by TE Carter
“I think I’m okay with that,” I lied. “I just…” But I couldn’t finish, because I didn’t have anything to say. I wanted her to tell me what it would be like, but she didn’t know and I felt like I was losing the only person I had to ask about these things.
Kate picked another piece of the white free and blew it out to the lake. “Can I just ask you why?”
I should have asked what she was asking why about. Why were we friends? Why did I care about Caleb? Why was it summer? Why is a big question with a hell of a lot of answers. But I had a hard time seeing beyond myself. I talked about Caleb, because that was what I wanted Kate for.
“He listens to me. I like how he listens,” I said. “I like the way he makes me feel like I’m important. When I talk, he does this thing with his head. He leans to the side and it’s like he’s got this way of listening. Like he wants to make sure he doesn’t miss anything. That’s what I mean. I literally like the way he listens.”
“I listen,” Kate said.
“It’s not the same,” I told her.
It wasn’t, because it wasn’t just about how Caleb listened. There was more, too. More I couldn’t say. Saying it aloud made me feel weird. Wrong or something. I didn’t want to tell her that when I went home most nights, after he dropped me off somewhere, that I could still smell him on my clothes. I would walk from wherever I was, thankful for the night as I pulled my lips together and tried to remember what he tasted like. I would think about what we’d done. The things he’d tried and how they felt. With Caleb, there was a recognition of something I’d never experienced before. He called me beautiful, but it was more than just feeling pretty. It was the realization of this sexual part of me. This thing I was and the way we affected each other. I wanted to know what it was about me that stirred that in him.
It’s not a big jump from the boy who bites your bottom lip to the one who makes you wonder what happens when someone is a part of all of you. And time, especially when you’re fifteen, fills itself with the steps along that path. I called it love. I told Kate I loved Caleb, and to some degree, I think I did. I loved him because he’d sat with me one night in the summer and he’d listened. He’d validated how I felt. But more, he guided me into something new that was waking up inside myself and I didn’t know this was something very different than love. Maybe they’re often linked, but at the time, I thought they were the same.
“I still don’t get it,” Kate said. “All you’re telling me is that he pays attention to you. Why does it matter anyway? You said you were sick of everyone calling you names, of noticing all the ways you were different. Why is Caleb so important to you? What’s so special about him? Or is it just because he notices you in the right way?”
“I don’t know.”
She turned around to look at me, but I felt like shutting down. I couldn’t answer her. I didn’t want to tell her that, for me, being loved equated existing. I needed Caleb to love me, because it meant I was someone. It meant I was. But I didn’t know why Caleb. And because I couldn’t say what made him special, it just made me feel worse about all the things I felt when I was with him. He was fine, but maybe Kate was right. Maybe he was in the right place and he’d said the right things and I liked feeling noticed. But if she was right, then why did I want to let him touch me so badly? Why did I let him do the things he did if I didn’t think he was special?
“It’s fine, Ellie. I’m sorry,” Kate said, and she sat next to me on the bench. “Look, you don’t have to know. You don’t need to have all these answers. I just worry about you. I’ve been lonely, too, and I know how it can mix things up in your head.” She smiled and started playing with my hair, braiding it into small sections. “I don’t know. I don’t know a lot of things. I know you think I do or whatever, but I don’t have a clue. I’m nothing special myself. I don’t know much about guys or relationships or even what you’re going through. I’m…”
I looked at the lake. Clouds were rolling in, like they do in summer storms. It’s warm and comfortable and everything makes sense. And then you’re running home, trying to keep the cold from getting into your skin, watching the lightning crack the sky apart.
I never knew what she was. She left the next morning.
And then … well, then I died.
chapter twenty-two
This place always calls me back. Nobody’s coming here anymore. No one is looking, but I go back. I hope. I hope maybe they’ll see me here. And that they’ll find me.
I wonder if I stay here because someone should. Because somebody should watch over where I am. Someone should remember me.
It’s a strange place when it’s empty. It never truly feels empty to me, of course, because it holds so much inside it. The brownness spreads off the walls to the floor. The carpet is still stained. They aren’t removing the stains. They were here before. Dark stains too faded to make out for sure. They could be blood. They could be anything. Any stains that may have come later blend in. One person’s pain added to another’s.
Kneeling on the carpet, I can’t feel the burns now. The burning that tore up my knees belongs to my body, and my body doesn’t belong to me. When I stare at my knees, they’re only the idea of knees.
Somewhere in the deep and buried stains are more pieces of me. Tears, blood, and all the other things I was that they took. It’s hard, when you’re not a whole girl to begin with, to lose even more of yourself. It’s not right that they get to have those things, and nobody even sees.
So many things make a girl. So many things that you can’t hang on to.
At first, I tried to be good. I heard those voices in my mind.
Ellie, be agreeable. Good girls don’t argue.
I let the carpet tear into my knees, let the blood spill in places while they found parts of me to devour. I was silent, always silent, like a good girl.
I remember how close the bed was. I could see it, but I didn’t earn that. I didn’t get that kind of luxury. I was a hands-and-knees kind of prize.
