She gives me a look, and I squirm.
“What? What’s wrong?”
Her hand tightens on mine. “Nothing. I just think you’re really awesome for doing this.”
My face burns. It’s cool that she thinks so, but I’m the furthest thing from awesome there is. I change the subject. “Britt, I’ve been thinking about Thanksgiving. Do you wanna maybe take off somewhere? Maybe camping?”
“In November? Are you nuts? We’d get shot by hunters.”
Can’t say I’d mind. I lift a shoulder. “Whatever. It doesn’t have to be camping. I just…you know. I can’t go home. I knew when I left in August that it would be better if I never went back. I think my mom kind of knows that. She’s texting me like crazy.”
Britt runs a hand along my cheek. “You should do it. Go home, I mean. Not camping.”
The thought of stepping foot into that house and facing Ashley’s cold, flat eyes and my parents’ tension makes me shiver. But that’s not why I won’t go home.
It’s because they need a break. All of them. If not seeing me means Ashley has a peaceful holiday, than I should do whatever I can to make that happen for her. Not having to referee us should lighten Mom and Dad’s load, too.
“No. I can’t help anybody there. Here… I don’t know. Maybe I can.” I shrug, thinking of Aaron Dreschler. I like knowing maybe something I did stopped somebody from getting hurt. “Ashley’s never gonna forgive me, and it is what it is, you know? But I’m doing this for me now. Maybe figure out how I can not be one of those assholes hassling girls like you.”
Her eyes lift to mine, and inside them, I see this sort of glow. She smiles softly. “I wish Ashley could see you like I do. If she did, she’d know what I know.”
I slowly shake my head, not sure I want to ask this question, but I do. “What do you know?”
“That you’re a good person.”
I snort and pull back, but she grabs my face and turns it toward hers.
“You are, Derek,” she insists. “Look, you’re not perfect. You don’t know all the answers. You don’t have life all figured out, so you improve. You fix. And yeah, you mess up a lot, but the point is, you change. Do you have any clue how freakin’ rare that is? If my dad were like you, maybe my parents would still be married.”
Frowning, I try to talk with her hands mushing my cheeks together. “So what. Messing up means I’m good?”
Britt rolls her eyes skyward. “No, you jerk. It’s knowing when you mess up. You don’t hide it. You don’t downplay it. You own it. That’s what makes you good.”
Pretty words. And yeah, really pretty girl.
A cheer rises in the distance. “Come on,” I say “We should get going.”
In front of the campus student activities building, the crowd is already big. Members of the marching band, out of uniform, bang drums, and everywhere I look, I see T-shirts bearing the Take Back the Night moon emblem. In front of the building, there’s a booth where two guys are handing out those T-shirts. Opposite the booth, four girls are unfolding an enormous banner. Grinning, Brittany tugs on my hand to walk faster. We sign in and get our T-shirts, a couple of candles stuck into cardboard drip guards, and a program.
Past the booth, there’s what looks like a clothesline strung up between a couple of trees. Clipped to the line are clothes and posters that say things like This is what I was wearing the night I was raped.
It’s a pair of flannel pants.
I swallow hard, and I keep reading.
He said I was so sexy, he couldn’t control himself. We’d been dating for four months.
This is a dress. It cannot give consent.
He told me, “You make me so hard.”
Stop telling girls how to dress and start telling boys NOT to rape.
He asked me, “How was it?” I cried and fought the whole time, and he wanted me to give his performance a score.
“Derek. Derek!”
I look down, find Brittany staring anxiously up at me.
“Derek, breathe. Just breathe.”
I shake my head, my whole body coiled when I spy people around us staring at me like I’m a bomb about to blow. I guess I am.
“Here. Have some water.” She presses her bottle into my hands.
I pop the cap and realize I’m tight as a spring. “I’m okay, Britt.”
“You’re flushed and look like hot molten lava is about to pour out of your ears. I know those signs are hard to see. Believe me.”
