“Oh my,” says Mrs. Poole. “How may I help you, officers?”
“We’re looking for three students, ma’am,” one of them says. “Rosina Suarez, Erin DeLillo, and Grace Salter. Is there a way you can get them all down to the office quickly?”
Grace thinks she’s going to throw up.
“Of course,” Mrs. Poole says. “Let me just call in Principal Slatterly. I’m sure I can guess what this is concerning.”
“I’m sure you can.”
Grace has never run so fast in her life. She is suddenly fifty pounds lighter; she is pure speed as she makes her way to Rosina’s sixth-period chemistry class. She takes a moment to collect herself and catch her breath, to put on her best invisible-girl face, then she tosses the rubber-chicken hall pass aside, knocks, and open the door.
“Hello, sir?” Grace says, with the question in her voice Erin hates. “Um, Principal Slatterly wants to see Rosina Suarez in the office?”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” the teacher says. “Miss Suarez, you heard her. You’re wanted in the office.”
Rosina stands up displaying her usual confidence, but with a questioning look on her face meant only for Grace.
“You might want to bring your bag,” Grace says.
“What’s up?” Rosina says as soon as the door closes behind them.
“We have to get Erin,” Grace says. “Do you know where her class is?”
“Yeah,” Rosina says. “But are you going to tell me why?”
“No time,” Grace says as she scuttles down the hall.
“Wait,” Rosina says. “Are we skipping class? I can’t skip class anymore. There’s just one period left. Can’t this wait an hour?”
“No. We have to go now. Trust me.”
Rosina stops. “I can’t get in trouble anymore.”
Grace turns around. “Rosina, the police are here. They’re looking for us. Skipping class is not your biggest problem right now.”
Rosina’s eyes go wide. “Oh, fucking shit fuck,” she says.
They run.
Rosina goes to get Erin out of class while Grace hurries back to Spanish. “I have to go, Señor,” she pants as she grabs her backpack. “It’s an emergency.”
“En Español!” he shouts.
“Adios!” Grace says as she hurries out the door. She hears him yell, “Dónde está mi pase de pasillo?” as the door swings closed behind her.
“I’m dead,” Rosina says when Grace finds her and Erin in the parking lot. “This is the end of me. As of now, I am most likely homeless.”
“Did you read your packets?” Erin says as they climb into Grace’s mom’s car.
“Wait,” Grace says. “First you need to tell us exactly what happened.”
As they drive out of Prescott, Erin tells them, in excruciating detail, all about Otis coming to her house, what he said he heard, what Eric did to him. When she is done, Rosina and Grace are both speechless for a long time. It sinks in what they are about to do: They are going to try to help a girl Spencer and Eric raped, a real girl, a girl who is here right now, hurting right now. Not Lucy. Not someone already gone. Not someone hypothetical. This is someone they’re going to have to look in the eyes, someone they’re taking a kind of responsibility for. If they don’t do this right, they could hurt her, too.
“This is too much,” Rosina finally says. “I can’t do this.”
“What are you talking about?” Grace says. “This is our chance to finally get those bastards. We finally have proof.”
“This girl isn’t proof,” Rosina says. “She’s a person. A person who just got fucking raped. What if she doesn’t want anything to do with us? We can’t force her to talk to the cops. We don’t even know her. What if she doesn’t even want our help?”
“But what if she does?” Erin says softly from the backseat. “Maybe she’s all alone right now. Maybe she’s scared and thinks there’s no one to help her. Maybe she’s waiting for us.”
The car is quiet. After a moment Rosina turns around to face Erin in the backseat. Grace can’t see what is happening between them, but she can feel it.
Finally Erin speaks again: “We have to at least let her know we’re here, that we believe her. We have to let her know someone’s on her side. Then she can decide what she wants to do.”
ERIN.
It takes exactly forty-two minutes to drive from Prescott High School to Cheyenne’s town of Fir City, which is approximately half the size of Prescott. “We’re in the country now, boy,” Rosina says with her fake redneck accent. Erin hates it when she does that.
