by Claire Adams
I felt as if I had poured salt into someone’s open wound, as if I was pressing broken shards of glass into his skin. “What happened after that?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
“She…” Johnny shook his head. “She didn’t want to talk about it to anyone. She went missing from school; the guys…those…they kept circulating the picture, talking about what a great lay she’d been.” Johnny made the stomach-deep, groaning sound again. “She just couldn’t take it. I don’t blame her. Not for a second. The things they were saying about her…” he shook his head. “She eventually ended up just…I think they found her a few hours after.” I saw him curl in on himself. Johnny’s voice went quiet, deadly-flat. “They found her journal and the clothes she’d been wearing that night. In the journal…God, so many of those—those fucking assholes. They’d raped her. She wrote it all down. The police found something like five different guys’ DNA on her clothes.”
“Jesus,” I said, barely able to keep my hands on the wheel. Johnny took a deep breath again.
“I went in to talk to the police; they didn’t know for sure how many people had been involved. They didn’t have enough proof.” He laughed bitterly. “As if DNA, as if a girl writing down everything she remembered—every person who’d…” he took another breath. “I testified against them all. Everything they’d said—the picture I’d gotten, all of it. They’re all exactly where they belong, and I hope they’re just as hurt and scared and shamed as they made her feel—every day. I hope they’re getting it over and over again.” I heard his breath hitching again and heard him starting to sob.
“I’m so sorry, Johnny,” I said, feeling my heart aching in my chest. There was no way he could fake something like this. It had to be the real story.
The tears were streaming down his face. “If I hadn’t left... No wonder everyone blames me. I even blame me. I should have been there—I should have been able to do something. I had to leave. I couldn’t go to school there; I couldn’t take it.” He started to shake.
“Is that why you don’t drink?”
Johnny nodded quietly. “I have to be alert. I have to make sure that never happens to anyone—no one. That’s…” he shook his head. “I can’t let that happen to anyone. I have to be alert.” I heard the deep, soul-sadness in his voice. I looked around; we were on the middle of the highway, but I couldn’t just leave him the way he was. I pulled over onto the shoulder and parked the car, leaning across the divider to hug Johnny tightly. He sobbed, holding me as if he had to cling to something for life itself.
“I’m so sorry I made you tell me all this,” I said, hugging him and stroking his head. “I’m so—thank you, for being willing to tell me.” I kissed him on the forehead, on the lips. “I love you so much, Johnny. I hate the pain you’ve been through.” We held each other in the darkness, and I barely even noticed the few cars that rushed past us. I felt Johnny’s sobs starting to ease, and he pulled my face up to kiss me on the lips. I didn’t even realize that I had been crying, too, until he reached up to wipe my face.
“I will never let you down, Becky,” he said, kissing me softly on the lips once more. “Never. You are always—always—safe with me.”
Chapter Seven
The next day, I got through my classes, but I kept thinking about everything that Johnny had told me. We had gotten home late the night before, and he had told me he was too tired to do more than just kiss me goodnight. I had to admit that I was more than a little emotionally exhausted myself, though it would have been nice to be able to get into bed with him for nothing more than the sake of cuddling. I watched him head off towards the frat row and dragged myself up to my dorm room where I had the best night of sleep I’d achieved in weeks.
The more I thought about it, the angrier I was with my mom. She had hired a private investigator because she’d had some weird suspicion about my boyfriend, who had been nothing but polite and pleasant to her. And the PI hadn’t even managed to get the full story. I knew I would have to talk to her, even though I didn’t want to dredge up any of the sordid details of what I had heard the night before, but I owed it to Johnny; I couldn’t just let my parents go on thinking that I was dating some rapist who got off when I knew the truth. If he had been willing to tell me about it, I had to make sure that they understood the whole situation before they got it into their heads to do something stupid like say something to Johnny that would only hurt him more.
I went up to my room as soon as classes were done and took my phone out. My hands were shaking from anger and frustration at my parents, from the sadness and horror of what Johnny had told me the night before. I gritted my teeth, found my mom’s number, and hit the call icon. I nearly lost my nerve; it was so difficult to even make myself think about what Johnny had been through, the fact that he couldn’t seem to get out from underneath such a huge tragedy.
“Becky! Are you okay? You haven’t been alone with that boy, have you?”
My anger flared up. “I have, actually. And I will be alone with him whenever I feel like it.”
“Didn’t you pay any attention to what I told you yesterday? He’s—he’s a monster!”
“No, Mom, he isn’t.” I took a deep breath. “For your information, I went to the source. I asked Johnny exactly what happened, and he told me in details what can’t be a lie. He was not one of the people who raped Claire; he had left the party long before, and he is still beating himself up for not being there to save her.”
“But, sweetie, that’s exactly the sort of thing…”
“Listen to me, Mother,” I said firmly. “The man I spoke to last night is still absolutely torn up about what happened to a girl he loved. He had no part in hurting her—he even testified against his own friends because he knew that they were involved.” I paused for a moment to try and let it sink in. “He did everything he possibly could to try and help her, to save her, and he still blames himself.”
