“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” Grace says. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“They were so nice to me at the party,” Cheyenne says, shaking her head. “They were asking me all sorts of questions about myself, like they really gave a shit. And then I realized I was drunk, and I said it. I remember. I said, ‘Hey, I’m drunk,’ and started laughing, and then they looked at each other, like they were giving each other a sign, like that’s exactly what they were waiting for. I should have known then. I shouldn’t have gone outside with them. God, I was so stupid. They said they were going to walk me to my car and drive me home because I wasn’t fit to drive. I thought they were being so nice. I thought they were helping me.
“I didn’t know something was wrong until it was too late. We were outside. I handed one of them the keys to my car. He opened the back door and told me to get in. He was older. He was the leader. His voice wasn’t nice anymore. He told the others what to do.”
“Do you need to take a break?” Grace says. “You don’t need to tell all the details if you don’t want to.”
The way Cheyenne shakes her head reminds Erin of how her mother shakes out the kitchen rug. Like she’s trying to beat it clean.
“Only two of them ended up doing it,” Cheyenne says. “The third one ran off. I remember he had a goatee. I could hear him throwing up in the bushes while it was happening.”
“Jesus,” says Rosina.
“I haven’t touched my car since I drove home that morning. I never want to go in that car again. God, there’s probably still their fucking condoms on the floor. Who fucking does that? Who rapes someone with a condom and leaves it lying around like that? Either they’re really fucking stupid or they’re so delusional and arrogant they think they’ll never get caught.”
Cheyenne stops speaking abruptly. Her face turns pale, gray tinged. She covers her mouth, throws the blanket off her lap, and stands up. “Excuse me,” she mumbles, and runs out of the living room into a room off the hall, closing the door behind her.
Erin moves off the floor and back to the love seat. She tries not to listen as Cheyenne throws up in the bathroom.
Erin’s nerves are all on fire. It hurts so much she almost can’t stand it—this caring, this remembering. This letting go. This letting the world back into the places she’s worked so hard to shut it out of.
“You guys,” Rosina whispers. “What are we doing here? What are we doing to this poor girl?”
“What do you mean?” Grace says. “We’re helping her.”
“She’s so upset she’s puking in the bathroom. How is that helping her?”
“She’s choosing to talk to us, Rosina,” Grace says. “We’re not making her do anything.”
“We don’t know that. Maybe she was afraid to say no to us. Maybe she’s in so much shock she’s not thinking straight. We want to get these guys so bad maybe we’re not thinking about what’s best for Cheyenne. Maybe we’re taking advantage of her.”
“You’re not taking advantage of me,” Cheyenne says from the hallway. “I want to talk.” She walks to her chair and sits back down. “I want to get those guys as much as you do.”
“Okay,” Rosina says.
“My car is full of evidence,” Cheyenne says. Something about her has changed. All of a sudden it’s like she’s leading a business meeting instead of talking about her own rape. “Fingerprints. The condoms. All kinds of DNA.” She pauses. Swallows. “I have bruises.”
No one says anything. Erin knows it’s because there’s too much to feel and no words for it. Disgust. Horror. But also the thrill of hope that Cheyenne may help them finally get these guys.
“Do you think you could identify them?” Grace says. “In a lineup or whatever?”
“Yes,” Cheyenne says. “Definitely.”
Erin unzips her backpack, pulls out the yearbook she brought, the one from last year that Mom insisted on buying even though Erin knew she’d never ask anyone to sign it. She opens to a page near the middle, an entire half page dedicated to Spencer, Eric, and Ennis, the three kings of Prescott High, arms around each other and smiling like they rule the world. Erin walks slowly, carefully, across the room, the book open in her hands like an offering, a gift.
Cheyenne flinches and looks away. “You can close it now.”
“Is that them?” Grace says.
Cheyenne nods, looking down at her lap. She fiddles with a snag on her blanket.
Then all of a sudden she looks up, eyes wide. “Oh, shit,” she says. “Are these the same guys who raped that girl last year?”
