Sara hurt, and she feared for her safety, but she refused to bow. “No!”
Jason struck her again. “I’m gonna ask you one last time. Drop the fucking charges!”
His face flushed with anger, and he was gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles turned fish-belly white, but Sara remained recalcitrant. “No!”
Jason put a hand over his face and let out an exasperated sigh. He turned and looked at her: his facial expression conveyed remorse, and Sara smiled, for she knew that she had won.
Then Jason took off his letterman jacket and rammed Sara back with so much force that he broke the passenger seat. He covered her face with the outside of his letterman jacket and pressed down hard on her nose and mouth. Sara, seeing nothing but blue, clawed at Jason’s hands, but to no avail.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Sara woke up from her nightmare, gasping for air and scratching her face. She sat up and began coughing. It took her a few moments to realize that it was still dark out and that she was still in bed.
She ran her hands over her face. She didn’t feel any scars or bruising. She clambered out of bed and into her bathroom. She flicked on the light and was a hair’s breadth from looking in the mirror when she cottoned on to what she was about to do. She turned away from the mirror in an instant: the last thing she needed to see right now was her homely, fat face. But she still wanted to see whether she had done any damage to it, so she clamped a hand over her eyes, made a small slit in between her pinky and ring fingers to see through, and turned toward the mirror, her hand covering the top half of her face. She saw a couple of short, faint scratches on her right cheek. Great. This was just great: something to make her face look even worse was exactly what she needed. She knew that makeup could hide scars and bruises, but she didn’t own any (the way she saw it, her wearing makeup would literally be putting lipstick on a pig), and she also had no idea how to use beauty products, so even if she went to Harold’s to buy some makeup before school, she would have no idea what to buy or how to apply it. Her scratches weren’t deep or obvious, though, so with any luck, no one would notice them. But they probably would (she did go to school with a bunch of assholes).
She heard Florence and the Machine’s “Shake It Out” playing in her bedroom, her alarm song du jour. Time for school. The dream version might have been over and done with, but now she had to contend with the real thing, and there would be no waking from that.
She turned her alarm off and then headed back into the bathroom to suffer through another abrasive shower. When she was through, she walked back into her bedroom to get dressed. She chose a long-sleeved black sweater for a top, and she chose black cargo pants for bottoms instead of wearing blue jeans as she usually did (she didn’t want to even think about the color blue right now, let alone put it on her body).
She parked on a street adjacent to the school and went through the front entrance, which was on the opposite side of the student parking lot, to avoid seeing Jason’s car. She walked into the building, a bundle of nerves. She wanted to run back to her car, but she determined to keep moving forward. She determined to not let fear get the best of her.
The day went by without incident during her morning classes: She handed in her AP English paper that had been due on Monday and picked up all the assignments she had missed. All of her teachers commented that they were surprised she was absent yesterday, citing her previously perfect attendance. Sara lied and told them that she had come down with a twenty-four-hour bug.
When it was time for lunch, Sara stopped by a vending machine to purchase a Sprite and then retired to her car, where she had a box of strawberry-flavored Pop Tarts and four Kit Kat bars waiting. She sandwiched each Kit Kat bar between two pop tarts, the crunchy chocolate of the former and the sugary sweetness of the latter proving to be a delectable combination.
Twenty minutes later, she came back inside for fourth period, and that was when she saw Jason for the first time that day. He was flanked by three assholes: Eric Moxley, Andy Abbott, and Collin Holt. Jason glanced at her and then turned back to his friends as they walked down the opposite side of the hallway. They all started laughing, and Sara was sure they were laughing at her but not the reason why. Was it the scratches on her face? Were they worse than she had thought? Or had Jason told them what he had done to her? Did the entire school know? Had news of her assault spread like wildfire on Monday while she had skipped school? Did everyone know and couldn’t care less, the same way no one had cared in her nightmare when Jason had attacked her? Was she the school laughingstock again and her assault a punch line?
As all of these thoughts swirled in Sara’s mind, beads of perspiration dampened her forehead, her heart rate increased, and her hands shook. She continued walking, but she didn’t feel herself moving (it was as though she were floating). She endeavored to breathe, the same way she had done in her nightmare when Jason had covered her nose and mouth with his letterman jacket, only this time nothing was over them. Her body kept moving, independent of input from her, and led her to the bathroom, where she heaved all over the floor.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
“Sara, I need to speak with you, please,” Mr. Gober, her balding AP English teacher, said at the start of Friday’s class.
Sara had managed to survive the rest of the week at school, although it felt as though she had survived a tour in Iraq. She was exhausted from coaxing herself to go to school and from fearing Jason was around every corner, and the fact that she still wasn’t sleeping well at night didn’t help matters.
Fortunately, she seldom saw Jason—though the plethora of guys in letterman jackets on campus made her imagine she saw him every five minutes—and whenever she did see him, she did an about-face and went the other way to avoid another episode.
She walked up to Mr. Gober’s desk. “Yes, Mr. Gober?”
