by Amy Hatvany
I stayed like this for as long as I could, keening and rocking until the water ran cold and I began to shiver, my teeth clacking. I felt numb, I felt empty. I was a shell, an abandoned chrysalis, a tomb lying in wait for the dead.
Once I was out of the tub and wrapped in a thick blue towel, I opened the door to let the steam out of the bathroom, then used my hand to wipe the condensation from the mirror. A stranger stared back at me.
I heard Tyler’s voice in my head: Your hair looks pretty like that, and another wave of nausea rolled through me. I looked down, and my eyes caught the gleam of the silver scissors I’d left on the edge of the counter. Before I knew what I was doing, I grabbed them with one hand and a strip of my hair with the other. I held it away from my head and began to cut, one chunk after another, leaving haggard ends and uneven lengths in a bob that stopped near the bottoms of my ears.
When I finished, I stared at myself in the mirror, hoping that I would feel better, somehow, no longer looking like the girl who had flirted with her best friend when she was engaged to someone else; the girl who had been the one to kiss Tyler first, to let him grind his crotch against her and lead her upstairs to a room.
I knew what was going to happen. I couldn’t deny that. I’d encouraged him, purposely turned him on. I’d let myself get drunk; I’d wanted to lose control. And this was the result: a girl standing in the bathroom, staring in the mirror, a trickle of blood running down the inside of her leg. A girl who had changed her mind when it was already too late, and now, no matter what she did, would never be the same again.
• • •
That night, I didn’t sleep so much as surf along the edge of consciousness, startling awake with every distant firework boom, sitting up in my bed and turning on the light to make sure that I was still alone. What if Tyler woke up and decided to drive to my house? What if he came in my room and took what he wanted from me again? It was doubtful, I knew, but the fear cloaking my thoughts was relentless, driving roots deep into my brain, choking out any sense of security I had hoped being home would provide.
I heard my parents get home a little after midnight, but I stayed quiet when my mom opened the door and peeked in my room. I was too afraid to open my mouth. Too terrified of what she might make me do. She might make me say what Tyler did to me out loud. She might make me go to the hospital and call the police. Or worse, she might not believe me. She might blame me, like I did myself, for sending the wrong kind of message and leading him on. I couldn’t fathom doing any of those things. I just wanted to pretend it never happened. I just wanted to escape into the thick, black bliss of sleep.
But sleep wouldn’t come. I lay in bed for hours, curled up as tightly as I could beneath my covers, pillows surrounding me. Through my window, I watched the moon drop lower and lower in the cloudless night sky, and the pale, lavender whisper of dawn begin to lighten it. I was scheduled to be at the gym at seven o’clock, but I knew there was no way I could get up, no possible way I could work, so around four, I grabbed my cell phone and left Harold a message, saying I was sick and wouldn’t be in. I couldn’t face my clients. I couldn’t face anyone. I turned my phone off and dropped it on the floor.
The throbbing between my thighs wouldn’t stop. Every time I rolled over or moved at all, a piercing spiral of pain shot through my pelvis. Somewhere around five a.m., the reality of the fact that Tyler hadn’t used a condom hit me, and while I was on the Pill, that wouldn’t protect me from whatever diseases he might carry. Before last night, I would never have fathomed thinking something so horrible about him. But everything I thought I knew about my friend no longer held true. There was something sinister and violent and dark inside him I’d never experienced before. In one instant, he had become a stranger to me, someone I never wanted to see again.
It’s all my fault, I thought. I called it a date. I wore that dress and no bra. I drank too much, I kissed him. I used his body like he was the pole and I was the stripper out on the patio. I let him take me upstairs to that bed. Maybe he was too drunk to hear me when I told him to stop. Maybe I didn’t say it loudly enough. Maybe I didn’t say it enough times.
Finally, around six, I drifted off into a restless sleep. But an hour later, my pounding head and empty, burning stomach woke me again. My mouth was so dry I could barely swallow, and I wished that I had taken Mason’s advice. The last thing I wanted to do was get up, but I needed to hydrate or my headache would only intensify.
