Emily (my 14-year-old sister) called me this afternoon. She told me Susan (my 18-year-old sister) was in trouble again but couldn’t tell me what it was because my mother was around listening in. I told her to call me back as soon as she could have a private phone conversation, and I just got off the phone with her a few minutes ago.

Apparently Susan’s gotten herself pregnant with her drug-dealer boyfriend. The guy’s a sleazeball, and I’m pretty sure he’s the one who got Susan into the hard drugs. She was just doing pot and drinking, but now she’s doing coke, acid, and narcotics (I know those for sure) and probably some other stuff too. Emily wouldn’t even tell me what it was at first, just that Susan has to have $250 by Monday night. I finally got Emily to tell me that Susan’s pregnant and is trying to get an abortion.

I’m not entirely sure yet if I believe Susan’s pregnant story. The girl’s an addict, and the first thing I thought when Em said she had to have $250 by Monday night was that she’d gotten herself into some drug money problem. The deadline is what really makes me suspicious–if she’s pregnant she has through the second trimester to get an abortion, though I do understand she’d want to do it before she really started to show. But this is rather soon–two days? Makes me wonder.

I’m not going to give the girl $250. For starters, I don’t HAVE that money to give her. Secondly, I wouldn’t give her money if I weren’t 100% sure where it would go. I don’t want her using it to buy more drugs, ESPECIALLY if she is pregnant. On the other hand, I’m concerned for her safety if she doesn’t get the money. I don’t think she’s stupid enough to get a back-alley abortion, but I didn’t think she was stupid enough to have sex without protection, either. And I’m concerned for her safety in my mother’s house if my mother should find out that she’s pregnant.

She is without a doubt unfit to raise a child, and I’m pretty sure she knows that. If she wants to carry the child to term and put it up for adoption, I’ll let her live with me as long as she’s clean–but I won’t have a place of my own until August. By that time it would be pretty clear that she’s pregnant–the girl is tiny and skinny, so it would be hard to miss.

Right now I’m really enraged at her for dumping all this on Emily. Emily is FOURTEEN, for god’s sake. Susan has no business dumping this on her and swearing her to secrecy, and she has even less business getting Emily to try to raise the money for her abortion. I really want to beat the hell out of Susan right now. Not that I actually would–I’m just really, really angry at her. I’d have much more sympathy for her situation had she come to me instead of Emily, but she didn’t. She dumped it on Emily, which is so many degrees of wrong.

I’m trying to figure out what to do. What’s right. I can’t tell the mother and can’t tell anyone who would tell the mother. I can’t give her money, and I can’t in good conscience ask anyone else to since I’m not sure where that money might go. Why the hell am *I* the responsible adult in this family? That’s what PARENTS are supposed to be for. I’m going to call my therapist in the morning, and she’s going to tell me it’s not my problem. Well, fine and good–till my sister ends up dead. I can’t ignore this, but there’s nothing I can do, either.

Sara