I take a good look around and decide there must be about a thousand of us marching. The light of all those candles reflecting off the gold trim of so many Rocky Hill University sweatshirts holds back the darkness. I see my coaches, guys from the team, my fellow GAR members.
“Yo, Lawrence!”
I whip my head around to find my roommate, Julian, grinning at me.
“This is sick,” he says, grabbing me in a one-armed hug that practically lifts me off my feet.
I wrestle free, anxious to keep our candles from setting our faces on fire.
“Yeah, it’s…powerful.” I have this completely ridiculous urge to grab a microphone and apologize to the entire female population, but I know it won’t do a damn thing to fix stuff with Ashley.
“Hey, Julian,” Britt says. “This is Ian and Grace.”
Julian’s face changes, a look of awe spreading across it. “Damn, girl. That speech was amazing.”
Grace smiles, shrugs, and leans a tiny bit closer to Ian. “Thank you.”
“Uh-uh. Thank you.” Julian falls into step beside us, marching to the rhythm of the chant. “Hey. Did Derek tell you about what happened in the fitness center?”
Ian frowns. “What happened?”
Julian tells them the entire story about Aaron Dreschler in the gym talking about how he wants to grab somebody. “And my man, Derek, goes caveman on his ass.”
Grace’s face snaps toward mine. “You beat him up?”
I shake my head. “No. I just threatened to. I let campus security deal with him.”
Brittany’s hand squeezes mine. I look down at her, and she’s got this bright smile for me that makes me feel all warm inside.
“And what did they do about it?” Grace asks.
I look away. “I actually don’t know if they did anything.”
“Maybe you should check.”
Bristling, I shake my head. “I don’t run the university.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Grace says, waving a hand in the air. “You could have gone to all your football teammates and told everybody what this guy said. Make sure they know why it’s wrong.”
A hundred protests form, and I open my mouth to argue with her. But the exasperated look on Ian’s face stops me. “Oh.” I suddenly get it. “I did exactly what you just said in your speech. I didn’t see it as my problem.” My jaw tightens, and I stare straight ahead. Once again, I’m the bad guy. Once again, I’m getting blamed for shit I tried to prevent.
I cannot do this anymore.
“It was nice meeting you,” I tell Ian and Grace. Then I tug on Brittany’s hand. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
“What? Derek, I—”
I don’t listen. I just pull her out of the parade of marchers. We cut across the quad, elbowing through the crowd until finally, I find a spot where it’s quiet, relatively speaking.
“Derek, what’s going on?”
“I don’t fucking know!” I explode, flinging both arms up.
Britt jerks like I hit her.
“You’re angry.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
I cross my arms and glare at her. Didn’t we just cover that I don’t know? Not much has changed in the one-point-two seconds that elapsed to suddenly fill me with knowledge.
She puts up both hands, palms out. “Come on, Derek. Psych major, remember? What’s fueling your anger?”
Sighing loudly, I fling myself to the ground, my back against a tree. “Failure, Britt. A total systemic complete failure of me to do my job!”
“Your job?”
“Yeah. As a brother. As a man. As a fucking human being!” Jesus, how does she not see this about me? “Did you listen to Grace? Did you hear those words?”
She waits for me to connect the dots.
“I’m one of the monsters Grace was talking about.”
She looks at me, blue eyes big and round. “No. No way. You’re no monster. You’re not a rapist.”
“Might as well be!” I shout and scramble back to my feet, needing to move. “I didn’t do anything to prevent it. Or anything to fix it. Hell, it was Sebastian who insisted we find them, not me! And I sure didn’t do anything to help after. No, the only thing I did was take off, after I told an entire courtroom he’s not a real rapist.” I finish with a sneer of self-directed disgust. “And you just heard Grace say I didn’t do enough about Aaron.”
Brittany puts herself right in front of me, hands on my chest. “Derek. Listen to me. Nobody’s attacking you or blaming you for anything. Tonight is about seeing a different perspective, you know?”
“I blame me,” I snap back, thumping my chest with a palm. “I—God! I am seeing things from a different perspective—my sister’s. She blames me. My parents, they can barely look at me. My brother? He’s suddenly the referee, telling me to do this because Mom’s upset or not to do that, because Dad is. Didn’t you see the way Grace controlled her anxiety? It’s been years since Grace’s assault and she’s still doing all the things Ashley has to do, like deep breaths and counting. You know what that says to me, Britt? What happened to them isn’t a twisted ankle or a pulled muscle that heals after some ice, some meds, and some therapy. It’s—” My voice cracks on a sob. I rake both hands through my hair and rock back and forth, barely able to keep my shit together.
“It’s…it’s an amputation, Brittany. It’s always gonna be here.”
“Okay, Derek,” she says after a long moment. “You’re right. If you’re so sure it will always be there, why do you keep trying to deny it? Find a way to live with it. That’s what you need to focus on.” She gives my hand a squeeze. “Come on. We should get back.”
I let Brittany lead me back to the rally, her words ringing in my ears. How do you find a way to live with something you hate about yourself with every cell in your body? I’m a big guy. Strong. I can take a lot of pain.