“Yes,” Grace says.
“Of course they are,” Cheyenne says. “Jesus, I can’t believe that didn’t even cross my mind until now. Isn’t that sick?” She emits something like a laugh, but also the opposite of a laugh. “I just assumed it was entirely different guys. Like anyone could do this. Like it’s that common.”
“It is, though,” Rosina says. “Way too fucking common.”
“We have to stop them,” Cheyenne says. “I have to stop them. I have to talk to the cops.” She stands up. She pushes her hair behind her ears.
“Are you sure?” Rosina says. “Your life is going to totally change. People will find out. Your parents, your school. It’ll probably be in the news.”
“But what else am I going to do?” Cheyenne says. “Sit around here forever trying to forget about it? Keep it inside me for the rest of my life and not do anything to make it right? If I don’t do anything, they’re just going to keep raping other girls. Then I’ll have to live with that the rest of my life. They need to go to jail.”
“But there’s a chance they won’t,” Rosina says. “There’s a chance they’ll get away with it, just like they did last time.”
“I know,” Cheyenne says. “But I have to at least try. I have to fight. I want to tell the police. Right now.”
“We’ll take you,” Erin says, her voice so strange in this room that has barely heard it. “We’ll stay with you as long as you need us.”
“Thank you,” Cheyenne says, holding Erin’s gaze with her own. “Thank you.”
ROSINA.
No one talks much on the way to the station. Grace asks Cheyenne if she wants to call her parents, but she says she doesn’t want to involve them until after she tells the cops her story. Grace probably thinks this is crazy, but Rosina gets it. Cheyenne doesn’t want her parents’ fear to get in the way of her courage.
Erin’s in the front with Grace. Rosina keeps peeking at Cheyenne out of the corner of her eye. She doesn’t want her to know she’s looking. Cheyenne is so still, so emotionless. They’re driving through farmland, the land flat and empty until it reaches the mountain foothills so many miles in the distance. The sky has cleared and the light of the late afternoon sun warms Cheyenne’s skin with an orange glow. Rosina wonders if she had met Cheyenne before what happened, would she notice now that something is different. She wonders if you can see rape on someone’s face.
“Does anyone want to listen to some music?” Grace says.
“Nothing you have,” Rosina says. “No offense.” Grace has the world’s worst taste in music. She’s almost seventeen and still listens to boy bands.
“Does Fir City even have its own police station?” Erin says.
“No,” Cheyenne says with a flat voice. “We have to go to the county sheriff. There’s a station down the road a couple of miles.”
They drive in silence. Grace’s hands are at a perfect ten and two on the steering wheel. Erin is straight backed, looking out the window, probably thinking about how this all used to be underwater, how there are shells and fish fossils under all this grass and cow shit.
“I’m not going to break down, you know,” Cheyenne says suddenly. “I’m not like that other girl. I heard about how she went crazy and had to leave school and everything. I heard about how she lost it. I’m not going to be like that. I’m not going to let them ruin my life.”
“Lucy didn’t let them ruin her
life,” Rosina says. “They just did. It’s not something she chose.” It comes out sounding a lot meaner than Rosina intended.
“I know,” Cheyenne says. “But I’m going to be strong. I’m not even going to cry anymore about it. I’m done. Those assholes can’t have any more of me.”
She is looking out the window. She is clenching her jaw so tight Rosina can see the muscles moving down her neck.
“I really appreciate you guys coming out here and helping me do this,” Cheyenne says. “Don’t get me wrong. But I don’t think you can really have an opinion about how I’m supposed to feel right now. I mean, have any of you ever been raped?”
Erin’s head snaps forward. “My research about how to best talk to a rape victim states that those trying to help should not share their own experiences because it takes the focus from the victim and belittles her experience.”
“That’s bullshit,” Cheyenne says. “This rape victim wants to know.”
“I’ve never been raped,” Grace says very quietly. Her knuckles are white on the steering wheel.
