I sat in the car just staring at my house, wondering if I’d ever be the same. If I’d ever be able to say, “It’s okay. I fell for the wrong guy, but at least he didn’t take my virginity when he had the chance.”
My head was saying, yes. My heart was saying, absa-friggin-never.
I was still thinking about finding a hole to crawl into when my phone started ringing. Only my mom would call to check on me while I was in our driveway.
But it wasn’t my phone. It was Chris’s. One of his parents had finally figured out he was gone. Took them long enough.
Even as I put the car in drive and backed out onto the street, I knew it was more excuse to see him, to be near him and try to fix things, than desire to give him his phone that had me driving down Franklin Street. I had this hopeful feeling that after I’d left he’d realized what he’d done and just hadn’t had the phone to call me from.
The party at Mark’s was still going strong when I got there. It was early as far as this group cared. I followed the music around to the back where a sliding glass door to a crowded basement was open.
Inside the most popular kids in school, and some I didn’t even know, were sitting around or dancing. The smell of beer washed over me as I pushed my way into the crowd. The music blocked out the giggling and chatter of the cheerleaders flirting up at the jocks I only recognized by sight.
This was not my scene. Not my group. I was pretty sure Luke or Ben weren’t going to stumble out of the kitchen and hand me a drink.
I inched my way through the heat to the kitchen, hoping I’d spot that mop of uncontrollable blond hair soon. Some guy I didn’t know bumped into me and handed me a beer with an apology as he grabbed my ass.
I really did not want to be there.
“Have you seen Chris?”
Ass-grabbing guy looked disappointed for a moment before he was already peering over my shoulder for the next potentially too-drunk-to-say-no girl. “Kent? Yeah, he was down the hall.”
I plowed down the hall through the hook-ups and near-hook-ups, hoping I’d find him soon. If I could just get him out of here…get him back to the bridge so we could talk. I never should have driven away.
He wasn’t in the hall or any of the rooms along it. At the end of the hall, a light shone from a half-closed door. I pushed through it, expecting the party to have spilled into this last corner. Expecting to try to set my world to rights and rescue Chris with it.
Only that isn’t what I found.
He was there all right. And the party had seeped into the room. But it was a party of two.
He was sprawled on top of a mostly-naked brunette, his face buried in her neck. His mouth edging its way toward her collarbone. The floor was strewn with their clothes, each down to just the minimum.
For a moment all I could do was stare at him, gorgeous still as he broke my heart in those stupid boxer briefs that only I should have been seeing.
And, for just a moment—just long enough to get me mad, get me out, and get me home—I was irate. I was beyond irate. It wasn’t sex he didn’t want. It was sex with me.
He was having no problem with the girl whose back his hand was sneaking around to unclasp her barely-there bra.
I have no idea what came over me, but his phone was flying through the air and crashing into his shoulder before I knew it.
And I was done.
Done with all of it.
I was in the hall before I even heard my name shouted from those too pretty lips, followed by just about every curse word I’d ever heard and a couple that were new to me.
I must have looked as crazed as I felt because the crowd parted as I shoved my way toward the door, desperate to get out. Escape.
And then I was in my car, racing home. I had to get home. If I could just get home…I don’t remember the drive or the stops or the turns.
My hands were shaking so badly on the wheel, I could barely clasp it. The road was blurry, but I didn’t care.
My phone rang and rang and rang till it went to voicemail.
Five more blocks.
Four more blocks.
I could see the lights on my front porch when the texts started.
I didn’t even make the driveway. The lawn was going to have to be good enough. I raced in, slammed the door and sprinted to my room.
The first thing I saw, the mirror I’d had a blanket tossed over for months and just uncovered, mocked me the second I closed the door.
I picked up my jewelry box and threw it right through the mirror. Right through me.
Chapter 24
“Rachel, open the door.” My mother was pounding on the other side even as I pushed my dresser in front of it. “Open the door now!”
“Go away.”
“I’m not going away. You know I’m not going away. You’re opening this door or I’m calling the cops to come take you out.”
She would, too. I didn’t even care. I sat on the floor, back to the dresser, dresser to the door.
I got up, stepping around the glass and pulled the shades on my windows before I caught my reflection.
“Rachel.”
Her voice was so far away. I started to reach out for it, to move the furniture and let her in, but then I saw my hands. They looked tiny on the ends of my arms. I knew it. I knew my arms had always been crazy out of proportion.
“Rachel, open the door.”
“No. Mom, please, please go away.” I couldn’t let her see me. If she saw me, she’d see everything.
I think my arms might have been getting longer. That couldn’t be right. That wasn’t rational. They must have always been this wrong. If she saw me like this, she’d never look at me and not see it. I’d be the daughter who was crazy and ugly.
How could she love me then, even if she was my mom?
“Open it, Rachel.” I couldn’t tell if she was angry or panicked.
These clothes. They felt tight. And it was so hot in there. I needed to get out of them. Stripping my shirt over my head, I imagined what Chris had seen. This misshaped girl who looked so wrong he couldn’t stand to touch her.
