by Amira Rain
I wasn’t even sure what kind of trees the saplings were, but with tiny pale pink flowers and bright green leaves that signaled spring, they were beautiful. Not that I was fully able to appreciate their beauty at present. All I could think about was the fact that I’d been raped, and had become pregnant as a result.
After a minute or so, Kayley ended her phone conversation, stomped over to the car, and spoke to me through the half-down passenger side window. “You can go now. Lexi’s just up the street at the mall, and she’s coming to get me in three minutes.”
Lexi was one of our friends from school, although sometimes I wondered if she was really a friend. Sometimes she could be nice, but at other times, she could be an incredible gossip and something of a backstabber. She’d never done anything to hurt me, personally, but I didn’t exactly like her most of the time. Really, she was Kayley’s friend more than mine.
In response to what Kayley had said about Lexi coming to pick her up soon, I said I’d wait anyway. “There was an attempted kidnapping of a teenage girl here in Moxon the other day, and I just want to make sure you’re safe. I guess I’m just like that. I’d definitely never leave a friend dead asleep on a couch in a frat house where there are dozens of drunken guys around.”
As far as the first part of what I’d said, it was true. I did want to make sure Kayley was safe. As far as the second half of what I’d said, I just hadn’t been able to resist. I didn’t exactly blame Kayley for what had happened, but at the same time, I was maybe just slightly resentful that she hadn’t been looking out for my safety a bit more that night.
Kayley snorted in response to my comment. “Yeah. I wasn’t joking when I said what I said before. You’ve been the most incredible bitch ever since your mom died.”
Before I could respond, Kayley began stomping away from the car with her arms folded across her chest.
Having a sudden thought, I all but flew out of the car and called out after her. “Kayley, wait! Please don’t tell Lexi that I’m pregnant, okay? Please?”
I knew that if she did, it would be all over school within a day, probably.
With bright sunlight giving her dark hair a bit of an auburn glow, Kayley stopped in her stomping and turned to look at me, glaring. “Well, why shouldn’t I tell Lexi?”
I shrugged, incredulous. “Oh, I don’t know. Some leftover shred of loyalty from being my best friend for five years?”
Still glaring at me with her arms across her chest, Kayley didn’t answer right away, looking like she was possibly thinking things over. “Fine. I won’t tell her. Just because I don’t even feel like explaining everything.”
“Thank you. That’s very generous of you. Just tell her that I’m here because I have a yeast infection or something but I couldn’t get in to see my regular doctor. Okay?”
Just then, Lexi herself pulled into the clinic parking lot driving her shiny black BMW, which had been a recent eighteenth birthday present from her parents. Lexi had complained about it to Kayley and me, because she’d specifically requested a red one.
Before getting into Lexi’s car, Kayley glanced at me over her shoulder. “You’ll be lucky if I don’t tell her you have herpes.”
I soon drive out of the clinic parking lot, determined to make a visit to the state police post in downtown Moxon. After that, I had no idea what I was going to do. I had no earthly clue. It wasn’t as if I could turn to my aunt and uncle for guidance and support, either. We just didn’t have a relationship like that. In fact, most days, I wondered if they wished that I’d died along with my mom.
CHAPTER THREE
I hadn’t even been in the car with my mom that day. She had taught kindergarten in Moxon, and she’d been on her way home from school. Incident of apparent road rage, the first paragraph of the police report had said. On a back-country road on the way to Ford, someone had started tailing my mom and then had run her off the road, making her hit a tree. The coroner said she had likely died instantly.
The person who’d run her off the road was never found. In a 911 call during the incident, my mom had only been able to give a description of the car as a “dark sedan” before telling the operator very briefly what was going on, saying that she hadn’t even done anything to make the person chase her. Then my mom had screamed and the line had gone dead.
I was maybe halfway from the clinic to the state police post when I got caught in a major traffic snarl caused by construction. At first, I was content to just sit in my car with a warm breeze flowing in through the windows, lifting my foot from the brake maybe once or twice a minute to slowly coast forward a couple of feet.
