by Kelley York
“S-so?”
“You probably haven’t heard yet, since Callie just found out less than an hour ago…but the DNA results came back.”
My heart leaps into my throat. “Okay.”
“They didn’t find any of you in, like—” She gestures awkwardly. “I mean, nothing in her rape kit matched up with you.”
I feel like someone has pricked my side and let all the tense air out of me. My eyes close while I take a deep breath to reflate, feeling lighter and more confident this time. “That’s g-good, right? If they have s-someone else’s DNA—”
“They don’t,” she cuts in. “When Callie came back from the party, she scrubbed herself down more than once. By the time I talked her into going to the cops, there wasn’t really anything left.” Her eyes narrow. “So, you know, it’s not like you’re off the hook.”
My shoulders begin to sink as I remember Mr. Mason telling me that a lack of physical evidence just means it could be Callie’s word against mine in front of a jury. “Oh. Then…why are you telling me this?”
“Because I wanted to see your reaction.” She examines her polished nails and I get the feeling she’s purposely avoiding looking at me now. That’s a first. “You didn’t seem surprised.”
“That’s b-because I told you, I didn’t do it.” The first bell rings for class. Autumn doesn’t seem in a hurry to move. If I play hooky a second day, Mom is going to murder me. “I really need to go…”
Autumn heaves a sigh and waves dismissively. There is no anger in her this time. No sense that she’s going to lash out and grind my face into the concrete. Instead she seems almost…defeated? Sad? I wonder how Callie felt when she got the news. If she still fully believes it was me or if the lack of evidence has left some doubt in her mind. I wish I could talk to her, but the restraining order kind of prevents that. Hell, Mr. Mason wouldn’t even want me talking to Autumn, but I can’t help it.
I should be going to class; I have less than a minute to be in my chair. And yet…instead I’m slowly letting my backpack slide to the ground and I’m sitting next to Autumn on the table so that we’re hip to hip. Neither of us says anything because it’s a bit awkward and I don’t know what to say that would be comforting. I don’t even know that my presence will do anything more than irritate her, but I have this gnawing need to make her feel better, and if this is all I can do…
“It’s only been a week, but everyone’s talking about her like she’s some kind of ghost,” Autumn eventually says. “At first, our creative writing teacher asked every day if I would bring Callie her homework, and now he doesn’t ask about her at all. Sometimes he just looks at her empty seat like…like she’s dead or something. People talk about her in past tense and I hate it.”
I scuff my heel against the bench. “Will she come b-back to school now?”
She shrugs. “At some point, she’s gonna have to. I mean, for finals if nothing else, or she isn’t going to walk with the rest of the seniors. But every time she thinks about it, it just…freaks her out, you know?”
Can’t blame her, but I also don’t know what to say.
Autumn sits with me until long after the last bell has rung. When she gets up, it’s all at once; still one moment and then sweeping up her backpack and sliding off the table to begin walking away without a word to me. No “thank you,” but no “piss off,” either. Maybe this is an improvement.
I don’t know why, but I don’t tell Brett about my conversation with Autumn. It seems like something personal meant just for the two of us, and I don’t feel the need to spread Callie’s—or Autumn’s—business with anyone. For that matter, I didn’t tell him about the incident with Aaron and his friends in the bathroom, either. This is my problem, and Brett has enough on his mind with finals and college applications to have to worry about me…again, like he always has.
But news apparently travels fast even when I keep tight-lipped, because at lunch he stares at me, avoiding looking at Aaron when he passes by, and asks, “When were you going to tell me?”
“About what?”
“You know what.” He glances askance at Aaron’s table. “I heard what happened and I was going to wait for you to say something, but…”
I refuse to lift my head. “N-nothing to tell. I just, you know, he w-wanted to talk to me.”
“With a group of his friends?”
A frown pulls at my features. “H-how did you even find out?”