“Your paper on The Canterbury Tales—”
“There’s not something wrong with it, is there?”
“No, no. It’s excellent, as usual, but it was due on Monday, and you were uncharacteristically absent on that day, and that absence remains unexcused. Because of school policy, I’ll have to give you a zero unless you get it taken care of in the front office. I’ll also have to give you a zero for the work that was given that day, as it was handed in the day after it was due.”
“I understand,” Sara said, her voice even and calm, but she was freaking out on the inside: A zero? She had never gotten a score lower than an eighty-six in her entire school career, and now she had a zero?
More bad news buffeted her when she attended her other classes: her other teachers told her that they too would have to give her zeroes for the assignments handed in late unless a parent or guardian excused her absence. She had no choice but to accept the failing grades, as telling her father was no more of an option than moving somewhere far away, where she knew no one and no one knew her.
Sara idled up to her bedroom when she got home from school. The plan had been to do her homework as soon as she got home, but playing around on the Internet sounded more fun (with the way things were going in her life, she could definitely stand more fun). She promised herself she would surf the Web for no more than ten minutes, and then it was time to work. She turned her computer on, and when her web browser opened up, an article about student-loan debt popped up on her homepage.
Her mouth fell agape as she realized she had forgotten to submit her application for early decision to Wesleyan University. It had been due on Monday, but because of what had transpired with Jason, she had neglected to send it in. She could call the school and try to work something out, but it was doubtful they would allow her to turn her application in almost a week late. She would have to wait for the second round of early decision in January, which was no better than applying regular decision. Fuck! She had been planning and preparing for this for months, and it all ended up being for nothing. She plodded downstairs to get a bag of Doritos to mourn her loss with (she had stopped by H
arold’s after school on Tuesday to replenish her stock).
CHAPTER FORTY
It had been two weeks since Jason’s attack on Sara, and she still wasn’t back to normal: Every dream was a nightmare featuring Jason. Every shower was an attempt to wash away an invisible stain that wouldn’t scrub off. Every grade was a fail, as she found it difficult to concentrate. She had stopped tutoring people, because tutoring and school required too much human interaction for her, and she needed more time alone. And she couldn’t remember the last time she had felt up to painting or going to the shooting range.
Painting and academics had been the only areas where Sara felt she excelled; they had been the only areas where Sara felt she had anything valuable to offer, and being no longer able to do them made her feel even more worthless than she usually felt. (Congratulations, Jason! You have now officially fucked up every part of my life! she had thought one day while making futile attempts to do her homework.) She now spent most of her time on the Internet, not playing around and goofing off like before but researching rape.
The only knowledge she had about rape came from what she had seen on Law & Order reruns, and they were hardly a source of reliable information. From what she had gleaned from her Internet searches, she had a pretty good case: her assault had been quite violent, she had reported it right away, she had had no sexual history before Jason, and Jason had not used a condom, so the district attorney should have no trouble successfully prosecuting him.
She was able to look at Jason now without having a breakdown, but she didn’t consider that progress. It hadn’t ended her fear of him, it hadn’t stopped him from appearing in her nightmares, and it hadn’t precluded him from consuming her thoughts.
She would see Jason with his friends in between classes, acting as though absolutely nothing had happened, and would wonder how he could be so carefree after what he had done to her. Did he not care at all that he had hurt her? And why was he still free? He should be in jail for the rest of his life and then some.
Sara would also see Jason with other girls, and it made her feel strange: she hated the girls for being with Jason and having his attention as much as she hated Jason himself, and she hated herself more than all of them for feeling this way. Why did she want the attention and the affection of the guy who had brutalized her? Why did she care whether he cared and thought about her? Did this mean that she actually liked him and liked what he had done to her? Had she wanted it? She dismissed these thoughts as her being agitated because she hadn’t heard anything from the police, so she decided to go down to the police station after school to get an update. She had an open-and-shut case; it shouldn’t have been taking them this long to get back to her.
Sara trekked up the steps to the police department, went through the revolving door, and shambled toward the clerk at the help desk. It was the same one she had spoken to before.
“May I help you?” the clerk asked.
“Yes, I—my name is Sara Krason. I was here a couple weeks ago about my case and need to speak with the detective investigating it. His name’s Nate Cassidy.”
“Do you have your case number?”
“No, I don’t.”
“What’s your phone number?”
“215-555-3039.”
“I’ll call Detective Cassidy down for you. Please have a seat in the waiting area.” The clerk picked up her phone.
Sara moved over to the waiting area but didn’t sit, remembering how dirty the seats had been the last time she had been here.
Detective Cassidy approached her several minutes later. “Hello, Ms. Krason.”
“Hi.”
“Come with me, and I’ll update you about your case.”
He led Sara to a room that looked identical with the room they had been in before, except Sara noticed paint cracking and peeling in several places in this one.
“So how are you today, Ms. Krason?”