Through the bathroom door, I caught a reflection in the mirror over the sink and couldn’t help the anger, the despair. I chased myself across the room till we stood eye-to-eye. My head looked giant. I’d always known it was abnormally large, that hats were not my friend, but now it was huge. Like a bobble-head doll.
All I could see was the gorgeous, tiny, perfectly-shaped girl under Chris, running her foot up the back of his leg.
My own porno nightmare.
My fist shot out and slammed into the glass, cutting through it to the medicine cabinet behind.
“Damn it to hell, Rachel Ann! Open this door or I’m taking an ax to it!”
Something dripped on my foot. Something thick and red. I needed her so bad, but I would lose her if I let her in. How could I lose my mom?
“Mom? I think I’m bleeding.” My voice kind of echoed in my head.
But, I couldn’t be sure I was cut because it didn’t ache or anything. It seemed like if you were bleeding it would hurt, right?
“Rachel, baby. Please.” I think she was crying. It sounded like it even through the door.
I started to push the dresser aside but panicked. My heart hurt from how fast it sped, the beats an uncountable jackhammer drowning out everything else—my breathing, my soul weeping.
“Mom?”
“Yeah, baby?”
“I want to let you in, but you have to promise not to look at me.”
I could hear her sobbing from the other side of the door.
“Yeah, hon. I promise. Just let me in.”
I tried to push the dresser aside, but it didn't want to move and now its corner was red and slick too. I shoved it part of the way from the door, enough so my mom could squeeze through.
I could hear her talking to someone, low and urgent, and another sound of someone crying, but I couldn’t go out there. I couldn’t let them see me. It would just be worse.<
br />
“Rachel, honey, can I come in now?”
I nodded trying to remember how to talk—how to remind her not to look at me. She squeezed through the space between the wall and the door where the dresser stopped the door, her head lowered, eyes on the floor until she saw the red drops there.
Her head jerked up and then back down fast, but enough to make me step back.
“Don’t!” She put out a hand to stop me. “There’s glass behind you.”
Her hand stayed out, reaching toward me but not making it, not making the distance between us.
“Where are you cut?”
I shook my head again. Was I really cut?
“Where are you cut, Rachel?”
“Mom?” I didn’t know what to do. I knew she needed to look at me, but I couldn’t stand the thought. Once she saw me…“Mom, will you still love me?”
“Always. Always, baby.” She yanked me into her arms and it was better there because I was safe but she still couldn’t see me. “Rachel, we’re going to have to go to the hospital, okay?”
“No!” Do you know how many people are in hospitals? And they make you sit in that waiting room where everyone looks at you wondering. Wondering. Wondering. “No.”
“I already called. They’re sending someone to get us and they’ll bring you straight in. Dr. Meadows is going to meet us there and make sure it’s safe. No one but us. I promise.”
I tried shaking my head, but she was holding me so tight I couldn’t. And I couldn’t breathe. I just couldn’t breathe.
The front bell rang and there were heavy steps on the stairs.
They were coming and they were going to see me and then drag me out there. Out where people could see me. God, why were they making me go?
I tried to pull away, yanking myself from my mom, but she held me so tight—so tight I couldn’t move. I pushed at her, trying to get loose of her arms, trying to escape that hug that cinched me to her.
“Mrs. Wells?” The voice came through the dresser-blocked door.
“We’re in here. You’re going to have to come in.”
How could she do this to me?
I started kicking, shoving. I swung my arms and pushed at her. If I could just get away. If I could just get to the bathroom and lock myself in.
“Hush. Hush.” She just kept saying it as the people on the other side of the door pushed and pushed until they broke their way into my room. The world was coming in. I eyed the door to the bathroom, frantic to reach it.
“No, honey.” My mom still held tight, holding me so close she didn’t break her promise not to look.
Then the strangers were there, one was trying to take me from my mom. I wouldn’t let him. If he got me he’d make me leave, make me go outside. Bigger, stronger arms clasped me, locking me in an embrace that lacked the love my mom’s had. The other stranger wrapped my hand and some type of gauze that turned from white to red.
“She won’t leave. She won’t go.” My mom just kept saying that, over and over. Maybe they wouldn’t make me. Maybe they’d get out. Neither of them had looked anywhere but my hand, but they were going to drag me out there. People would stop and look then. Look and cringe.
I couldn’t leave. Could. Not. Leave. I fought them with all the fear I had, punching and kicking and begging at the same time. Begging them not to kill me. That’s what would happen if they made me go. I’d die. I knew I’d die.
Everyone was talking, all at once I think, but the noise in my ears was so loud I couldn’t hear them. Sound, sight, everything—everything was hazy. I was still struggling against the guy holding me from behind, bracing my hand as the lady changed the gauze to white again and watched it turn red…it was all turning red…I couldn’t breathe. My lungs hurt and I gasped for air. He changed the cloth, binding my wrist as it turned red another time…and then, gasping once more, it all went dark.
Chapter 25
My mom didn’t make me leave the house for another nine days except for the outpatient meetings. Everyone was very clear I’d have to go back to school that Monday though.
