A few nights before Jack asked me to come over, I had tried to resist it, but I pictured him naked, and I got wet. I touched myself, thinking of him, and it felt so good. I even called out his name as I had an orgasm. It was my first orgasm and I would soon learn that it was a baby one, but I liked it – and I felt both dirty and ashamed, as well as curious, about the fact that I did.
So we were in his room, kissing on his bed, when his hands moved to my stomach. He laid his hand against my skin, under the edge of my shirt that had been pushed up a little.
“Is this okay?” he asked.
I nodded and his hand slowly slid upwards. He stopped after every inch and asked if it was okay. Finally, as he got close to my breasts, I knew he was going to ask, and I took my shirt off and undid my bra.
“I want you to touch me,” I told him, and I meant it. He was gentle, his hands nervous as he explored. He kissed me everywhere and, when he moved his hand lower, I guided him to the spot that I had discovered just a few nights earlier.
Jack was gentle, and he was so nervous. He waited for me to say it was okay every time he moved. It was cute, because he had so much anger and hate in him, yet he treated me like I’d break. He brought me to orgasm with his fingers, after some adjusting and guidance on my part, and it was so much better than it had been alone. He looked taken aback as I jerked my hips up toward his hand, but after, I pulled him down to me and kissed him with far more passion than he’d seen from me before.
I felt him grow harder against me, and I knew how to make him feel good. I’d been taught well, but with Jack, he kissed me and thanked me as I stroked him. He came quickly, because he’d never been touched by a girl like that. He wouldn’t look at me, though, and it hurt, until after, when he spoke.
“Alana, I’m so sorry,” he said, after he came.
“It’s okay. We have time.”
“No,” he said, embarrassed. “I’ve been… I think about you… a lot. In that way. I’m as bad as those other guys. I’m so sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?” I asked.
“Because every night, I can’t stop it. I can’t help what I think and I imagine doing things with you. The things they say that we do. And it’s not right. You’re so much more to me than that.”
I kissed him and whispered close to his ear, “I think about you every night, too.”
He was so ashamed that I turned him on, but I was so happy that it was normal. I touched him again and he lasted longer this time; I even got him fully undressed so I could see him naked. His body was perfect. He was lanky and he hadn’t gotten his tattoos yet – or his muscles for that matter – but I didn’t care. I loved his body. He didn’t say anything while I touched him except my name and “thank you.” He thanked me more times than a person normally says thank you in his lifetime. This time, though, I begged him to look at me, and his eyes never left mine.
After he came again, I took my pants off, and he saw the scars on my thighs for the first time. “What happened?” he asked, and he touched them, which made me freak out.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I told him. “Please… don’t touch them.”
After that, he never touched them again, but with Jack, I felt loved. I felt how much he loved me as he kissed me and touched me and held me, and when we were both ready, I opened myself up to him and he told me that he loved me. It was the first time he’d said it, but I believed him. And when he said I was beautiful, it wasn’t crude or vulgar. It made me feel like I was. I didn’t feel like I could only be good at fucking. I felt whole with him, especially when he held me after.
When Jack entered me that first time, his eyes held mine, and I was lost in them. They were so blue, and they grew wide as I gave myself to him. “Oh, Alana,” he whispered, and I could see the confusion behind his gaze. He loved how it felt, how easy it was to enter me, how willing I was to take him in, but I saw the guilt, too. I saw how scared he was that he was just like them. I smiled up at him, and when he pushed deeper, I groaned with the pleasure of it. As he moved faster, the confusion started to fade, because I clutched the sheets in my fists and watched him, and I felt something with him that I didn’t feel shame about feeling. I tried to tell him in the sounds I made that I didn’t classify him with those other guys, and as he came, he looked at me with the biggest grin. It was cute, not even slightly sexy, and Jack was forever scarred on my heart. I would never be able to be whole without him.
I fell in love with him as a person before that first time, but after we had sex, he thanked me again. He kissed me all over my face and then, he sat up, his naked body over mine, and his eyes looking all over me. He smiled and kissed the top of my head.
“Alana, I’m so grateful to you,” he said.
“I love you,” I told him in reply, which was the first time I’d said it. And I knew I would love him for the rest of my life.
He made love to me several times that night, and no one seemed to care that I slept over. What made it so different was that, each time, he asked if it was okay, if I was sure, and he watched me carefully throughout. His eyes were so beautiful, so hopeful, and I used them as an anchor to keep me from floating off into the other place, the place where I would later go, when it wasn’t Jack who was holding me.
The sex was good – even though I would later learn that it could be great – but the sex was just something between us. I finally felt like I was normal. He never knew why, exactly, I loved him so much, but Jack made me respect myself. Through sex, something that had been so terrifying and dirty to me, he had made me feel good. I learned later that sex was a weapon and I realized that I’d been corrupted deeper than even Jack could heal, but that first time with him, he made me think that it was okay to like my body and the things we did with it.
15
“You said there was a party after Prom?”
It’s my weekly appointment with Melinda, but I don’t know if I want to talk about this yet. She doesn’t know about Dave, about everything that happened, about what led to the party and what I did. She doesn’t know what happened after, and I don’t know if I can tell her.