The sky is gray and low with clouds. Erin remembers something she read about how the Willamette Valley is one of the worst places in the world for people with chronic migraines because of something to do with its unique barometric-pressure system. Erin wishes she knew more about barometric pressure. She wonders if, had she grown up here instead of by the beach, meteorology would have been her interest instead of marine biology.
Rosina tells them they’re entering white supremacist country. “This is where all the survivalist crazies live,” she warns. “And they have machine guns.”
“I’m sure not everyone out here’s like that,” Grace says. “That’s like saying everyone from the south is racist.”
During the drive, Erin quizzes Rosina and Grace on the instructions she prepared about how best to talk to a rape victim. She’s moderately confident that they have the most important things down—don’t push her to share anything she’s not comfortable with, don’t criticize or judge her, don’t get too emotional, don’t touch her, don’t try to fix her, don’t make it about you and your experiences, don’t tell her what to do, don’t pressure her to report it if she doesn’t want to.
“What if we forget one?” Rosina says. “Is that going to screw her up forever? Is the fact that we have no idea what the hell we’re doing going to add to her trauma? What if we make things worse?” She shakes her head. “You guys, I don’t think I can do this.”
“Of course you can,” Grace says.
“Aren’t you supposed to be the brave one?” Erin says. Rosina is always the brave one. She’s always the one who knows exactly what to do.
“But I’m not,” Rosina says. “It’s just an act. It’s always been an act.”
Erin wonders what’s gotten into Rosina, why she’s acting so un-Rosina-like. All this Nowhere Girls business has turned everything upside down, has turned each of them into their opposites—Rosina’s scared, Grace is brave, and Erin is skipping class to do something spontaneous and possibly dangerous, and she’s not even all that anxious. She hasn’t had to count backward at all today.
“But that’s exactly what being brave means,” Grace says. “Doing something even when you’re scared.”
“You make it sound so easy,” Rosina says. “You do know that people out here are just waiting to shoot people like me, right? Hello? I’m brown and gay.”
“We’re almost there.” Grace turns into a cul-de-sac of small ranch-style homes. “It should be on the left,” she says. “There. The white one.” She pulls up in front and turns off the engine. No one moves.
“What the fuck do we do now?” Rosina finally says.
“She’s probably not even home from school yet,” Grace says. “Should we just wait out here until we see her?”
“That feels creepy,” Rosina says. “Like we’re stalking her or something.”
“I think we’ve already crossed that line,” Erin says.
Rosina turns around and glares at Erin in the backseat. “Why the hell are you so calm?”
Erin shrugs. “We should go up there now,” she says. “In case Cheyenne’s already home.”
“What are we going to say?” Rosina says.
“My old OT said you should usually start with ‘Hello,’ ” says Erin.
“Are you trying to be funny, Erin? Now is really not the time.”
“I think Grace should speak first,” Erin says. “Since she’s th
e nicest and most normal-looking.”
“Okay,” says Grace, and she opens her door. “Let’s go.”
“What?” Rosina says. “Now? We don’t have a plan. Grace, what are you going to say?”
“We’ve prepared as much as we can,” Grace says. “Now we just have to trust that the right words will come.”
“Is that one of your God things?” Rosina says. “Because I really don’t think I can handle that right now.”
Without answering, Grace steps out of the car and shuts the door behind her. Definitive. Decisive. Erin decides she likes this new Grace better than the old one.
The three girls converge on the front porch and, without speaking, stand facing one another.
“Did you know the triangle is the strongest geometric shape in nature?” Erin says.
They meet one another’s eyes, one by one by one. They breathe. They swallow. They turn toward the door. Grace presses the button of the doorbell. They hold their breath and wait.
The sound of footsteps. Locks unlocking. The door creaking open to a tiny crack, just enough to reveal a girl’s face.
“Can I help you?” the girl says. Her voice quivers. She is already afraid.
