Someone I Used to Know

by Patty Blount

  “Okay, I get that it sucks, but, Ashley, you have to figure out how you’re gonna manage this. He lives here! You could see him on Blaine Boulevard, walking into the diner. You could see him at the supermarket. What if you’re by yourself and have an anxiety attack? Who’s gonna stop him from hurting you again while you’re just trying to breathe?”

  Tears sting the back of my eyes, and I swallow hard. I will not cry. I am done crying. I am done being scared. And I am way past done wasting my life worrying. It comes to me in a flash. “I have an idea about that.”

  “What?” he asks, looking at me sideways.

  “Tell you later. I have to think about it some more.”

  And think about it, I do. All morning. I think it about it so much, I get in trouble in math class for daydreaming.

  By lunchtime, I’m standing on a cliff about to fall. Tara and Sebastian catch up to me at the cashier and exchange a glance.

  “Me or Tara?” he asks, and I swear, I fall a little in love with him for just asking, for somehow knowing that I’m not ready yet to lean on him this much, and for being cool with it.

  “Tara.”

  He nods and says, “I’m eating with the team, but you call me, text me, whatever, when you’re ready, okay?”

  I nod. Fine by me. “Sebas.”

  He turns back, eyebrows raised in question.

  “How do you feel about cutting class?”

  His eyes dart around like I’d just suggested we go on a serial killing spree. “Jeez, Ash. Like right now?”

  Sebastian’s honorable. My mom says he’s straitlaced, but he’s not weird about it or anything. He tries hard to do what’s right.

  “No, not now. But maybe later?”

  He steps closer and holds out his hand. I really love when he does that. He never just touches me. He offers first, and if I want to touch, I will. I grab his hand and squeeze it. “Is this about Vic?” he asks.

  Nodding, I tell him the truth. “This is really pissing me off.”

  “But not scaring you.”

  It’s not a question, and I nod because until Sebastian said it, I hadn’t realized I’m more pissed off than I am scared.

  “Yeah. I just can’t believe he gets to go free so soon.”

  A muscle in Sebastian’s jaw ticks and jerks his chin toward Tara. “Go eat. Reach out when you’re ready, and I’m there.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Yeah. Just like that.”

  I watch him walk away, trying to figure out how a boy like him would want a messed-up, pissed-off, whacked-out girl like me.

  “Ashley, what’s up with you? You’ve been zoned out all morning.” Tara grabs a bottle of water.

  I slide my tray to the cashier station and hand over my student card. “I need to talk to you.”

  She gasps. “You and Sebastian didn’t break—”

  “No, no. We’re okay.” I say nothing more until we slide into an empty table. “It’s Vic.”

  Her eyes go wide.

  “He’s out.”

  Tara’s face scrunches up. “Oh, Ashley. I’m so sorry.”

  “You and me and everybody else.” I crumple up the wrapper around my sandwich and crunch it into a ball.

  “But he was guilty. I don’t understand.”

  “He was guilty of sexual assault, not rape.” I grit my teeth and try not to wish a long and painfully torturous death on my brother. It’s just a game, he kept saying. Sighing loudly, I pull myself out of that thought spiral. It’s over. It’s done.

  I have to live with it.

  “There are two things I need to do, and I need your help.”

  “Anything.” Tara nods, and for a minute, I can’t talk because of the lump in my throat that formed the second she said that without even knowing what I need.

  “Off Main Street, there’s a place called Street Warriors. I want to sign up.”

  “Kickboxing?”

  I nod. “That and any other form of fighting they’re willing to teach me.”

  “Done. What’s the second thing?”

  Instead of answering her, I pull out my notebook and show her the doodle I was working on when I got in trouble for daydreaming this morning. “I want to plaster these all over town. The courts may think he’s paid his debt to society, but society should know this face and this name.”

  Tara pulls out her phone, swipes, and taps. “Okay. I’m looking up slander and libel.”

