I look over at Raj, who is packing up his gear on the other side of the field. He doesn’t notice me at all, and he’s too far away for me to even try to get his attention.
“I’m leaving,” I say. I stand up and quickly put my stuff in my bag. “That’s what’s going on.” I don’t know what I was thinking coming here. Right here. Right where he is. I haven’t seen him this close since that night. Even at the dance, he seemed so far away. Now here he is.
“Can I talk to you?” He steps onto the bottom row of metal seats like he’s going to work his way up to me.
“Raj is driving me home. I don’t want to keep him waiting.”
I back up, almost tripping on myself. Stepping onto the fifth row. Then the sixth.
“Rerun will wait.”
His commanding voice. I go back to that night. Drink it. Follow me. Upstairs. With Sean Nessel comes instruction. He steps onto another bleacher, getting closer to me, and my heart pounds wildly, like I might fall down.
He’s on the second row now. I’m on the sixth row still, edging to the end.
“I’ve been wanting to apologize to you,” he says. “I wasn’t myself that night. You know, that night we were together.”
He wasn’t himself. This is the only thing that he wants to say to me. That he wasn’t himself.
I had all sorts of revenge scenarios planned, but when you’re stuck in the moment like I am now, it’s very hard to get your mouth open. It’s hard to say anything when you’re shaking. It’s hard to say anything when you feel like you might die.
“I got carried away,” he says.
“Carried away?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“When you put your hand over my mouth, is that what you mean by ‘carried away’?”
“Holy fuck,” he says. “You’re going to keep going on with this?”
I want to punch him. And if he wasn’t almost twice the size of me—I mean, his neck is like easily the size of a tire—I would pummel him.
My voice trembles with all the words I want to say, and they tumble out of my mouth with little management by me. It’s a seething power that comes over me, and I almost want to get physical with him. Grab his shirt, twist it really hard, and pull him close to me. Or just push him down into the metal bleachers. I want to see his head gush with blood.
I feel like an alien invaded my body. I never thought I’d talk to him ever—let alone talk to him like this. Just a few months ago I was obsessed with him. Now I feel like this empty package. Dumped and crumbled. I feel like a stupid cliché. After all, what did I expect? That he was going to all of a sudden become my boyfriend after hooking up with me one night?
He got carried away.
But something stirs in me. I take a step forward instead.
“You didn’t expect me to accuse you of rape, did you?”
“Yo, I didn’t rape you.”
“Yo?” I say. “Yo?”
His face reddens. His whole body tenses. His face. His eyes. His eyes plow into me. He’s angry now. I’ve made him very angry. “That’s not the way it went.”
I remember vividly how strong he was that night, how his arm held my shoulder down so I couldn’t hit him, or push him off me. I almost feel like he might grab me now. We’re standing only a foot apart.
I run across the bleachers to get away, crossing past him, the metal clanging as I leap over each bench. I don’t know if he’ll chase me. I don’t care. There are too many people around. Not his style. Sean Nessel only forces the issue with too much alcohol in his system and in a dark room. In sober daylight, he’s the do-gooder-all-American boy.
I turn around, and he’s walking after me, calling my name. I jump off the bleachers into a pile of small pebbles. I could stone him just like in that story, “The Lottery.” I could chase him with rocks, aiming for the back of his head. I could get him right between the eyes and maybe he could bleed to death. Or maim him so that his beautiful face could never, ever entice another girl into a bedroom again.
His feet stomp over the metal bleachers, and he jumps down, following me.
“Ali,” he says, marching quickly after me. “You can’t just use that—that word, Ali.”
“Oh, why not?”
I turn around and see his face. Red and contorted. Like he’s about to reach out to me. But I keep walking. If I don’t stop walking, I have to face him. If I don’t stop walking, I’m going to cry.
No, I’m not. I’m not going to cry at all.
I feel his arm wrap around the back of my arm, and I want to scream out, screech and moan, like a crazy person. I want to smack him. But I don’t. Because I want to be in control. I want to be in charge.
“Let go of my arm,” I say. And my face must have contorted because it reminds me of everything from that night. The way he held me down. I want to shake it out of my head because I want to make him pay right here. I don’t want to back down.
He drops his hand.
“You and I got drunk together and things got out of hand.”
“I yelled stop, and you put your hand over my mouth and held me down,” I say. There are the words. They come out of my mouth. My mouth.
“You wanted to go upstairs. I didn’t force you to do that.”
“But you put your hand over my mouth?” Again. I’m two separate people. Someone else answering for me. “You were hurting me,” I say. “That’s what I was saying to you. I screamed it. I had a bruise on my shoulder. I bled all over your jacket. I was a virgin!”
Sean Nessel might not remember it at all. Isn’t this the side Blythe was trying to convince me of? Sean Nessel is a nice guy. He made a mistake. He was drunk. We were both drunk. Of course, it’s entirely possible that Sean Nessel is a nice guy. But I’ll never get to know him that way—or ever. Because he pinned me down in a bedroom with blood streaming down my legs, and that’s the only memory I’m ever going to have.
