by Ina Carter
“I asked her, not you,” Kevin cut her off, without sparing her a glance. His attention was laser-focused on me, his nostrils flared, waiting for my answer.
Did he recognize me? Was he testing me to see if I would say “Julie”?
(fourteen years ago)
“I like that Mamma named you, Julie. It suits you. You are like the sunshine in July – the best month in a year.” Kevin smiled. I shook my head “No, the sun in July burns everything, Kevin. It makes the green grass go yellow, like hay…” I said. It was not like I didn’t like my name, just he kept saying I was “sunshine” when I laugh, and I didn’t like my smile. One mean boy in my class kept calling me “frog face” because my smile was too wide. Kevin crouched to meet my eyes and got more serious. “Jules, you might set some fires, but only because you shine so bright.”
I opened my mouth, to say the name I once had, a name I was taught to despise. But the word that slipped from my lips was Lauren. Like a trained dog, I was conditioned to repeat the strange name, punished with hours of therapy for refusing it, and somehow accepted it as my “after” identity.
“Lauren,” Kevin repeated it, but it sounded like a hiss coming from him. He looked away from me and laughed bitterly. “Suited for a Princess…”
His eyes scanned my body and my outfit with contempt, smirking like I was some sort of a joke. I was expecting him to turn around and leave, but instead his eyes narrowed into slits, and he grabbed the pin from my shirt, clenching it in his fist. Freaking Cattie gave me the last number 10, like she expected I’d be the last picked. I looked at her to see the shock on her face that I was the first pledge to be “Chosen.” Kevin didn’t even spare a look at the other girls as if they weren’t there.
“Follow me, Princess.” Kevin smirked at me, tapping his thigh like he was calling on a dog. He just turned on his heels and left, not even looking over his shoulder to check if I obeyed his command.
Cattie grabbed my arm harshly and pushed me in his direction. My head was a complete jumble, my heart splitting into pieces. This guy was either a complete stranger – asshole, in fact, who just found his punching bag for the day, or worse… If he was my brother and somehow recognized me – he hated my guts. What happened to you, Kevin? In those unforgiving eyes, there was no trace of the kind boy I knew. Driven by a desire to find the answer, no matter how horrible it might be, I ran after him.
“Hey, Tanner,” Cattie shouted after us, “Don’t forget to bring her back tonight to Gamma house. She is your invite to the party.”
Kevin sharply turned back, scoffing at the bitch “Gamma house, ha? I am honored. I never managed to pass the sobriety test for entrance there. Should I booze her beforehand, then? Make sure she is returned in proper form?”
He was staring at me, gauging my reaction. My deer in the headlights stare made him laugh like he was enjoying the alarm in my eyes. Was he seriously planning to get me drunk before the party? I knew my limit, and I was a total lightweight, so I thought I might get alcohol poisoning from more than two drinks. After what happened with Max and Tyron, I’d had only one glass of wine with Marina, and that was to celebrate her belated birthday last year. I promised myself to never be intoxicated to the point I was not in full control of my decisions again.
Kevin didn’t wait for Cattie’s response, but he kept a weather eye on me as I followed behind him. When we got to the football stadium, he started jogging towards Dedeaux Field but looked over his shoulder, down at my feet, like he was wondering if I was wearing heels, and if I would try running in them. Thank God Cattie didn’t make a fuss that I wore my sneakers with the obscenely short skirt, but I was expecting to be on my feet all day, doing who knows what, so I needed comfortable footwear.
I was not going to give Tanner the satisfaction that I couldn’t keep up with him. I knew he was doing this on purpose. I was also not going to call him Kevin in my head because it hurt.
I was never in athletics at Carlton Academy, but I was a runner. It was one of my victories with my father, and in the last few years, after “the deal,” when he was sure I was not going to run away again, he let me out of the house every morning for my two-mile run down the beach. I convinced Dr. Rogers to relay to my parents that physical activity would be highly beneficial for my “depression.” This was my only jailbreak and I made the best of it.
