The Most Dangerous Place on Earth

by Lindsey Lee Johnson

  “Serious?”

  Elisabeth shrugged.

  “That is fucking incredible,” Emma said. “I can’t believe she didn’t murder you.”

  Elisabeth reached into the back pocket of her jeans and pulled out Emma’s iPhone. “I almost forgot, I found this in the Red Room—I mean, that’s what we call the guest room.”

  The Red Room, Emma remembered: the color of the walls recalled the meat of a beating heart. Emma had perched on the edge of the bed, the down mattress exhaling underneath her. The walls cast pink light on her hands. Ryan Harbinger lay before her, stretching to fill as much space as possible, just like boys like him always did, without even noticing. Above him hung one of Elisabeth’s mother’s art experiments: a grotesque yarn macramé, maroon, that looked like sinews torn and stringing down the wall. Ryan’s eyes were closed and his caramel-colored hair, which usually swept low over his forehead, now fell back to reveal a secret band of untanned skin, and a cluster of tiny, gleaming whiteheads at his hairline that no one, she was sure of it, had ever seen but her. She wanted to pop them, one by one. He opened his eyes.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey.” He smiled sleepily, fingered the skin at the small of her back.

  Leaning down, she kissed him. He returned the kiss, flattening his palm, pressing her toward him. Urgent, awake. She wanted more. She wanted to taste him all over. She wanted the salt on his palms and the sweat between his shoulder blades. The spice of tobacco on his fingertips. The tang of beer on his tongue. She pushed her palm over his hair, finger-combed the waves. He sat up, pulled off his T-shirt and dropped it on the floor beside the bed. She pushed him back to the pillow. Lay beside him and connected the dots of three small moles on his shoulder, each perfectly round and flat, the color of dark chocolate. Raked her fingernails from the curve of his elbow to the seat of his palm, trailing goosebumps. Tongued his belly. His fingers. Sucked on his bared neck, the blood pumping frantically under her mouth. He moaned. Gripped the cords at the back of her neck. She gasped, released him. Opened his mouth with her fingers and kissed him softly there. He pushed back. He unbuckled his jeans and kicked them to the floor. He was the only boy she knew who wore briefs, not boxers—they were electric blue and clung closely to his hips. She liked them. She slid her fingers under their elastic band and giggled as she snapped it, leaving a shocked pink strip of skin. He bucked. Grinned. Let her do what she would. He didn’t tell her he loved her or even that she was beautiful, but she knew that he liked it. She knew that she was wanted.

  She didn’t remember all of it, but she remembered that he came. She did too. It didn’t always work that way—Abigail had said a lot of girls couldn’t get off ever. (Had Mr. Ellison told her this? Disgusting thought.) So what was the point of doing it then, Emma had asked her, because since losing her virginity to Jonas Everett freshman year, she’d hooked up as much for her own pleasure as for any boy’s.

  In the hospital room, Elisabeth handed Emma her phone. “I charged it for you,” she said.

  “Thanks.” The smooth white phone, nestled in Emma’s palm, had a comforting, familiar weight. She curled her fingers around it.

  —

  As soon as Elisabeth left, Emma scrolled through her missed texts. She stopped on a series from her mom, from that night:

  11:32 PM: Hi honey, where are you? Are you at Abigail’s? Everything OK?

  12:05 AM: Hello? Do you realize it’s an hour past curfew?

  12:12 AM: Time to come home now.

  12:12 AM: We will talk about this when you get here.

  12:32 AM: Emma Jane. This is your mother. Please do not ignore me.

  12:48 AM: Text me or call NOW, please!

  1:01 AM: Now I’m beginning to worry…

  1:06 AM: I just want to know you’re OK.

  1:13 AM: OK I’m calling again. Pick up your phone!!

  1:15 AM: Honey?

  1:15 AM: You didn’t answer.

  1:33 AM: Where are you.

  1:34 AM: Are you OK??

  1:35 AM: Answer me

  1:35 AM: Text me

  1:36 AM: Call me I’m trying you again

  1:41 AM: Baby?

  1:42 AM: Please

  Emma dropped the phone. The naked desperation in the messages made her ache—an ache deeper than her injuries, centered in the hollows of her bones. Her mom was her mom, no matter her faults.