“Can’t we talk about something else?” I ask.
“What do you want to talk about then?”
I shrug. “I don’t know.”
“I think you need to tell me about the party,” she insists.
I sigh and sip my tea. I’m becoming a big tea drinker thanks to her, but I don’t think the insurance company is paying for tea. I know I need to tell her; I know the only way to move on, to accept that Jack is never coming back to me, to deal with my father and Jerry and what they did, is to tell someone everything. I’ve never told anyone. Jack is my closest friend, and we have a wall of secrets between us. In the time that I dated Dave, I told him some things, but a lot has happened since, and he also had his own walls. Even in therapy, I have consistently left things out, avoided the things that make me look bad. It’s easy to blame my father and my stepdad, but I’ve made plenty of mistakes as well. And the after-Prom party was one of the worst.
“I’d started dating Dave.”
“We’re going out of order then,” she says.
“Yeah, but I’m not ready to talk about him yet,” I remind her.
“Okay, so things had not worked out with Jack and you had chosen Dave.”
“Sort of, but that’s another story for another time. Anyway, I was dating Dave. He really wanted to go to Prom. It was, for whatever reason, something normal, and he wanted to do something normal. We didn’t belong there. Everyone at school hated the three of us, but he felt this sense of entitlement. Not in a bad way, but like… he didn’t give a fuck about them. He wanted us – me, him, and Jack – to go anyway. To show them that we could and that they couldn’t stop us.”
“How did you feel?” she asks.
“I didn’t care either way. I wanted him to be happy, but Jack was adamant. He told me we wouldn’t be friends anymore if I went, that I was becoming a sheep like the rest of them.
Which is kind of ironic, because Jack always needed their approval far more than Dave or I did.”
“Did you know that then?”
I shake my head. “No. I was sixteen. I didn’t know shit.”
Melinda laughs. “No one does, Alana.”
I smile. “I don’t know shit now.”
“I repeat, no one does,” she says.
“Well, anyway, I decided to go. I couldn’t afford a dress so Dave and I went to the Salvation Army and picked something out. The dress was actually really pretty, and no one would have known, except they knew that I was poor.”
“What about Jack?”
“Another story for another time, but he was true to his word. He stopped talking to us. For a while, actually.”
She nods. “Go on.”
“All right, so we went to Prom, which was, well, Prom. It was an overpriced dance with shitty music and shittier food. But we went and Dave was happy and then a bunch of kids came over to our table and invited us to a party afterwards.”
“Was it malicious?”
“Of course,” I say. “But I didn’t know that at the time.”
“What happened?”
“Well, a group of guys were the ones who invited us, but I didn’t think anything of it. I just figured their girlfriends were in the bathroom. I didn’t know that their girlfriends didn’t want me there.”
“Why not?” she asks.
“For the exact thing I ended up doing.”
“What did you do, Alana? And how could they predict it?”
I shrug. “Because. They knew. They knew I’m nothing but a stupid slut.”
16
The after party was at some ridiculous house. It had like twelve bedrooms or something. Half the school had apparently been invited and, even though we headed straight there, it was already packed when we arrived.
Prom had been fine, but I was feeling claustrophobic. I missed Jack. I missed his bitterness, his snide commentary about the people who prowled our high school. Although Dave was a freak and a loser, too, he wasn’t in our classes and the crowd he knew seemed less vicious than the honors kids who surrounded me and Jack. As soon as we got to the party, Dave was dragged off by a couple of kids from one of his classes. I didn’t follow or argue; I knew he would’ve stayed with me, but I felt bad. Most of the time they treated all of us like shit, but tonight they were being nice to him. Why should I interfere? I figured he would find me eventually.
I entered the living room and three girls – Amanda, Natalie, and Siouxanna – stopped talking and looked at me. They were the most popular juniors and they looked almost exactly the same. Except Amanda had blonde hair, Natalie was a brunette, and Siouxanna’s hair was dyed black. For some reason, my naturally black hair made me a freak, but hers made her cool.
“What are you doing here?” Natalie snapped.
“Ian and his friends invited us,” I said.
“Ew. I didn’t realize this was a fucking cathouse,” Amanda replied.
I was surprised that she knew was a cathouse even was, but I kept my mouth shut. It just wasn’t worth it.
“Where did you get that dress, anyway?” Amanda continued.
“She probably fucked someone to give it to her,” Natalie countered.
Amanda laughed. “Mom’s new boyfriend? Did you fuck him, too? Looking for a sugar daddy?”
I don’t know why I stood there and took it. I guess I didn’t want to make a scene, and I didn’t want to ruin Dave’s night. Without Jack, I didn’t know how to stand up to them, so I just stood in the doorway while they called me a slut and made fun of my dress. By the time Ian walked in, I was actually relieved to see him. He’d invited me, after all. Maybe he saw me as something else. Maybe he wanted to be my friend. I was still really that naïve.
“Hey, Alana, do you have a minute?” he asked.
I nodded. I wasn’t sure whose house it was, but Ian must have known the person well, because he led me by the arm through the crowd, up the stairs, and into a spare bedroom. I didn’t see Dave and I didn’t ask about him; I was so hopeful, even after everything I’d been through, that I didn’t see it for what it was until it was too late.
