True Story
Page 26
GIRL
Tutwiler’s Cove.
RICHARD
Oh, cool. I have a friend who lives there.
GIRL
A lot of people live there.
Richard looks out the window, kicking himself. Then:
RICHARD
I’m Richard, by the way.
He glances into the back seat.
The girl is passed out.
INT. RICHARD’S CAR — A LITTLE LATER
Richard turns onto a dark street. He stops the car, leaves it running. He turns to look into the back seat.
Max and the girl are both passed out, heads rolled back.
Richard gathers his nerve, then reaches out —
RICHARD’S POV: He touches the girl’s BARE KNEE, through the rip in her jeans.
RICHARD
Hey. Hey.
She sits up, blinking and confused.
GIRL
What?
RICHARD
I’m Richard, remember?
She frowns at him.
RICHARD (CONT)
Where’s your house?
The girl looks out the window, still confused, very drunk.
RICHARD (CONT)
We’re in Tutwiler’s Cove. Which house is yours?
GIRL
Three-eighty Poplar.
There’s a loud, inarticulate GROAN from Max.
Max has rolled over and is trying to open the door, pawing at the handle, his eyes still closed.
RICHARD
Max, we’re not there yet. Hold up.
MAX
(mumbling)
Gotta pee.
Max gets the door open and nearly falls out of the car.
Richard and the girl look in opposite directions. Out the window, Max stumbles over to the side of the street and PISSES LOUDLY.
MAX
(groaning in pleasure)
Oh, yes! Yeah, baby, yeah!
Richard drums his fingers on the steering wheel, hating Max.
The back door opens. Max slides into the back seat. His eyes are open now. He slaps his own face, wakes up.
MAX
Whoo-yeah!
RICHARD
Welcome back, cowboy.
MAX
(to the girl)
So we’re gonna party at your house, Alice?
(a short pause)
. . . Alice?
Richard turns. The girl — Alice — is unconscious again. Max is leaned across the back seat, one arm around her neck, patting her cheek with the back of his other hand.
RICHARD
Dude!
MAX
What?
RICHARD
Get off her. You just peed on those hands.
Max doesn’t move. He grins at Richard.
Then he turns and slowly, deliberately, LICKS ALICE’S CHEEK. He turns back to Richard.
MAX
All clean.
Richard, frustrated, reaches for Alice’s knee again, tries to shake her awake.
She just rolls over onto Max’s shoulder. Max smiles, cradles her under his arm.
RICHARD
Fuck you, dude.
Richard puts the car in drive and SPEEDS down the road.
INT. MEXICAN RESTAURANT — PRESENT DAY
Adult Alice has her eyes closed, breathing.
ADULT RICHARD (O.S.)
So yeah, he licked your cheek, but that was really the worst of it.
Adult Alice squeezes her eyes closed, trying not to cry.
EXT. 380 POPLAR — ALICE’S FRONT YARD
Richard opens the back door and leans in to pull Alice out of the back seat. She’s still unconscious.
Max gets out of the other side and walks around to help.
They each get one of her arms around their shoulders. They start carrying her toward the door.
Her head is rolled onto Richard’s shoulder.
RICHARD
She smells like Skittles.
MAX
(rolling his eyes)
Gaywad.
They carry her up the front stoop. The porch light is on, but the house is dark.
The two boys look at the front door, considering for a minute.
MAX
Let’s just leave her here.
He gestures: There’s a wooden BENCH on the stoop.
RICHARD
Dude. It’s freezing out here.
MAX
You wanna wake her parents up?
Richard tries to shake the girl awake.
RICHARD
Alice. Alice, wake up. Alice, we need your key.
Max rolls his eyes.
MAX
She’s out, dude. Come on, let’s go. It’s not that cold, she’ll be fine.
Richard sighs, looks around.
RICHARD
Okay.
The two boys lean over and set her on the bench.
She slumps over to one side.
MAX
She looks like a bum.
RICHARD
You asshole.
Richard TAKES OFF HIS LACROSSE TEAM JACKET and drapes it over Alice.
RICHARD
(to Alice)
I’ll come back and get it later.
They turn and jog down the front lawn back toward Richard’s car.
Behind them, a LIGHT goes on in the house. The front door starts to open.
ALICE’S MOTHER comes out and SEES the name on the jacket:
ROTH
#36
Alice’s mother SCREAMS.
INT. RICHARD’S CAR — A LITTLE LATER
Richard is still frustrated, gripping the wheel with both hands.
Max is rolling back and forth in the back seat, laughing hysterically.
MAX
Did you hear the way her mom screamed? Jesus, she was mad! Oh my God, dude, that was so nuts!
EXT. 7-ELEVEN — A LITTLE LATER
Richard sits huddled in the front seat of his car, sipping a Slurpee.
