“Well, I like your determination,” she says in a wry tone.
“Why?”
“Because it means you’ll be strong enough to face this situation and deal with it. Traumatized doesn’t mean broken,” she adds. “But we don’t have to put a label on it if you’d rather not. Or . . . let me put it differently—you may have unprocessed trauma.”
“Okay . . .”
“It seems like part of what you’re struggling with is whether you have the right to be upset. Or . . . if you are indeed traumatized, whether you’ve earned your trauma. Normally I would wait until we were talking in person,” Dahlia says. “But do you want to tell me what happened with these two boys? Boris, you said, and Kyle? Even just a short version?”
I stand up, walk to the window. Our backyard is a neglected mess, but still beautiful in that wild, new spring way. And then there’s me, looking out at it from behind glass. Like I could end up looking out at my possible relationship with Noah from behind glass—seeing it but separated from it. I roll my shoulders, exhale, then say, “Yes.”
Dahlia and I talk for almost an hour. Mostly she listens, and asks smart, deep questions, and she confirms what I already know—that I did not give enthusiastic consent.
“You didn’t consent to sex with Kyle at all,” she says. “And with Boris, I can see how he may have been confused, but deep down he must have known something wasn’t right.”
“Yeah, and I mean, like I told you, he and I talked about it.”
“It’s positive that you had that conversation with him,” she says, “but I’m troubled that he’s so much in your life still.”
“He’s trying to keep his distance.”
“Is it enough?”
“You don’t understand,” I say. “I hate conflict, and I have so much to deal with right now, and if suddenly I drive Boris completely away, one of us would have to explain why, and then I’d have to talk about this with everyone, and it would become such a huge thing and take so much energy. The thought of all that makes me just want to collapse. It would be much worse, in my mind, than having to cope with him being around for the next couple of months. Not to mention, he is my friend and . . . ”
“Okay, I hear you,” she says. “Just keep an eye on how you’re feeling around him.”
“Better, generally speaking,” I say. “Which makes me wonder if I should confront Kyle? If I could get the courage up I think, well, I think he should know.”
“Everything in this process is up to you—keep that in mind,” Dahlia says, her tone thoughtful. “Studies definitely show that avoidance has the effect of making things worse, and that facing things and talking them through, as we’re starting to do, will make recovery faster. But you might consider waiting on talking to Kyle until you’ve had more time working through it on your own. Then you and I could sort of plan it in advance—how, where, what you want to say to him, what you’re hoping to accomplish with the conversation. And we can plan how you might do that at a time and in a place that’s safe for you—physically and emotionally.”
“That makes sense.” Though this means that I have to keep fending him off in the meantime.
“Something I want to emphasize,” she says, “is that the things you’re experiencing—the intrusive memories, and other sudden, bad feelings,” she continues, “even in severe cases, as long as a person gets help, these symptoms fade. They may even start to fade within a couple of weeks. I have some strategies I can give you when we meet, but the biggest thing is talking it through, facing it. And you’re doing that, so hang in there.”
* * *
—
We make an appointment for Wednesday afternoon, and I hang up feeling wrung out, but also a million times better.
But then I start to worry about Noah, and whether he’s going to text or call me today after what happened last night. I sit there in my bed staring at the phone for a few long minutes before finally deciding I’m being stupid. After all, I’m the one who freaked out and then sent him away.
Morning, I text. You still there?
Are you???
Yes.
In response, he sends me an extremely cute, smiley picture of him, his head on his pillow, and his hair a wild mess.
Is that a yes?
Yes. You okay?
Much better. I’m really sorry.
Don’t be. Clearly not your fault. Still wondering if it was mine.
No. Really not. And now I’m scared I’ve scared you away and also thinking I wouldn’t blame you.
What kind of wuss do you think I am?
Are there a bunch of varieties of wusses?
Ha. I am not scared that easily.
Okay, I . . .
???
Yikes, my dad is hollering. I have to go. Talk later?
Sure.
And then the shit hits the fan.
“Goddammit, Andrea! Where the hell is all my stuff?”
I almost collide with my mom in the hallway as we both head toward the top of the basement stairs.
“Andrea! Libby!”
Mom and I pause, looking at one another.
“What do we do?”
“I’m so tired,” she says, completely devoid of her usual everything-is-fine attitude. “I don’t know.”
“Well, don’t you still have the rest of the furniture to build? And then you can get the room set up and fuss around with it.”
“If I can get him back on that project,” she says, “but listen to him down there.”
I listen. Dad is grumbling, swearing, and shuffling around, probably behind the bar from the sounds of it.
“Not good,” I agree.
“I wish I could just lock him in the bathroom for a couple of days,” she says.
“Seriously,” I say.
The swearing and slamming around downstairs is intensifying, which means we’re on a countdown to Dad exploding, unless Mom can perform some miracle and get him calmed down and/or distracted.
“Andrea! What the hell?” Dad shouts.
“Coming, dear,” she calls out, then whispers, “Maybe I could just whack him over the head?”