There were three guys in the room already when Ian brought me inside. I knew them, but not well. Wade was Amanda’s boyfriend; Natalie had been off and on again with Jason; and, although they weren’t together, Topher had been Siouxanna’s date for Prom. They had broken up a while ago. He and Ian were seniors, and I’d heard that Topher thought Siouxanna was too uptight, so he broke up with her while he was looking at colleges. Something about wanting the freedom to meet new girls.
“You look really nice tonight,” Jason said, but it didn’t sound like the kind of nice that Jack or Dave saw in me. It sounded just like my father. His voice even reminded me of my father’s.
“Thanks,” I replied, but I wasn’t stupid. I knew what was happening by then. Ian locked the door and came around in front of me. He put his hands on my shoulders and leaned close to my face. “Dave looks busy and we were thinking you’d like to play. We’ve all heard some pretty great things about you.”
“What about Amanda?” I asked. At least Wade shouldn’t be here.
Ian stepped aside so I could see Wade. He shrugged. “She’s my girlfriend, but there are some things you have to go elsewhere to get.”
“Yeah. Like what?” I knew exactly what, but I wanted them to say it. I wanted them to look me in the eye and tell me exactly what I was. I wanted them to realize what they were doing, but of course, we all want a lot of things that never happen.
“Listen, Alana,” Ian said, running his hands along my arms and neck. He accidentally tore the ribbons along the top of my dress, but he didn’t even notice. They fell to the floor at his feet, but it didn’t matter. I was a cheap whore in a cheap dress, and no one needed to take care with either.
“Your reputation is pretty well known,” he continued. “Those girls downstairs? Well, they didn’t want us to invite you tonight because they’re afraid of you. They’ve heard the same things. But while they might not like you because of it, I’m sure that we will like you just fine.”
Topher stood up. He was angry and probably beyond drunk. He pulled me against his body and I could feel him getting excited as I started to cry. “Look, if you can fuck that dirty killer’s kid, you can fuck us. Where is he anyway?”
I don’t know why, but it bothered me that he said it. I was already mad at Jack for leaving me to deal with tonight alone. And now, I was so much angrier. I was also angry at Dave for going off with his friends, even though I hadn’t stopped him. Finally, I was pissed at the girls downstairs. They always made me feel bad for doing the things that they were somehow popular for doing, as if I was broken or wrong because of who I was.
All of those things ran through my head and I realized that there was only one way to get back at all of them. There was only one thing that I knew how to do, and I realized how much power I wielded in that moment. I could hurt them all for making me angry and all that I needed to do was get naked and let a few guys fuck me. All I needed to do was to be the girl that Jack and Dave believed I wasn’t. Because if I showed them that I wasn’t worth believing in, the rest of them would be right, and then I wouldn’t need to keep hoping that things would change. I made the decision that night that nothing was worth fighting for anymore, because no matter how much I hoped, no matter how much I dreamed, it would all end with nights like this.
“Okay,” I said, looking at the four guys waiting in front of me. “Who’s first?”
The thrift store Prom dress was quickly forgotten, torn to pieces, as they passed me back and forth for hours. I did things that I’d never done with Jack. Things that I hadn’t even thought about, not since my father had made me watch porn with him while he raped me. I let Topher and Ian and Wade and Jason come all over my body; I let them use me as they wanted. It went on all night. By dawn, I had been fucked raw and they were all more than happy, already bragging
to each other as if I wasn’t even there, as if I couldn’t hear what they were saying. At some point, Ian took out his cell phone and got me on video, blowing Topher while Wade fucked me from behind. I was naked and dirty, my pretty dress around my waist, and they called me the wrong name, but I didn’t care. I’d realized finally what I was and what I did. It was rage that drove me, hatred at the people who were supposed to want more for me, but they had abandoned me. And so I abandoned the idea that there was anything else.
In the morning, they all left and, when the room was empty, I picked up my dress, holding it together, even though it was ripped in so many places. I would never wear it again, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t belong at things like Prom. When I walked downstairs, my makeup was smeared and my hair was a mess. I had to keep one hand on the zipper in the back of my dress to stop it from falling off of me. I had no way home, because Dave had apparently left hours before. I didn’t know if he’d looked for me, but it didn’t matter. I needed someone to take me home. Siouxanna was awake when I made it to the kitchen, looking for a ride.
“Nice show,” she said.
I didn’t register what she said at first. I ignored her and walked around downstairs, finding most people asleep. Eventually, I stumbled across Ian, who was sitting with one of his friends. They both looked at me when I walked in and his friend checked me out. I didn’t even know the guy’s name.
“Can one of you bring me home?” I asked.
At first, I was scared that the stranger would offer, because I was afraid of what it meant I would have to do, but Ian sighed and stood up.
“Fine,” he said. “Go wait outside. You’re a fucking mess.”
He met me by the car, but he wouldn’t take me home right away. Instead, he drove to the parking lot of a local warehouse, which was closed on the weekends, and I let him fuck me in the backseat in exchange for a ride to my house. It was fine. I felt nothing.
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