RICHARD’S POV: Through the window, a PUNK GIRL behind the register, blue lipstick and bright orange hair, laughs and shakes her head at Max, who’s leaning on the counter, leering and flirting.
INT. DENNY’S — A LITTLE LATER
Max and Richard walk into the all-night diner.
The place is empty except for a table full of lacrosse guys.
And one girl:
HALEY MORELAND. A beefy guy has his arm around her, and she’s goofing around with everyone. She turns and smiles as Richard approaches.
HALEY
Hey, Richie Rich!
RICHARD
’sup, Moreland.
They fist-bump as Richard sits down at the table.
ALICE (O.S.)
Wait, what?
CUT TO:
INT. MEXICAN RESTAURANT — PRESENT DAY
Alice is staring at Richard.
RICHARD
Haley Moreland. God, I haven’t thought about her in ages. We used to be good buddies. She was dating a friend of mine. But she was like one of the guys, you know?
Alice closes her eyes.
RICHARD (CONT.)
What’s wrong?
ALICE
Just keep going.
Alice’s eyes are still closed.
INT. DENNY’S — A LITTLE LATER
The pitch of the conversation peaks, as
Max gets to the climax —
MAX
And we left her on the fucking bench!
Everyone explodes in laughter, everyone talking over each other.
“I don’t know why I went along with it,” Richard said when he finished. “I guess I didn’t want to get into it with Max—he could be such a dick. And maybe part of me thought I could get them to stop giving me such shit about being a virgin. I was a dumb teenager! I didn’t think about the consequences. I never thought the story would get around the way it did.”
He ate another chip. I drank some water. There was nothing to say.
“What made me crazy, what drove me so crazy about the way everyone talked about it, was that I actually saved her. You, I mean. Max probably would have—done bad things, if I wasn’t there. It’s unfair to say I did anything but stop that from happening. But I know it was my fault. I was dumb for going along with the story. I should have told everyone he was lying, that it didn’t happen.”
He exhaled, as if he’d been crying. “I know it went bad.” He said, “It feels good getting that off my chest.”
I couldn’t look at him.
“How do—are you okay?” he asked.
“You never even touched me,” I said to the table. I meant it as a question, although it sounded like an accusation.
“No,” he said.
“I thought you did,” I said.
“Like I said, I touched your knee. And Max licked your cheek.”
“I used to tell people I wasn’t a virgin,” I said. “I didn’t know how else to say it.”
Finally I looked up at him. His eyes were wide, and he was shaking his head slowly. “I always thought you knew,” he said. For a second I saw the boy he was in high school, who didn’t even realize that nobody had ever told him he was wrong.
“Richard,” I said. “How could I have known?”
He looked down at his hands in his lap and said, “I always thought a girl could tell.” The sound in the room was fuzzy, like static on a VHS. I thought I might throw up again. He was still talking. “You don’t know how this has weighed on me, all these years.” He laughed a bit at his own hands, astonished.
I grabbed my bags and stood up. I didn’t look at Richard as he started to stand, saying he was sorry, asking if I was okay, but my vision was contracting, and I rushed out of the restaurant and onto the busy street and down the block, gasping for air, the strange, empty nothingness of Richard’s story opening like a pit under my feet.
* * *
• • •
I SENT YOU A TEXT MESSAGE to say that I was leaving New York. I’m sorry, I wrote. Something happened this morning and I need some time to think. You rushed out of your coffee meeting, texting, Wait Alice, no! stop! But I was already gone.
A headache started on the plane back to Barcelona. By the time we disembarked, it was squeezing; there were dark clouds gathering at the edges of my field of vision, and I knew it was going to be bad.
I found my apartment just as I’d left it. The sun on my patio was as bright as ever, the succulents still creeping out of their pots. A week of mail had piled up behind the front door, all of it addressed to previous tenants; I kicked it aside, turned the dead bolt, and burrowed my head under my pillow as my vision shrank to a pinpoint.
The migraine lasted a week. I hoped that it was the worst of my grief, but when the pain finally began to ebb, I found actual despair waiting for me, heavy as a sedative. I tried to run, bisecting the city over and over again. I sat on benches and watched people go by. I went days without speaking. I lingered in secondhand bookshops; I couldn’t concentrate enough to read, but I found it comforting to pace around in the familiar smell of the mystery aisle.
A month passed before I realized I was buried in rage.
God damn Richard for taking so much of my life. For the hours I’d talked to him on the phone. For the years I didn’t speak about what happened—what I thought had happened—and the years it ate me up inside. For the dark nights when I felt so damaged I thought I should die, or so damaged I should be grateful to Q as he took me away from the people I loved. For the work it took to keep that damage inside; for the constant crunch of terror that someone would spot it in my voice. God damn Richard for creating a story that shaped my life, even as he tossed it behind him like spilled salt. He didn’t have to touch me in the back of that car. The story damaged enough.
