by Leanne Davis
Ally shook her head. He had no idea. He was naive and ignorant when it came to her reality. She pushed away from him and wiped her eyes. “I need to go.”
“Let me grab my keys.” He turned, releasing the emotional pressure that was swirling around inside her. He hastily found his wallet and keys. She followed him to his car and stared at the passing scenery as they drove in silence to her sister’s studio apartment. It was tiny, but Kylie preferred living alone after spending two years in the dorms. Ally almost offered Kylie a room with her, Janice, and Tabitha but something held her back. Perhaps it was her need for escape, to get a break from her sister’s stressful life. Ally didn’t imagine that Kylie would stop her partying and date a single man exclusively. A man she could remain faithful to.
Until now. She stared up at the empty street and her sister’s dark apartment. “I have a key. I’ll just let myself in and wait for her.”
Nate took her hand, and kissed her knuckles. “Do you want me to wait?”
“No. I have a feeling whatever this is, it won’t be simple.”
“Call me first chance after you know and can get free… first thing, okay? Please don’t forget. I’m pretty worried too. But mostly, I’m just worried about you.”
Ally smiled as she reached for the door handle. “I won’t forget. I promise, I can’t forget you.”
She slammed the door and disappeared into her sister’s apartment, which was dark and empty. Glancing at the time, it was only eleven. Ally doubted Kylie would be back soon. She rummaged through her cupboards and found some snacks her sister, who rarely ate junk food, wouldn’t miss. They were most likely Tristan’s. Stealing a few moments of quiet and being alone, Ally locked herself in her sister’s bathroom. She was ready to deal with waiting for her sister to come home and learn the terrible thing that Tristan’s brother did to her.
Chapter Nine
NATE STARED AT THE passenger car door when it clanged shut and Ally disappeared upstairs. He waited for several minutes but she didn’t return. Shifting into drive, he started down the street, heading back to her apartment, where he went inside. Her roommates probably figured out why he was always there, but they kept quiet about it, in deference to him or Ally; who knew? He entered her bedroom and locked the door before going into her bathroom, where he stood for a long moment, reliving his observation. He kept staring at the toilet.
Ally stuck her finger inside her mouth. The magnitude of that kept replaying through Nate’s head. He didn’t imagine it. Nearly choking on her sobs, her endless tears were blinding her when she suddenly released him and ran to the bathroom. Nate understood why. The chance that sweet, fragile Kylie had been raped, even the possibility of it happening, made Nate feel sick and jittery as well. He understood how it physically affected Ally. The love for her little sister was still very strong in Ally, along with her guilt when she realized that she shut Kylie out and then something happened to her. Nate wanted to enter right behind Ally, and stroke her hair, rub her back, or do anything to soothe her.
But she knelt over the toilet with such speed, comfort and authority, it was… shocking. He had no other word for it. Shocking. She put her finger down her throat and began throwing up.
Nate didn’t come forward from disgust, but rather, dumbfounded astonishment. He couldn’t understand or begin to fully comprehend what was happening. Not in that moment, at least. But then, she seemed to realize that too. She stayed on her knees there for a profound moment. The silence seemed to alert her that she had done something very, very odd.
Going to the sink, she performed a ritual that Nate felt sure now, was very familiar and comfortable to her. After she finished vomiting in the toilet, she looked inside, flushed it, went to the mirror, washed her face, and used exactly three swishes of mouthwash before patting her entire face dry. Only then could she turn towards Nate and be… fine. She was functioning again. Sure, she was upset still and there were plenty of tears and doubts, which were only natural, given the circumstances. And of course, she was worried over Tristan’s odd call in the middle of the night asking her to find Kylie.
But the vomiting? It was more than just a reaction to Kylie’s absence. It was necessary and desperately needed by Ally. Nate didn’t get it. At all. He stepped forward and opened the sink cabinet.
Seeing another bag, he just stared at it. Then, standing before the basin, his shoulders slumped in defeat. He did not want to reach inside. He could not. His willpower was lacking. He wanted to leave the bathroom, slam the cabinet doors shut, and walk away to wait for Ally. Beautiful, together, almost perfect Ally would call him soon.