“Me neither,” Rosina says.
Erin is silent. Rosina feels like she’s been ejected from the car, like she’s falling, like the air is being sucked out of her and she’s trapped in a vacuum with nothing to inhale.
“Erin,” Cheyenne says. “You have?”
Erin folds her arms over her chest. “I never cried about it either,” Erin says. “I’ve spent the past three years not crying about it. In retrospect, I’m not sure that was the best approach.”
“Oh, Erin,” Grace says. Rosina can hear the tears already in her voice.
“Sometimes the not crying hurts worse than the crying,” Erin says.
“What happened?” Grace says. Rosina knows her face is already drenched even though she can’t see it from the backseat. Grace cries enough for all of them.
“You’re not supposed to pressure the victim for details,” Erin says. “And you’re definitely not supposed to get more emotional than her.”
“I can’t help it!” Grace is full-on sobbing now. Rosina is grateful for Grace’s display of emotion. It takes attention away from her; no one sees her face twitching, her lips tightening into a thin line.
“Are you okay, Grace?” Cheyenne says. “Do you need to pull over?”
“Oh, Lord,” Grace sniffles. “You’re asking me how I am? I’m fine. How are you?”
“I don’t want to talk about me right now,” Cheyenne says. “I’m going to have to do a lot of that in a few minutes.”
“I don’t want to talk about me, either,” Erin says.
“I’m sorry,” Grace says. “I’m just so sorry.”
Grace manages to pull herself together over the next couple of miles. “We’re almost there,” she says as a cluster of buildings becomes visible in the distance. “Are you ready, Cheyenne?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
The Fir County sheriff’s office is in a town even smaller than Fir City. Only a handful of buildings make up the main street area. Grace pulls into the almost-empty gravel parking lot. She turns off the car. Nobody moves.
“This is really happening,” Cheyenne says. “I’m really doing this. Shit, you guys. I’m scared.”
“You should be scared,” Erin says, turning around to face Cheyenne. “This is going to be really hard.”
“Um, Erin?” Grace says.
“You didn’t let me finish,” Erin says. “What I was going to say was this is going to be really hard, but nothing will ever be as hard as that night. You already survived that. You can survive anything now.”
Someone besides Rosina might be full of love for her friend right now, might want to wrap her arms around Erin and never let go. But Rosina doesn’t do things like that. Instead, she looks out the window and rubs her nose, which is a little wet, but of course it’s not from tears.
“Okay,” Cheyenne says. “Let’s do this.”
The inside of the sheriff’s station is almost identical to the Prescott police station—the same beige walls, the same handful of mostly empty desks behind a long counter in the front. “Hello, ladies,” says the deputy behind the counter. “How can I help you?”
“Um,” Cheyenne says. “Is there a female cop I can talk to?”
His face softens. “I’m sorry,” he says, and he might actually mean it. “Unfortunately, we don’t have any gals here right now.” He pauses, smiles warmly. “How about you talk to the sheriff?” he says. “He’s in his office right now. I promise, he’s a real nice guy. Has twin daughters almost your age. They’re twelve now, I think. He loves those girls more than life itself.”
It is Erin who Cheyenne looks to now. Some kind of wordless message passes between them. Erin nods. Cheyenne takes a deep breath.
“Okay,” Cheyenne says. “I’d like to talk to the sheriff.”
“We’ll stay here until you’re done,” Grace says.
“You don’t have to do that,” Cheyenne says.
“Yes, we do,” says Rosina.
Erin, Grace, and Rosina sit for what seems like several hours but is only about forty-five minutes. In that time Erin finishes her homework, Rosina avoids several phone calls from her mother, and Grace spends most of the time in the bathroom to, Rosina suspects, spare the rest of them from her emotional meltdown.
“You know what?” Rosina says. “This may sound bad, but I can’t help but think maybe it’s a good thing Cheyenne just moved here. She wasn’t here to see what happened to Lucy after she reported her rape. She has no reason to expect that she won’t be believed.”