“Mom!”
“Just to knock him out,” she says. “Not kill him.”
“Oh, well then,” I say with an eye roll. “That’s much better.”
“Andrea!”
“Yes, dear,” she says in a singsong voice, and starts down the stairs with me following. “What’s the matter?”
“You cleaned me up!”
“Well, yes, just temporarily,” she says, while I observe the carnage of the eight-drawer dresser, which they obviously, and unwisely, started putting together while under the influence last night.
“Guys, what happened?” I say. “It looks like Ikea barfed all over our floor.”
“You and your friend abandoned us—that’s what happened,” Dad says, striding over to the mess and glowering at it.
“We can fix it,” Mom says, hustling after him. “Come—we’re very smart people, you and I.”
“I need my computer! My papers! And where the hell did I leave my phone?”
“Here,” Mom says, putting a piece of pressboard that might be the side of a drawer in his hand. “Let’s get this done so that we’re ready for the renters—”
“You said they’re not coming until next week.”
“But they wanted to see photos, remember?” she says in a calming voice. “So let’s finish this, and then set the room up, and then we’ll find your things.”
It’s quite amazing that Mom has managed to distract Dad for this long—almost a day and a half—but I’m not sure she’s going to be able to reel him back in now.
“No!” Dad says. “This furniture is garbage. It’s impossible to figure out, and so flimsy!”
&n
bsp; “But—”
“Watch this,” he says, and then takes the piece he’s holding, and breaks it in half. “See? Total garbage.”
And then as we watch in horror, he picks up one piece after another, breaks them, and chucks them back on the floor.
We know him better than to try to stop him. If we do he’ll only get more worked up, whereas this way hopefully he’ll get his frustrations out and then go back to normal. Or should I say, “normal.” Usually these things tire him out, at least.
And so we stand and watch while Dad breaks literally every single piece of the dresser.
When it’s done, he stands up tall, hands on his hips, and says, “There. Those boneheads should give you your money back.”
“Someone should,” I mutter.
“You’re welcome to call them,” Mom says, a glint of steel in her eyes.
“Damn right I will,” Dad says, proving he’s still got some fighting mojo left.
“Let me get the customer service number,” she says with freakish agreeableness.
She takes the stairs at a run and returns with the landline phone and a shipping receipt a minute later, and hands them to Dad.
“Here, darling. There’s the number.”
Dad dials, a gleam of anticipation in his eyes, and settles in for the call.
“Ha!” he says after a few seconds. “On hold!”
Here we go.
He will count the minutes he’s on hold, and when he finally gets some poor hapless customer service person on the line he’ll report the number of minutes with his very special brand of outraged relish. Then he’ll tell a very lengthy story about the furniture, in which he is the aggrieved hero (though what he’ll tell them this time, given that he’s the one who deliberately broke every single piece of it, I can’t imagine). He’ll tell them, then, how the furniture is flimsy and the company that made it is evidence of corruption, greed, and the downfall of humanity, and by the way they damned well better give him his money back. At this point he’ll be put on hold to talk to some other department, which will fill him with more gleeful outrage, and he will count the minutes he’s on hold again, and add it to the original minutes, and report all to the next person put forth to talk to him, and start demanding that he also be compensated for his time. This next person will likely have to hear the entire story again, and will not be able to help, or not be able to help to my father’s satisfaction, and Dad will demand to speak to a manager, and try to get the employee numbers of the people who have refused him so far, which they will refuse to give, and then he’ll be put on hold again, and count the time, prowling and feeling aggrieved but also somehow enjoying every minute of it.
It could take hours.
And I take back everything bad I’ve ever said or thought about my mom—she’s a genius.
Back up in the kitchen, we close the pocket door and make a pot of coffee in silence. It’s been a while since Dad’s had this kind of meltdown, but it’s familiar territory.
“Maybe it’s better for him to just keep doing his fighting online,” I say finally. “I feel like we stop him in one venue, and he just moves to another. Like a super un-fun game of whack-a-mole with no giant stuffed bear at the end if by some chance you manage to win.”
“No prize whatsoever,” Mom says in a sad, flat voice.
“Except coffee,” I say, pouring one and passing the mug to her.
“Except coffee,” Mom says, raising her mug to her mouth and sipping with her eyes closed.
“At least the online stuff is anonymous,” I say.
“It’s terrible, though,” Mom says. “I looked at some of it last night after he went to sleep. Awful. And more far-reaching than any of his Pine Ridge vendettas. Here, at least, he’s contained.”
“Yeah, but we’re contained with him.”
She sighs.
“Mom, I really think he needs help.”
“We just have to get through this and he’ll settle back down.”
“But he was never actually settled. We just thought he was because he shut up about it and kept all his activities secret. He needs therapy, medication.”
“Honey,” Mom says, pulling her robe tighter around her waist, “he’d never agree to any of that.”