  No matter that when Emma was thirteen, her mom would gather her parents’ friends in the living room for drinks, then pull Emma to her lap and hug until it hurt. “This is my favorite girl, my best girl,” she said, squeezing her, kissing her neck. “I love you, Emma-Bear, I love you, I love you.” While everyone was watching. The grown-ups with their glasses tilted over their faces smirking because they knew her mom was drunk.

  Emma kissed her mom and said she loved her too. Then she squirmed away and went back to her bedroom. But the party people’s voices carried through the walls, hippie music on the stereo and plates crashing on the hardwood floor and bodies thumping into walls and Emma knew that they were dancing. Not dancing like she did, not real, just bodies lurching senselessly around the room. It was no use trying to sleep. She was missing everything. Rubbing her eyes, she pulled her hair into a topknot and went out in her pink cotton nightgown to join them.

  The grown-ups careened around the living room. Emma’s mom spun in Randall Neal’s arms. Threw her head back, laughing. “Emma-Bear, you’re up!” she said. “Come here, honey. Dance with us. Emma is the most amazing dancer,” she announced, and Emma blushed with pleasure and embarrassment.

  “Jesus Christ, Debra,” said Bob Simonsen, “we know, we know!”

  “My little ballerina girl,” her mom said, breaking away to come to Emma, brush her hair back from her face. “When she dances, it’s a—what’s that called, like a religious experience, like a thing you can’t believe—”

  “A miracle,” Emma’s dad broke in. He was at the wet bar, pouring drinks.

  “Yes!” Emma’s mom leaned down to Emma, who was small for her age, pulling her against her chest. Her cotton blouse released the familiar, heady scent of patchouli and red wine. “It’s like a miracle. God-given, I’m telling you. Her father and I had nothing to do with it.”

  “No kidding,” said Phil Monroe.

  Emma was pleased and embarrassed, embarrassed and pleased. She said, “Mom, get off, you’re crushing me.” She untangled herself, went and opened the door to the kitchen.

  “Em, while you’re up, bring us a refill?” Her dad picked up an empty gin bottle and shook it. “Should be another in the fridge.”

  In the kitchen, glassware scattered over the butcher-block counters. Half-drunk martinis and glasses of wine. She picked a martini glass still heavy with gin. Sipping the bitter liquid, she circled the kitchen and stopped at the sink. The gin made her head swim gently, pleasantly. Out the window were swirls of misty silver. Mill Valley lay below them, but she couldn’t make out its glitter of lights; they were floating on acres of fog. It was like gazing out the window of an airplane after ascending through a cloud—the span of clear, dark sky above, the roiling gray below. Hilltops broke through here and there, stippled with houses, but these were the only signs of any kind of life below them, any other humans in the universe.

  —

  In the hospital, Emma scrolled through the rest of her texts:

  Lexie Carlton: omfg em r u ok I cant beleive this happened!!

  Jonas Everett: Emma just want u to know Im here for u whatever u need. Sorry this sux so hard.

  Dave Chu: Emma, I’m sorry abt what happened. Are you having more surgeries? My mom says Get well soon and We’re thinking abt you.

  Kai Alder-Judge: Emma Fleed. This truly blows I am so sorry. Stay strong and keep a Positive Outlook. Remember its the struggles in life that help us grow. Peace and Love.

  Annalynne Schmidt: Luv u to the moon and back, lets do something soooon!

  Alessandra Ryding: Miss ur beautiful face girly. <3 See u soo
n.

  Nick Brickston: Yo ima try to get there to see u asap. hang in there girl.

  Ryan Harbinger: Dear Emma, Get Well Soon. My parents said we should all come visit you so maybe thatll happen, lol well see. Anyways hope you feel better soon.

  Steph Malcolm-Swann: Luv u hope u r doing better. I cant wait to visit u babe!!!!

  Abigail Cress: I texted your mom and she said u r ok. I’m glad.

  Abigail Cress: It’s not that I’m not thinking of u. Believe me I am.

  Abigail Cress: I know I should come. I will when I can. I still <3 u Em, promise.

  So many declarations, so many promises. Yet she’d been in the hospital for a week and seen no one but her parents and Elisabeth Avarine. It made no sense. If her friends loved her, where were they? If they wanted to see her, why didn’t they? Emma knew that she was missing a piece of the puzzle—something must have happened that was keeping them away.