Once I caught up to Tanner, I tried to keep my pace by his side. He gave me a quizzical look like he was entertained that I was up to his challenge. Then the bastard pushed forward, running to a sprint, probably thinking I would eat his dust. He was an athlete, and his stride was way bigger than mine, but I was determined to beat him at his own game. The distance to the baseball stadium was probably five hundred yards, and I beat my own sprint time reaching the destination. Vaguely, I heard some whistling and hooting by some other people we passed but focused solely on the man in front of me, I didn’t care how I might look to them. Tanner beat me to the entrance of the field but probably by only twenty seconds. That was a win in my book, considering he had a head start on me.
I was winded, every muscle hurt, but the victory was sweet. I leaned on the brick arch of the gate, and after I caught my breath, I finally looked up at my opponent. If he thought I’d be his doormat all day, he had it coming. I didn’t have a choice and had to stick to the hazing rules not to speak to him and do whatever degrading task he gave me, but I realized I had ways to keep my dignity.
He was staring at me in disbelief at first, but then his jaw clenched, and his eyes turned into an inferno.
He looked away, took off his baseball hat, and ran his hands through his hair. He looked like he wanted to hit something – for some reason my tenacity had pissed him off.
When he turned back to me, he reached into his bag, took out a bottle of Gatorade, and tossed it to me. “There you go, Princess. Better keep hydrated because we are just starting.” This sounded like a threat. I gave him the “Fuck you!” look without saying a single word, and it felt good. In the last year I had tucked it away, not throwing it back at my parents. Only so I could meet this asshole, and I was pissed that I might have wasted my time. Anger was simply a bandage for my bleeding heart, but the emotion was painful enough to distract me from the soul-wrenching disappointment.
When we reached the field, most of the baseball team was already there, running drills. From my spying last week, I recognized the older man who approached us – their assistant coach.
“Tanner, you are late. I get that offseason you have a private trainer, but please respect my time. How’s the knee?” He looked concerned at Kevin’s leg.
I caught Tanner’s glance at me like he didn’t want me to know I had an advantage in our sprint match earlier.
“It’s good. I have to take it easy though, so I brought a batgirl to chase my balls.” He smirked at me, the double meaning in his words obvious.
His coach looked at me and frowned. The distaste in his stare was obvious, and no wonder – I looked like a floozy.
“I don’t need distractions, Tanner,” the man murmured, looking at Kevin disapprovingly.
“No, problem coach. She’ll just do whatever I tell her.” His snarky tone was meant for me. The bastard wanted to remind me he owned me for the day like it was something I could forget.
The fight in me started to die thirty minutes into the baseball practice. While the other players were running drills at one end of the field, Kevin and the men who met him were working on their swings at home plate. The coach had a bucket of baseballs that he was throwing at Tanner, and the guy hit them in rapid succession. I didn’t know anything about baseball, but now that I saw Kevin in his element, I couldn’t help but stare. He was like a machine – his body moved like it was choreographed, his hits were sharp and precise, and he didn’t miss a single ball – laser-focused like he could see the small object coming at him with some terminator vision.
He handed me another bucket to collect the fly balls after each drill and told me to stand behin
d him, so I didn’t get hit. Once the first workout was over and his coach’s bucket was empty, I had to run around and collect the baseballs while they discussed his technique. This was the worst part. Not that I minded the exercise, but I would rather not do it in a miniskirt. That moron, Tanner, was hitting hard and likely directing his shots on purpose to land close to his teammates. By now, all of them were intimately aware of the color of my underwear and of the shape of my behind under the skirt. It was absolutely mortifying. Some of them, who were taking a break, started whistling every time I bent to pick a baseball, and I heard shouts behind my back, “Nice ass, babe.” My head was firmly fixed on the turf, and I was not even looking at them, but my anger at Tanner was rising.