This is what I wanted to tell you when you showed up in Barcelona for the film festival. When I heard your voice on the phone, my heart leaped. I rushed out the door. I couldn’t wait to see you, because I finally understood how your story was tangled with mine, and why you’d been pressuring me all these years. You were friends with Richard, and Max; you were dating another lacrosse player; you were there the night the rumor began. You’ve been wanting to atone ever since. That’s why you brought me cookies the summer after senior year. That’s why you’ve built your career making space for women to speak.
I wish I could have told you years ago: I forgive you. It wasn’t your fault.
I would have told you in Barcelona. I would have explained why I ran away from New York and abandoned our movie. But as I walked in circles around your hotel, I realized you might not believe it. I imagined how the conversation would go—You’re arguing for their side of the story, Alice!—and I knew I didn’t have the strength to fight you on it.
Maybe you still don’t believe, even after all this. Why should we believe Richard? you’ll say.
But Haley, I’m begging you: believe it. It was the level of detail he gave me, and the tone of his voice. I’d already spent ten hours listening to him talk. I know he was telling the truth: the story that fractured my life was a lie.
* * *
• • •
ON THE PLANE back to Barcelona, before the headache got bad, I glanced over the shoulder of the guy next to me and saw he was watching Black Christmas on his laptop. When he noticed me looking, he smiled and took his headphones out. “It’s a horror movie called Black Christmas,” he said. “But don’t worry, it’s not too gory!”
“I love Black Christmas,” I said.
“Really?” He sat up a little straighter, excited. “You know it basically created the whole genre of slasher films? You wouldn’t get Halloween or even Saw without this movie.” He paused, watching to see if I was amazed yet. “And the craziest thing is that it was made by the same guy who made A Christmas Story! You know, the one with the leg lamp?”
“Right, Bob Clark,” I said. “He made Porky’s, too.”
The guy looked at me like I’d pulled a quarter out of his ear.
“That’s what my thesis is about!” he said, nearly shouting.
I was glad for a distraction from my own thoughts. We ended up chatting for an hour, as our plane accelerated the sunset. He was a know-it-all, but eager to please, with eyes as big as a puppy’s. He was on his way to Spain to make a dramatic proclamation of love to a woman who had left him years earlier but had remained a dear friend. He was overwhelmed by romantic anticipation and eager to talk about it.
“She doesn’t know I’m coming,” he said, widening his eyes as if to convince me he was doing the right thing. “But I think she’ll be happy to see me.”
I nodded encouragingly and asked questions. I had no advice to offer. I just wanted to know what it was like to be a man like that, so sure of your righteous heart.
When they turned off the overhead lights, he closed his laptop and fell into a heavy sleep. I was jealous; I couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept so deeply. He was still rubbing his eyes as we got off the plane. “Good luck, Nick,” I said, squinting against my headache, and left him struggling to get his ratty backpack out of the overhead bin.
I thought of that guy again on the night after I stood you up in Barcelona. It was a bad night, desperate and dark. Wrapped in a blanke
t, sitting on my patio, hating myself, I wished I could talk to you without worrying that you wouldn’t believe. I wished I could tell you my story with the same firm certainty the guy on the plane had told me his; the same firm certainty I’d heard from Richard.
And then I heard a voice in my head.
Why can’t you? the voice said. It’s not like his story was so great.
At first I thought it was your voice, Haley. But then I realized it was mine.
I sat up and tossed the blanket aside. I found my laptop and opened a new, blank document. I started writing.
In the fall of our senior year, my buddy Max Platt was arrested for shining a laser pointer at an airplane. We didn’t even know this was illegal. It was one of the least bad things Max ever did, and it was hilarious that it ended up being the thing he got in trouble for. (This was still a few months before the whole thing with the private school girl.)
We were at Denny’s when we heard the story . . .
I decided to write about a bystander. It was the best way to show a truth I’ll never know firsthand. He was a teenage boy—a jerk and an idiot—but the more I wrote, the more I liked him. He just wanted to fit in; fitting in was invincibility. He was easy to write—so easy I was startled, at first. But I guess it’s not really such a big surprise; we’ve spent our lives listening to men like him.
The freedom I felt in writing from his perspective was exhilarating. No matter how I punished him, he always felt certain he was on his way somewhere better, and always felt certain he deserved it, too. He always felt safe in his body. He was even strong enough to kill Q.
I named him Nick, after the guy I’d met on the plane; I gave him the same confident heart. Then I used him to push Richard’s voice out of my head.
* * *