However, after a few minutes of really not moving much, I began to get irritated along with a long line of drivers behind me. Many of them began honking, which furthered my irritation, and added a bit of fear to my already-jumbled emotional state as well.
Incident of apparent road rage. Those words echoed in my mind. I never liked to make other drivers angry, for fear that what had happened to my mom would somehow happen to me, too; and presently, I was first in the long line of cars, making me think that I’d be the target of any raging drivers.
They couldn’t see what I could, which was that I couldn’t have driven forward more than a few feet even if I’d floored it, because of some construction vehicle now blocking my path. Men in hard hats were exiting the vehicle, as if they had no plans to move it right then.
Beginning to perspire a bit even though the spring day was warm but not hot, I glanced up in my rearview mirror and saw that the person honking in a car behind me was a scowling man who was also waving a hand out the window, making some angry gesture as if to tell me to go forward.
“I can’t.”
My words had come out in a shaky little whisper that betrayed my growing fear but also a little anger. Being that the man was right behind me, I couldn’t believe that he couldn’t see why I couldn’t move. Unless he can and just wants to rage out on me anyway, I thought.
When the man continued gesturing, seeming to become even more agitated, I considered putting my head out the window and shouting directly to him that I couldn’t move, but I ultimately thought better of this idea and rolled up my windows and locked my car doors instead. Not a moment later, one of the men in hard hats cupped his hands around his mouth, facing the long line of drivers, and began shouting something, which I caught the tail end of after hastily rolling down my windows again.
“Understand, folks? We’ve got to move the cones to open up another lane! Three minutes! Be patient or take West Ave!”
Immediately, drivers began pulling out of the line behind me and shooting off down different side streets toward West Ave. The honking died down. However, the man behind me didn’t budge, blocking me from making a U-turn or reversing, and instead, he began shouting at the top of his lungs.
“Just go around their truck, dumbass!”
I assumed that “dumbass” was me, but I couldn’t just “go around their truck.” On one side was oncoming traffic, and on the other was some piece of construction equipment, something I could only think of as a “road flattener,” because that was just how it looked. About the size of a lawn mower, it had a seat on top, and then a large steel cylinder in front to smooth hot asphalt.
If this piece of equipment hadn’t been where it had, I could have possibly gone around the construction truck, even though I might be stopped by whatever was happening on the other side. I might at least be able to get away from the angry driver behind me, though, by driving into a coffee shop parking lot nearby.
As if reading my mind, the construction man who’d advised drivers about the West Ave detour made some kind of a gesture to me that meant “one second,” and then shouted at me. “Just hold on, sweetie! You can cut through the coffee shop lot!”
He then hopped up on the “road flattener” and began moving it forward, to my great relief. With a quick wave of gratitude that he probably didn’t even see, I began moving forward myself, then hung a right int
o the small coffee shop parking lot, and not a second too soon, from what it sounded like.
Through my open windows, I heard shouting and then the squeal of tires. I glanced back at the street just in time to see the angry man who’d shouted at me peal out to head back up the street the wrong way, narrowly avoiding a collision with another driver who was still in the process of pulling out of the traffic line.
With my nerves thoroughly rattled, I decided to park at the coffee shop for a few minutes and maybe go inside for an iced cappuccino or something rather than just go through the parking lot to the exit on the other side. Realizing that my hands were trembling slightly, I figured I probably shouldn’t be driving until I could gather my bearings a bit.
Inside the small, well-lit coffee shop, I ordered a vanilla iced cappuccino and a square of strawberry-rhubarb coffee cake, hungry even despite being rattled. Besides, I figured I should have a piece of cake just because it was my birthday. I had no idea if my aunt was planning on making me a cake or not, or if there would be any kind of a birthday dinner for me that evening.