“Cheyenne?” Grace says gently.
“Yeah?”
“Hi, I’m Grace. I’m here with my friends Erin and Rosina. We go to Prescott High.”
The door opens a little more. Cheyenne sticks her head out—pale skin with freckles; long strawberry-blond, curly hair. Her blue eyes are red rimmed. Haunted. She takes a long look at each of the girls.
“I don’t really know how to say this,” Grace says. “We’re here because . . . Well . . .”
“We thought you might need our help,” Rosina says, stepping forward.
A wave of recognition passes through Cheyenne’s eyes, then a tremor of surprise. She opens the door a little more.
“A friend of ours overheard a couple of guys talking,” Grace says. “Guys we already know have done bad things to girls. They mentioned your name. They were talking about something they did. Something horrible.”
Erin is trying to hide behind Rosina. She is no longer calm. All of a sudden she wants to run back to the car. She wants to curl up in the backseat, where she felt safe just moments ago, lock the door, and wait for this all to be over.
Cheyenne’s eyes dart between the girls. Erin knows that look. Erin knows that panic.
“We’re so sorry about what happened,” Grace says. “We want to help. We want to support you in any way you need.”
“Does everyone in Prescott know?” Cheyenne says. She sounds mad. “How many people know?”
“Just us,” Grace says. “The guys don’t know we know.”
Cheyenne takes a deep breath. “This is crazy,” she says. She closes her eyes for a moment. “What the hell? I guess I should invite you in.”
“Only if you want to,” Grace says.
Cheyenne looks Grace in the eyes. “I want to,” she says softly, almost too quietly to hear. She turns around and they follow her inside.
Erin thinks the living room looks like the kind of place where nice things are supposed to happen. Not things like this.
“Sit down, I guess,” Cheyenne says as she curls up in an armchair already draped with a blanket, a cup and crumb-dusted plate on the table next to it. Grace and Rosina sit on the couch, and Erin takes the matching love seat with the arms just high enough Cheyenne won’t notice her rubbing her hands.
“So how do you think you’re going to help me?” Cheyenne says.
“That’s up to you,” Grace says. “At the very least, we can listen. You don’t have to keep it all in.”
Cheyenne looks at them, one by one. Erin studies her face as it softens. She can see the moment Cheyenne makes the decision to trust them.
“It happened on Saturday night,” she says. “I got home early Sunday morning, before my parents woke up. They didn’t even know I missed curfew. I slept almost all day yesterday, and when I woke up, I told my mom I have a fever. She let me stay home sick from school today.”
“Your parents don’t know?” Rosina says.
Cheyenne shakes her head. “I was going to tell someone,” she says. “My mom, or the counselor at school or something. But I had no idea how to do it. I was waiting to feel like talking about it. But that never happened.”
“Can you talk about it now?” Grace says. “With us?”
“Yeah,” Rosina says. “Do you want to talk about something superintimate and scary with these weird girls you’ve never met in your life who just showed up at your door?”
“Honestly, I think it’s actually easier,” Cheyenne says. “Because I don’t know you, I don’t have to worry about your reaction. I don’t have to worry about how it’s going to affect you.” Her eyes crinkle when she smiles. “Plus, you’re the Nowhere Girls, right? So I know I can trust you.”
“How’d you know?” Grace says.
“You’ve heard about us?” Rosina says.
“Of course I’ve heard about you,” Cheyenne says. “Everyone’s heard about you. You’re like superheroes or something.”
“Wow,” Grace says, and Erin can tell she’s trying not to smile.
“I don’t even know their names,” Cheyenne continues.
“We do,” Rosina says.
“I don’t want to know,” Cheyenne says quickly. “Please don’t tell me.”
Erin wonders if Rosina was right—maybe they shouldn’t be here. Maybe they shouldn’t be pushing Cheyenne to talk. Maybe it’s not always a good idea to talk about it. Everyone is always saying “Talk about it.” But what if talking hurts? What if it does more harm than good? What if talking about it just makes you relive it over and over again? What if it just gives the pain more fuel?
