Something Happened to Ali Greenleaf

by Hayley Krischer

  * * *

  * * *

  Ms. Tap wants to see me after the session. Blythe walks out by herself. She waves to me. I wave back. There’s nothing more than that.

  Ms. Tap takes my hand. “Ali, I just want you to know that this is one of the proudest moments of my life, being around you. That knowing you has changed me so much.” She starts to cry. She makes that weird guffaw sound when you’re trying to suck in tears.

  It hurts to hug her, because no one wants to be the girl who changed everyone. It’s too much weight. I would have liked to be the girl who did nothing all year. The invisible girl. The girl with a collage book filled with pictures of a boy she didn’t know shoved under her bed.

  On the wall, a shadow. It’s like someone is making bunny ears in a film projector, except this is more triangular and pointy. It floats back and forth like a chime. It’s three little paper planes hanging from the ceiling.

  I reach up and touch one of the wings of the plane. It dangles back and forth in this easy way in this innocent place with paper planes and goofy stuff that childhoods are made of.

  * * *

  * * *

  In the hallway outside Ms. Tap’s room, Sammi sits on the floor, leaning against the wall, waiting for me.

  “I saw Blythe walk out.”

  “We don’t have to talk about her.”

  “No, I think it’s good if she can be real.” Sammi waits. Thinks about this. “Can Blythe Jensen be real?”

  “I don’t know. Honestly. I don’t know.”

  I look through the rectangular windows out onto the soccer field. The season is long over.

  “It’s hard for me not to still hate her.”

  “I know,” I say. “Do you mind if I don’t hate her?”

  I know this sounds weird to Sammi. I know this would sound weird to anyone after what she did. But something in Blythe changed.

  “Oh, I know you can’t hate her,” Sammi says, laughing. “Maybe you’ll love her, hate her. But you’ll never just hate her, hate her. I’ve accepted that already.”

  I want to say a lot more. Defend myself. Defend Blythe.

  But I don’t want to talk about Blythe anymore. I want to clear her from my head. Stop dreaming about her, what it was like when we were so tight. What it meant to me. How she made me feel.

  I lock my arm in Sammi’s the way we used to when we first came to high school in the ninth grade.

  We walk past the gym. The basketball players and their squeaking sneakers over the court. Past the gym door until we can’t even hear them. Just an echo of their voices. And as we walk farther away, through the big doors leading out to the parking lot, Sammi unlocks her arm from mine and throws her arm over my shoulder. It’s a gray day, but that doesn’t really matter because some days are just like that.

  RESOURCES

  If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted:

  National Sexual Assault Hotline

  800-656-HOPE (4673)

  Trained staff members are available 24/7.

  Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN)

  www.rainn.org

  National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC)

  www.nsvrc.org

  #MeToo Movement’s Healing Resource Library

  metoomvmt.org/healing-resources-library

  Find resources and organizations near you.

  #GirlsToo

  girlsinc.org/girls-too

  Girls Inc. provides safe spaces for girls to speak out about their experiences.

  If you or someone you know has substance abuse issues:

  SAMHSA’s National Helpline

  1-800-662-HELP (4357)

  www.samhsa.gov/find-help/national-helpline

  This is a free, confidential, 24/7, 365-day-a-year treatment referral and information service (in English and Spanish) for individuals and families facing mental and/or substance use disorders.

  Shatterproof

  www.shatterproof.org

  Shatterproof is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to reversing the addiction crisis in America.

  If you or someone you know is struggling with depression or anxiety:

  National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)

  nami.org

  NAMI provides advocacy, education, support, and public awareness so that all individuals and families affected by mental illness can build better lives.

  Crisis Text Line

  www.crisistextline.org

  Text from anywhere in the United States, Canada, or the United Kingdom to connect with a trained crisis counselor. Every texter is connected with a crisis counselor, a real-life human being trained to bring texters from a hot moment to a cool calm through active listening and collaborative problem solving.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I was on my way to attend Rebecca Traister’s event at the New York Public Library for her book Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger when I found out that Razorbill was interested in publishing my book.

  Only five days earlier, Christine Blasey Ford testified about being sexually assaulted at a high school party by a young, popular, very smart, and very drunk Brett Kavanaugh. The hearing was still fresh in my mind and had affected me as it had many women across the country. I was outraged.

  I watched Justice Kavanaugh and his spitting anger and defense and was shaken by the similarities to the rapist in my book, the “beatific” Sean Nessel. The characteristics fit a certain type: privileged, arrogant, sexist bullies and predators.

