TWENTY
Ariel
“I know I never told you …” She finally lifts her face, but I can see how hard it is for her.
Gemma probably feels as naked and terrified as I did when I told Dylan about the crazy voices in my head. I want to reach out and take her hand, but her body language leaves no doubt that she doesn’t want to be touched.
She takes an uneven breath. “When I was in first grade, my parents were having one of their big harvest parties after the fall crush. I was down in the basement in my castle playhouse, and my uncle came down and … bad things happened.”
“God,” I whisper as my stomach collapses. I want to say something more, but I can’t. I don’t know if I have the words for this.
“I didn’t even understand what was happening at first,” she says. “He was Uncle Steve and … I trusted him. Until it was too late. I tried to call for my mom, but the music was so loud upstairs. No one heard me.”
“Gemma.” I take her hand. To my surprise, she lets me and holds on tight for a moment before letting go. “I love you. I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah. Me too. I love you, too.” She smiles and lets out an easier breath. “It actually feels good to tell you. I knew you wouldn’t think I was gross or anything, but—”
“Of course not!”
“I know.” She shrugs and reaches for her coffee. “I guess old habits die hard. I wasn’t allowed to talk about it for a looonnng time. Even when I started going nuts and my parents sent me to therapy, they only let me talk to a therapist they trusted not to rat out Uncle Steve. And a therapist on the take is worse than no therapist. It only made me feel worse. So I stopped.”
I shake my head, not wanting to understand what she’s saying. But I do. And it makes me so …
I close my eyes, pull in air, and let it out long and slow. I can’t afford to have an episode right now. But if I let myself get any angrier, I know I will. I take a second to focus on my heartbeat, willing it to slow. I imagine my blood cooling in my veins and my breath coming out frosty. I am calm, cold, as still and grounded as those giant stone Buddha statues in China.
When I’ve got myself together, I open my eyes and say what needs to be said. “Your parents knew about it, and they didn’t do anything?”
“Oh, they did something,” she says, her voice so bitter it makes my tongue curl behind my teeth. “They stopped inviting Uncle Steve to parties and made sure he wasn’t allowed to drink at Thanksgiving or Christmas. Or sit at my end of the table. Not that it mattered. He could still look at me.” She takes a sip of her coffee, sets the mug down a little too hard. “I could tell he never regretted what he did for a second.”
“They still …” I fight the urge to be sick. “You’re not serious.”
“I am. I mean, Steve’s a really nice guy when he’s not drunk. It was just that one mistake, and it’s not worth sending a man to jail or tainting the Sloop name with child molestation charges.” She does such a perfect imitation of her mother’s voice, it makes me shiver. I can imagine Mrs. Sloop saying these things to Gemma over and over, heaping shame upon shame until Gemma was buried alive beneath it. “That wouldn’t be good for wine sales. Or Dad’s Senate campaign.”
Deep breath in. Deep breath out.
I won’t get angry. Instead I focus on how sad it is that the people who should have protected Gemma have spent twelve years protecting the man who violated her. “You deserved so much better.”
“You think?”
“I know. You were a kid, and what he did to you was sick. Your mom and dad should have done everything they could to get him sent to jail.”
She smiles, a secret smile that I’m starting to recognize. “That’s what Mike says.”
“He’s right.” Another deep breath. I keep my hands still on the table, making sure I stay calm even when I say, “And if they couldn’t put him in jail, they should have taken care of him themselves.”
Gemma lifts one eyebrow. “Meaning?”
I don’t hesitate. “They should have buried the body somewhere you could go look at where he’s rotting. In case you ever forgot how far they’d go to make sure you were never hurt like that again.”
“Wow.” She swallows. “That’s pretty intense, Ree.”
“So is molesting a six-year-old,” I say, ignoring the acid that churns in my guts from just imagining a person sick enough to violate anyone like that, especially a baby who had barely learned to write her name, playing in her princess playhouse. “If you were my family, Uncle Steve would have become Uncle Dead Body a long time ago.”