  “It’s neither,” I informed her. “As long as it’s true. The court already convicted him, so I’m safe.”

  Tara looks down and says nothing. I can tell she’s not on board with this. “What’s the problem?”

  “This feels like revenge, Ash.”

  I shake my head. “No. It’s justice, which is what I should have gotten in court, but I didn’t because nobody could prove it was real rape. I mean, seriously, is there such a thing as fake rape?”

  A few heads swivel my way, and I realize I’m talking too loud. I lean over my sandwich and tell Tara straight up, “It’s not fair, Tara. None of this is fair. He says the sex was consensual, and just like that, the charges go from rape down to sexual assault, and he spends what? A stupid year in prison and gets to come out, go back to his nice life, like nothing happened? And what do I get? A brother who can’t stand me, parents on the verge of divorce, and oh, yeah, let’s not forget about the list of psychological problems I now have.”

  Tara gives my hand a squeeze. “They’re not psychological problems, Ashley. They’re scars from a trauma. Every day, you get stronger. Give yourself a break.”

  “Not strong enough. And not fast enough.” I shut my eyes and drop my chin into my cupped hand. “I need to do something, Tara. I need to make people get how unfair this is.”

  Tara cracks the seal on her bottled water and swallows a sip. “Ash, the Raise the BAR rally was a huge success. You’re gonna talk to other schools, right?”

  “Yeah, and that’s something, I guess. It’s just not enough. I need to do more.”

  “Okay, but is hanging a bunch of posters around town really gonna make an impression?”

  My eyes pop at Tara’s words. Make an impression. “No,” I say slowly. “They’re not.” And I bounce out of my seat. “You’re right. Thanks, Tara.” I grab my backpack and tray.

  “Wait, where are you going? You didn’t even eat!”

  “No time. I need to take care of something. See you later.”

  Ten minutes later, I’m in the library, scouring through the search results displayed on a workstation monitor. I read about Emma Sulkowicz, the Columbia student who carried her mattress around campus after her university permitted her rapist to continue attending class. I read about Grace Brown’s Project Unbreakable and studied the haunting images on her website. I visited Ithaca College student Yana Mazurkevich’s website and viewed the graphic photo series called It Happens.

  Thank God I hadn’t eaten my lunch.

  “Ashley, are you all right?” Mrs. Hudson, the librarian, puts a hand on my shoulder.

  I nod and swipe my eyes with my fingertips. “Yeah. I’m okay.”

  Mrs. Hudson studies me and glances at what’s on the screen. She pulls out the chair next to me and sits down, uninvited. “How can I help you?” She waves at the search results.

  All I can do is shrug hopelessly. “I don’t think anybody can.”

  “Why not?” she asks, removing her glasses.

  “Because people can’t stop judging. And because they can’t understand, I mean, not completely…unless it’s happened to them. They let him out, Mrs. Hudson, and I—” I bit back the sob building up in my throat. “I can’t deal with this, can’t accept Victor Patton will be walking the same streets, shopping in the same stores, breathing the same air as me. It’s just not fair. Everybody says I should be happy becaus
e I got a conviction, that justice was served, but it’s not true! I don’t know if there’s any such thing as justice.” I slouch down in my hard wooden chair and cross my arms over my chest. The primal need to do something ripples just under my skin, driving me mad with my inability to scratch it.

  “I understand,” she says. “Completely,” she adds a second later.

  My eyes snap to hers, and she meets my gaze, unflinching.

  The tears spill, and I can’t stop them now because I get it. “Oh, no. I’m so sorry.”

  She nods and covers my hand with hers. “I wasn’t much older than you are now. It happened when I was in college. And no one believed me. They let him remain in school. I had to see him every day or transfer out, which is what I ended up doing. I gave up a scholarship, much to my father’s ire.”

  “You still talk to him? Your father?”

  She laughs at that. “I didn’t for many years, but we finally came to a mutual understanding.”