When I filled the bucket halfway, I charged in his direction and dropped it at his feet. Behind us, some other idiot found the perfect timing to yelp, “Thanks for the show, Tanner. Way to keep up morale.” The comment was followed by more guffawing and hoots. Would they laugh if I jumped on Kevin’s back and strangled him with my bare hands? Because at that point, I was close to committing a murder.
Kevin looked at me - his expression mirroring mine, like all his blood rose to his face and was shooting out of his eyeballs. He wanted my humiliation, so why was he angry at me? I was about to reach for his baseball bat and hit him with all I had in me when I noticed that his rage was not directed at me after all. He was looking over my head, and somewhere up on the stands. I turned around and to no surprise there was my “big sis” Cattie, documenting my utter humiliation on her phone. It made me wonder how Daddy would feel when there was actual video proof that his delinquent daughter was involved in a crime?
A harsh hand grabbed me by the elbow, and Kevin forcefully pulled me after him to the dugout. Once we were alone, his eyes locked with mine. He was breathing heavily, and the intensity in his stare crashed over me like the weight of a whole building collapsing on top of me.
At that moment, I recognized him. This is how he looked at me the last time I saw him twelve years ago. Desperate. Broken. His eyes were like jade-colored sea glass, polished with tears, dead shreds of something that used to be whole.
“Why are you doing this, Lauren?” his words were in agony, but somehow low as a whisper.
“I don’t have a choice,” I managed to whisper back. It was not all that I wanted to say to him, it was just a small sliver of truth, but the rest was too much to voice.
My words angered him, and he looked away like he was trying not to let his despair take control of his actions. “You always have a choice,” he snapped.
“Are you this desperate to get into that freaking sorority?” Kevin’s words came from far away. I wanted to tell him that I was doing this for him and how desperate I was to find him. I was desperate to understand his anger and wondered why it was directed at me.
“Yes, I am desperate!” I screamed at him. The rest of my words got stuck somewhere between my heart and vocal cords.
“Fucking perfect.” He turned away and his fist connected with the closest bench.
“You are just like the rest of them…” his words cut like razor blades.
“Kevin…” I tried to find my voice, but I think he lost it and was done listening to me.
“Shut up, Princess. I don’t want to hear another word from your mouth.” He shut me off, then looked around the dugout, like he was searching to find a way to punish me. He grabbed a bucket with water and some rags, and dropped them at my feet, fuming, completely out of his mind.
“Here is what you’ll do – You’ll go down on your knees and scrub every surface in the dugout. When you are done, there are four buckets of balls that need mudding.”
Out of a box with supplies, he grabbed a container and shoved it in my hands. He opened the lid and dug two fingers inside something that truly looked like sludge. He grabbed my hand and roughly smeared the disgusting substance on my palm, then reached into his pocket, pulled out a baseball, and shoved it between my dirty fingers.
“Read the manual on the box, Princess. You should know how to get dirty and how to rub balls if you are part of that crowd,” he hissed. “Wait for me at that frat house tonight. We are not done.”
Then, like he couldn’t spend another minute in my company, he stormed towards the field. I just stared at the filth I was holding, and my tears started to run down my face. I was so lost and detached from reality that I didn’t pay attention to what was going on around me. Maybe an hour later, I noticed there was a bottle of Gatorade and a sandwich in a Ziplock bag on the bench next to me, but when the tears dried on my face, and I looked up, Kevin was gone.
Chapter 7
At the end of the day my body hurt, my knees were sore, and my clothes looked like I had rolled in the dirt. I vaguely remembered rubbing the mud on baseballs, mixing the clay with my tears, but it was like an out of body experience. I was there, but my mind was far away, back in time, the flashbacks of the past so vivid that they felt like reality. Everything was a trigger that pulled me into the dream-like state. I was looking at myself, but it felt like I was observing my appearance from the outside, like I was floating in the air looking down.
(fourteen years ago)
“Jesus, Julie, what happened? Did someone push you down?” Mamma looked at my dirty shirt and the big grass stain on my shorts.