The card I’d found on the table after she and my uncle had left that morning didn’t say anything about a family celebration one way or the other. The card had simply said happy birthday in my aunt’s handwriting, and she had signed her name and my uncle’s. No Love, Aunt Pam and Uncle John. Just Aunt Pam and Uncle John. No love.
The birthday card had contained a gift card to one of the two movie theaters in Moxon. I wasn’t sure I’d ever use the card before it expired, since I hardly ever went out anymore. Nonetheless, I appreciated the gift. It was something. It proved that my aunt and uncle at least knew I was alive.
I’d just finished my cake when my phone began blowing up with texts. The first was from a semi-good friend named Julia, and it said OMG…is there something you want to tell me? Immediately after, a text from a friend named Claire said something similar. The next two texts were from two other friends, both just basically wanting me to call them. RIGHT THIS SECOND, one of the texts said.
The fifth text in rapid succession was from a very casual acquaintance named Haley. I didn’t even know how she’d gotten my number. After identifying herself, her text said Is it true? Are you seriously pregnant????! This was immediately followed by a second text containing nothing more than a shocked-face emoji and a baby emoji.
Lexi. I knew she’d told everyone, maybe with a social media post or a group text. I also knew that Kayley, who was supposedly my best friend, had told her.
With tears springing to my eyes for the second time that day, I turned off my phone, threw my trash and remaining half of a large iced cappuccino in the garbage, and flew out of the coffee shop so fast that I narrowly avoided colliding with a woman on her way in.
Wiping hot tears away, I exited the parking lot on the non-construction side, and began taking side streets toward West Ave, which would lead me to the state police post. I wasn’t even sure why I’d decided to go to the state police directly, rather than the Moxon city police, other than the fact that something just told me that the state police would be the ones investigating my rape anyway. The city police would probably say that since it had happened two hours away, it was out of their jurisdiction.
You’re assuming that anyone’s even going to believe you and investigate anyway, I suddenly thought, experiencing doubt about my course of action for the first time. Maybe the police would react the exact same way that Kayley had. With surprise and dubiousness at first, and then with outright disbelief. Maybe they’d even remind me that false report of a crime is in and of itself a crime. The thought of being accused of being a criminal when I hadn’t done anything wrong brought on a wave of nausea so intense that I nearly had to pull over.
I fought it, though, still determined to report what I was pretty sure had happened to me to the police. If nothing else, even if they accused me of being a liar to cover some kind of “regret sex,” my conscience would be clean, because I would know that I’d done everything in my power to try to stop some other girl from being raped and possibly becoming pregnant.
It was maybe three blocks away from the state police post that a dark sedan tapped my bumper at a red light. It really wasn’t an impact that could even be considered a bump; just a tap. Just a slight enough tap that I knew that the sedan’s front bumper had very softly connected with my back bumper. Someone had just absentmindedly taken their foot off the brake for a second, I thought, and their car had just slowly rolled forward a few inches.
Knowing that there wouldn’t be any damage, I didn’t even think about pulling over. I did, however, look up in my rearview mirror, expecting to see an apologetic wave from the driver behind me, or maybe a mouthed sorry. I couldn’t even see the driver of the sedan, though. The front window was too heavily tinted, which seemed strange, because I was pretty sure that having tint on a front window wasn’t even legal in Michigan.
The stoplight was now green anyway, and I hit the gas, now just wanting to get away from the strange car before anything further happened, although I couldn’t imagine what that might be. But Lord only knew that my nerves had already withstood enough borderline road rage for one day.
It wasn’t long before the black sedan creeped into the left lane, and since the street was a double-lane one-way, this prevented me from getting over to the left like I’d been trying to after the light. I’d even had my turn signal on. Annoyed and slightly unnerved, I slowed so that the sedan would speed past me and I could change lanes to the left. However, the sedan slowed down, too. They were now driving directly alongside me, although I couldn’t see exactly who they were, because of the tinted windows.
