by Sara Taylor
“What’s up, girls?” Ed said, grinning at us. “Come sit down, have a drink.”
There wasn’t any room on the couches to sit, so I hesitated, unsure of where to go. The other two girls moved forward immediately and made as if to sit down on two of the guys’ laps.
“Not so fast,” Jerry said. “You two have some unfinished business to take care of. Don’t worry, I’ll have them back here in no time.”
The guys started hooting. “Of course you will, man. Two minutes? Thirty seconds?” Everyone laughed. The girls followed Jerry back out into the hallway, and the door closed behind them. Fern and I stood facing the four of them.
“Sit down,” Ed said to us again.
“I’m okay,” Fern said. I didn’t reply. There was no way we were going to sit on their laps for god’s sake.
“Want some wine?” Victor gestured at the bottles on the table.
“No thanks.” I cleared my throat and smiled at them. “We’re really excited to meet you guys.”
“What is this, an interview or something?” Chaos piped up. “Yeah, we’re happy to be here, blah, blah. Come on, relax, sit down, have a fucking drink, let’s just chill and have some fun.”
The door opened and my heart stopped as Balthazar walked in. He was taller than I thought he would be, totally looming over Fern and me, and his hair was wet. He smelled like soap. I gazed up at his handsome face, unable to really grasp that I was standing here, right in front of him.
“I think she likes you, Bal,” one of the guys joked.
Balthazar looked down at me and smiled. I smiled back. “The shower’s free if anyone wants to use it,” he said, and then moved to the table and poured himself some wine. He took a sip, turned back, and surveyed us. I fumbled for something cool to say as they all stared at us.
“Well, this is boring as shit,” Balthazar said to his bandmates.
What did they want us to do? I didn’t understand. Would they prefer the company of the giggling idiot girls? There was a bad atmosphere, a tension.
“We have a band,” Fern said, taking a cigarette out of her purse and lighting it.
“Oh, do you really.” Balthazar yawned. “Why don’t you tell us all about it?” There was a round of chuckles that followed this comment, and my stomach slowly started to freeze up. They were assholes.
“We kinda don’t want to hear about your band,” someone else said. “We kinda just want to get laid. You know?”
I had no idea what to say. I felt stupid as hell. Me and Fern standing there in our stupid outfits, thinking they’d actually care we were in a band too. To them we were no better than the other girls, willing to twitter and fawn and fool around with their fat roadie.
“We’ll go then,” Fern said. There was an urgency in her tone that I didn’t understand. I felt like I was missing something.
Balthazar sighed loudly and slammed down his glass. “No, you’ll sit down and have a drink.”
The next thing I knew, he had taken Fern by the shoulders and shoved her down on the couch between Ed and Sid. Her face registered surprise and fright, and I moved forward towards her. “We’ll leave,” I said, reaching for her. But someone grabbed me. The room spun and something jolted me, hitting me hard in the back of the head. When my eyes cleared I was looking at Balthazar’s fist, clenched around the front of my shirt. I was against the wall. He’d slammed me up against it. “Have a drink,” he said again.
My lips moved as if to talk, but my brain couldn’t find anything to say. I didn’t understand what was happening. I heard laughter coming from somewhere in the room, but I didn’t know from where. I couldn’t see around Balthazar and I couldn’t move.
“We get very tired of boring girls,” he told me. I had no idea what he meant. He kept talking to me in this low tone, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I heard a shriek and I knew it was Fern. What was happening to Fern? I tried to pull away from the wall, but Balthazar’s fist still gripped my shirt. He tossed me against the wall again, bouncing my head off it, and I blacked out for a second. The next thing I knew I was down on the floor on that disgusting carpet. I lay there. Balthazar was standing over me, laughing about something, and I couldn’t get up. I was too stunned, trying to understand what was happening.
I heard another shriek — Fern again. I looked up to the couch where it came from. I was behind the couch and I saw her hand fly up, and a big fist wrapped itself around her wrist.