“You really are crazy,” she says with obvious affection. Her eyes fill, and tears spill over, streaking what’s left of her eyeliner.
I don’t know if I’ve ever seen her cry. It makes my ribs contract until I can barely breathe. “I care about you.”
“Me too. About you.” She reaches for me, and I wrap my arms around her tight, hugging her with all my strength, so glad that she’s here. It’s amazing she’s lived through this and come out semi-okay on the other side. I’m so glad that Mike makes her feel loved. If I’d realized what heinous people Gemma’s parents were, I would have tried harder to make sure she knew I loved her too. No matter how uneven our friendship has been at times, she’s always been one of the most important people in my life.
We finally pull apart and reach for the roll of paper towels on the table at the same time, laughing when our hands bump. “Allow me.” She pulls a towel for me, and then one for herself.
“Thanks,” I say, returning her smile as I mop up my face.
“No problem. I’ve been crying a lot more lately, but I think it’s a good thing,” she says, with a shrug. “Mike doesn’t mind. His parents are both counselors, so they encouraged the touchy-feely stuff when he was growing up.”
“Good for them.”
“Yeah. Mike’s parents are cool. They live in LA. We went down to visit them when we first left, and they came to the courthouse when we got married. They got married young too, but they’re still together, so …” She smiles her Mike smile. “I think Mike and I have a good chance. I never thought being happy could be so easy. I love him so much.”
“I can tell.”
“He’s the real thing.” She pauses, and in the silence her smile fades. When she looks at me again, I can tell we’re back to more current events. “But Dylan is not. He’s lying, Ree. I don’t know what he said to convince you to sleep with him, but it’s a lie.”
I lick my lips, hating the doubt I taste there. “No, Gemma. I really don’t think so.”
“You know what Dylan said to me?” she asks, that stubborn gleam in her eye. “He told me that this friend of his dad’s touched him all the time when he was little. He even cried about it. I guess he knew that would get to me the way nothing else would.”
“You don’t think he was telling the truth?”
“I know he wasn’t. Or maybe he was and he decided to say it was a lie later. I don’t know what goes through his sick head, but it doesn’t matter. I know for a fact that he acted one way for the few weeks when we were hanging out at the bar, and an entirely different way after we did it a few times.”
Gemma and Dylan slept together. It should freak me out, but it doesn’t. I’ve got bigger things to freak out about. Like whether or not the boy I love is a lie.
“What changed?” Doubt and nerves mix in my stomach, making me feel like I’ve swallowed poison.
“All of a sudden he wasn’t so sweet anymore,” she says. “One day I went over to his house and he answered the door but didn’t ask me to come in. He said he was bored, and that everything he’d told me about his dad’s friend was a lie. He said I was a pathetic whiny little rich girl and shitty in bed, and then he slammed the door.”
By the time she finishes, her face is pale and her voice trembling. I can tell she’s embarrassed and ashamed and would rather have her fingernails ripped out than tell this story.
I know Gemma. I know how har
d it is for her to tell any story where she doesn’t come out the big winner. Sharing this has to be killing her, but she’s doing it anyway. For me. I’m her best friend, and she doesn’t want me to be hurt the same way she was hurt. She can’t know that it’s too late, and that if what she’s saying is true, I’ll be so far beyond hurt, I won’t understand the meaning of okay anymore. I’ll be shredded inside, such emotional raw meat that every feeling will sting like fire.
“After that, every time we ran into each other at school, he was an asshole. I gave him shit right back, but all I could think about was how stupid I was for trusting him.” She tugs a piece of her hair hard enough to hurt, a little punishment for something else that wasn’t her fault. “I mean, who cares about the sex—I’ve had sex with plenty of guys who didn’t care about me—but I trusted him with the biggest secret of my life. And he proved that I was still too stupid to know the bad guys from the good guys. I don’t think he told any of his loser friends about anything other than getting laid, but …” She drops her hands into her lap. “It still messed me up for a long time.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say, not knowing who I’m saying it to. Her? Me? Both?