But she used her own finger to force herself to throw up.
Nate reached inside the cabinet and pulled the bag out. It was an ordinary, plastic white grocery sack, tied in a tight knot to prevent anything from escaping. Nate ripped a hole to get inside, where he found wrappers and an assortment of boxes. They were all flattened down and stuffed into the bag. There were different wrappers than the ones he found several weeks back. That was when he thought it was cute that Ally had a sweet tooth and felt compelled to hide the evidence. Then, however, he thought the bag held several weeks’ or even a months’ worth of candy and snack wrappers.
Now, he could only sit down on the floor and stare at it. Slowly, rising to his feet, he walked into her room and started searching through it. He found two more grocery bags filled with wrappers. Recoiling in horror, like a frantic, angry tornado, he scattered the contents of the plastic bags on the unmade bed where they had been lying together just hours before. It was three in the morning when he finally flopped down, sitting on the edge of the bed, and running his hands through his hair over and over again.
What the fuck?
Everyone, including Nate, thought Kylie was anorexic. Nate heard all the scuttle and believed it too. Sure. Looking at her, she was always extra skinny. Not super-model skinny, but emaciated-skinny.
No one, not one person, ever considered they pegged the wrong sister with an eating disorder.
Nate hadn’t questioned it.
Now, he sat there, stunned and incredulous. He stared at his feet, and then back at the bed.
The amount of wrappers he found and cake boxes and pie tins were enough to feed a family of four dessert for a week. He couldn’t fathom it. Ally ate all that food? And then she threw it all up?
He shook his head. He tried to picture it but it filled him with disgust. It was nothing he’d ever been involved with or understood. The idea of it repelled him thoroughly. Reluctantly, he searched her medicine cabinet. Laxatives. Then, he found a giant box of them stashed behind the garbage pail under the sink.
He had no idea what the fuck to do now. Methodically, his hands shaking, he retied the wrappers up in fresh grocery sacks and returned them to where Ally had stashed them. Why would she keep them stashed around the room? That made even less sense to Nate than puking. Why keep the evidence around? It was a dirty, dark, disgusting secret and also the source of her insistence that he didn’t know her. No! No, he didn’t know her at all, and hadn’t suspected anything like that.
But why did she keep the evidence? And stash it all around her? Was it a comfort to Ally? How could that be? Nate couldn’t comprehend it.
The phone rang early in the morning. “We’re going home. Something big is going on. Kylie wants to tell Mom. Her decision to do so on her own is really huge.”
“It is,” Nate agreed, his tone very quiet. He didn’t know how to react or what to say. He suddenly felt very weird with her, and only last night, he was head over heels in love with her. Of course, that was before he understood that nothing about her was what it seemed.
“I’m scared, Nate. I think it’s really bad. She’s rarely needed to go to Mom before.”
Nate leaned back, and shut his eyes. She needed him now. Not his judgment, or confusion, or repulsion. His first reaction? What a gross thing to do. Of course, he knew it was much deeper than that and far more complicated. But still, that w
as his first thought. Just stop that. Don’t stick your fingers down your throat. Most sane people don’t need to be told that.
“Call me as soon as you’re done there, okay? I’ll be here,” Nate replied.
He heard her inhale a long breath. “You have no idea how much that helps right now.”
“I love you, Ally,” he said softly. It popped out before he realized he would say it. He was confused, upset, unsure, totally freaked out, but an overwhelming tenderness filled him. Just hearing the trembling tenor of her voice and the pain she felt were enough to override all Nate’s own doubts and fears.
“How can you know?”
“I just know. I feel it.”
“I want to think I do too. But—”
“You don’t have to say it. I just wanted you to know I do right now. Call me. I’m here.”
Ally hung up and Nate glanced around. Her room was just as she left it. Her secret all neatly tucked away in little plastic bags. Her bed was made and the bathroom seemed so ordinary but he stared at it again.