  But it was the moment Dr. Blasey said that Justice Kavanaugh had covered her mouth, held her down, and tried to pull her clothes off in a bedroom upstairs at a party that I realized Sean Nessel was eerily similar to Brett Kavanaugh. I could see Sean Nessel on a similar path forty years from now, angry and confrontational, in denial, actively lying about his past, and on his way to becoming a Supreme Court justice.

  When asked what Dr. Blasey remembered most about the assault, she said this: “Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter, the uproarious laughter between the two. They’re having fun at my expense.”

  It’s important to know that not every sexual assault survivor remembers all the details. Traumatic memories can be fragmented and fuzzy, with survivors vividly remembering certain images, but not, for instance, the time of day.

  I had started writing Something Happened to Ali Greenleaf about twenty years ago. It began as a short story about a girl who was raped by the most popular boy in school. After the incident, she took a shower and held her feelings in, telling no one. I had never really understood why I wrote it. This isn’t me, I’d tell writers in workshops who’d read it. I’d assure them, Oh, no. Not me.

  It took me years to realize that this story was an outlet for my own experiences that were too difficult to talk about or too painful to understand.

  I lost my virginity to a boy in my college dorm room who refused to let me go until I told him, “Fine, just get it over with.” I’ve never forgotten how I told him the blood he saw was just my period and how I escaped to the bathroom, trying to wipe it all off. I’ve never forgotten how that boy, the same year, raped my friend while she was incapacitated on psychedelic mushrooms.

  I’ll never forget walking into a room at a high school party where an intoxicated friend was sprawled out in a dark bedroom, unconscious, as seven boys stood around her, groping her body. How one of those boys shamed me for being a “party pooper” when I stepped in and dragged her out of there. How a tailor taking in my prom dress went in for a feel on my breast. How, when I was sick with the flu at nineteen years old, a male doctor told me that I needed to take my bra off because it was the only way he could really listen to my heartbeat.

  Here are the statistics: Younger people are at a higher risk of sexual assault. Females ag
es sixteen to nineteen are four times more likely than the general population to be victims of rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault.*

  I was a high school senior in 1989 when the Glen Ridge, New Jersey, rape case hit the news, living just a few towns away. (For the record, I now live in Glen Ridge.) A young woman with an intellectual disability was gang-raped in a basement by a group of high school athletes. The victim was called a slut. Many educators and students sided with the athletes. A female friend of one of the perpetrators even tried to convince the victim not to testify. That detail always stuck with me because it was the worst kind of betrayal. Eventually that story morphed into Blythe Jensen.

  When I first wrote this story, Ali Greenleaf didn’t have a voice. She was raped and the story ended. But as I grew—and as my understanding of myself developed from years and years of working with a very good therapist, as I understood rape culture, as I understood that this behavior didn’t happen in a bubble—the story grew.

  I’ve written for publications including The New York Times, The Atlantic, Marie Claire, Lenny Letter, The New York Times Magazine, and more. And in many ways, I approached this book like a journalist: I researched, I fact-checked, I interviewed experts, I pored over articles and journals. I worked with an authenticity reader who gave valuable insight and feedback. Even with all of this research and my desire to get things right, there still might be mistakes that are my own. I also know that despite my best efforts, some people will still feel that this story isn’t fully accurate to their experiences.

  I hope reading Something Happened to Ali Greenleaf will have opened your mind to the complexities of sexual assault. I hope it gives you insight into what the act of surviving looks like. But as much as this book is about female rage and the aftermath of sexual assault, it’s also about the beauty of female friendships, as well as their worrisome dynamics. These girls often treat each other in the way teenage girls aren’t supposed to treat each other. Girls today are expected to have evolved beyond the mean-girl trope. But it’s important to show that while, yes, teenage girls can be compassionate and forgiving, they can also be complicated and dark. And sometimes menacing.

  Lastly, if you’ve jumped ahead to read this note because you are wondering, What kind of person wrote this book? and What is her backstory? and you feel too overwhelmed to dive back in . . . then close the book. Stop reading. Give yourself some time for it to settle. Seriously, I will not take offense.

  Ali and Blythe find a way to heal through writing. It’s how I’ve found a way to heal too. For me, writing is breathing. Writing is meditating. Writing is the map that leads me outside of my mind. Writing can also feel, as the New York journalist Sid Zion once told me, like being boiled with a pot of hot dogs. So, look, writing is not always the answer, and it can be incredibly frustrating, but it can get you to understand yourself, and it can be an incredible release.

  Even if you just write something down in a journal and chuck it in the trash. Put those words on the paper and leave them there. Don’t look back. Sometimes that’s enough. So do that, will you? Grab a journal and write.