Slowly, I rolled out of bed and tried to stand, feeling like I had the worst sort of all-over body flu. My rib cage felt bruised, my joints creaked, and my muscles barely cooperated as I left my room and stepped into the hall, where my mom stood at the top of the stairs, about ten feet away from me, still dressed in her loose black pajama bottoms and one of my dad’s blue and green Seahawks jerseys.
“Amber!” she exclaimed, the sharpness in her voice assaulting my senses. “What happened to your hair?”
I didn’t move. I didn’t look at her. “I cut it.” Keep it together. Don’t say a word. Just act like everything is fine.
“I can see that,” she said, walking toward me. “But when? And why? You’ve always loved it long.”
I shrugged. “Last night, when I got home. I just . . . did it.” I stood still as she hugged me, keeping my eyes on the floor.
“Whew!” she said when she pulled back. “Had a little to drink, did you? It’s coming out your pores.”
I nodded, finally meeting her eyes. “I’m not going to work. I feel awful.”
“I bet,” she said. She paused, then reached up to push my hair back from my face, staring at me with an assessing look. “I like it,” she declared. “We need to clean up the ends, but it actually suits you. Probably easier to take care of, too.”
I nodded again. It was all I could manage.
She pursed her lips and tilted her head to one side. “Are you all right, honey? Did something happen? I didn’t think you’d get home earlier than us last night.”
“I just drank too much. I’ve never done that before.”
She kept looking at me, like she was trying to decide whether or not to believe what I said. “Okay,” she finally replied. “I’ll go make you some ginger tea and dry toast. It’ll help.”
My gut twisted at the thought of trying to put any kind of food in my mouth, but I nodded, if only to make her leave me alone. When she turned to walk away, part of me wanted to call out, to start crying and tell her everything. To ask her to wrap herself around me in my bed the way she used to when I was a little girl, back when the monsters in my imagination weren’t real. When they weren’t actually someone I loved, someone I thought I could trust.
And then, I couldn’t help myself. “Mom?”
“Yes?” she said, stopping her descent down the stairs to look back at me.
Tell her. Say it out loud. I opened my mouth, ready to convey the entire sordid story, but then, only two words came out. “Thank you,” I said, and she smiled.
“Of course, sweetie. I love you.”
“Love you, too.” I entered the bathroom, where I forced myself to drink handful after handful of water, ignoring the mirror, staring at the contents of the wastebasket next to the sink. Before I’d gone to bed, I’d shoved all the strands of my cut-off hair on top of the toilet-paper-wrapped, chopped-up dress and panties, and now it lay there looking like a messy, dark brown nest. The girl I used to be, sitting in the trash.
I washed my face over the sink, then decided to take another hot shower, hoping it might actually make me feel clean. But when I took off the long T-shirt I wore and looked down at my body, I gasped. The evidence was everywhere—fingerprint bruises around my breasts and waist, fat smudges of purple on my rib cage and inner thighs, blood-crusted, half-moon indentations on the palms of my hands. I couldn’t risk my mother walking in on me and seeing any of it. Hurriedly, I pulled the T-shirt back on and raced into my bedroom, where I changed into an oversize, gray WSU sweatshirt and black leggings. Once I was bac
k in bed, a few tears snuck out of the corners of my eyes and rolled down the side of my face into my hair. About five minutes later, my mom brought in a tray with the hot tea and toast she had promised, and again, as I had last night, I pretended to be asleep. She stroked my hair again, setting the back of her hand against my forehead, like she was checking to see if I had a temperature, and the tenderness of her touch brought more tears to my eyes.
“Just rest, my sweet girl,” she whispered before she left the room, and I realized that she knew I was awake.
I thought I might cry more. I thought I might lie there, thoughts spinning as they had last night, but the sheer weight of my fatigue won out and I finally slept, soundly enough that I had no dreams. I woke several hours later to a knock on my bedroom door, to my name being spoken as it opened.
“Amber?” Tyler said, and my entire body seized up. My muscles froze, and a sharp rock in my throat blocked me from taking a breath. What is he doing here? Who let him in? My parents, of course. They didn’t know better. I hadn’t told them what he’d done.