Were they raping her?
One look at one of the guys standing over the couch answered that question for me. He was watching whatever was happening there and fiddling with his belt.
They were.
I opened my mouth and let out the loudest scream I could, screwing my eyes shut and throwing everything I had into that scream.
A huge rough hand slapped down over my mouth, cutting it short, and I opened my eyes to see Balthazar’s face directly over mine. “Shut the fuck up,” he hissed.
xXx
I can’t get into what happened after he put his hand over my mouth. I really can’t. But I can tell you how I felt about it. A few minutes after Balthazar climbed on top of me I was fully lucid again. I heard them joke to him about being careful not to get any “diseases” from me. I didn’t know what was going to happen after he was done with me. I was too afraid of them to think about anything other than the fact that they might kill us. I mean, I’d like to say I was running through plans in my mind to get away, to attack him, to summon up all the rage I usually have and break free, to crawl out from underneath Balthazar and escape. But honestly, I thought he would kill me. Have you ever been afraid that someone is going to kill you? I didn’t have any sort of adrenaline rush or anything. It was just pure, simpering fear. I didn’t look at him. I kept my eyes closed. I didn’t want to see. My hands were free and I brought them up to my eyes, as if trying to protect my face. I didn’t know what else he was going to do. I was aware of sounds — I heard them talking and sometimes laughing. I heard Fern crying. I didn’t see anything. I could smell his rank, rotten breath as it blew over my neck and hands in warm, erratic waves.
Finally he climbed off me and moved away, and I felt a scratchy cloth hit me. “Clean yourself up,” he laughed, and when I peeked down I saw he’d thrown an old towel onto me. I heard him joke with the other guys that I was “free” if they wanted a “go,” and I felt myself ready to throw up, ready to scream again. I heard other voices joke back that I was “too ugly” and relief filled me for a moment, until I remembered that they might kill us and I covered my face again.
“Grow the fuck up,” Balthazar said, grabbing one of my hands and jerking me up to my feet. I saw Fern standing by the wall, stick-still, her hair covering her face.
“Look at this,” Sid said. “Get them out of here.”
“Get out,” Balthazar said in disgust. Fern stayed completely still by the wall, and I tried as best as I could to snap myself out of it and grabbed her hand.
I pulled the door open, and almost slammed into Jerry, who was returning with the two giggling girls. Would this never end?
Jerry paused and looked at us. I violently pushed my way through the door past him, pulling Fern behind me, and as we burst into the hallway and ran, laughter echoed around us. “I guess it’s 1997 all over again, guys?”
THIRTY-THREE
Fern acted as though she’d been hypnotized, but for some reason, my mind was clear and mechanical. Okay, get back downstairs. Done. Go back into the venue, done. Go to the coat check, hope the girl is still there. She was, cleaning up and looking at us as if we were crazy. Get our backpacks. Done. Get the fuck out. Done.
Don’t think about what just happened. Just get the fuck out.
Fern followed me onto the street, and I put my arm around her. It was chilly. I started walking. I didn’t even know where I was going. I just had to get us away from that place.
Away from them right away. My eyes were so wide I felt like a lunatic. My mind raced. Get us out of here.
I found a park, a small long one that followed a path between two buildings. It was dark and there were benches. I led Fern to one. We sat down. She stared straight ahead, and I put my head in my hands. I had a thousand thoughts, a million thoughts, all of them running, racing around, and I couldn’t grab any of them to focus on. I closed my eyes and let them run through me.
“Rachel,” Fern said after a little while.
“Yes.”
“We have to go to the police.”
Yes, we should. That was the first step. “No. We’re not going to the police.”
“Rachel, we have to.”
“Do you think they’ll believe us? DED gets tons of girls, whenever they want. Why would they bother doing this? No one would ever believe what they’ve done to us. The cops won’t do anything. We went back there ourselves, I mean . . . we came to the show and went backstage, all dressed up.” My head pounded.