Raj finally reaches us.
“What’s up?” His jaw is clenched.
“She’s got the wrong idea in her head, Rerun.”
“Why don’t you just step back,” Raj says. “You’re standing too close.”
“I’m trying to apologize to her, dude, so we can just get this behind us.”
Sean Nessel will have no problem putting this behind him. He’ll erase it from his mind. He’ll convince himself that I’m some annoying junior who he thought was cute and who cried rape. Girls are idiots. What, do I need a consent form next time I fuck some chick?
I run off toward Raj’s car in the parking lot. If I can just get to the car, everything will be okay.
Raj calls out, but all I hear are echoes—something familiar—my name. I feel like someone different now, and though hardly anything has changed—everything has changed.
* * *
* * *
Raj drives us over to Manakow Park, where there’s an old swing set and hardly any kids. They’re revamping all the parks in town one by one. Taking out the old swings and putting in these ugly colorful playgrounds, stupid metal climbing structures. No swings. Too dangerous, the mayor wrote in a letter that went out to all the parents. I only know about this because my father actually went to a town council meeting to complain. “How can you take swings away from kids?” he asked. But they told him that the older kids use them to hop off from a high distance. That three kids broke their ankles. That almost all the existing swings violated safety recommendations. No more swings in public playgrounds, the mayor said, and that was final.
When was the last time you were on a swing? When was the last time you kicked your legs up and down, pumped them across the wind, pulled your body back into a curve so hard that when you came down in a swan-like dive, your belly rose up, sharp? I look over at Raj, and the wind blows back his hair. His cheeks, still red from practice. His lips dry.
“I�
��m scared.”
“You just stood up to Nessel. I don’t think you have anything to be scared of.”
We crisscross each other with our feet, swinging back and forth, a breeze trailing between us.
38
BLYTHE
It’s after school. Loud knock on the door. Pounding.
My mother is on a new pill. Sleeping all day is the side effect. Better than her taunting me. Better than her wanting to spend time with me.
I run downstairs, swing open the door. It’s Sean. Sean sweaty with his hair pulled back in this new man bun he’s doing. His eyes red, as if he’s been crying.
“She’s going to ruin my life.”
“Sean—you’re getting paranoid.” I push him outside, shut the door.
“No, you don’t understand, B. She and Rerun. Today after practice. I went to talk to her. I apologized to her. You know. For getting so, you know, getting carried away that night.” He’s panting. His face in a panic. “She made me chase her across the bleachers. She’s crazy, B. What the fuck am I going to do?”
I look around my neighborhood. Anyone can see us. Anyone can see the captain of the varsity soccer team falling apart on my front porch.
“Lower your voice.”
“She said I raped her.”
“She said those exact words?”
Every part of me tenses up, a weird tingle all over. Here he is, standing in front of my door, like nothing happened at all. A desperate, broken-down man who I need to take care of.
“She said she was a virgin. She said all this other crap.”
“Interesting. What did you say?”
He raises his voice again. “What do you think I said? I said, ‘That’s not the way it went.’ But then Rerun tells me to get away from her and that I need to take a step back. I tower over that kid, and he’s telling me to take a step back.”
And where does that leave me? I’m the girl who swept in. I’m the girl who tried to be friends with Ali because Sean Nessel told me to. I’m the girl who told Ali to forget about it. To move on. That Sean is a good guy.
I flash to that night before the party. Sean’s face. Salivating about Ali Greenleaf. The way she stares at me in the hall, he kept saying.
Every girl is a conquest. Maybe I was a conquest.
If anyone connects the dots to why I’ve become friends with Ali, then I become the girl who hid the information.
I become the person who tried to get her not to admit it. I tried to erase it from her mind.
If Ali tells this whole story to everyone, she is going to mess with my reputation. I was there, people will say. I knew how it went down.
Blythe Jensen knew all about the rape, and she did nothing. She just tried to protect Sean Nessel. That’s what they’ll say.
I knew what he did to her as she tore down the stairs, her eyes popping out of her skull as I left the bathroom. How she almost ran me over. Leaving so soon, I said to her. How callous. How inhumane. I pretended it wasn’t happening. That Sean wasn’t capable of this. Or not to this degree. That she should have known. People will talk. They’ll say she was my puppy dog. That I let it happen.
And Sean? Well, Sean will be forgiven because he’s every other golden athlete. Their coaches scream from the sidelines. Go all the way. Press them until it’s over. Be relentless. They do not stop.
Can it be that what Amanda Shire told me that night is true? It might seem humiliating at first, but in time you’ll see that it puts you in control. Can it?
I feel for my doorknob and slowly open it. Sean is still whimpering about how his life is ruined. I walk backward into the house.
Sean is beside himself. Hands on his knees. Saying he’s going to puke.
“You’d take the moon if you could, wouldn’t you? You would lasso the stars right from the sky just to brighten your little section of the soccer field while the rest of us sat in the dark.”