God. What if … What if … I can’t even think it. I can’t or I’m going to lose my temper, my mind, my heart, my soul. Everything. It will all be gone. Forever. There will be no coming back, no changing my mind the way I did the night I almost pulled Dylan’s car off the road.
“Don’t be.” Gemma waves a hand in the air, oblivious to the meltdown trying to get started inside me. “I’m so over it. I’m with Mike and I’m great. And you’re going to be great too.”
No, I won’t be. If Romeo’s a lie, I won’t ever be great.
“You’ll find someone amazing, Ree.” Gemma nudges my boot with her tennis shoe. I force myself to focus on her face, hoping it will help tamp down the frantic feelings. “You are a kick-ass person, and someone better than Dylan is going to see that. And when he does, you’re going to look back on Stroud and feel sorry for his pathetic, sociopathic, evil self. You will. I promise.”
“I … I …”
I can’t. I won’t. I won’t feel sorry for him; I’ll hate him. Forever. I’ll hate him so much, I’ll have to do what your parents should have done to your uncle. I’ll have to kill him. Because you’re right; I am crazy and I can’t take something like this. It will break me, and when I am broken, I will break the world.
I grab my coffee and hold on tight, giving myself a stern shake. I can’t start thinking this way. I have to have faith. I take a deep breath and focus on the way Romeo’s voice cracked this morning when he told me he loved me. That was real. He’s real, and it doesn’t matter what Dylan did, because Romeo is not Dylan. He’s not.
“I hate what he did to you,” I finally manage to say.
“But I—”
“Don’t, Ree. Don’t let him use you anymore.”
I squeeze the mug so hard, it hurts my fingers. “I know I probably sound stupid, but I think it’s different with us. I think he really—”
“Okay, I didn’t want to say this, but we talked about you one time,” she says, eyes flicking around the kitchen, landing on anything but me. “I told him you’d never kissed a boy, and we made bets on whether or not you’d have your first kiss before we graduated. I bet no. He bet yes and asked me if I’d put up a hundred dollars if he was right. I said sure. I thought he was joking, but … maybe he decided to tip the odds in his favor.”
A bet. Another bet. This time with my best friend. For a hundred dollars.
“I’m so sorry,” she says. “I don’t know why I talked about you like that. I shouldn’t have. It was last fall, and I was having a really bad day. I was miserable and too busy with my own mental crap to care about how I affected other people. I used to do that a lot, but I’m trying hard not to anymore. I talked to a new therapist a couple of times while Mike and I were in LA, and I’m going to find someone in Washington. I’ll get myself straight, and I promise I’ll be a better friend to you from here on out. Starting right now.”
She touches my hand, but I can barely feel it. I’m numb, and I’m glad I am. I don’t want to thaw out and have to make a decision about what I feel. I don’t want to feel at all.
“I’d love to believe Dylan has changed his evil ways and is as in love with you as he’s pretending to be,” she says. “But I know how scary good he is at pretend.”
Pretend. Fairy tales. Witches. Wishes. Curses. Dreams.
How easy would I be to read? With my subconscious hanging on the walls of my room and my weakness pouring out of my mouth every time I let it open? But could he really … All of it? Even his kiss? Even that hitch in his voice?
“When you were … with him,” I say. “Did he say he loved you?”
“All the time.” She looks me dead in the eye, her expression as humorless as I’ve ever seen it. “And I said it back. And for a while there, I thought I meant it, because he was so easy to love. He made himself into everything he could see I wanted, and then ripped it away when he knew it would hurt me the most.”
That’s it. Enough to make the entire story come pouring out. Everything, from learning about his bet with Jason and the other boys, to trying to pull the car off the road, to Dylan’s strange change of personality and the even stranger explanation for it. I tell Gemma about the episodes and Dylan’s talk about magic and how much better it made me feel to imagine that I wasn’t crazy but cursed. I tell her about the witch and the disappearing Shakespeare story and Romeo and Juliet.