Or what if talking about it burns it out? That’s the theory, anyway. But has anyone scientifically proven it? Do memories have a half-life, like carbon? Do they shrink over time until they’re minuscule, microscopic? Can you share something so much you give it all away?
Erin does not know the answers to any of these questions. She hates not knowing. She hates looking at this girl in pain and not knowing how to fix it, but also not knowing how to run away, not knowing how to stop caring. Erin is powerless. She hates being powerless.
She hates the feeling of the world crushing her. She hates metaphors being the only way to describe it.
Cheyenne takes a deep breath. “I was at a party. A girl in my math class invited me. I just moved here so I don’t really know anyone that well. I went because I thought it’d be a good way to meet people, to make friends.” Her face scrunches up. “How ironic, right?
“There was this punch, and you couldn’t even taste the alcohol, so I had no idea how much I was drinking. I was just standing there in the corner, not talking to anyone, holding that stupid plastic cup and drinking because I had nothing else to do. I was so embarrassed. And then these three really cute guys started talking to me, and I was so grateful, you know?”
“Do you remember what happened?” Rosina asks.
“Of course I remember,” Cheyenne says. “I remember everything. I wasn’t that drunk. I wish I was. Then I’d have an excuse.”
“An excuse for what?” Grace says.
“For not doing anything,” Cheyenne says. Her hands grip the arms of her chair. She squeezes her eyes shut as she pulls her blanket-covered knees close to her chest. “I could have fought back maybe. I could have screamed. But it was like I was frozen. I just laid there. I couldn’t move. I saw everything. I felt everything.”
Cheyenne is shaking now. Erin looks away and tries to focus on the rhythm of her own rocking body. She thinks she might be shaking too. She doesn’t know which feelings are Cheyenne’s and which are her own.
Erin thinks about Spot. She thinks about what he does when she’s shaking, when Erin feels like Cheyenne must be feeling. Erin thinks of Spot resting his furry warm face on her hand. She thinks of the feeling of his breath on her f
ingers. She gets off her chair and walks across the living room. She kneels on the floor and puts her hand on Cheyenne’s. Erin thinks of what she would have wanted to hear if someone had ever helped her.
“Just breathe,” Erin says. And Cheyenne breathes. And Erin breathes with her. They wrap their fingers together. They hold hands. Erin knows she is breaking the rule of not touching her. They breathe in. They breathe out. Erin wonders how she can feel Cheyenne’s tears on her cheeks, but then she realizes they’re her own.
“It’s not your fault,” Erin says. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“But maybe I could have done something,” Cheyenne says. “Maybe I could have stopped it. If I fought back. I didn’t even fight back.”
“You shouldn’t have to,” Rosina says. “We should never be put in a position where we have to fight someone off us.”
“Shit,” Cheyenne says, covering her face with her hands. “I can still feel them on top of me. The weight. They were so heavy. I can smell them. Their BO. The beer on their breath.” She speaks between her fingers. “My neck got wet when they breathed.” She puts a hand on her neck, as if she’s trying to cover up the memory on her skin.
Erin leans into Cheyenne’s leg. Her whole right side is touching another human being, and she is not freaking out. Erin is not thinking about herself at all.
Cheyenne lowers her hands to her lap. Her lips are closed tight and thin as she sits up a little straighter.
“I knew I was supposed to tell the cops right away,” she says. “I know that’s what they’re always saying on those detective shows. But I was so tired. I just wanted to take a shower. I had to. There’s no way to describe it. I didn’t care about turning them in, or justice, or any of that. I didn’t care about them at all. I just wanted to sleep. I just wanted it to be over. I just wanted to make it go away. I had just dealt with it for the whole time it happened, I didn’t want to deal with it any more.” She looks up. “I’m sorry. I should have told someone. I shouldn’t have waited this long.”