“Well . . . can’t we force him? Like into some kind of rehab? I mean, I don’t think troll rehab exists, but if they look at it as an addiction, or . . . symptom of depression or something . . . ? I’m really worried. Like, beyond worried for myself and whether he sticks his nose into this Perry issue.”
“I know, I am too. But somehow we’ll muddle through. Speaking of Perry . . .”
“What about him?” I say, tensing up.
“Have you planned what you’re going to say to him on Monday?”
“Oh. ‘I was wrong, forgive me, yada yada, I’m just a poor, overly emotional girl who really needs her job, blah, blah, blah . . .’”
“What are you going to wear?”
“Clothing.”
“But you need to look your best.”
“It’s a uniform, Mom,” I say. “A Goat T-shirt, and matching pants or skirt in black. There aren’t a lot of variations.”
“Hmm,” she says, starting to pace the kitchen, “the skirt is more appealing to someone like Perry, obviously, but at the same time could be seen as encouraging . . . but you still want to look attractive . . . so I’d say the pants—your stretchy ones—and just a little extra makeup.”
Ugh.
“I’m not putting on extra makeup for Perry Ackerman. In fact it’s probably better for me to wear less makeup, because then I look younger, and that will hopefully remind him it’s a teenager he’s been harassing.”
“Oh, that’s quite strategic,” she says, looking far too excited, considering. “Yes, go for dewy—some of that shimmery lotion, a light shade of gloss . . .”
“I have homework,” I say, and leave the kitchen before my head explodes.
Back in my room I have a text from Kyle.
Do you want to have coffee today? Or tomorrow?
Damn it, Kyle is everywhere. I turn the notifications off on my phone, but then turn them back on because if Noah texts, or Emma, I don’t want to miss it. Kyle is driving me nuts. Why won’t he just go away?
Possibly because I haven’t told him to.
Because I don’t 100 percent want him to, because he’s an ally. An occasionally drunken raping ally. But he’s on my side, and I need people on my side. I even like him most of the time. And I don’t want to go back into the Goat on Monday and be in an argument with him.
I guess I would just rather be secretly mad.
And plagued by flashbacks of him whenever I try to kiss someone else.
And hope that I’ll eventually forget what happened between us.
’Cause all of that is working so well for me.
24
MANSLAUGHTER
Dahlia would probably disagree with this course of action, but I’m feeling so much stronger and braver since I talked to her this morning, so I text Kyle back, accepting his offer to go for coffee, but explaining that there’s nowhere I can go right now without attracting a lot of attention. He says he has an easy solution, and half an hour later we’re parked in a nice shady spot behind the gas station—the same place Emma and I left him that memorable, horrible morning—and Kyle is returning to the truck with a box of doughnuts and two coffees from the kiosk.
I curl my hands into fists, then release them, trying to stay calm.
Time to process some trauma.
I’m pretty sure at this point that he doesn’t even know what he did. Or he knows he pushed things but thinks it turned out for the best. Or maybe he was drunk enough that the memory is too fuzzy for him to clue in. Or he knows and he’s going to apologize. I never would have expected it from Boris, and yet it happened.
Kyle does look awfully grim and determined as he strides toward the truck.
“Hey,” he says, once he’s set the stuff on the roof and opened the door. “Nobody’s around. You want to sit in the back?”
This reminds me of his more suggestive offer of climbing into the bed of this same truck with my duvet last Sunday, but this doesn’t feel like the same type of invitation, so I agree.
We climb up into the back and sit facing one another, the doughnuts and coffees between us. Kyle seems keyed up, so I decide to wait and see what he has to say before I advance my own agenda.
“I have something I wanted to give you,” he says, looking solemn.
Then he grabs the backpack he brought from the cab of the truck, unzips it, pulls out a binder, and hands it to me.
“What’s this?”
“Remember how I said my mom’s a lawyer?” he says, leaning forward eagerly now. “I talked to her, like I said I would, about whether you have a case against Perry, or against Dev. I didn’t know everything that happened, but I told her what I observed, and some of the stuff I’ve seen him doing to other servers. My mom is so pissed on your behalf, and on everyone’s. And by the way she’s pissed at me, too, because I stood by and didn’t do anything. I got three ‘I brought you up better than this’ lectures this week.”
“Poor you.”
“Nah,” he says, missing my sarcasm. “I can handle it.”
I take a bite of a chocolate-glazed doughnut and try to mentally regroup, since this obviously isn’t going to be an apology.
“Anyway, my mom gave me a ton of info and helped me compile some facts and resources for you, and summed up your options. Of course it’s also your option to do nothing. But you do have just cause to sue, or to go to the police and try to get charges laid. It’s all in here, with pros and cons and possible outcomes and timelines and stuff. And my mom—all her contact info is there too.”
“Thank you,” I say, chewing a bit too violently, and studying Kyle.
Yet again, I don’t want to feel grateful to him, but I am.
I don’t want to think of him as a good person, but based on most of his actions, all but the one, he is.
He Must Like You Page 20