Modern Monsters (Entangled Teen)

by Kelley York

  Because when Friday rolls around, Autumn, Callie, and I are piling into Callie’s car and driving two hours south, hoping none of our parents call with an emergency that requires us home quickly.

  There’s a distinct sense of déjà vu in doing this. Except Callie is the one in the driver’s seat and she keeps glancing in the rearview mirror at me with a bright smile that says everything is going to be great. Autumn knows better, but she slips her hand back so I can hold on to it, regardless.

  The address Dave gave me is an apartment. The complex is old but not bad, and my dad’s unit is number 321 near the front, so it isn’t hard to find. We park in the visitor’s section and get out, lingering anxiously in front of the car.

  “Do you want us to go with you?” Callie asks.

  Autumn squeezes my hand as though to silently reassure me that they will, under any circumstances, stick right by me if I need them. I smile a little. “A-actually, I think I got this.”

  They watch me approach the apartment, where the outside light is on and the living room window is dimly aglow. Let’s face it, this could turn out to be another dead end. Just because Dave got this address doesn’t mean anything. It could be years old, for all I know. He could have moved again.

  I glance over my shoulder at the girls, who both wave and give me a thumbs-up of encouragement, then turn back around to knock on the door.

  From inside, the TV volume lowers. When the door opens, it’s to reveal a man who looks like me but older, grayer, with a few days’ worth of growth on his face, and I don’t think I’ve ever been so conflicted in all my life.

  Don Whitmore smiles at me, perfectly friendly, with a tilt of his head. “Can I help you?”

  This man is it. This is my father. There’s no denying it, from the slope of his nose to his messy hair and jawline. He is me, many years from now.

  He’s also the man who raped my mother.

  My father, the rapist.

  Do I hate him or love him? Inconclusive. But it’s not because I’m feeling so many things at once this time.

  It’s because I don’t feel anything.

  I say, “I’m s-sorry. I have the wrong apartment.”

  When I turn away, Don Whitmore steps half outside his doorstep. “Hey, wait, kid?” And I look to him questioningly for him to ask with a puzzled look, “Do I know you from somewhere?”

  Glancing back at Autumn and Callie by the car, thinking of Amjad, of Mom and Aunt Sue…maybe this was stupid. Maybe I needed to come here to see how stupid it was. Because this man is my blood, but I couldn’t care less if I never laid eyes on his face again. A smile comes surprisingly easily. “No. You don’t know me.”

  This was all I think I needed. A method of severing any remaining strings I had holding on to the idea that my father was out there somewhere, this miraculous person who died a hero, or who would enter my life again and make everything better. I feel a little at a loss without those dreams to hang on to, but I think I’m getting closer to being okay without them.

  Don doesn’t try to stop me again as I return to the car—where Autumn is waiting with open arms—and then back home, where I go straight up to Mom and hug her tight.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Ten weeks later

  "Your parents will kill me if they find out I’m here,” I say, pulling up a chair. “Sorry. You probably don’t want to see me, but I wanted to see you. I m-mean, I didn’t want to…but I needed to. I guess it wouldn’t feel real until I did.”

  The monitors beep, slow and steady, unchanging day in and day out.

  Brett has been in a coma for eighty-two days, and the limited brain function makes me wonder if he can even hear a word I’m saying.

  Carter told me the bullet must have been guided by God’s hand itself or something, because it passed through his mouth—where he’d put the barrel of the gun—and exited up and out the back of his skull while nipping just the right amount of the delicate workings of his brain to make him like…well, this, but not kill him.

  “They told me it’s rare, but sometimes people like you can wake up.” I pause, rubbing my palms on my jeans. I thought I’d be a stuttering wreck doing this, yet my voice remains even and steady aside from the occasional stumble. Stay calm. Think my words out before I say them. I’m working on it.

  “I don’t think you want to wake up, though. You wouldn’t be the s-same.” If I’m entirely honest— “I’m kind of pissed off at you for that, too. Patrick’s facing jail time. He doesn’t have a f-fancy lawyer father like you do. So in the end, if you die, you still aren’t having to pay for what you did. I won’t forgive you for that.”