I shake my head again. I don’t even know what I’m feeling anymore.
“Come on,” she says, tugging my hand.
I let Brittany lead me to an area near the fountain where the crowd is thickest. There’s a mic standing on top of a small temporary stage and a sense of anticipation in the air I recognize from my football games. But I don’t feel anticipation. Jeez, those posters messed me up. I don’t know what Vic said to Ashley.
I should. But I never asked because I wanted her to forget. To heal. To move on.
Which isn’t true.
I never asked because I didn’t want to know.
My phone buzzes. I pull it out and glance at it. It’s from Ian.
Ian: Hey, man. You nearby? I’m at the sign-in booth.
Derek: Yeah, I’m by the stage.
Less than a minute later, I spot him, holding hands with a girl dressed head to toe in black. This is his girl. Grace. She’s supposed to speak tonight. Her boots have metal studs on them. Her shirt is more metal than material. Her hair is long and straight and a sort of light brown, but it’s her eyes that make my throat close. They’re bright gray—almost silver—and they don’t stop darting around, taking in everything and everybody.
Ashley does this, too. After…after Vic. She hangs back and studies the environment. If Justin’s there, she edges closer to him. If he’s not, she moves to Dad.
Not me. Not anymore.
Ian flashes a smile when he spots me. I stand up and raise a hand in greeting.
“Hey, Derek.”
“Hey.”
Ian’s eyes dart to Brittany.
“Oh, um, this is my girlfriend, Brittany.”
“This is—um—Grace. The girlfriend.”
She shoots him a silver glare, and he laughs at our questioning expressions. “Grace has a thing. Hates when I call her my anything.”
Sure. Okay.
“Hi, Grace. I love your boots,” Brittany gushes.
While the girls make small talk, Ian studies me. “You okay, man? You look like you want to start flattening people.”
I spread my hands out. “I don’t know. I’m just…feeling like a complete ass, you know? Did you read those posters?”
Understanding crosses his face, and he nods. “The posters. Yeah. I read them. Did you see the one that said something about being so sexy, I can’t control myself?”
When I nod, Ian looks down and clears his throat, and says, “I used that exact line on the girl I lost my virginity with—and then, didn’t talk to her for over a year.”
My mouth falls open. I stare at him like he just sprouted horns.
He smiles halfway. “I hated her, you know. Grace, I mean. When it first happened. I was sure she was making up the whole story. Zac, the guy who did it? He was my friend.”
I wonder if he hated her in the universally accepted definition of the word or if it was true hate, but I don’t ask.
“Then Grace and I had to serve some stupid weeklong punishment together for mouthing off to teachers and got to know each other. When she told me what happened, it was a way different story than the one Zac told.”
I consider that for a minute. “So why did you believe her and not him?”
He shrugs and then shakes his head. “I didn’t at first. But the entire school called Grace a whore and a liar, and she never qu
it and never tried to hide. I figured nobody would do that to themselves if it wasn’t true.”
The posters hanging on the clothesline snap in a sudden gusty breeze. “You know, I told Grace that they should put up the stuff everybody says to a rape survivor after they go public instead of the things the rapists said.” He turns to watch Grace, smiling kind of shyly at something Britt is telling her. They’re standing near the stage. “It’s ridiculous, the things people say, people who are supposed to help.”
My eyes go wide. “Yeah, but some girls really do lie.”
He looks at me sharply. “Some do. About the same as people lie about any other crime. Do you think your sister lied?”
I think about that for a minute. “I really hoped she did.”
“I get that. It’s hard to accept that someone you know, someone you consider a good friend, could do something like that. Harder still to look back on moments when you could have said something, done something, only you didn’t because you didn’t want to be the buzz killer.”
Sebastian’s refusal to play in the scavenger hunt picks that moment to haunt me. God, we really ganged up on him over that.