“Sweetie—”
“No, Mom,” I said. “I don’t even want to hear it. What you and Dad did was incredibly shitty. Who the hell hires a private investigator to look into their daughter’s boyfriend? I’m not a child. I’m not an idiot.” I heard my voice rising in volume and took a deep breath to calm myself. “I have absolute trust in Johnny because he has shown me he’s a good person. If you were going to hire someone to investigate him, you should have at least paid someone who knows what he’s doing. Obviously, this guy you put on the case can’t even get his facts straight!”
“Sweetie, I know you’re upset…”
“You’re damned right I’m upset. You nearly ruined the best relationship I’ve ever had in my life because you’re too nosy to let me make up my own mind, and you hired an incompetent idiot who rushed to a conclusion without even looking hard at the facts. I’m in love with Johnny and I trust him, and there isn’t a whole hell of a lot you can do to stop me.” I heard my mom sputtering on the other end of the line.
“I would suggest, Mother, that you see about getting your money back. You wasted it on that stupid idiot when you could have just trusted me to make a good choice.” I took a deep breath, realizing that I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I was spent. I said a quick goodbye and ended the call, my hands still shaking from all of the adrenaline flowing through me. I felt weirdly hot and cold all at once, my heart racing. I had done it. I cringed, thinking that my mom would probably have more than a few choice words about my vocabulary once she got over her shock, but I couldn’t just let her sit there in her pretentious ignorance and think such horrible things about the man I loved.
Chapter Eight
A few minutes after I had hung up on my mother, I heard the room door open. I pulled myself up off of the bed. “Becky!” Georgia was calling out, and I tried to hurry to leave my room and meet her in the common area.
“What’s up?” I asked; she looked excited—anxious, even.
“Have you heard? You have to have heard.” I looked at her in confusion.
�
��What are you talking about? Heard what?” Georgia’s eyes widened. She ducked into her room and brought out her laptop. She pulled me onto the couch with her and opened up a browser. “Just tell me already,” I said, losing my patience. I watched as she typed Johnny’s name into the search bar. What was going on with Johnny? I felt my heart lurch in my chest—had something happened to him?
“Hold on, it’s coming up,” Georgia said. I gritted my teeth. If something had happened to Johnny, surely someone would have let me know. Johnny would have had someone call me or text me, wouldn’t he? A hundred scenarios played through my mind: car accidents, injuries happening in the gym, something happening on campus, each thought growing wilder and wilder as I waited for the page to load. I wished Georgia would just tell me what was going on.
I got my answer in a few moments, even if it felt like an absolute eternity before the page loaded. The top results were news articles, and as my eyes trailed over the headlines, I groaned. “Hockey Star Implicated in Notorious Gang Rape Case,” one said. “Johnny Steele Under Suspicion in Claire White Case. College Hockey MVP Under Investigation.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “No, no that’s all wrong.”
“Look, Becky,” Georgia said, opening up one of the news articles. They were referring to Johnny as an “alleged rapist,” and I sagged against Georgia as I read the article. It was impossible. It couldn’t be. I knew the facts of the case; there was no way that Johnny had been lying to me. I kept reading, as much as it gave me pain; the article said that “new information has come to light in the investigation of the circumstances surrounding the suicide of Claire White.”
“Oh God,” I said, bringing my hands to my face.
“What? Did you…did he say something?” Georgia was staring at me wildly. “Did you know?” I shook my head.
“Johnny told me everything about that whole horrible thing. He wasn’t involved. I swear to God he wasn’t involved. I can’t believe he has anything to do with it.” I shook my head again. “I promise you everything I have, Georgia: Johnny did his best to save Claire, not hurt her. He wasn’t even there when it happened.”
“I believe you, but what about the new evidence?” I groaned again and slid down along the couch, burying my face in the pillows.
“My parents are fucking idiots,” I said, barely lifting my head up enough to be heard. “This has to be about that stupid private investigator they hired. That’s the only thing it can be. Oh God, I hate them so much.” I buried my face in the pillows once more. I couldn’t believe it. Johnny was going to be hounded by this again—and it was all my parents’ fault, which meant that in some way it was partly my fault. If I hadn’t let them meet him, they wouldn’t have thought it was necessary to drag a stupid gumshoe into the situation. They wouldn’t have had him investigated, and this “new evidence,” whatever it was, would never have come about.
I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe just how much dating me had brought Johnny so much sorrow; I had failed to trust him. I had been the reason why he would have to relive the whole horrible act and everything that he still blamed himself for about it over and over again. It was bad enough that he’d had to tell me about it the night before, but this could ruin his prospects. This could get him kicked off of the team for no reason. My mind was reeling. How could my parents have done something so stupid? I wanted to call my mom again and yell at her, scream at her that she was destroying the life of the man I was in love with. I wanted to tell her that I would never, ever forgive her. I wanted to make her put my dad on the phone so that I could scream at him, too.