  These aren’t things I had planned on saying, but they’re finding their way off my tongue regardless, and that’s okay. Carter said she could get me fifteen minutes before she’d have to drag me out, because I’m not supposed to be here. No one without a uniform is. Brett might be comatose, but he’s still being tried for the rape of Callie Wheeler, and it is all happening while he’s oblivious.

  “I guess I can’t forgive you f-for leaving me, either. But whatever. Y-you know, I came here to talk to you, because maybe some part of you cares and I don’t want to think our friendship wasn’t real. So…I wanted to tell you that I’m okay without you. Maybe I was always okay without you, I don’t know. I just wanted you to hear that because in the end, I sort of think you were the one who wasn’t okay without me.”

  I won’t voice the guilt I feel over that. Over everything. The sense that I had the power to change things at some point in time, in the course of our lives as friends, to make all this turn out differently.

  Amjad says I deserve better friends than Brett.

  Mom hugs me because she doesn’t know what to say, but hey, a hug is an improvement.

  Autumn says I need a therapist…and she’s probably right. Now that I’ve graduated (by the skin of my teeth, but still—!) I can do that. I can think about me. I’ll be going to college in a few months, and I’ll be something more than Brett ever thought I would be.

  Carter pops her head in the room and clears her throat. That’s my cue to leave. I spent most of my time sitting and staring at Brett’s face, thinking that from this angle, he didn’t look much different. Thinner, paler, but otherwise like the same guy I’ve known most of my life.

  I blink back the sudden sting of tears. Nope. I told myself I was done crying over this. Over him.

  Yet I can’t help but murmur to him, “I’m sorry,” and I rest a hand against his arm and wonder if Brett would forgive me.

  If I would want his forgiveness even if he did.

  As I turn to leave, the monitor blips, something irregular, nothing I’ve heard since I’ve been in here. I look at Brett, and the machines blip again. Once, twice. And then they’re back to normal. A way of communicating? I could almost laugh bitterly. Knowing Brett, it could be anything from an “I forgive you” to a “go fuck yourself.”

  I’ve made progress, I think as I head out the door, because I don’t think I’d care which it was anymore.

  Acknowledgments

  Another book finished!

  Modern Monsters was one of those stories that jumped out at me years ago, probably around the time I finished Suicide Watch. There are amazing stories out there already that tackle the subject of rape and the aftermath on the victim, but I haven’t come across any that touch on the way it affects the accused, whether or not he’s guilty. I wanted Vic’s story to show what he endures, as well as touching on Callie’s strength in surviving what happened to her.

  It was entirely coincidence that this book ended up hitting closer to home than I would like, and parts of it were difficult to write. Rape is not an easy subject to talk or write about, and others have done it far better than I. My hope for this book is to touch on the impact these things have not on just the victim, but on everyone around him or her, how the ripple effect can do such tremendous damage. I hope I’ve managed to come close to keeping true to the roller coaster of emot
ions.

  This marks the second book I’ve gotten to do with my amazing editor—Stacy Cantor Abrams—as well as my first with Tara Quigley. Words cannot express how incredible these two are to work with, how insightful, intelligent, and hilarious they are! If I never work with another editor in my life, I’d be content so long as I get to keep them. They are to thank for making sense of the drivel I put on the page.

  Thank you to everyone at Entangled for helping me realize another dream. I couldn’t ask for a better set of people to work with. I view so many of them as friends after all these years, and I don’t know what I would do without them.

  And as always…thank you, my readers. I put these emotions in words as best as I’m able all for you, to get a laugh, a smile, a tear. I hope I succeeded.

  Resources for Victims of Abuse

  After Silence

  www.aftersilence.org

  RAINN

  www.rainn.org

  Victim Rights Law Center

  www.victimrights.org

  1in6

  1in6.org

  Rape Victim Advocates

  www.rapevictimadvocates.org

  The Voices and Faces Project

  www.voicesandfaces.org

  About the Author

  Kelley York was born in central California, where she still resides with her lovely wife, step-daughter, and way too many cats, while fantasizing about moving to England or Ireland. (Or, really, anyplace secluded.)

  Kelley is a sucker for dark fiction. She loves writing twisted characters, tragic happenings, and bittersweet endings that leave you wondering and crying. She strives to make character development take center stage in her books because the bounds of a person’s character and the workings of their mind are limitless.

  www.kelley-york.com

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