But this? I don’t know if anybody’s strong enough for this.
We catch up to the crowd back at the stage. The rally organizer is at the podium and leans into the mic. She’s a tall woman with short hair and a big voice.
“I have a question for you!” she shouts to the still-cheering assembly. “Rape culture—is it real? How do we end it? The mic is open!”
She steps back and waves her hand to the crowd, encouraging people to step up, to share.
My stomach drops and rolls, and I don’t know how much more I can take.
A small girl who looks like a high school freshman approaches the mic. She adjusts it and then says in a loud, clear voice, “I was raped by my stepfather more than once. My mother didn’t believe me. We have to listen to victims when they come forward instead of assuming they’re lying! That’s how we’ll change things.”
As the crowd cheers, Tiny Girl looks straight at me, like she knows I didn’t believe my sister.
Another girl walks up to the podium. “We can change it by making the punishments a lot harsher. When I was harassed by my softball coach and told him I would report him, he just shrugged and said, ‘What are they gonna do? Fire me?’ They didn’t even do that, and that creep is still coaching.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. Victor Patton is gonna be released from prison because I told the judge not to punish him too harshly.
The next person approaches the mic and lowers her—wait, his hood. Holy shit, it’s a guy. “We can change it by accepting that rape is everybody’s problem. It can happen to guys, too. It happened to me when I was fourteen years old and in Little League. My own parents asked me if I was sure I wasn’t just imagining things.” He turns his head and looks at me.
Jesus. What the hell is this? Imagining things. I’d used those exact words.
Another guy walks up the three steps leading to the stage. A chill runs down my spine. “I don’t know if we can change anything.
But I do know that when it happens to somebody you love, you always have to remember your job is to support them. You be there for them. You keep loving them. You don’t turn your back. My mom was raped by our landlord. My dad couldn’t look at her. They’re divorced now.” He turns his head, his eyes boring through mine, and a lump the size of a baseball lodges in my throat. How can he know my parents are on the verge of splitting up? How can he possibly know this?
On and on, they come. Dozens of them, all talking straight to me.
I take off running in the dark, where the monsters are supposed to be, and don’t stop until I reach the woods that border the campus. I can hear traffic on the main road that runs north from the Long Island Expressway to Rocky Hill, but thank God I can’t hear any more of the open mic stories. I lean over my knees, breathing deep against the burn. Jesus. All those stories. All those survivors.
All that pain.
The burn inside my chest climbs to my throat, and I’m on my feet again, running a few steps before I trip over a branch and face-plant into the weeds. I climb back to my feet and brush off the leaves and dirt. I grab the branch I tripped over, hold it like a club, and beat the tree it probably fell from, curses flying, until I’m too weak to move.
I drop the branch, slide to the ground, and sit there, panting, trying to figure out how the hell I’m gonna address a crowd like this next month when I’m no better than the guys who cause all that pain.
17
Ashley
I don’t remember getting to the hospital. I was so dizzy and sick and in pain. But I remember the nurse who took care of me. After she finished combing my hair for dirt and garbage and traces of the defendant, after she finished taking pictures of the blood and the bruises, after she finished packing my clothes into a paper bag that said ‘Evidence,’ she took me into a shower and said I could wash. I remember wishing she could take my whole body like she took my clothes. Just unzip, peel it off, and stuff into a bag where I would never have to look at it again. It’s his now. He took it. It smells like him sometimes…even today.
—Ashley E. Lawrence, victim impact statement
TWO YEARS AGO
BELLFORD, OHIO
They make me strip while standing on a large white sheet.
Paper.
No, plastic. Maybe.
It’s frustrating how some details are so blurry while others are etched onto my retinas like sun flares.
My clothes get put in bags, and I get put in a gown. I don’t know why they bother giving me anything to wear because the nurse examiner keeps opening it to take pictures of every part of my body. She combs my hair down there. She swabs every soft part of my body, pulling dirt, bits of trash, and even glass from my skin and hair. It takes a long time. Crying and trembling through most of it, I’m comforted by how kind and patient she is with me. She gives me medication and painkillers and stays with me after the detectives show up, asking the same questions over and over again. I’m okay—mostly—until she tells me my family’s outside and anxious to see me.
My heart beats so fast, it makes my chest hum. There’s an ice-cold ball spinning in the center of my body, growing bigger and bigger, spreading that icy cold pain to every cell in my body until I’m not me anymore. I’m ice. Every breath hurts, and soon, I can’t get breath past the pain into my lungs. I gasp, my hands clawing for air, and then my vision goes gray and blurry.
The nurse examiner takes my hands, tells me to hold my breath and count to three, but it doesn’t help. It doesn’t work, and then I can’t see. My vision fades and then goes completely black. I’m dying. I am going to die, and just when I think I can’t take another second of this agony, I let everything go and welcome death with relief.
Escape.
Only it’s not death.