Now much more than just slightly unnerved, I took a right as soon as I could, intending to go around the block in order to lose the sedan before getting back on the one-way. The sedan turned right, too, though. With my heartbeat accelerating, I wondered if I was actually being tailed.
To test this theory, I began driving faster, maybe five miles above the speed limit, which was thirty. I also began making lane changes fairly quickly, and taking corners fairly quickly, too, without turning on my blinker. I’d gone maybe a mile north when I finally glanced up in my rearview mirror and exhaled, feeling a bit silly. There was no one behind me but a rusty pale blue minivan.
The minivan soon turned, though, revealing the sleek black sedan behind it. Still not entirely certain that I was being followed, I began trying evasive maneuvers again, and after a minute or two, I was sure. I was definitely being followed. Had to be. Either that, or the sedan driver and I were experiencing a one-in-a-million coincidence of making approximately twenty turns on the same path. Which would have been pretty remarkable considering that I wasn’t even following any path in particular, and instead, was simply trying to lose them.
As a result of all my turns and speeding, I was now kind of on the outskirts of the city, heading to the more suburban part of Moxon. Realizing that I now had not one but two reasons to get to the state police post, I tried to make a right turn at the next opportunity, astonished when the driver of the sedan blocked me by speeding up and driving half in the bike lane and half right up on the sidewalk, with the front bumper just about touching my right back door from what it looked like. I might have crashed right into the sedan if the rev of the engine hadn’t alerted me to its presence.
“Dummy. Should have headed straight to the police first.”
In times of great stress, I had a habit of often talking to myself out loud almost without even realizing it, and this was one of those times. However, this particular time, I was aware of what I was saying, and I knew what I’d said was true. I should have just made a beeline to the police post the second I had thought that I was being tailed.
I’d just wanted to find out for sure first, though, but now that seemed completely stupid to me. Better to be safe at the police post, where a criminal probably wouldn’t dare to go, than to be in a dangerous situation with the meaningless satisfaction of proof.
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br /> It was too late now, at any rate. I was a few miles from the police post, and the sedan was now right on my bumper after falling back a bit. Also, I was in a part of town without much traffic, meaning that there weren’t many people around to possibly observe that a fellow driver was in a dangerous situation.
Realizing that I could just easily call the police and give them by approximate location, I reached a hand out to grab it from the passenger seat, but my hand met nothing but upholstery. A quick glance down told me that the phone had somehow slid off the seat and fallen on the floor during all my fairly fast corner-turning.
“Damn.”
I’d have to stop the car to grab the phone, but I knew that the sedan might stop, too. At that point, I had a feeling that I’d be attacked, even though I had no clue why. My mom hadn’t seemed to have a clue, either, I thought, experiencing a little chill upon realizing that I was essentially living the exact same situation that had happened to her and had led to her death.
Incident of apparent road rage. The words echoed in my mind, and suddenly, I recalled the man who’d yelled out that I was a “dumbass” earlier in the traffic jam. Could it be him? I wondered? Could he have changed cars or something while I was in the coffee shop?
The idea that someone might have become enraged enough to chase me just because of a five-minute traffic jam, which wasn’t even remotely my fault, seemed absurd. But then again, it was an absurd world.
And the exact same thing had happened to my mom. Also, I couldn’t deny that no matter the reason what was happening was happening, it was happening. The sedan was still just about kissing my back bumper, despite the fact that I was now doing fifty miles an hour in a thirty mile-an-hour zone.
Not having a clue what my plan was, other than to just try to lose the sedan somehow, I began increasing my speed even further, beginning to perspire even though the windows were down. I flew past a car stopped at a stop sign on a side street, and they honked, probably trying to bring to my attention how fast I was going. Becoming panicky, I honked back, desperate to somehow communicate that I needed help. I might have been too far past the car for them to hear me, though. Or, I realized, maybe they’d just thought that the honk in return was some sort of an “F you.”