Brett gives me a long look. Ah. Right. Someone probably saw them drag me into the bathroom, or maybe Aaron himself said something. “Tell your mom, man. She can talk to Aaron’s mom so he stops being a dick.”
“Mom doesn’t care.”
“She’s your mother. Of course she cares.”
I pick at the crust on my sandwich. No response for that. On a basic level, yes, I know my mother loves me because she’s my mother. We used to be close. She would read me bedtime stories and tell me how much she loved me, and that I was her reason for getting out of bed in the morning. She went on my field trips with my classes. Packed my lunches with extra treats. Got up early on Sundays to make me blueberry French toast before church.
To this day, I’m still trying to figure out what it is I did to make her distant. If there was some defining moment that changed our relationship. Now, as always, I draw a complete blank. It’s not like she woke up one day and started ignoring my existence; it didn’t happen all at once. It was a gradual process, until I finally realized that things had drastically changed.
Brett nudges my foot under the table. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Lots of things. I’m not telling him how I’m hardly sleeping at night and how, despite that Mr. and Mrs. Mason are great, I miss being at home in my own room. I’m not telling him how exhausted I feel after sitting down to conversations with Mr. Mason, or how the hardest part about all this isn’t how everyone else has treated me, but just that Mom doesn’t believe I’m innocent.
What I tell him instead is an attempt to focus on the positive so all the things I don’t want to say can remain tucked safely in the recesses of my mind. “The DNA came back.”
Brett’s spine straightens. “Really? So you’re cleared, right? What did they find?”
“N-nothing of mine,” I say, forcing a weak smile, and purposely leaving out the fact that a lack of physical evidence doesn’t necessarily mean I’m cleared.
He taps his plastic fork against his lunch tray. “Well, duh. Someone else’s, then?”
“I d-don’t think so.” Not that Autumn told me, anyway. She said they didn’t find anything because of Callie washing any viable evidence, but she could very well have made that up.
“Well…that’s a weight off you, isn’t it?” He grins. “No evidence means they can’t really prosecute you for rape.”
I try to smile in return, despite not being so sure. Like Autumn said, I’m not off the hook yet. Though some part of me does feel a little lighter, and that feeling lasts long after I’ve gone to work that night and returned to Brett’s, where Mr. Mason is there to greet me with a smile as he pulls me into his office. Brett follows us and this time, Mr. Mason allows it.
“Good news,” he says brightly, and proceeds to reiterate the information we already knew. Hearing it again, especially coming from him and not from Autumn, makes it sound better, more hopeful. He must be in a good mood, because he doesn’t tell Brett to leave so we can talk in private like he usually does.
“It’s great,” I say when he’s done, even though I don’t entirely know what it means for me. Thankfully, Mr. Mason is good at explaining every step of this process so I haven’t been left too in the dark.
He takes a seat and we sit in the stuffed chairs across from his desk as he explains. “First, they don’t have much to convince a judge for a restraining order anymore. This temporary one will stay in effect until your hearing on the sixth, but they’ll probably have to drop it.”
Brett rolls his eyes. “It’s not like Vic would’ve gon
e to talk to her anyway. They don’t have any classes together.”
“True. But when Callie was ready to return to school, if they had gotten a permanent restraining order into effect, Vic would’ve been the one forced into switching schools.”
Oh. I hadn’t known that. Frankly, I’m not so sure I’d survive going to school without Brett. The idea in and of itself is terrifying.
Mr. Mason continues. “They obviously have no physical evidence to charge you on. A party full of drunk kids doesn’t make for reliable eyewitnesses, and since there are so many varying stories about when you went upstairs and came back down again, they’re struggling for a leg to stand on.”
“Even w-with Callie identifying me?”
“The wording she used is pretty sketchy.” He rummages through his papers to locate a stack in particular. “She told the detectives that she remembers you were present at some point when you took her to the bedroom, but that she couldn’t say with undeniable certainty you were the one raping her. Your face is just the last one she saw and she remembered hearing your stutter. If she reiterates that to a jury, it isn’t going to sound convincing. Alternatively, if she changes her story, her credibility is shot.”