  Whoa. My mind instantly thinks of Derek. Will we ever reach that point?

  “Ashley, I want to say something to you,” she begins.

  I sit up straight and angle to face her.

  “The work you did on your video…on Raise the BAR. It—” She shakes her head. “It is absolutely astounding to me. I wish I’d known you back when I was…I wish I’d had someone like you.”

  I blink. “Like me?”

  Smiling, she rubs absently at the open collar of her blouse. “You are so courageous. My parents wouldn’t let me talk about it, wouldn’t let me think about it, but you? You won’t let anyone forget it, and I envy you.”

  Envy me? What alternative reality did I fall into?

  She rubs her blouse again, and I see it. Just under her collarbone, there’s a scar. She catches me staring and squirms.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to stare.”

  She waves away the apology, opens the collar a bit more, and shows me the scar. “I was raped at knifepoint. And still, my father blamed me. Said I shouldn’t have been walking alone, shouldn’t have gone to that school. You know the drill.” Mrs. Hudson’s pretty dark eyes dim.

  I do. Too well.

  “Anyway. I saw you here, and you looked upset. I just wanted you to know you can talk to me anytime. Talking helps, more than you probably know right now. Talking saved me, Ashley. I wish I could have taught my dad that.”

  Her words reach right into my heart and squeeze. Teaching a lot of people would be awesome. I’d start with all of the football players from two years ago.

  And I’d end with Derek.

  • • •

  My last class of the day is art, an elective I chose because I thought we wouldn’t have a ton of work to do. Turns out, I was wrong, so now I sort of hate art.

  Sometimes it’s fun, like when we learned to create blackout poetry to reveal new meanings in the ways words are arranged on the page. But most of the time, art annoys me. I can’t draw or paint or sculpt or even take decent photographs, the smells of art materials like paint, glue, or paper make my nose wrinkle, and the dozens of finished projects on display at any given time mock my lack of artistic ability. Like the cultural masks we made before Halloween. A bunch of them line the shelves on the back wall, judging me with their empty eyes.

  Today, we’re supposed to make collages. That’s not terrible, I suppose. Collages require cutting and pasting skills, talents I actually have. I head to my seat, avoiding all the drops of paint and smears of glue that always seem to mark the floor in this room. Mr. Anton, our art teacher, starts up the projector and aims a remote at the laptop connected to it.

  “Okay, let’s examine some examples of pop culture’s influence on graphic and digital art.” He begins scrolling through some magazine ads. “What jumps out at you?”

  A murmur rises up across our class. Laughs and gasps quickly change to full-out whistles, hoots, and cheers.

  “Okay, keep it professional. Obviously, you’ve noticed these images are intentionally trying to be provocative. Why?”

  “Because sex sells!” a guy shouts from the back of the room where the shelves of masks watch with total disdain.

  “Okay. Sex sells. Why?” Mr. Anton prompts. When no one replies, he advances his slide show. “That’s what we’re going to investigate today. Each table will spend the next twenty minutes researching provocative advertising. I’ve got piles of magazines for you to examine. Go through them and tear out the ads that speak to you. We’re looking for the psychology here, so if you have tablets or phones, feel free to google all you want, but find me more than what’s on Wikipedia.”

  Ooh. That’s fun. Usually, we can’t even take out our phones during school.

  There are four of us at my table. Me plus Ken, Craig, and Peter. Ken hasn’t talked to me since freshman year. His brother is the same age as Derek, so when football got canceled, his family took it personally and naturally blamed me instead of Vic. I don’t know Craig at all. This is the only class I’ve ever had with him. Peter’s okay. I’ve known him almost since kindergarten. He lives down the street from us, but we’re not tight or anything.

  Mr. Anton drops a stack of publications on our table, and the boys lunge for them. Past issues of Seventeen, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, a Bloomingdale’s catalog that’s several years old, Sports Illustrated, Car and Driver. I grab the catalog and start flipping through it while the boys huddle around the Sports Illustrated and Car and Driver issues and ignore me.