  On her phone she clicked the Instagram app. She saw that she was tagged in sixteen photos. Dread settled in her chest—there were too many hours she couldn’t remember. She was scared to see the pictures, but it was more dangerous not to know.

  She clicked on the first—it filled the phone’s small screen—and exhaled when she saw it was harmless, a crowd scene, Emma barely visible in a cluster of junior girls. Next there was a selfie with Abigail: they posed with eyes wide, cheeks sucked in to sharpen cheekbones, lips glossed pink and pursed.

  The photos that followed told the story of the night: Emma posed on Elisabeth Avarine’s glass coffee table. Mid-swing, her hair strung over her face, and bra straps dangled down both arms; her tiered chiffon skirt swung up to flash a strip of muscled thigh. In another, she bent forward to reveal a dip of cleavage, a black push-up bra, a dark slice of nipple. In the third, she sprawled across a white couch, eyes closed, head cocked on her shoulder, legs dropped open to reveal a pink vee of underwear under her skirt. On Facebook more photos were posted—the same poses shot from different angles, by different kids—and beneath them were strings of comments from people she called friends, the same kids who had texted her afterward, professing love and promising to save her from her solitude. Then there was the blog post that popped up when she Googled her name, and Twitter posts from people she had never even met:

  http://www.onemarinviewblog.com

  Marin County Teenager Injured After Night of Hard Partying Recorded on Social Media

  posted by admin

  5/27/2013

  A Marin County teen is in the hospital today after a drunken car crash near downtown Mill Valley early Sunday morning. The girl, 16-year-old Emma Fleed, will have to cope not only with the serious injuries she has suffered, but also with the nightmare that has been raging online ever since the news of the crash got out. Facebook and Instagram posts from the party that preceded the crash are all over the Internet, and they are disturbing. But they do give us a glimpse into the reality of teenage life in Marin today:

  Nick Brickston: Everybody in mv get to elisabeth avarine’s shes throwing down

  Ryan Harbinger: yee

  Emma Fleed: yeah its bout to be fat

  Damon Flintov: lez do it

  As the night wore on, signs of trouble began to emerge. There is a photograph of the driver of the BMW, Damon Flintov, kneeling on a kitchen floor, a bottle of Smirnoff Ice cocked at his mouth:

  Nick Brickston: Damon getting iced

  Ryan Harbinger: chag ro

  Ryan Harbinger: fuckin goon

  Damon Flintov: Ha ha flints back bitches

  Jonas Everett: ohhhh shit

  In another photo, Nick Brickston, one of the passengers in the BMW, gives a sexually explicit hand sign kids refer to as “The Shocker”:

  Ryan Harbinger: its the shocker!!

  Emma Fleed: ohh yaaaa

  Damon Flintov: yo nick brix got the hooks

  The night progressed and Emma Fleed, the primary victim of the car accident at Throckmorton and Cascade Canyon, was video-recorded on a mobile phone as she danced on a glass coffee table, apparently unaware of her surroundings, likely intoxicated (or “turt”). The video was posted on Vine, a popular social networking site where short videos play on never-ending loops. Here, the kids’ comments take a darker turn:

  Nick Brickston: majestic

  Steph Malcolm-Swann: he he

  Damon Flintov: woah woah woah. this chick is so ratchet

  Lexie Carlton: luv u sexxxy

  Ryan Harbinger: drunk off her ass ha ha

  Annalynne Schmidt: wut the fuck is this girl doing??? lol

  Nick Brickston: Emma Fleed is so wasted Lindsay Lohan just told her to get it together

  Jake Rambelli: is this girl getting naked or what?

  The kids continued to take advantage of Emma Fleed’s vulnerable state, posting additional photographs and videos of the young girl on the table, her skirt and top disheveled so as to reveal her thighs and underwear:

  Jonas Everett: this girl is fcked UP

  Jake Rambelli: thirsty trick

  Steph Malcolm-Swann: this is so hilar

  Dave Chu: what if that was your daughter

  Ryan Harbinger: what if it was my fuckin little sister

  Damon Flintov: it wouldn’t be tho. she wouldn’t do that.

  Ryan Harbinger: real.

  Jonas Everett: Emma Fleed is DTF whose ready??