“You’re really, really sure that Johnny had nothing to do with it?” I took a deep breath and turned onto my side, bringing my head up to rest on Georgia’s thigh. It would be all over the place soon enough, I realized. I knew that Georgia had to have heard about it on campus—everyone would be talking about it; there would be no way to avoid hearing about it from fifty, a hundred, two hundred people I didn’t even know. But I could set the record straight for my roommate. She could correct anyone who had the nerve to bring it to her. I told her about the situation; I didn’t go into as much detail as Johnny had, but I explained that he and Claire had dated, that they had broken up, and she had started to go a little nuts, leading to her being at the party, drinking—the perfect set-up for a bunch of predatory assholes. I told her about Johnny confronting his friends, about him carrying Claire home, about her suicide and his testimony against the people he had played hockey with who he had been close to. And I told her about how he still blamed himself. I closed my eyes. “Okay,” Georgia said when I finished. “That…I can’t really argue with you. So what are you going to do now?” I thought about it for a long moment.
“I have to go find him.”
Chapter Nine
I felt myself starting to panic again and told myself I had to rein it in. I wasn’t going to be able to do anything for Johnny if I went off like a crazy person. I found my phone and went into my bedroom in the dorm and tried to call him; there was no answer. I bit my bottom lip. I could understand that Johnny was probably getting a lot of phone calls. His phone was probably ringing off the hook, but I had no idea where he might be on the campus. I tried calling him again; again, no answer.
I decided to change tactics. Even if he wasn’t answering his phone, he might see a text. Hey babe, it’s me—I wanted to make sure you’re okay. Get back to me, please? I found myself pulling up the news on my laptop, reading with my stomach in knots as more and more articles came out about the situation with Claire White, about Johnny’s possible involvement, and a rehash of all of the details that had been published before. The comments sections on all of the articles were absolutely vile, with people saying that Johnny should have been shot, that no jury on the planet would convict Claire’s parents for killing him.
I was trembling. I tried to call Johnny a third time; this time it went straight to voicemail. His phone was off. I didn’t know what to do. I knew I had to talk to him and soon, but I couldn’t imagine how I was going to find him on the campus. I remembered everything he had said to me about the situation. I remembered how he had cried. I remembered that he blamed himself for what had happened to Claire. Wasn’t it bad enough that he was taking the blame for something he didn’t even do, that he was carrying around the pain of what happened to a girl he loved?
I started to feel angry. This was all because of my parents and their stupid private investigator; I knew it was. If they had just left well enough alone, Johnny wouldn’t be getting hounded and wouldn’t have to relive the whole terrible situation. He might actually live in peace. I had already told my mom off; I found myself picking up my phone again and finding my dad’s number in my contacts. I hit the call icon before I could even hesitate and rethink what I was doing.
“What’s going on, sweetie?” Dad said the moment the call connected.
“How could you?” I shouted. “How could you do this to him?”
“What do you mean, Becky? What are you talking about?” I nearly screamed in frustration.
“What am I talking about? You and mom hiring some incompetent private investigator to look into Johnny’s past, that’s what I’m talking about.”
“Sweetie, slow down. What’s going on?” I took a deep breath, realizing that I couldn’t keep up the momentum of my rapidly-escalating anger forever.
“A bunch of news companies are writing about Johnny being involved in—in that terrible mess with Claire White—all because your stupid private investigator dug into him. Johnny had nothing to do with that.”
“How do you know, Becky? If the private investigator was able to turn something up, that’s a real cause for concern. Your mother and I are really worried about you with that boy.”
“Why didn’t you think to ask me about it? Why not ask Johnny? Why not do anything other than drag out a tragedy that he still blames himself for and get him into a huge mess with the whole fucking world?”
“B
ecky, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“What I’m talking about is that Johnny wasn’t even there when that attack happened. He’d left the party. He came back for Claire when he got a picture from one of the other guys. He testified against them! He went against his friends because he really loved that girl. And now—now he’s going to have to go through all of this all over again.”
“If there’s nothing going on with him, then the investigation will be closed, and he’ll be able to go back to his life. I think you’re overreacting, sweetie.”
“No I’m not! If—if Mom had killed herself and there was nothing you could do to save her, and someone brought it all back and made you live through it all over again, how the hell would you feel?”
“Becky, you don’t know if what he told you was even the truth.”
“I know it is, Dad. I talked to him, did you? No. You and Mom are both willing to believe anything bad about anyone if they’re not rich. How many of the boys you tried to fob me off on at the country club do you think have raped girls? I can tell you—there’s probably at least a dozen of them! But because Johnny isn’t rich and because you think I’m too stupid to have any sense at all, you hired some jackass to dredge up everything he ever might have done.”
“Becky, I need you to calm down. Yes, it’s unfortunate if Johnny is innocent—”
“Unfortunate? I don’t even know how I could ever even ask him to forgive you for it! I don’t even know if I can ever forgive you for it. You’re destroying the life of someone I love and trust, all because you think that money is the most important thing in life and that your own daughter doesn’t have the sense to take care of herself. Johnny has never been anything but kind, sweet, and gentle to me.”