“And because enough guys like you and me don’t step up when we have the chance, this kind of stuff keeps happening.” He waves his hand at the posters on the clothesline. “To somebody we love.”
If I’d refused then, if I’d stood next to Sebastian when the scavenger hunt lists were distributed and said, “This is wrong,” could I have prevented Ashley from getting hurt?
The thought breaks my damn heart.
• • •
Somebody with a mic standing on the stage tries to quiet the crowd.
“Welcome! Welcome everyone! We’re here to Take Back the Night!”
The crowd erupts into cheers and we’re again quieted down to listen to the order of events. We’ll light our candles and walk around the fountain at the north side of the campus to right back here, where the stage is. Then, there will be an open mic, when anybody can share their story. But first, we’ll listen to Grace Collier deliver the keynote speech.
Grace moves closer to Ian and he holds out his hand. She clutches it in both of hers, lips twitching into something that tries to be a smile but fails. She breathes heavily and I hear him murmur, “You’re okay. You’re safe. Do the counting.”
The counting. My stomach twists.
Ashley does that. She holds her breath for three seconds and slowly lets it go. Ian counts softly, just under his breath, the same way Mom does for Ashley, only he counts backward. Grace holds her breath, then exhales slowly as he counts, tapping one finger against her hand. I remember hearing about the Laurel Point High School Rape case. It was so many years ago.
And Grace still suffers.
Viciously, I kick a water bottle lying on the ground, send it careening toward the stage. I hate this, I fucking hate it. Is this what it’ll be like for Ashley? Grace jerks like I just fired a gun in the air. Ian shoots me a dark glare, and Brittany looks at me like I’m insane. I think I am.
“Sorry,” I mutter and step away from them so they can have whatever time they need.
Grace lets go of Ian’s hand and walks up three steps to the platform. Ian’s eyes are glued to her and he looks like he’s ready to pounce if she so much as trips on a crack in the sidewalk.
“Hi,” she says into the mic and laughs once at the reverb. “I’m Grace. You might know me as the Laurel Point rape victim. I was pretty famous about six years ago.”
The crowd cheers at her joke. Six years. I would have been in seventh grade then.
“So we’re here to Take Back the Night!”
Another cheer goes up.
“But we can only do that if we talk about something nobody wants to talk about. And that’s rape culture. See, a lot of guys believe women like me hate men. That we’re a bunch of man-hating feminists who worship Satan.”
The audience laughs.
“These are men who think it’s okay to harass women they see on the street, demand that we smile for them or give them our numbers, and then call us bitches if we don’t. These are the men who protect and support the athletes, the celebrities, the coaches and teachers, the priests and next-door neighbors and politicians accused of rape instead of listening to the accusers.”
The cheer that goes up at that makes my ears ring.
“For the record, I don’t hate men. But I do hate feeling scared of men. That’s why we’re here tonight. Tonight is about us. As women and men. It’s about our society. It’s about taking a long, hard look at why the crime of rape is so significantly underreported. It’s about asking why we’re still teaching girls not to get raped instead of teaching boys not to rape.”
Cheers ring out across the quad, and I glance at Ian, and he’s in some kind of trance, watching his girl work this crowd. His lips are parted, and his eyes gleam. It’s pretty obvious that he’d do anything for her.
I…I wouldn’t do that for Ashley. I’d proven that, hadn’t I? My sister hadn’t asked for much. Just for her brother to act like her brother and not some stuck-up dick who’d rather hang out with his friends instead of her.
Grace doesn’t talk about her rape. Instead, she talks about after. She talks about nobody believing her.
About losing her friends.
About her dad’s inability to deal.
About the police refusing to make an arrest.
She talks about the school protecting their star athlete, about his teammates harassing her, calling her a liar. She talks about the bone-deep feelings of guilt and loneliness that almost compelled her to take her own life.
The crowd continues to listen and cheer in the right places. But then, Grace says something profound.