“God, I hope she’s right,” Grace says. “I’ve been praying about it the whole time we’ve been in here.”
So that’s what Grace was doing in the bathroom. For once Rosina doesn’t think she’s nuts. Maybe she’s gotten used to her weird God stuff. Or maybe Grace has been secretly trying to convert her this whole time, and breaking down Rosina’s resistance is all a part of her plan.
Or maybe, deep down, Rosina wishes she believed in something. Maybe she wishes she had a god she could pray to right now, like Grace does.
“What if we’re setting her up to be another Lucy?” Rosina says. “Once word gets out, is Cheyenne going to be crushed like she was? Are we going to screw up her life more than those bastards already did?”
“We’re doing the right thing,” Grace says. “Cheyenne is doing the right thing.”
“Since when does that matter?” Rosina says.
“Since we made it matter,” Erin says, looking up from her book.
God, please, Rosina thinks. Please help her.
Is thinking the same as praying?
Please help us.
The door to the sheriff’s office opens. The girls stand as Cheyenne walks out. Her face is unreadable. She looks tired, but not broken. She smiles weakly at her friends as a tall, broad-shouldered man follows her out of the office. He looks like a dad. A good one.
“When your mom gets here,” he says gently, “we’ll need to all sit down together and talk about next steps, but I figured you needed a little break from my office. I know I do.” He smiles at Cheyenne warmly, how Rosina as a little girl used to imagine her father would smile at her if he was still alive. Something twists inside her.
“These are the friends who helped you today?” the sheriff says, looking at the girls. Rosina wonders if she should be worried. Is he going to talk to Chief Delaney? Is he going to tell them they’re the secret leaders of the Nowhere Girls?
“Yeah,” Cheyenne says. “I couldn’t have done it without them.”
“Those are good friends to have,” he says, but Rosina’s not sure she completely believes him, even after everything Cheyenne has said to assure them she wants to do this. Because every step they take forward takes them further away from the time before any of this happened.
Rosina catches Erin looking at her strangely. “What?” Rosina says.
“Don’t worry,” Erin says. “I can see you worrying.??
?
Rosina laughs. “You’re telling me not to worry. That’s hilarious.”
The front door swings open. An older version of Cheyenne walks in wearing nurse’s scrubs, spots her daughter behind the front desk, and they rush into each other’s arms. Rosina is embarrassed to witness this moment between them. Something so intimate, something so primal, as a mother rocking her wounded child.
Rosina’s phone buzzes with another call from her mother.
Rosina wonders, what if this were her? What if Cheyenne’s mom were replaced by her own? Would she be here holding her like this? Would this be her mother’s first reaction to news that her daughter had been hurt? Would she hug Rosina like this, love her like this, before asking any questions, no matter what happened, no matter what the story? Could Rosina trust her own mother to love her?
But that doesn’t matter right now. Cheyenne is looking at the girls from inside her mother’s arms. She mouths, “Thank you.” And for a brief moment Rosina has an unfamiliar sense, not quite a thought but not quite a feeling, a sudden burst of clarity, of certainty—it’s going to be okay. Is this what Grace’s faith feels like? Does she feel it all the time? Is this how she knows God exists?
Cheyenne’s mother lets go. She follows the sheriff into his office without ever acknowledging the three girls sitting in the waiting area.
Cheyenne stays back a moment before going with them. “You can go home now,” she says. “I think we’ve got it from here.”
The girls don’t move.
“Really, you guys,” she says. “I’m going to be okay.”
“You have our numbers,” Grace says. “You’ll call us?”
“Of course,” she says. “And you’ll call me.”
“I won’t call you,” Erin says. “I don’t like talking on the phone. But I will text you.”
“Okay.” Cheyenne smiles.
“Cheyenne,” her mom calls from inside the office. “Honey, are you ready?”
Cheyenne waves at the girls, turns around, and closes the door behind her.