I wake up who knows how much later, lying on a stretcher with a sheet pulled all the way up to my chin. I’m woozy and weak, like I’ve just recuperated from some illness. I’m not in the same room where I’d been examined. I’m in a regular room now. Mom, Dad, Derek, and even Justin are there. They all jump up and surround me when they see my eyes open. Mom and Dad cry. Justin looks dazed. Derek?
He looks pissed off.
They all talk at once, asking me questions, but I can’t seem to make sense of their words. But their emotions? Those register. Shock, pain. Disapproval so huge, it’s like another life-form. I float, disconnected. The nurse who examined me tells me she has to leave me. I try to hold her hand, keep her there, keep her with me, but I have no strength. She takes my family into the hall with her, and I wish I could say thank you, but I’m too tired even for that.
So I sleep.
Every time I move, I jerk awake, remember where I am…and why I’m here. The ice-cold pain in my chest starts right up exactly where it left off, and it’s too much. I muster up enough strength to rip some sensor from my finger, the sheet off my body, but I can’t stand up. I crash to the floor, more pain squeezing its way past the agony I already feel until I’m sure every nerve ending in my body is lit up.
I have no memory of getting up from the floor. I wake up again, much later, back in the bed, again with the sheet up to my chin. My room’s dark, except for a slice of light from the open door. A shot of fear goes through me when I see a figure silhouetted in that light, but then I recognize it.
Derek.
He stands there for a long while, saying nothing. The light bothers me, but I’m too weak, too fuzzy to protest. Finally, the door shuts, and I relax, but then he speaks.
“God, Ashley,” his voice whispers, thick and harsh in the dark. “Why couldn’t you just stay home like I told you to?”
What? But I can’t move. It takes all of my strength just to keep my eyes open. I want to apologize and tell him I didn’t mean to do it, but Vic wouldn’t stop. I want to tell him he was right. I should have stayed home. I shouldn’t have made such a big deal out of the scavenger hunt. If I’d listened to him, would this have happened?
“The police arrested Vic. Sebastian is a witness.”
No. No, he can’t be.
There’s a noise, loud. Deep. Almost animal.
It takes me a few seconds to figure it out.
It’s…it’s a sob.
A sob from my big strong football player brother, the one who never apologizes and means it, never cries and means it.
Am I actually dying? Why else would Derek be crying? I wish I can get out of this bed, hug him, tell him I’ll be fine, but I still can’t lift my limbs.
“Damn it, Ashley! Why? If you’d listened to me, this wouldn’t have happened! We’re never gonna be the same after this. Mom can’t stop crying, and Dad says he’s buying a gun. Justin wants to quit school. The whole family is hurt. We can’t even look at you. You should have just stayed home. God. Goddamn it.” He kicks something in my room. Hard.
The slice of light appears again, and he’s gone, the sound of whatever he kicked still echoing between my ears.
The next day, I don’t feel so floaty, so tired, but I still wonder if maybe I dreamed the whole thing.
“It wasn’t your fault,” everybody tells me, but I see through their well-rehearsed lines taken straight from the rape survivor’s handbook they give my parents before they let them take me home.
The only one who never says it is Derek.
If you ask me what I think, I’m gonna tell you. Ask somebody else if you want compliments.
That’s what he always used to say.
So I don’t ask. If I don’t ask, he can’t tell me what he really thinks, what he told me while he thought I was sleeping.
18
Derek
TWO YEARS AGO
BELLFORD, OHIO
“Derek.”
I look up and find Sebastian Valenti, pale and anxious, running toward me. The homecoming game is later today, and I just got to school for a
team meeting our coach called.
“What’s up, man?”
“Your sister. Any idea where she is right now?”
I look away. Ashley’s pissed off at me for what I said by the principal’s office. I haven’t seen her this morning. When I stumbled out of bed this morning, Mom said she went to school early for Fusion practice. “Uh, the girls’ room, getting ready for dance?”
“She’s not,” he says, shaking his head emphatically. “I already checked.”
An instant uneasiness prickles just under my skin, and I squirm. “Well, maybe she’s already out on the field.”
“I checked there, too, Derek.”
I step forward. “What the hell’s going on, Sebastian?”
“Something bad, bro. I think Vic is with her.”
Panic ignites inside me, and my entire body snaps to attention. “What the fuck do you mean, with her?”
“With her, Derek. It’s on his card.”
The bottom falls out of my world. “What’s on his card?”
“I don’t know for sure. It’s just a feeling. I heard some of the guys in the locker room talking about Vic’s scavenger hunt list. Sex with a virgin. Two hundred points. They doubled the points.”
I grab Sebastian while all the blood drains from my brain.
“Did you hear me, Derek?”
I blink and shake my head. “No, I told them Ashley’s off-limits. You were there. You heard me.”
Impatient, he slashes a hand through the air. “I know, and I’m telling you, they’re not listening. They decided she’s worth double if Vic…if Vic…you know.”
No. My vision turns red around the edges, and my mouth goes dry. “Who? Tell me who!” I scream at him.
“They didn’t know I was there. Brayden. Andre. Vic. But Vic left. I don’t know where he’s heading.”
I pull out my phone and call Ashley, but it goes to voicemail. I tap out a fast text warning her not to go near Vic.