It was just motion. Hands. Arms and mouths. Places on my body that I thought of when it was quiet. Sometimes accidental brushes in the shower, and sometimes at night, especially after Caleb. But they were secret places. And now they weren’t. All these places were opened and discovered and colonized.
They were an army of monsters, giant claws and teeth. There was no kindness in their touch or their words or their lips on mine.
I made it a story. Something from Lovecraft, a descent into the otherworld. I told myself it was only a nightmare. I promised myself that if I was good, it would be over.
His hands were so dirty. I could see the dirt under the fingernails in the hand on my jaw, the fingers pushing my lips apart. The monster, with a multitude of arms, kept me captive. Later, Noah’s hands were soft. But they didn’t feel it when he hit me.
I knew I’d die remembering the contrast in their fingernails and how my knees burned.
Agreeable. Good. Don’t cause trouble.
All the voices.
I tried. I was good for so much of it.
And maybe it was all true. Maybe it was because I wasn’t good. Because I couldn’t be agreeable. Because when I couldn’t be good anymore, when I finally screamed and begged and fought, it got so much worse.
Brutality. That’s what it was. A control that extended beyond me, beyond us, beyond this place. It filled the room that night, and I could have cried or begged or fought, but nothing could dispel it. It was something in us, something in the way we were, the way we all are. I was a sacrifice, a testament to it, but I could have been anyone.
That hurts most of all.
I could have been anyone.
It wasn’t my eyes, or my hair, or my pleas that drove them. I wasn’t pretty after all. It wasn’t something I’d said, some way I’d looked. I wasn’t special.
In my head, I tried to place blame. I thought about the clothes, the $18 jeans, the things I’d said to Kate. I remembered the unsaid promises I knew I’d made to Ca
leb that summer. I found blame in me, because I had to make sense of it all. I had to have a reason, because a reason was the closest thing there was to being special. A reason, even if it was blame, was something I owned, and ownership was better than just being.
Being anyone. Being a girl was all that landed me here. Having all the parts they wanted, but being nothing more than that.
Maybe we are a cookie recipe. Maybe nothing makes a girl.
I claw uselessly at the carpet now. My hands are smoke. A memory of hands and there’s nothing there but the carpet. I thought I knew what it was like to be invisible. I thought I could disappear, but now, I fight to touch anything real and I vanish.
Whether or not anyone likes me—whether or not I like me—I don’t want to blame myself anymore. I only wanted to belong. I wanted so badly to be taken in—by someone, someplace. Anyone. Anyplace. I wanted it enough to screw up and lose myself, but I am still not to blame.
I did exist. I do exist. I’m phantom knees and hands and the memory of what makes a girl, but I’m still real. I was real then, too. Even when nobody noticed.
No matter how bad we are, no matter the mistakes we make, we exist because we make them. We exist because we screw up and we’re wrong and we’re broken, but those are all the things that make us real. Those are all the things we are.
I didn’t deserve this. Even the most confused and lost girl, even the most screwed up of us all, doesn’t deserve this. Death isn’t the consequence for making a mistake; it’s the punishment we force on girls because they couldn’t be good.
Only girls have to die for wanting.
PART TWO
chapter twenty-three
The attorney’s office is stuffy. Well, I can’t actually feel that it’s stuffy, but I can sense it. I can glean it from the way they all sit, uncomfortable, not looking at one another. The attorney speaks with a drawl, a man out of place.
“What’s this your father’s told me about some nonsense with the ladies?” Ladies is supposed to mean gentility. He says it as an insult.
I came here because I could. Because they don’t know I’m still here, and it feels like revenge. The meaningless revenge of the dead girl.
Noah responds first, clearing his throat, still looking to the side as he speaks. “It started with this girl, Gretchen, from school. She’s one of those girls. She’s always making a problem out of everything, always going on about misogyny or male privilege or some ridiculous issue she has. She’s so annoying.”
The attorney—his nameplate says Adrien Deschaine—leans back in his leather recliner. He would be better matched to a pipe than the black pen he clicks throughout the conversation. Slow, methodical, timekeeping clicks.
“I looked into her background,” Adrien says. Click and pause. “She’s quite the instigator, but I don’t think you’ll have much trouble with that one.”
Noah nods. “It was … I just … yeah.”
Adrien clicks his pen again. “It’s the other one, though. She concerns me. I’m wondering if she could possibly be an issue. There’s not a lot to dig up on her.” Click.
The guys shift in their chairs, eyes trained on anything but a living person, waiting. For a name or an explanation. There are too many and they can’t tell which one.
I like watching them as they squirm, seeing how they run through the mental list of the things they’ve done, unable to differentiate between us. Unable to identify what happened when. Suddenly aware that there are so many of us who could take them down. So many they assumed were weak.
“Who is it?” Noah asks.
“Right now, you understand there are no charges, correct?” Adrien replies. “You’re aware the police have merely begun to gather information, and I only have limited access thanks to a few friends I have in the department?” They wait for the click, but he keeps his finger poised on the pen, pausing. He waits for them to nod, to confirm and acknowledge. “So you are also aware that it would be bad form to consider any kind of response to these claims?” Click.