Brett smiles wide and pats me on the back. I feel like this should make me happier than it does. Yeah, I’m ecstatic that this is good news for me, but… “W-what do the police do now to f-find out who did it?”
“Depends.” Mr. Mason shrugs. “If the detectives had their way, they’d just close the case. But if Callie’s family wants to keep pushing or if they get the media involved, then the police can press charges anyway—I don’t think they’ll get anywhere with that—or they’ll find someone else they can pin this on just to put everyone’s mind at ease. They have the other guys from the party that they’re questioning, but again, no evidence, no easy suspects. There isn’t a lot they can do to really find who did it, shy of someone stepping forward with a new story or an admission. They’ve taken multiple statements from several people, ran their tests, and found nothing. They may mark the case as cold until—if and when—they find some other evidence. Cases like this aren’t taken very seriously, though. They might think digging deeper is too much of a hassle.”
It’s just like Autumn said. Now Callie is going to be stuck not having any clue who raped her. If she’s going to pass him by on the street. If it could happen again, because he got away with it once. If she isn’t fully convinced it was me, how can she sleep at night knowing the real rapist is still out there?
Chapter Eight
Apparently evidence does not matter once a group of high school students gets wind of a juicy rumor. They grab it in their teeth and run with it like wild animals, zeroing in on the person it’s about. Technically, that person would be Callie but since she isn’t here…I’m next in line.
It’s a subtle change. People stare at me. They whisper in class and then twist to look in my direction before someone nudges them and whispers, “Don’t stare!” I am this dark shadow to point at and talk about in the halls. Suddenly everyone was Callie Wheeler’s best friend just so they can say how they saw this coming, how they knew I was the sort of person to do something like this. Aaron watches me like a hungry lion, and it’s all I can do to hover close to Brett’s side because it’s the only place I truly feel safe from being eaten alive.
It isn’t just them, either. It isn’t school and it isn’t home. Thursday afternoon as Brett and I are walking to his car, someone whose face looks vaguely familiar approaches with a smile. I start to ask what he wants but Brett grabs my arm and begins dragging me full force to the car. The man follows right on our heels and I see he has a recording device of some kind in his hand, holding it up as he begins to say, “You’re Victor Howard, right? Just a moment of your time!”
Brett pushes me into the passenger’s seat before I’ve fully realized what just happened and he whips around, glaring. “No fucking comment,” he says, before getting into the car and speeding out of the parking lot.
My heart is galloping at a steady hundred miles an hour. “W-w-what—”
“Craig something-or-other,” he hisses. “He’s from one of the local news stations.”
I swallow hard. “I d-don’t understand…”
“It’s a small town, Vic. The media must have gotten wind of it and want to find out more.”
No. It still isn’t processing. Me, the guy who has flown under the radar all his life, the designated driver, the nobody…and now the news wants my story? This confuses me more than anything else, but I can tell Brett is livid.
“They’ll turn this into a fucking sideshow,” he growls. “For you and Callie both. Don’t talk to them, no matter what, got it?”
“But…” If I tell my side of the story, wouldn’t that be a good thing?
“No matter what, Vic. My dad is going to tell you the same thing.” At the next stoplight, he looks over at me. “Promise?”
I slump back into my seat and close my eyes, unsure what to do with the overwhelming sense of nausea overtaking me. “I promise.”
Friday morning, Craig something-or-other is back. This time with a camera in hand. He doesn’t approach us, but I see him from across the parking lot snapping pictures while I stare, dumbfounded. Brett shoves me to his side and I duck my head as we hurry to the school, taking solace inside where—I’m guessing, hoping—a reporter can’t follow. Mr. Mason told me the same thing Brett did: not to talk to him under any circumstance, and that he’s probably been to my house and doesn’t yet realize where I’m staying. That could change soon.