Fern was silent for a few moments. “But we have to do something,” she said, her voice rising to a wail.
“I know we do.”
A thought was taking shape in my mind, something concrete, something exciting, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I couldn’t focus on it. Not yet. But I could feel it there, slowly forming. We had to do something.
xXx
The first thing to do was to go to the bus station. I focused on every step, every action that would take us forward. I couldn’t bear to look backwards. I knew what had happened but I did not want to envision it. I knew there would be plenty of time, the rest of my life, to think about it, to relive every horrible detail. But right now I had tasks, and I focused on them. We were two hours away from home, and we had to get back. We had to figure out what to do right now.
I held Fern’s hand and set out to find a taxi. I began to steer us into the general direction I thought the bus station was so we could walk and collect ourselves before getting into a cab. She knelt on the sidewalk and threw up, punctuating it with sobs, and I knelt beside her and rubbed her shaking shoulders. Again, I felt my eyes were wider than they normally were, absorbing more than usual, in greater detail: the way the streetlights cast patterns on the sidewalk through the tree branches, the small glittery hair clip on Fern’s head, the dry grass and the crushed juice box in the gutter.
When she said she felt well enough to get in a taxi, I hailed one. As we drove through the streets, she laid her head on my shoulder. I felt frozen, too aware, too sensitive. My skin felt as though stick-legged bugs were crawling over it. I pressed my arm tighter against Fern, screwing my eyes closed, noticed I was trembling, realized I wasn’t — it was Fern, huddled against me. I felt some sort of hollow, failed protectiveness for her.
We got out of the taxi at the bus station, which was still open, thankfully. The attendant said that there would be a bus leaving in two hours that made a stop in Keeleford on its way someplace else. She flicked her eyes between Fern and me, noticeably weirded out by us, so I tried to smile as calmly as I could and then led Fern towards a row of plastic chairs to wait. I didn’t want the woman to call the police, because if the police came it would spoil everything. My mind was working on some idea that would show itself to me eventually. I needed time.
I got Fern a can of Coke and she sipped it, wiping her eyes. “Rachel, we have to go to the doctor,” she finally said in a wet, wavering voice that sounded as if it could escalate to a shriek very quickly.
“They used condoms.”
“Yeah, well, we have to go to the doctor.” Her voice took on a keening tone and her breath started coming in short gasps. “If we aren’t going to the police, we should at least be going to the doctor.”
An image entered my mind of poking, prodding doctors and I slammed it away, swallowing hard, actually stamping my foot to distract from the coiling nausea inside me. “Let’s just worry about getting home right now.”
Fern pulled her sweater around herself and closed her eyes. I wasn’t sure if she had fallen asleep.
We had two hours before the bus home. That was enough time to head back to the club. I was struck with the urge. I could go back. They would probably be on their tour bus, all of them. I could find some way to block the door, prevent it from opening, and set the bus on fire. Fern had a cigarette lighter, I could take that with me. Block the door, somehow set the bus on fire, and they’d roast inside it like hot dogs in a tin can. The bus would get so hot that their skin would stick to it, the tires would melt, the smoke would smell like burning rubber and bacon. Especially that fat fucker Jerry, his skin would split open and all that fat would come drooling out of him like melted butter, and it would smell exactly like bacon. And it would make the bus floor slippery, so while they were running around, all on fire, trying to escape, they would slip in puddles of bloody fat. They’d all be on fire and their long hair would be on fire too. They’d get all charred, their skin black and flaky and their teeth would be so white.
The next thing I knew they were announcing the bus over the loudspeaker and Fern was shaking me awake. “You fell asleep,” she said. “Come on.”