“I’m fine. Concerned and confused as to why you still haven’t arrested Jason Pruitt but fine.”
“Understandable.”
“What’s going on with my case?”
He opened the dossier that was on the table. “So you claimed that you were raped—”
“No, I was raped.”
“Right, right.”
“And I want to know what’s going on, because I haven’t received so much as a phone call from you guys since I first spoke to you.” The detective’s facial expression was inscrutable, which annoyed her. “You guys have investigated, haven’t you? I mean, please tell me you’re good for something other than eating donuts and wasting taxpayer dollars.”
“Okay, I’m not gonna take that personally because I know you’re angry and upset. I would be, too, if I were in your situation.”
“Can you just tell me if you have anything?”
Detective Cassidy sighed. “Ms. Krason, there’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just gonna say it. We have investigated your case thoroughly, and we sent it to the district attorney for review, and he . . . well, he doesn’t think we have a strong enough case to prosecute your attacker. I’m sorry.”
Sara’s blood boiled, and her head felt as though it were going to explode. “Wait, what do you mean you don’t think I have a strong case? He didn’t wear a condom, so there had to be—his stuff must’ve been found inside me. Do not tell me I went through that fucking examination for nothing! And I told you it wasn’t consensual. I had a fucking bloody nose for crying out loud! And it’s not like I’m a slut with a past or anything, so what’s the fucking problem?”
“I need you to calm down, Ms. Krason.”
“I am calm. Believe me, you don’t wanna see me when I’m not calm.”
“All of the things you said are true, Ms. Krason. We did find semen in your rape kit, but we interviewed Mr. Pruitt, and he said the sex was consensual, and we can’t prove otherwise, even with the bloody nose, so it’s your word against his, and . . .” His voice trailed off.
“And what?” Sara said. He had something negative to say about her. She knew it; she could feel it.
“Well, don’t take this personally, Ms. Krason, but he looks the way he looks, and you look the way you look and”—he sighed—“we just don’t think a jury would believe you. I’m sorry.”
Sara wanted to bash his head against the table until his skull split open and he started hemorrhaging once she processed the insult he had cast at her. “So let me get this straight: I’m an ugly, fat girl, and he’s a hot football player, so there’s no way anyone would believe that he would even want to have sex with me, let alone have to rape me? Is that what you’re saying?”
“No, that’s not what I’m—”
“Fuck you!”
Sara ran out of the room and out of the building, holding back tears of anger and frustration. She could hear Detective Cassidy calling her name, but she kept running until she made it to her car. Once inside, her tears flowed like the River Ganges, mingling with the sweat falling from her forehead and wetting her jacket; her breathing sounded as though it belonged to an asthmatic from her exertion. She didn’t want to cry, to be weak, to let her enemies get the best of her, but she couldn’t help it. People had discriminated against her because of her weight her entire life, and she had grown accustomed to it, but she had thought—expected—that this time it would be different, that this time people wouldn’t think less of her because she was fat. Wasn’t justice supposed to be blind?
On the drive home, Jason getting away with hurting her simply because she was fat and ugly still absorbed and enraged her. She was so preoccupied that she rear-ended someone’s car.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Shit! This cannot be happening! Sara got out of her car with absolutely every intention of apologizing, and then she saw that the driver of the other car was a handsome jock wearing a letterman jacket, which turned her from apologetic to tetchy.
“What the fuck! You smashed my car!” the other driver shouted.
“Well, maybe you sho
uldn’t have been going so fucking slow, you fucking moron!” Sara retorted. “You can’t be holding up traffic like that, people ain’t got all day to be waiting on you. What, you think the whole world just has to bend over backward for you?”
“Are you drunk?”
“Are you a fucking moron?”
The other driver chuckled. “Look, I know you’re in a hurry to get to McDonald’s or Burger King or wherever you like to stuff that fat-ass face of yours, but that’s no reason for you—”
Sara slugged him. Again. Again. And again.
“Hey! Get the fuck off me, you crazy bitch!” He pushed her away.
Sara launched herself at him a second time, but he parried with another shove. He got back in his car and called someone on his phone. Sara beat on his car, yelling profanities and daring him to step out of his vehicle.
Ten minutes later, a police car pulled up. Two police officers got out of the patrol car, rushed over to Sara, and pulled her off the other driver’s vehicle.
The other driver came back out. “Hey, I called you guys. I want her arrested.”
“Whoa, slow down, sir,” one of the officers said. “First, tell us what happened.”
“She rear-ends me, then when I try to exchange insurance info, she attacks me.”
“You lying bastard!” Sara tried to rush him, but the officers held her back.
“You see? You see how crazy she is?”
“Is that true, ma’am? Did you rear-end him and attack him?”
“No. This moron was going below the speed limit, and I accidentally bumped him. That’s all.”
“And why were you attacking his car?”
“I . . .”
“Because she’s crazy, that’s why! Just arrest her already!”
“Sir, we’re handling it.” The officer turned his attention back to Sara. “So why were you beating his car?”
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