I am beyond exhausted. I sit numbly through classes. By the time we get to lunch, I have to quietly excuse myself and slip outside to be alone. Not that Brett listens. He follows and sits next to me on the bench and asks me what’s wrong while I’m slouching forward, pressing my palms into my eyes, trying not to cry.
Brett says nothing but I feel his hand on my back, reassuring. My whole body aches from the built-up tension. I thought with the DNA test cleared, this would be over. Yet I feel like it’s only the beginning.
I tried to call Mom a few nights ago to tell her about the DNA results. She didn’t answer. She didn’t call me back.
Indifference: lack of interest, concern, or sympathy. Unimportance.
What is it they say? The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.
I wonder if Craig Something-or-Other has shown up there. If he’s snapped pictures of “the rapist’s mom” while she fled from her car to the house. If he asked her questions…if she answered them.
After school, I’m not feeling up to waiting around while Brett is at tennis practice. I would walk home, except I’m worried of what might be waiting there for me. An angry mother? A prying reporter? Instead I’ll head to Brett’s car and do some homework or play on my phone.
I haven’t even reached two steps into the parking lot when an old blue sedan pulls up alongside me and the tinted window rolls down to reveal Autumn behind the steering wheel. I remember her threat about plowing me down with her car and go still, staring at her.
She says, “Get in.”
“If I s-say no, are two g-guys in suits and sunglasses going to get out and m-make me?”
Autumn actually smirks. “No, just me. Come on.”
This is all sorts of a bad idea, and yet I find myself circling around to the passenger’s side door, opening it, getting in, and dropping my bag to the floorboard. Autumn waits for me to buckle up before driving off.
“W-where are we going?”
She keeps her eyes glued to the road. “Shut up and you’ll find out.”
I run my hands over my knees, swallowing past a dry throat. “I got into the c-car with you; the least you can do is t-tell me where you’re taking me.”
Autumn purses her lips. “And I appreciate your cooperation, but I’m not telling you anything. So either watch and see, or jump out at the next stoplight.”
“I’ll h-have you know that no one will pay my ra
nsom if this is a k-kidnapping,” I try to joke. Autumn’s mouth actually twitches a little at the corners, like she’s trying not to smile, but she doesn’t reply.
You know, if she wanted to tie rocks to my ankles and throw me in the river, no one would even notice I was gone for at least twenty-four hours. More than enough time for her to drive to Mexico.
But Autumn doesn’t take me to the river. She drives to a little town house complex where she parks in a spot assigned number forty-two and twists in her seat to look at me. “You tell anyone about this and you’re dead. You got it?”
“Uh…o-okay. Where are we?”
“My house.” Autumn gets out of the car and I follow suit, leaving my backpack behind. She lets us inside where we walk through a modestly furnished living room and upstairs to what has to be her bedroom. Autumn insists I go in first. I have no problem being invited into Autumn Dixon’s room, but this isn’t under the conditions I would have hoped for.
When I step inside, the first thing I see is Callie Wheeler sitting on the bed.
Immediately I freeze and try to back up. Autumn shuts the door and leans against it, effectively cornering me, preventing me from fleeing shy of throwing her aside or something. My heart leaps into my throat and I look from Callie to Autumn and back again. “W-w-what—”
Callie rises from the bed, holding out her hands. “Calm down, I promise this isn’t anything bad.”
“Well, my dad does have a chain saw in the patio storage,” Autumn drawls. When neither of us laughs, she rolls her eyes. “Oh-kay, well, I’ll be downstairs. You sure you’re all right?”
She clearly isn’t talking to me. Callie smiles a little and nods. Autumn slips out of the room and I find my feet itching to chase after her and demand to be taken home. “If th-they find out I’m here and there’s still a temporary restraining order…”
Callie silences me with a raised hand again. “I’m really sorry we had to trick you here, Vic. I knew you wouldn’t show up if she told you what was going on.”