“Are you okay?” he asked, coming in and closing the door behind him. “I was worried when I woke up and you weren’t there.”
I sat up, pressing my back against the padded headboard of my bed. Did he expect me to stay there and cuddle with him? The skin beneath his eyes was dark, and it appeared as though he hadn’t changed or showered. He was frowning, like he was sad. For a flash, I felt myself soften, accustomed to comforting him. But then, a new kind of muscle memory set in: his weight on me, the way he had gored himself inside me, and I instantly felt like a cornered animal, wild and willing to do anything to find escape.
“Get out,” I whispered.
“Amber . . .” he said, taking a couple of steps toward me.
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. He sat down on the edge of my bed, and that’s when I managed to find my voice. “Get out!” I screamed, with enough intensity that my entire body vibrated and the muscles in my throat felt singed. I kicked at him with both legs, as hard as I could, hard enough to push him onto the floor, fighting the way I should have fought last night. Instead, I’d let him hurt me. I’d let him win. “Get the fuck out!”
“Jesus, Amber,” he said as he struggled to right himself.
“Get out!” I screamed again, and I kept on screaming it. “Get out! Get out! Get out!” Just those two words, the only ones I could think to say.
He stood up, his green eyes wide. Then, both my parents appeared in my doorway, their breathing labored after they’d clearly dashed up the stairs.
“What the hell is going on here?” my father demanded.
“Make him leave!” I said, barely able to speak. “Make him go!”
“What?” my mother said, her eyes darting back and forth between Tyler and me, confusion shrouding her face. “Tyler . . . ?”
Tyler didn’t speak; instead, he simply turned around, pushed past both my parents, and strode out of the room.
My parents stood still for a minute, shocked, I supposed, by what had just occurred. “Honey, what happened?” my mom asked, coming over to sit down with me. She wrapped her arms around me and squeezed tightly, making me cry all over again.
“Did you two have a fight?” my dad asked.
I sobbed harder, unable to speak. I felt the mattress sag as my father sat down on the other side of me, putting his strong arms around me, too. “It’s okay, baby,” he said, and I could hear the tears in his own voice. “We’ve got you. Everything’s going to be fine.”
They held me like that for I don’t know how long, until my eyes were swollen shut and my body felt like it had been drained of all my blood. I was so spent, I could barely move; I could barely draw a breath.
“Tell us,” my mother said, her voice trembling. “Please.”
And then, finally, I lifted my head and looked at my parents, and somehow found the strength to speak the truth.
Tyler
What the hell just happened? I thought as I let the Bryants’ front door slam behind me, making my way to the street, where I’d parked my truck. I jumped inside, gripping the steering wheel and gunning the engine, picturing the wide-eyed, undeniable look of fear that had taken over Amber’s face when I walked into her room. She was scared of me. Totally terrified. The tires squealed as I pulled out of my parking spot and pointed my truck toward home, running through three almost-red lights and scaring the hell out of a pedestrian on the way to the freeway.
“Watch it, jerkwad!” the man yelled at me as he jumped back on the curb to avoid getting plowed into by my truck. I flipped him off, then zipped past three cars, cutting them all off so I could merge onto the freeway before them.
Something was seriously wrong. When I’d woken up in the bed without Amber there, I’d called her, but her phone must have been off because it went straight to voice mail. I decided I’d better head over to her house to make sure she had gotten home okay and, also, to find out why she had left. With all the tequila I’d had, I still wasn’t thinking clearly, and the entire night was a sort of fuzzy, amorphous blob in my mind. I remembered the way she and I had danced, how she’d been the one to kiss me. How she’d led me upstairs to the bedroom, how she tore off my clothes, writhing against me and pulling me down on the bed. I remembered how amazing it felt to be inside her. After that, everything sort of went dark, the specifics of the sex we’d had flashing in and out of my head in fractured, disjointed pieces. Why was she afraid of me? Why would she scream at me like that? Had I gotten too rough with her? Had I done something to her in my sleep?