  CHRIS NGUYEN and 6 others

  Finally, the victim is shown as she lay passed out on a soiled white couch, her hair disheveled, her skirt hiked up to reveal pink underwear. Though at least five other kids took and posted photographs in this moment, it does not appear, from the photos, that anyone stepped in to help the girl. To the kids it seemed to be a kind of terrible joke:

  Damon Flintov: she is so fucked right now

  Corie Narlow: who is this sloppy drunk bitch?

  Brian DeAngelo: cumbucket

  Jeremy McCreigh: some people deserve to get raped

  Damon Flintov: u r one sick fuck

  Jeremy McCreigh:

  http://www.twitter.com

  5/25/2013–5/26/2013

  @sflover_08: @1marinview It must suck to be that drunk slut everyone’s tweeting about #mvcrash #partyfouls #sloppydrunkbitches #kidsthesedays

  @aliciababe8: Girls need 2 stop putting thmselves in dangerous situations like this. #mvcrash #kidsthesedays

  @mvdad94941: @aliciababe8 @1marinview What so now it is her fault the other kid was driving drunk?? #mvcrash

  @anniebansie: @mvdad94941 if u act like she did ur asking for things 2 happen 2 u. Its common sense, this is the world we live in. #mvcrash

  @ericdracula2: Stupid bop gets what she deserves. Maybe now shell see dont get in cars with ppl who r drinking!! #mvcarcrash #sloppydrunkbitches

  As Emma read, her heart beat faster. This was her (could this really be her?) that they were talking about. She had always been popular, among kids and adults. Now she was worse than a slut or a trick—she was a victim to be judged, pitied, and avoided. Even Abigail, her best friend, did not want to be near her. No one did.

  —

  In restless dreaming she was standing on the wet deck at the party, in a circle of basketball players. One of them, Chris Nguyen, she’d given a blow job after the MCAL finals. Now they flirted in the semi-dark and Emma let him kiss her because why not. When Rihanna soared through the stereo, Emma’s of-the-moment favorite, she didn’t need a partner to start dancing.

  And she drifted to an earlier performance, years before:

  The other kids were playing in the tents or crawling over the fence line or turning cartwheels at the edges of the grass, but in the center of the lawn Emma practiced her dance for the grown-ups. The recital was just two weeks away and she’d been rehearsing constantly. The music wasn’t playing, but she felt it in her body. She was small, but she stretched to draw the lines the dance required. The adults sat around the campfire chewing on their ribs and pasta salad; her dad had a picked bone in his hand and reddish juices smeared at the corner
s of his mouth. The adults turned toward her, but they didn’t know how to be an audience: they laughed at the parts that were serious, oohed and aahed at the parts that were easy, glanced away from the parts that were hard. As Emma leapt into a grand jeté, her mother spilled a glass of red wine across the picnic table’s cloth and cursed, and everybody jumped up screaming and laughing as the wine skimmed over the table and flowed off the edge. “Time to cut her off!” Emma’s father yelled, and her mom fake-slapped him as she stumbled toward the house.

  —

  The next day, although Emma could not yet walk, Dr. Kopech promised that she would. She’d have to work at her physical therapy, he told her and her parents, but all would heal in time. Her body was young and strong, had bounced back remarkably, and would recover completely.

  At this news Emma felt a tightening in her chest, a quickening. “I’m going to be able to dance?” The doctor nodded. Emma’s mom started crying, messy, sniffling sobs; she covered her face with her hand. “Oh, Emma-Bear,” she said, and enfolded Emma’s hand in hers. Emma shook her off. Her mother’s blatant joy annoyed her, though she didn’t know why. She would heal, she would recover her legs, her feet, her turnout—and yet something disturbed her. It was something to do with the stage and the freedom she’d once found there, something to do with the texts and tweets and online posts that had come to define her to the world outside this room, and something to do with the understanding that, in spite of his smug hands and satisfied smile, the doctor was as powerless as everyone else—powerless to recover her in the way that really mattered, powerless to erase the record of her shaming, powerless to bring her back to that night and undo what had happened to her.

  —

  After two weeks in the hospital, Emma was released to a rehab center.

  On the way there, Emma’s dad pulled his Mercedes convertible into the parking lot of the shopping center across from school. “I’ve got to pick up a couple things for your mom,” he said. “Just hang tight, okay?”

  Her crutches were propped in the backseat, announcing themselves, waving hello. “Where am I gonna go?”