That night, when she acted so strange to Nate, crying because her sister had sought out her dad, he knew then, didn’t he? He suspected something was drastically wrong with her that night. She was doing something she was ashamed of. It was more than just her needing to be alone. She must have been doing… that. And on Christmas day at Gretchen and Tony’s, after he followed her into the locked room… damn. She had been throwing up then too.
Nate nearly collapsed. All the signs were there. He knew something was definitely off with her. He had a distinct feeling there was something he didn’t know about or see… but nothing like this.
Bulimia. Nate didn’t know anything about it or anyone who suffered from it. He knew it existed, but he hadn’t cared about what it was or what it meant to the person suffering from it. Bulimia wasn’t a word he could say or picture with Ally. It didn’t fit. Not at all. Eating disorders only affected people who were out of control, desperate, with crazy food issues. Besides, people who suffered from it were constantly talking about it. Ally didn’t. She rarely discussed her weight and Nate always assumed she had a positive body image. He didn’t find her particularly self-conscious about it. She was careful about every single thing she ate. He could almost understand if she felt the need to starve herself as a way of controlling the environment around her, but obviously, that wasn’t it. She lost her self-restraint and then what? Did she also lose the ability to feel full? He couldn’t picture that happening or Ally purposely making herself puke. She wouldn’t even say the word around him, let alone, acknowledge she might do it. Self-induced vomiting? The very thought just seemed so out of bounds for him with regard to Ally. He couldn’t grasp it. Not the Ally he knew, loved and spent a lot of time with. His first reaction to her coping mechanism of purposely trying to make herself sick was one of total disgust and denial. But he actually witnessed it so it could not be denied.
He had no idea what to do with that hideous revelation.
After another night, and late the next morning, Ally entered her room. Nate spent the night at her house, feeling unexplainably closer to her by staying in her bed so he could be there for her when she returned. Stumbling in without a word, she wrapped her arms around him and began to cry. After great, wrenching sobs that shook her entire body with their amplitude, she sniffled and gulped before wiping her face with the sleeves of her shirt. She trembled over and over again as he cradled her head against his shoulder. He rubbed his flat palms over her back, not to calm her down so much as to let her know he was there. His stomach muscles tightened with dread. It was obviously very bad with Kylie, which would cause huge problems for Ally.
Eventually, Ally let Nate see her face. She shook her head, and stared vacantly with unseeing eyes, interlacing her fingertips and twisting her fingers all around.
“What happened?” Nate finally asked.
“I couldn’t call you. We were together until now. We even slept in the same bed.”
“She was raped?” His words were clipped, but his tone was heavy with emotion.
“She was. Yes.” Ally’s words were calm, sane, and simple, but her breath hitched, and her tone trembled. Hearing her own words brought a fresh flood of tears that spilled over her eyelids as she sobbed all over again. Nate swooped her up in his arms again. This time, she wrapped her arms around his trunk and kept pressing her head against his chest. “She was drugged. January of her freshman year. He—the rapist drugged her and took her to his room. She woke up there, completely naked and confused. She had no idea how she’d gotten there or what even happened. I mean, she eventually figured it out by the semen on her legs and… and…” Her voice trembled and her previous hysteria resumed. “She couldn’t tell me, Nate. My own sister was drugged and raped and she couldn’t even tell me. Am I that hard to talk to? Or trust? Am I that terrible? Do I drive everyone away from me? Is that why they won’t talk to me? And won’t believe I love them, no matter what? Oh, my God. My own sister… my own sister…” She was almost incoherent between her tears and her jumbled words.
Nate kissed the side of her cheek, her forehead, the top of her ear, and anywhere he could touch or caress. Stroking her hair, he rested his chin on top of her head as more tears rolled down her cheeks. “Shh, no, no. Ally, no, you aren’t impossible or terrible. Did Kylie tell anyone?”