It was jarring to go from the brightly lit bus station into the cramped dark of the coach bus, but there were only a few other passengers so Fern and I got a quiet spot together at the back. She sat next to the window, pulled her sweater hood over her head, and promptly fell asleep. As the bus pulled away from the curb, I stared out into the dark street and lamented that I hadn’t actually gone back to light the bus on fire.
xXx
When we got back to Keeleford the sun was starting to rise, and as Fern and I walked on the street leading uptown, everything had a sort of misty surreal quality to it. Not dark but not light, no cars in the streets, just a few faraway birds beginning to chirp, the sky hovering between dark blue and pale orange.
We’d slept the whole bus ride home, but sitting unconscious in a lousy bus seat doesn’t count as sleep and I felt bone tired. My makeup had smeared into my eyes and they burned dryly. The air felt damp, and as we walked both of us folded our arms close to ourselves to keep out the chill. Fern looked rumpled, stained, and exhausted. I knew I looked the same. “How do you feel?” I said.
“Tired,” she said. “I want to go home and sleep.”
We walked through the familiar neighbourhoods as the sun rose and cars started appearing on the streets. We went our separate ways at the usual corner, and I walked the rest of the way home alone, feeling strangely calm. The image of those guys burning to death with their hair alight like birthday candles gave me a strange sense of amused hope, and I tried to hold on to that feeling as I walked up the driveway in the early morning light and realized my parents would probably be waiting up for me.
xXx
I think they were prepared for something very different. I was not defensive, I was not defiant. I quietly agreed that I should have been home earlier. I agreed that I should have called. I agreed that I was definitely not going to any more concerts; not while I lived under this roof. They asked me what Fern’s mother would think of this. I told them she was probably angry as well, and justifiably so.
I didn’t like sitting in the kitchen. I felt like I had something wrong with me, a cloud or an aura of what had happened, some evil that I didn’t want in the house where I grew up, around my parents, sitting in the same kitchen chair my little sister sat in, permeating the air. I needed to wash myself, get the layer of sick off me, become myself again.
The whole time they yelled, I could also feel that they were concerned, and they hadn’t expected to feel that way. I sat there, my hair a mess, my face smeared, holding my arms tightly around my body, staring at the floor. I could feel their eyes on me and despite the fact that they tried to sound angry, they were horrified at how I looked. I could tell they both wanted to ask me if I was all right, and were torn betw
een that and their desire to punish their rebellious teenage daughter.
I guess it’s hard to be compassionate when you’ve sat up all night planning to be pissed. I can totally get that. I didn’t want to talk to them about it anyway, obviously. I would’ve had to make something up, which I didn’t really have the energy for.
When they had finally stopped talking to me, I went into the bathroom and got out of those clothes. Taking them off felt incredible, as if I was stepping farther away from what had happened. That only lasted a second though. I saw blood. I couldn’t pretend anymore. I couldn’t be strong anymore. I was home, I was alone, and now I was going to have to feel every second of what happened. I was glad I had turned on the shower before I started crying and throwing up, so my parents couldn’t hear.
THIRTY-FOUR
I started walking in the woods out past Clyde Road, which is on the edge of town and pretty remote. It took me about an hour to walk there from my house, but the walk was good. Walking and just being quiet had been very helpful to me in the days since it had happened. The weather was getting a bit colder, and the leaves had started changing. It was my favourite time of year, walking down sidewalks covered with dry leaves, watching blackbirds flocked against the white sky, smelling smoke in the air. It always brought clarity to me, and everything that had happened left me with more of a need for clarity than I’d ever had.
I’d torn down all my DED posters, wadded them up, and shoved them into the same plastic bag with my clothes from that night, which I’d wrapped in another bag and shoved beneath the back porch of our house. I didn’t want the stuff in the house, but for some reason I wanted to save it. I’d been having trouble focusing on anything, which was why I was walking a lot.
I went to school and stayed away from my parents as much as I could. I was quiet in my bedroom, not listening to music, not causing any trouble. I could hear them talking in those concerned, low voices all the time and I knew they were talking about me.