  That’s okay. I’m used to it.

  While I turn pages, bits and pieces of the conversations taking place around me drift into my ears.

  “Totally do her. She’s so hot.”

  “What car? I only see the girl in the bikini.”

  “Great tits.”

  “Legs.”

  “Ass.”

  “Mouth.”

  It happens slowly, the dread pooling in my belly. Conversation fades to the background. The words become white noise, leaving behind the grunts, sounds of appreciation, and hums of sexual interest that start to morph and blend into memories that lap at the dams and levees I keep erecting.

  Ashley, you’re so hot. You have the best tits in the entire freshman class. I love to touch them. You like it, don’t you? You like it when I touch you.

  Oh God. I can smell the sour beer on his breath and the locker room soap on his skin. I scan the room, telling myself I’m wrong, that he’s not here and that I’m safe, but it’s no good.

  “Whoa!” Craig shouts, tearing a page from his magazine. “Look at this one!”

  The sound feels like sandpaper against my eardrums, and I clap my hands to my ears, shaking myself out of the past, blinking rapidly, stunned to discover my chest actually hurts from the memory of Vic’s hands on me. Ken, Peter, and Craig have a pile of sheets torn from their magazines…images of girls in bikinis, miniskirts, close-ups of pouty lips or curvy butts, each with captions suggesting all manner of innuendo and insult. The tightness in my chest that’s become so familiar spikes abruptly, making me gasp. I rub at it, but I can’t reach it because it’s too deep. It’s changed me into something that’s more pain than person. I force my attention back to my catalog and stop suddenly at a holiday ad that says, “Hey! Why not spike your best friend’s eggnog?”

  I stare hard at the image. The girl on the left blurs, but the guy on the right snaps into sharp relief, his eyes shifting to meet mine, lips curling into the same lazy smile that Vic wore when he…when he…oh God. The lump that lives in my throat pulses in time with my heart rate and all the bad stuff…the memories, the pain, the betrayal, the shame—it all swirls together like sewage, swelling and rising and overflowing every one of the walls I put up. It sweeps away everything that used to be me until it’s all that’s left. The classroom spins at the edges. My limbs are numb, dead. I can’t move. I can’t breathe. I’m drowning.

 
No.

  No, damn it. No!

  I gasp and watch the guys shoot me the you-are-so-weird eyeball. Whatever. They can stare all they want because right now I’m in control.

  I am in control. I am in control.

  I’m not going to let paging through magazines and catalogs flip me out. They’re a bunch of stupid, harmless photos. They shouldn’t be able to hurt me.

  But they do. In fact, they don’t simply hurt me. They freaking torture me, hammering home a point made over and over again since the first day Vic assaulted me, the same point Derek made in his court testimony.

  It’s just a game. It’s just an advertisement. It’s just a joke. It’s just guy talk. It’s just boys being boys.

  Just.

  Just!

  JUST!

  Oh my God, the excuses never stop.

  The idea that half formed during lunch abruptly snaps into focus, and I know exactly how to make a statement as powerful as the ones I studied during lunch in the library. The more I think about it, the easier it is to breathe.

  I’ve finally found my weapon for fighting back.

  20

  Derek

  NOW

  LONG ISLAND, NEW YORK

  The week before Thanksgiving, I wake up to rain.

  Great. No wonder I have a pounding headache. At least there are no classes because of the holiday break.

  But there is practice for the Rock Bowl tomorrow, and damn, I hate practicing in mud.

  I drag my ass out of bed, unsurprised to find Julian’s bed empty. He pretty much only uses this room as a closet to hold his clothes.

  What sucks is that my bed is empty.

  I apologized for ditching Brittany at the rally. Of course, I apologized. I was a dick for taking off. She said she forgave me. But…here we are. Empty bed. Cold shoulder. I figured she’d have gotten over it by now, but no such luck, and I’ve got one more thing to fix without any clues.