“What are you talking about, B? Moons—what?”
“For the future, when a girl is wasted, don’t have sex with her.”
“Oh, Jesus, not you too. You’re going against me too?” He takes my hand and pulls me toward him. “Don’t you have feelings for me, B? I thought it was me and you?”
I push him back. I want to spit on him.
“You ruined your own life. You’re in the process of ruining mine too.”
His face crinkles up. He tries to go for my hand, but I slap him away.
“So you’re not going to help me?”
I slam the door in his face.
39
ALI
The sign on the door says PRESSROOM on legal paper scribbled in thick black marker. The newspaper crew takes their shit seriously. This is where you come when you want the first copy. Thursday mornings. After drama class, I’d stand outside the pressroom door like a cultish doe-eyed moron to satiate my Sean Nessel fix for my collage book.
Now I need the school paper for another reason. I need them to tell my story.
Terrance is sitting on top of a large desk with his laptop. He turns to me, surprised.
“Haven’t seen you here in a while, Greenleaf. We’re all out of papers.”
“I don’t want a paper. I want to write for you, actually.” I shift nervously.
“Well, you’d have to know how to construct a sentence,” he says, dryly.
“I can do that.” No flinching.
A girl with pink hair and cat-eye glasses who sits in the back corner of the room with her laptop looks up at me, blinks her eyes a few times, and then buries her head again, furiously typing.
“Talk to Savannah. She’s the managing editor,” Terrance says, and points to her.
So I shuffle to the back of the room and stand in front of Savannah’s desk.
She ignores me for about a minute, and I turn back around to look at Terrance. He’s still sitting on top of his desk, just staring at me.
Savannah then jerks her head up. Her eyes blink rapidly.
“I need someone to write about the school play,” she says with this squeaky mouse-like voice. “Interested?”
“I want to write a column. Like an op-ed piece.”
“Oh, she’s got something to say, Terrance.”
“You know what—I made a mistake,” I say, backing toward the door. I’m nervous all of a sudden. It’s too much. I don’t have enough bravery in me to fight with these people.
“No, no. Don’t leave,” Terrance says.
He jumps off the desk with his laptop under his arm. His big boots clunk to the back of the room.
“What’s your outrage, Ali?” Terrance says. “Tater tots? You hate them? They’re too fattening? Or maybe it’s the lettuce? You’d rather them use organic kale instead—”
“Okay, forget the kale. Maybe she wants the school to let the student body go off-campus for lunch,” Savannah says.
“Maybe she just wants the dress code to change. She wants to wear flip-flops to school,” Terrance says. “That’s it!” The floor vibrates when he speaks.
I put my story facedown on Savannah’s desk and write my email on the back, but I’m tempted to throw it out. I hate both of them. Savannah and Terrance and their stupid newspaper.
“My story is about rape,” I say, and my heart races, thumps in my chest.
Savannah stops blinking. Her eyes open like a stuck record player. Terrance scratches the fuzz on his chin.
“And the school play? Sure, I’ll do it. Just email me with a deadline,” I say and walk out the door.
40
BLYTHE
I don’t trust Ali will wait for me after class. I texted her a few times that I needed to talk to her, but her responses are just K. Nothing else. Now, I don’t know where she is. I’m not used to being ignored, and that scares me.
I scamper out of class right when the
bell rings and race down the hall, my boots stomping under me.
Ali’s strolling out of her class, not even looking back.
“Ali!” I yell. It feels like the whole hallway turns around. People aren’t used to seeing me chase someone. This will be their first and last time.
I get real close to her. Scorch her ear. “What the fuck is going on?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all,” she says, defensive. Like she’s got something to hide.
“Except Sean came to my house last night. He was a mess. So it’s not nothing.”
I lock arms with her. I’m the leader again. “Come with me. We need to talk.”
In the stairwell. Bell rings. Hall is quiet. No one will see us here. And I want to talk to her. I don’t want to bombard her. Make her feel attacked. I want to just get through to her. Convince her that I’ve been dragged into this. And haven’t I been? Haven’t I unwillingly been part of this?
“I was confused. I was . . . I was manipulated by Sean. You don’t understand how social politics work. It’s like a puzzle, and I haven’t been as valiant as you. I’ve been stuck in this system for a long time.”
She looks at me so carefully, studying me. A new air about her now. Something superior.
“Blythe, I’m going to write something about what happened in the school paper.”
It takes my breath away. Like a brick in my chest. Everything swirling. My life in a stupid newspaper.
“You can’t. You can’t just do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because people are going to have questions. People are going to look to me for answers. People see me in a certain way, Ali. I know you understand this.”
“Ah, I see,” she says, taunting. “You don’t want people to judge you. You don’t want people to know that you purposely became friends with me to convince me that Sean Nessel was a nice guy. The kind of guy who wouldn’t do something so awful. Isn’t that what you said?”
Something Happened to Ali Greenleaf Page 18