Mostly Romeo. Romeo, Romeo, Romeo.
Oh, Romeo, please don’t be a lie. Please don’t be a lie. Please, please, please …
Even as I spill my guts, a voice deep inside me is praying for a miracle. The magic has to be real. If it dies, I don’t know what I’ll do.
“Shit,” Gemma says when I’m finished. “What a twisted bastard. I would say you’re batshit crazy for buying any of that, but I know him. He could make being possessed by the soul of another person sound believable.”
My “lovely” face crumples. Lovely. I believed that, too. I believed that Romeo thought I was beautiful and valuable and worthy of being loved like a princess from a fairy story, scars and psychotic breaks and all. But there is no Romeo. There’s Dylan, the most gifted liar the world has ever known. Dylan, whom I told all my secrets. Dylan, whom I let sleep in my bed and touch every part of me and snatch my still-beating heart out of my chest.
“I can’t believe this,” I mumble. “I can’t … I …”
“Ree, don’t beat yourself up.” She gives my limp arms a shake. “A good liar can make people believe all kinds of wild stuff. Like that Scientologist guy who convinced the movie stars they’re being spiritually attacked by the disembodied souls of dead aliens or whatever. That’s insane, but it’s a real religion, and there are tons of people out there who waste their lives worshipping something some sci-fi nerd pulled out of his ass in the 1950s. Their entire lives.” She shakes me again and tries to smile, but I can see that she’s scared. Something in my face must be telling her this isn’t going well. “This is just your virginity. You were safe right?” she asks. I nod, and her shoulders drop. “Good. So, really, at the end of the day, this isn’t that big a deal.”
“It’s not that,” I whisper, sounding as broken as I feel.
She sighs. “You loved him.”
“I did.”
I do. I still do. I can’t stop myself, even though I know Gemma’s right. I’ve been played. Spectacularly. Stupidly. Hatefully.
I hate him. I love him. I hate him. I’m going to lose my mind. I can feel the threads holding things together starting to pull tight and rip, rip, rip … pop.
“It’s okay. You’re going to make it through this.” Gemma squeezes my hands. “I’ll help you. We’ll figure out some way to make that psycho ass-wipe sorry. We’ll bring him so low, he’ll never be able to do this to anyone, ever again.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” Revenge. It??
?s cold comfort, but at least it’s something to focus on to keep from falling apart. “I have something. He let me take a video.”
“What kind of video?” she asks. “Something incriminating and shame-inspiring, I hope.”
“I think so. At least to the real Dylan it would be.”
“There is no real Dylan,” she says. “He’s just one big ball of stupid and false wrapped in rotten.”
“Right.” She is. But my heart still hurts so bad, I’m not sure I’ll live through it. And maybe he won’t either. Maybe I’ll kill him.
“Let’s start with the video and go from there,” Gemma says. “Let me get some more caffeine in me so I can think my most evil thoughts.” She grabs her coffee mug and heads to the pot for a refill.
“We should probably go somewhere else. My mom worked late, but she could be up soon. If she sees you, she’ll call your parents.” I’m amazed that I can think logical thoughts, let alone speak them. And how can I sound so normal when half my mind is busy thinking of ways to get away with murder?
“Right.” She ticks her finger in my direction and sets her mug on the counter. “We can get drive-through coffee. You can drive; I’ll hide my face. I’ll be out in Mike’s car, okay? It’s an old black Subaru Forrester. I parked around the corner.”
“I’ll get my backpack and purse and be right out,” I say, accepting the hug Gemma hurries across the kitchen to give me.
“Don’t worry, girl.” She pats my back before turning toward the door. “We’ll get him good.”
I smile like she’s made me feel better. But she hasn’t. Nothing can and nothing will. Even hurting him won’t make this better. But at least it’s a start. First I’ll make him wish he were dead. And then, if I still feel this betrayed and horrible and empty … maybe I’ll make his wish come true.
TWENTY-ONE
Romeo
The Mercenaries have her.