“I didn’t get it until much, much later, that I wasn’t alone. What happened to me, what was done to me, impacted more than just me. It impacted my family. It impacted my entire community. Because when I pointed my finger at one of our own, I showed everybody that the monster doesn’t put on a scary mask and hide in the bushes, waiting for his opportunity. No, he doesn’t hide at all. He lives in plain sight, takes off his mask of total normalcy, and attacks only after you trust him. When you believe a nice kid like him, a guy from a great family, is a monster, it means you have to redefine what a monster really is…and own your share of the blame in creating those monsters. For way too many people, that’s as bad as admitting you’re a monster, too.”
Oh God.
Lights flash in my visual field…little twinkling lights interrupted by flashes of Vic tracking Ashley while she danced on the field, of Dakota’s hurt expression when she discovered I’d wanted to get back together just to score points. Those fucking points. Of Ashley’s bruises when…Sebastian found her. Of me yelling at Ashley to leave me alone, to quit the dance team. The lights beat brighter, faster, until I swear I’m back there again, back running across the field so fast my lungs are on fire, back under those bleachers where Victor is with Ashley…only this time, it’s not Ashley and Vic.
It’s me.
It’s me with Dakota. A hundred points!
Gasping, I drop to the ground and wrap my arms around my middle. I feel like I’m gonna hurl…or maybe die. And I don’t care.
“Derek! Derek, what’s wrong?” Britt falls to her knees next to me.
Ian tears his gaze from Grace and studies me.
Our eyes meet, and he nods once. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. He tried to tell me, but I think I already knew.
I’m the monster.
Dad pulling me off Ashley’s bed, insisting I go shower off Vic’s smell. Because I’m just like Vic.
A monster.
I sit on the ground for a minute or two and try to hold my shit together. Ian’s studying me like I’m a slide under a microscope, and Brittany looks like she’s about to call an ambulance
and have me committed. Grace doesn’t look at us. She focuses on what’s directly in front of her.
After a minute, it smacks me with all the force of a tackle that I’m probably making Grace nervous. I scramble to my feet, dust off my ass.
“Sorry, man. Sorry.”
Ian shakes his head. “Don’t worry about her. She’s done this a few dozen times now, Derek. You won’t rattle her.” And then he flashes a fierce grin. “You can’t.”
Brittany grabs my hand, which is shaking. I want to run, head back to my dorm room, plug in headphones, and get lost in some headbanging music until this rally is over, but I can’t. The entire football team is supposed to be here. I pull the hood of my sweatshirt over my head and shove my hands into my pockets.
Grace finishes her speech to thunderous applause, and the rally organizer takes the mic, instructing everybody to light their candles and start the march. It takes about fifteen more minutes to get the crowd organized. Brittany’s got her candle lit and holds it out to me.
She says she loves me. How does she not see the monster in me? I don’t belong here. I’m exactly the reason why these people are out here tonight.
“Derek?” She waves her candle at me.
Mechanically, I pull the stupid candle out of my pocket, and she lights it. We start the march. Everybody chants, “We are women. We are men. Together we fight to take back the night!”
Brittany nudges me with an elbow. “You’re scaring me. Are you okay?”
No. I shrug and shake my head. “Working on it.”
“This is pretty great, right?”
“It’s not at all what I expected.”
She smiles, teeth flashing in the low light. “There’s hope for you yet.”
Hope.
The word kind of hangs there in midair, taunting me, forcing me to face it, but I don’t want to.
The chant is growing, getting louder, and has suddenly split by gender with the women shouting out, “We are women,” and the men answering in a deeper pitch, “We are men.”
It’s working its way inside me, a challenge. A dare to be better than what I am. All this time, I thought I was a man, but I wasn’t. I was a pretender, a wannabe. Now these protestors are daring me to be a real man, a man who’s not afraid to tell other dudes when their jokes aren’t funny, when their behavior is scaring someone, when they’re coming on way too strong…and a man who’s not afraid to hear it when he’s the one being a jerk.