is making you suffer like this. You just don't know how much your mother is worrying about you." Jasmine said.

Still Ragini did not say anything. She clipped her inner lip between her teeth frames.

"What about the relationship between you and that Pramod?" Mounika suddenly asked.

Ragini snapped open her eyes and looked into the face of Mounika. "What do you mean?" she asked angrily.

"You know what I mean." Without flinching a little Mounika said. "That relationship has to do something with your fever."

"How it would be?" Ragini said "How a relationship causes a fever? Pramod is just a friend to me."

"Intimate relationships cause fevers sometimes." Mounika said. "Pramod is tenth class and you are ninth class. How you both have become friends? How a boy and girl become friends like that much even they are in the same class?"

"He is our neighbor and we know each other for a long time."

"I still can say that your fever has something to do with your friendship with that Pramod." Mounika relentlessly said.

"I cannot say anything." Ragini closed her eyes again.

There was silence again between them three for some time and then Mounika suddenly said with the same firm voice. "He did that to you, did not he?"

Not just Ragini, Jasmine also was shocked on hearing that.

"What you are talking?" Ragini hastily asked her. Her cheeks were blushed with anger and shame.

"You both have unsafe sexual intercourse, is it is not true? Now you are feeling fear that you might become pregnant." Mounika said looking straight into the face of Ragini.

Ragini suddenly burst into weeping. "It is not just fear. I have become pregnant. Fifteen days after usual time but I have not have my periods."

Jasmine and Mounika were stupefied on hearing that. "Is it is true?" Jasmine's voice shivered while she was asking like that.

"Yes, it is true." Still weeping Ragini said.

"First stop your weeping. I am getting disgust." Mounika angrily said.

"Don't talk like that." Jasmine hastily said.

"How the hell it has happened? How you have agreed to such type of a disgusting thing?" Mounika once again angrily asked.

"This is not the way to talk to an already depressed girl." Jasmine was also angry but she could not talk like Mounika.

"She is talking it right. What I did is a dreadful wrong." Trying to control her weeping Ragini said.

"First we have to think what needs to be done." Jasmine said.

"One thing I understood for sure. You did not say it to your mother yet, is it is not so?"

"She would have skinned me alive if she knows about it." Ragini's voice shivered while saying that. She could not even bear the thought.

"You know how dreadful it is! You know what your mother would do to you if she knows about it. How still you could agree to that?" Mounika could not control her anger at all.

"Sometimes situations prompt it like that. There is no use in thinking about it so." Jasmine said.

Mounika with difficulty controlled herself. Ragini was her close friend for a long time. She could not understand how Ragini yielded that easily to bodily pleasure.

"Scoundrel! How he could take advantage of a helpless girl?" Jasmine angrily said.

After a pause Mounika said again "Should not we say it to aunty? How long it can be kept like a secret?"

"Oh, No. Please don't tell to mother." There was instant fear in the eyes of Ragini.

"But how long it can be kept as a secret? Sooner or later it will be known to your mother and all and we cannot do anything to the fetus if the pregnancy advanced." Mounika said.

"Just a minute." Jasmine hastily said. "How long before you were matured? I mean you have got your womanhood?"

"In my sixth class itself. I joined one year late into school for some reasons. Three years or so have passed after that incident."

"Are you always regular in your periods?"

"No. Sometimes I am irregular. Sometimes it would be late more than fifteen days also."

"Why should not it is that type of irregularity? Why we have to think it is hundred percent pregnancy?" Jasmine asked.

Mounika hissed out heavily. "How much I hope it to be so." She said. "But what if it is pregnancy?" with fear stricken eyes she asked.

"First of all we have to know whether it is pregnancy or not. Pregnancy checking kits are available in medical shops."

"And you very well know that you and me cannot go to a medical shop and ask for pregnancy checking kits. What anyone would think of if we do it like that?" Mounika said.

"I shall try to find a way out. For the present we are not going to tell anything to aunty." Jasmine said.

"Thank you very much Jasmine" Ragini said.

"I shall try my level best to save you from this Ragini." Jasmine paused few seconds before saying again. "But never think I support what you have done. I hate and despise to do this type of a thing under all circumstances."

Ragini closed her eyes and tears started flowing down on her cheeks again.

Mounika went near to her and put her hand on her shoulder. "Its alright Ragini. Whatever happened is happened. Never let something like this happen to you again. Things like this should happen only after our marriage and only with our husbands. That much I know."

"All the time we are trying to find fault only with Ragini. That bastard Promod, he must be skinned alive." Jasmine angrily said.

"I shall see that he would be punished. I don't let him go scot free." Mounika became angry once again.

"Oh, there is not much mistake in him. I also encouraged him enough." Ragini said.

"Shut your mouth. Don't try to support him. Whenever something like this happens it is the girl who has to bear the loss, not the boy. It is the girl who has to suffer, not the boy. He is older to you, more matured than you, did not he know this much? He also has two sisters. How he would feel if someone do something like this to one of his sisters and she becomes pregnant?" Mounika angrily said.

"Somehow or other we do come here again at the same time tomorrow also with the pregnancy kit. Don't worry yourself too much. I am thinking it is certainly not pregnancy." Jasmine said.

After talking some more time with Ragini, Jasmine and Mounika came out. "What is my daughter saying?" looking anxiously into the faces of Jasmine and Mounika, Ragini's mother asked them.

Jasmine and Mounika looked into each other's eyes.

"Ragini is worrying as she could not score high in the examinations. She cannot understand the lessons better in the class. She is feeling too much fear thinking how her future is going to be." Mounika said.

"Ridiculous! How she does feel fear like that? I am here to help her in all the ways she wants. Is it is something that she has to struggle like that to keep as a secret from me?" looking doubtfully into the eyes of them both, Ragini's mother asked.

"That is what we also have said to her. We could alleviate her fear to some extent. She becomes normal soon. Don't worry at all." Jasmine said.

"You both please come as often as possible." Ragini's mother said with a pleading look in her eyes.

"We sure shall do so." Mounika said.

"We shall come on tomorrow also at the same time. We have promised to Ragini to come on tomorrow. Just you tell Ragini that there is no necessity to her to worry about her studies. Only for that she is feeling too much nervous." Jasmine said.

"I do it now itself." before going into the room of Ragini, her mother said.

***

After hearing what Jasmine has said, Malathi stupefied. Her daughter not only knew how woman would become pregnant but also about pregnancy tests! How much more this girl knew she could not understand. 'Is the present generation needs sex education at all?" she wondered.

"Mounika and I scolded her as much as she deserved. She really did a dreadful thing which cannot be approved at all." Jasmine said.

"Does her mother know about it?" slowly coming into this world Malathi asked Jasmine.

"Ragini would have been killed by now if her mother has known about it." Jasmine said.

"So you people first want to know whether she is pregnant or not?" Malathi asked again.

"Absolutely. Why should we break our heads unnecessarily without knowing whether there is pregnancy or not?"

"What you are going to do if it is pregnancy?" feeling fear to hear what her daughter would say, Malathi said.

"Then it must be told to her mother. Only her mother has to decide what to do with it then." Jasmine said.

"Thank god!" Malathi sighed .

"Mom, will you please help us? Will you please get a pregnancy checking kit for us?" looking pleadingly into the eyes of her mother, Jasmine asked.

"Alright, I sure do help you." Malathi nodded her head.

(..........to be continued)

(I hope you enjoyedit so far. Please don't forget to rate and review it. I update the next chapteras early as possible.)