Shuddering, Ally replied, “No one. She held it in. For two years… she just held it in. She wasn’t ready to tell us… she didn’t know how. She blamed herself because of how she kept partying, without being careful. She thought what happened was her punishment for acting that way and not heeding the warnings. But oh, my God. No one, no eighteen-year-old ever thinks that something as bad as that will happen to her. Not once did I believe she deserved blame or punishment. Even when I was at my maddest, or the most scared by her behavior, it was from fear, not judgment or blame that propelled me to lecture her. I was always getting on her… I suppose I must have forced her to distrust me and feel like she could not tell me something as horrible as this.”
Nate lifted her face off his chest, cradling it with both hands as he gently brushed his thumb over her lips. “So she blamed herself, and now you’re going to blame yourself too?”
A soft, barely-there smile appeared on her lips, then quickly disappeared. “You sound like me talking to her.”
“Because you need your own version of what you want to be to Kylie. I think everyone just missed that fact about you… including you.” His tone was quiet, serious, thoughtful, and he was thinking about far more than just what happened to Kylie. He was thinking about what Ally did to her own body, which no one dreamed she could do. Nate felt sick when he thought of Kylie being hurt so badly and victimized. But strangely, that wasn’t Nate’s priority right then. Ally’s physical health was in jeopardy right now. Today. Nate had no clue what to do about it, however. His stomach twisted with repulsion and fear for Ally, and Kylie was more like an afterthought.
She wiped her eyes. “There’s more.”
“What more could there be?”
“Do you know who Tommy Tamasy is?”
“Yeah, I know him. Cocky, friend to all, kind of a meathead football player?”
“He was Kylie’s rapist. And he’s also Tristan’s little brother. Tristan’s real name is Tamasy, not Aderly.”
Nate jerked back, his entire body recoiling with alarm. “What was he trying to do?”
“At first? I think his grandfather wanted him to neutralize her. Instead, he fell in love with her, or so he claims. He didn’t do anything to violate her. Kylie isn’t sure how to handle that little tidbit, not yet anyway.”
“How is she?” he asked. Kylie’s story was finally winning, at least, for the moment, over his concern over Ally.
“She’s surprisingly stronger now. We all thought she’d be falling apart, but she’s calm, and even stranger than that, she’s talking to us. She and I slept in her old bed last night. We talked until quite late into the night. She’s g
oing to press charges on Tommy, through the school disciplinary committee. Apparently, without proof, they can’t get anywhere with the police, but maybe…”
“And Tristan?”
“Not sure yet. She told me she’s really in love with him, and can’t figure out what he was up to. We’re meeting him tonight to erase his company’s security feed. That would show proof of Kylie going there a few weeks back.”
“So Kylie told you when she was ready?”
“Yes. I guess, I have to learn to respect that about her.”
“It’s hard to do that, isn’t it? Watching someone you care so much about floundering with something difficult when you want to help? Or at the minimum, figure out a way how to help them.” He spoke quietly, referring more to Ally than Kylie, but unwilling to say that yet. He was extremely unsure how to proceed.
“I always tried to with her, but I always worried about her. She’s such a mystery. So quiet, and so out there with her wild behavior. And then this guy…”
“Tristan, your nemesis.”
“I’m not so sure now that he is. I don’t know. I am beginning to think he genuinely is unsure how he feels about her, and was simply protecting his brother at first. I get that. As an older sibling constantly trying to protect a younger sibling. In fact, it defined half my college life. I realized while talking to them, I let that happen. Not Kylie. She didn’t really ask me to. I took on that responsibility and made myself so available, it was ridiculous. Maybe, it’s time for us to figure out how to do this more normally. How to be sisters, I mean. Or even friends.”
Nate squeezed her waist to show his support and brushed his lips over her hairline. “Listen to who sounds so mature now.”
“I have not been lately, about Kylie especially. And even Tristan. It was hard, to be honest. After all I went through with Kylie, to have this strange guy, her new boyfriend, receive all of Kylie’s genuine honesty and sincerity. I thought she could tell me anything, but I see now, I was only setting up myself as a caretaker, whom she was so afraid to disappoint, Nate. She couldn’t tell me that… yet she accidentally told her rapist’s brother?” Shaking her head over and over, the irony was not lost on either of them.