“No mamma, we were playing Pirates, and Kevin said we should abandon ship, but he is the captain, so he stays. I rolled down the hill and fell into a puddle…”
“Shhh,” Mamma put her finger to her mouth. Then she whispered, “Don’t say Kevin’s name, baby. Say my friend. Your Daddy would be mad…”
I didn’t understand. My tears were about to spill because I loved Kevin and didn’t know why it made mamma and daddy fight when I played with him.
“Mamma, why don’t you love Kevin?” I whispered through the tears.
“Of course, I do, baby. He is my boy… Just your Daddy… he wanted a son of his own, not… Just say, ‘my friend,’ Okay.”
Maybe in those dreams, I was somehow trying to rationalize what made Kevin act so callous. He never had a family, and I was not sure his dad was any better than mine. The memories from before and after we parted assaulted me all day, bringing out sufferings I had pushed down for years, inching closer and closer to the bottom of the pit – to the one trauma suppressed further than the rest.
Like on autopilot, I walked off campus and the two blocks to Greek row. I passed by the sorority house, but the thought to go and take a shower or change out of my filthy clothes made me sick. Those bitches made me sick. Depravity should not be assigned to a specific class, but I had the bad luck to find it at the bottom of the social spectrum and on the top. Maybe happiness was somewhere in the middle, but I hadn’t stumbled upon it yet.
It was dark, and no one noticed my dirty clothes when I made my way to the Gamma frat house. I wasn’t planning to go to the party, I just wanted to see Kevin one more time and simply tell him who I was. I wanted to know for sure – was his anger directed at me or if he hated me on principle, thinking I was one of those privileged spoils. He kept calling me “Princess” all day, so I wasn’t sure he recognized me.
The party was in full swing, and a stampede of people was heaving in and out of the house, like two snakes twisting together. Red solo cups and drunk coeds were scattered all over the front lawn. The music was pumping loud, thumping in some techno rhythm, but my ears were numb to any sound, like all my senses were disconnected from the present.
I scanned the crowd in despair, wondering if I’d have to go inside to search for Kevin. I saw him by the iron fencing of the frat house talking to a tall blond guy. I didn’t know what they were saying, but it seemed they were having an argument. Like me, Kevin was still wearing the same clothes he had on in the morning – baseball pants and a Trojan's hoodie. He looked disheveled, his hair in complete disarray, and his whole body tensed and his fists tightened at his sides the moment he saw me standing a few feet from him. He looked d
own at my mud-covered clothes, and his lips twisted in a cruel grin.
“Oh, here comes Cinderella, showing up for her ball.”
His malicious words dug like daggers into my skin and cut into my resolve to calmly say my peace and leave.
“Screw you, Kevin!” I screamed at him, “You are not worth it!”
His eyes grew wild, filled with pain, mixed with rage, and he crossed the distance between us.
“Not good enough for you, Princess, am I?” he roared.
Then he roughly grabbed my hand and pulled me towards the house. The blond guy tried to stop him, getting in his way. “Kevin, what the hell is wrong with you?” he stated angrily, but my tormentor pushed by him, dragging me with him toward hell.
His grip was firm, but I didn’t try to get away from him. With each step, a part of my fight dissipated, and I slipped deeper into the abyss that had threatened to engulf me all day.
He pushed his way through the intoxicated crowd inside the house. The music might have been loud, but all I heard was the thumping of my own heart. I bumped into a mass of sweaty bodies as the stench of depravity insulted my senses. “Is this what you want?” Kevin shouted in my ear, pointing to a girl dancing on a table. I vaguely recognized her as one of the Delta Phi pledges. She was obviously drunk and had lost the t-shirt with the sorority logo, dancing only in her bra with a crowd of horny men salivating at her feet. I shook my head “no,” but he didn’t even look at me or cared for my reaction.
He pulled me down a corridor, opening doors one by one, glaring inside and shutting them with disgust. He looked like he was about to lose the contents of his stomach, and I was afraid to think of what inside those rooms made him sick. When he got to the last door, he took the choice away from me and opened it wide, so I could clearly see what was happening in the room.