  Hayley

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  First and foremost, I want to thank my parents, Amy Krischer and Norman Krischer, for always supporting me, for being my biggest fans, for always embracing my creativity and my eccentricities. I love you both with all of my heart.

  To my agent, Emily Sylvan Kim, who believed in me since the beginning, never wavering. Not once. I will forever be indebted to your belief in me, your honesty, and your sage advice.

  To Julie Rosenberg, for being not just an editor, but my partner in all of this. I feel like we’ve been dual therapists for my characters—you have such an empathetic soul for all of them, understanding them with such great compassion and treating them as if they’re your own. I’m so grateful for all that you do and for giving me this opportunity.

  To the Razorbill and Penguin Teen team, Casey McIntyre, Alex Sanchez, Gretchen Durning, Jayne Ziemba, Wendy Dopkin, Marinda Valenti, Abigail Powers, Liz Lunn, Tessa Meischeid, and Bri Lockhart. Writing a book is solitary until it is not, and having a team like all of you is a writer’s dream.

  Thank you to my cover designer, Samira Iravani, and to Monica Loya for your original artwork. You brought Ali to life and I cannot thank you enough.

  The female friendships are the most important relationships in this book for very good reason. I had the most loyal best friends in high school, who rallied around me and got me through some of the worst times of my life. Without them, I probably wouldn’t be here, and I certainly wouldn’t have this book. Thank you, Jessica Sherman, Amy Griffiths, Irene Stamos, and Liz Adams, for reading my first-ever YA book when we were seventeen, for watching Heathers with me over and over, and for embracing my specific level of crazy. Thank you, Liz, for being my own personal Sammi, for rescuing me from too many situations to count and counseling me through practically every crisis in my life.

  I also have to thank my girl gang, Beth Block, Sara Kaye, and Miriam Rosenberg, my anchors, my traveling partners, my therapists, my spiritual leaders, and for holding me tight and never letting me go.

  My sister-in-law Melissa Adler, my creative brainstorming partner. Like Oprah Winfrey said about Gayle King: Melissa, taka, you are my mother and my sister. You are the friend that everybody deserves.

  My therapist, Iris Ascher (because every writer has to thank her therapist). Iris, you gave me vision and insight; you blessed me with boundaries and taught me self-worth.

  To my brother David Krischer and my sister-in-law Brandi Morris. I’m so lucky to have your wisdom, your friendship, your heart, and your understanding.

  Thank you to all of the Adlers and Solomons, for being my tribe, with Mel and Eileen at the helm. Thank you for making me feel loved in this big boisterous family that you’ve created. I’m so grateful.

  A tremendous amount of research went into this book. Special thanks to Bernard Lefkowitz, author of Our Guys, a detailed account of the Glen Ridge rape case, which was instrumental to the writing of this book.

  Thank you to Grace Brown, the photographer behind Project Unbreakable, a photography project aiming to give a voice to survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse.

  Thank you to all of my readers, Nicole Cooley, Jodi Brooks, Ruby Brooks, and Miriam Novogrodsky. To my teachers at Lesley University, where I got my MFA in creative writing, Hester Kaplan, Michael Lowenthal, and Laurie Foos, for encouraging me and putting so much into my work.

  To Jami Attenberg, for creating #1000wordsofsummer. Jami, I was in a low place when I started your challenge in the summer of 2018. I thought I had no future as a fiction writer. Your challenge lifted me from a bad place and got me to look at my writing differently. Do yourself a favor and follow Jami’s #1000wordsofsummer—it’s inspiring and will turn your writing around and, as Jami says, you will have 14,000 new words after two weeks. What could be bad?

  Most of all I would like to thank my children, Jake and Elke. I would be nothing without you. You both have changed me and enlightened me, more than you will ever know.

  And to my husband, Andy, my shining star. Thank you for your honesty, for your compassion, for your love, for being absolutely the weirdest person I know, for making me laugh even at the most inappropriate times, and for being the best and most thorough reader any writer could ever ask for. I love you.

  Finally, I want to thank the young Hayley. The girl who wrote and wrote and wrote because breathing is writing and she had to write to live. Thank you for not giving up on yourself. Thank you for persisting despite the hundreds upon hundreds of rejections. Thank you for pushing through the anxiety and the fear, the depression and the loneliness. Look at you now, girl. Look at you now.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Hayley Krischer is a writer and journalist. She is a regular contributor to The New York Times, where she covers women, teenage girls, ce
lebrities, and cultural trends. Her work has also appeared in Marie Claire, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, and more. She lives in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, with her husband, two kids, one dog, and three cats.

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  *Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Sex Offenses and Offenders (1997).