The thought that I’d possibly hurt Amber caused me to reflexively press my foot down on the gas pedal, accelerating to sixty, sixty-five, seventy, then eighty. My blood pressure pounded in my eardrums, the rush of adrenaline filling my veins made my limbs feel heavy, aching with the need for release. What is wrong with me? Just calm the fuck down! Out of sheer frustration, I pounded the heel of my right palm hard enough against the top of the steering wheel that the front of my truck jerked into the next lane. The brakes on the car beside mine screeched, and the driver slammed on his horn.
“Shit!” I said, rushing to right my vehicle. But it was too late. Red and blue lights flashed behind me and the whoop-whoop of the siren sounded. My pulse jittered through my body as I slowed down, using my indicator to signal as I moved over to the side of the road. I turned off the engine and turned on the hazard lights, reaching for my license in my wallet and the truck’s registration from the glove box.
When the officer approached, I didn’t even bother to speak; I just held the documents out the window, wanting to get home, desperate to figure out why Amber had freaked when she saw me.
“Do you know why I pulled you over, sir?” The officer’s blond hair was tucked up into a bun at the base of her neck, and her lips were so thin and pale, it almost looked as though she didn’t have a mouth at all.
“I was speeding,” I said, flatly. Please don’t have me do a Breathalyzer, I thought. I might still be hovering near the limit of legally drunk.
“And you almost drove that Lexus off the road,” the officer said. “Were you on your cell?” She looked to the passenger seat, where my cell phone lay along with my jacket.
“No, I was not.” I reached over and offered the phone to her. “Feel free to check the text or call history for a time stamp of when I last used it.”
She waved it away, then made a note on the clipboard she carried. “You in a hurry to get somewhere this morning?”
I held the tops of my thighs in a tight grip. “No, ma’am. Just wasn’t paying attention. I apologize.”
“You seem agitated. Everything all right?”
I had to restrain myself from unleashing the truth. That everything was far from all right. And just then, as I stared at the officer standing next to my truck, the sound of Amber’s voice pleading with me last night went off like loud bell inside my head—Tyler, wait! she’d said as I was lying on top of her, and a sinking sense o
f horror crept through me. Did she think that I forced her to have sex? Did she think I raped her? Oh god. Oh fuck. I have to talk to her. She has to let me. I have to make her understand she has it all wrong. I would never do something like that!
I clenched my jaws, feeling the muscles working beneath my skin, before I answered. “Can you just give me the fucking ticket so I can get on my way?”
The officer paused, looking at me with cool brown eyes. “There’s no need for that kind of language, sir.”
I took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “I’m sorry. Really.” Getting arrested was all I needed right now; I needed to tone it down. “The thing is, I’m a paramedic and I guess I’m used to being able to push the limit, you know? Sometimes it happens off-shift without me even realizing.” I didn’t mention that Mason drove our rig the majority of the time.
“What district are you with?”
“City of Bellingham, under Captain Duncan.” I held my breath, hoping that this thin alliance between my job and hers might encourage her to let me off with a warning.
The officer looked as though she were contemplating a decision to do just that, and then she spoke. “You might want to avoid driving when you’re this upset,” the officer said as she finished writing out the ticket and handed it to me. “I’m dinging you for the speeding, not reckless endangerment, but I’d better not catch you out here pulling that crap again.”
“You won’t,” I said, taking the ticket, setting it on top of my jacket. “Thank you.” After the officer had returned to her vehicle, I slowly drove away, trying to figure out where I should go next. Heading home wouldn’t do me any good. I needed to sort out the events from last night, and I could only think of one person who could help me do just that.
Ten minutes later, I pulled up in front of Mason and Gia’s house, a small two-bedroom, sky-blue Craftsman in a neighborhood a few blocks off Cornwall Avenue, similar in size and design to the one I’d lived in with my parents across town. Before I left my truck, I shot my partner a text, not wanting to just knock on the door and wake him and Gia or the baby. It was a little after eleven, but I wasn’t sure what time they had gotten in. All I knew was that Mason hadn’t been drinking last night and could maybe help me figure out what had happened with Amber. Maybe he had seen something I couldn’t remember.