Part of me couldn’t wait to go, to escape the damage I’d done. My mother was covered in bruises. My sisters were afraid to look at me. My room was being repaired. My mom had been able to squeeze through the tiny opening I’d made for her, but EMTs had to break down my door in the end to get in. Mom left the door for last, probably afraid I’d lock myself in again.
The day before I went back, Amy came to the house. She’d been there every day, but I hadn’t been able to face her. To admit to her what I was…as if she didn’t know.
Mom stopped policing me long enough to let Amy come up to my room. She knew I’d feel safe there, even if the doorframe still hadn’t been replaced.
I sat on the bed, listening to Amy climb the stairs and pause at the top. She was right to be afraid. Who wanted to claim a crazy girl as their best friend?
“Hey.”
She was looking at me, but not straight on. As if she couldn’t stand to. As if someone had warned her.
“Hey.”
She picked at the splinters of the doorframe and just kind of waited.
“You can come in.”
Who knows why that made her look relieved. You’d think she’d want to get as far away from me as possible if she were smart. She held out a little bag as she came toward me.
“Ben sent this.” I took the bag and even as I pulled the gift out, I couldn’t have guessed what it was until I unfolded it with a laugh.
“He sent you a pillow case?” Amy ran her fingers along the edge as if there might be something magical to it.
And, of course, I knew there was. “It’s the most-comforting-smell-in-the-world pillow case.”
I tugged it over my own pillow, breathing in the scent. The pool party seemed years ago, but this gift, this made me smile like nothing had since I’d come home.
Amy circled the foot of the bed and curled up on it next to me, like we’d done all those nights she’d stayed at my house after her mom had died. After a few moments, she spoke. Whispered really.
“I’m hoping you’re ready to talk to me now.”
I wished she could just magically know. That I didn’t have to tell her anything but she could just download it, like an mp3 or something.
“I wasn’t away being a camp counselor this summer.”
“Okay.”
And it was. At least with Amy.
I was about to say it out loud. Even with Dr. Meadows, I’d never actually had to say what was wrong. I had to talk about how I was doing and how I felt, but not what I had. Now, I was going to put into words the mess I was.
“I’ve been on meds since freshman year for BDD…and the panic attacks it causes for me.” I leaned back into one of the pillows pulling another one from under me to wrap my arms around. “I’m on them again.”
“Tell me.” Only Amy could make this sound like no big deal. “Your mom told me a little about it, but not much.”
That was Mom. I cause mass chaos and destruction in the house, and she tries to smooth the way with my best friend. Probably my only friend.
“Body Dysmorphic Disorder. Basically, I can’t see me. I know rationally…” I forced a grin, trying to hide my embarrassment, “…when I’m being rational, what I’m seeing isn’t true. But there’re triggers and stuff.”
“But no one sees themselves like they are.” She sounded more confused than argumentative.
“Yeah. True.” I curled on my side facing her, and she slid down next to me, another pillow wrapped in her arms too. “But more, like, extreme…you know? It’s as if we both looked at a swan and you saw a swan and I saw an elephant. Or constantly seeing yourself in a funhouse mirror, all warped and mangled and stuff.”
She nodded, trying to understand. Listening, like no one outside my family and Dr. Meadows ever had.
“But things have never been this bad, right?”
I still didn’t want to talk about that night. It was humiliating. Not
just the attack, but everything leading up to it. Even now I couldn’t stand to think about it.
“No.”
“You had a big trigger? Chris?”
I wasn’t sure what she knew. Part of me wanted to ask how much and how she knew it. But most of me, the part of me fighting to get my feet back under me and feel almost normal again, didn’t care.
Okay. That’s a lie. I still cared. A lot. I just hurt more than I cared.
“Yeah. Stuff with Chris got bad, and he…”
I’m not sure why, but I didn’t want to tell her what he’d done. How much he’d hurt me. She had promised we were best friends and we never cheated on each other. I knew that even meant Chris…that even Chris, her fragile ex-hero, wouldn’t come before me.
“I know.”
I hadn’t realized I’d been studying the quilt pattern of my comforter until she said that and my gaze snapped back to hers.
“You do?”
“Yeah. He called Luke that night to get him from Mark’s. Luke said he was so trashed he couldn’t stand, but he wouldn’t go home. He tried to get Luke to bring him here.”
That would have been bad to say the least.
“What did he do? Luke, I mean?” I prayed he was smart enough to not bring Chris home.
“He brought him to the Parkers’.” She paused, running a finger around the ribbing of the pillow. “He’s still there. He’s staying with the Parkers.”
Just what that house needed. A fifth boy.
“How is he?” Why did I ask that?
“Honestly, a mess. You’re calmer than he is.”
I coughed out my first almost-laugh since that night. Yeah, but I was the one on pills. Mine were small, and kind of diamond shaped and vital. Right now, they were vital.
And that was okay. For now.
“So.” Amy was looking at the pillow again. “Where were you this summer?”
“I went to a camp where you come off your meds while doing cognitive therapy…retraining your brain. It’s supposed to make it easier than doing it around people you know and during school and stuff. There’s more than that, but yeah.”
“How’d that go?”
Secret Life (RVHS Secrets) Page 18