“We won’t say anything.”
“It’s important you don’t, because if this does become a case, we make sure the burden of proof falls on the girls. Make them prove it wasn’t consensual, which is very difficult to do. It’s easy to walk away from these things, as long as you know what to say.”
“Thank God for that,” Noah says.
I want to hit him. I want to punch Adrien with his careless words. I want to ask where the case is for me. Ask if the burden of proof falls on the dead girl, too.
“This other girl,” Adrien continues as he looks down at the file he’s prepared, “Kailey Howe. She says she doesn’t remember how she ended up with you in the first place. What’s the story on that one?”
“She was one of Caleb’s,” Noah says. “The redhead, right?”
Caleb nods, and I imagine feeling nauseous. I imagine my stomach turning over. I remember sickness.
The way he said it—one of Caleb’s—like she was part of a set. Like I was.
“You remember her?” They both nod. “So what’s the story?” Adrien asks again.
“There isn’t one. She came over, we hooked up, end of discussion,” Caleb says, but his eyes stay focused on the papers on the desk in front of him.
“Was she drunk? High? Anything she can use to say she wasn’t able to consent? This is important, too.”
“No.” Caleb looks up. “She’s lying. Just like Gretchen. They’re all liars. Are you gonna fix this?”
Click. Adrien puts the pen down and shuffles his notes and files back into a folder. “These cases are really tough to prosecute. Charges like this are hard to prove. You’re lucky, too, because this Gretchen one has a bit of a past. She did say she saw a doctor after, which could possibly be a challenge. Realistically, though, given her background, I think we can say it was consensual. We can argue that she’s feeling rejected. That’s assuming anything comes of this.”
“She wanted it,” Noah insists. “I don’t think we have to argue that. She was into it.”
Adrien smiles. “Your dad said you’re both pretty well-liked. I’m sure it’s hard on these girls when they realize you’re not interested in anything long-term.”
Caleb holds his hands out in front of him, spreading the fingers apart. “I have a girlfriend.”
“How will she handle this?” Adrien asks.
“I don’t know. She’s gonna be pissed. I’ll figure it out, though.”
“Please do. Especially with this Kailey one. There’s very little I can find on her. The only thing is, given the timing, we may have the advantage. It’s been what—ten months?”
“Nine,” Caleb replies. “And I hooked up with her before I started seeing Gina Lynn seriously, so hopefully it won’t be a problem.”
Nine months.
Summer. This happened in summer.
This happened while I thought we were falling in love.
I’ve never heard of Kailey Howe.
This whole time, even after what happened, I still held on to hope. This belief that somehow Caleb was two people. That I’d loved him and something in him had gone wrong between that first time we’d met and the last time we were together. I wanted to believe that the person he was at the end wasn’t the same person I’d known and spent those moments with. All that is gone now.
While I fell asleep on those nights last summer, thinking of the way he’d learned to kiss me … When I’d started to feel the things I’d expected, the things I’d wanted to feel … While I was lying there, wondering if it was too soon to go further.
All those things I was thinking, was imagining, was wanting …
He was there. In that room. In that house. He was there with other girls. Doing those things to other girls. This was a part of him the whole time.
“Okay, so with Kailey,” Adrien says, “it’ll be a question of why she waited. It sounds like they’re pulling all kinds of things out of the air, hoping something will stick, and that actually w
orks out for us.”
“What about … Gretchen made these flyers,” Noah says. He takes me out of his pocket, folded into pieces, and passes me across the desk to Adrien. “And the news said the police are reviewing the case.”
Adrien unfolds me. Looks at me. Remembers. And then he smiles.
“The police already questioned you on this. We have a lot in place and it’s going to be hard to find a connection now out of nowhere. Just because two girls said something happened. Allegedly happened.”
I don’t hear the rest of the conversation. I leave before I can. Before they can continue to erase me completely.
I pass their father in the lobby, flirting with the receptionist. He didn’t even go in, trusting his attorney to guide his sons through these kinds of accusations.
Outside, I try to find somewhere else to go. Maybe I should return to my body. Wait by it. Wait for the rain to come, to reveal what they’ve hidden. Wait so I can show everyone exactly what they’ve touched. Maybe I can remember flesh and bone and blood and the things that used to be mine. Before they were theirs, too.
chapter twenty-four
I was wearing the $18 jeans and a black sweater. Sneakers. I had my hair in a ponytail because I didn’t know how else to wear it.
If you try finding a missing girl who was wearing a sweater and jeans and wore her hair in a ponytail, I imagine you’ll realize what she already knew: Some people blend in so well that, when they’re gone, it doesn’t seem like they ever were.
I think the elastic came out before I made it to the carpet. It’s meant to hold your hair away from your face, not to save you. I remember swallowing my hair as I fell. It caught in my throat, quieting me while I cried.
You get to relive these moments on a loop. I know there are probably details that contradict each other. Ones that maybe came from another part of the night or from pieces of things I acquired in my life. I’ve moved them in where they don’t fit to fill out the story. But I know what happened. I know it because it plays in my mind for every second I don’t focus on something else.