Sara began to appreciate she could possibly be in serious trouble. She took a deep breath to calm herself before she responded. “He insulted me after I accidently bumped his car, and you know, emotions were running high—it was a mistake on my part, and I am deeply, deeply sorry and regret what I have done.” Sara looked at the other driver, feigning contrition and doing her best to disguise that she loathed him. He wasn’t buying it, but she hoped the officers were.
“Well, she’s still here, so it’s not like she’s a hit-and-run driver, and it sounds like it was an accident, so as long as she’s willing to exchange insurance information—” The officer turned to Sara.
“I am,” she said.
“—then there’s really no need to charge her with anything. It’s not really worth it, sir, unless you’re hurt, which you don’t appear to be. Sound agreeable?”
“Yeah, that sounds fine,” the other driver said through gritted teeth.
The officers released Sara. They stayed to monitor her and the other driver exchanging insurance information and then took off after the other driver left.
Sara took a look at the front of her car to ascertain the amount of damage done. The front end looked as though it had been through a recycling machine. Her father would kill her once he saw it.
As soon as Sara arrived home, she went straight to work preparing her father’s favorite dish: coddle. She also made a green-bean casserole, her father’s favorite side dish. Her father would likely still ground her, but she hoped making her father’s favorite meal would mitigate her punishment.
She moved into the living room to watch television after she finished cooking. Movies and television shows that paraded around rail-thin, surgically enhanced women in revealing costumes and weight-loss infomercials that told her she could quickly and easily lose stubborn body fat if she bought their merchandise bombarded her as she flipped through the channels to find something good to watch. Wonderful. Just what she wanted to see right now: a bunch of scantily clad skinny bitches with plastic body parts and get-skinny-quick ads, reminding her of the humiliation she had suffered at the police station. She turned off the TV and brought her laptop downstairs, so she could play around on the Internet until her father came home.
Two hours later, Sara saw the headlights of her father’s car through one of the living-room windows. Sara, on pins and needles, began to pace, because she knew her father would park in the garage and see her banged-up car before he had her meal.
“Sara!” Her father’s sonorous voice, carrying all the way from the garage to the living room, made her jump. His body, tense and fraught with anger, soon followed. “What the hell happened to your car?”
“I got into a little fender bender, Daddy.” She smiled sweetly and innocently, hoping that would lessen how furious he was.
“Little? Little? There’s about five hundred dollars’ worth of damage on the front, Sara!”
“I know, I’m sorry. I did my best to avoid it, but I just couldn’t. This guy came out of nowhere, you know, just completely blindsided me, and I couldn’t stop in time. You know I’m usually a really good driver.”
“This guy must’ve been a fucking moron.”
“That’s what I said!”
“You okay? What’s that on your face?” he asked, finally noticing the scratch marks turned scar tissue that had been on her face for weeks. He tried to touch Sara’s right cheek, but she turned away from him.
“I’m fine, Dad. It’s just a little scratch. I actually got it at school this morning when I fell and not in the car accident.”
“And you’re sure you’re okay?”
Sara nodded.
“Okay, good. That’s the most important thing. What smells so good? Is that coddle?”
“Uh-huh.” She turned to face him. “And I made a green-bean casserole, too,” she added ingratiatingly.
He smiled at her. “You know how to butter me up. Just like your mother.” He had a nostalgic look on his face.
“Does this mean I’m not grounded?”
“I’m not gonna ground you because some fucking moron wasn’t paying attention to what he was doing.”
Sara smiled.
“I will, however, cut your allowance in half to help pay for the damages done to your car and the other driver’s.”
“But it wasn’t my fault!”
“But it’s your car. Your car, your responsibility. You think if you were out on your own you wouldn’t have to pay?”
Sara turned toward the stairs. “Dinner’s in the kitchen. I don’t feel like eating right now.” She stomped up to her bedroom.
Sara stayed in her room all night. She surfed the Web for a few hours and then tried to go to bed for another disturbed night of sleep but couldn’t. Her mind kept replaying what Detective Cassidy had said to her. She tried to shut the words out, but the harder she tried, the more they persisted.
After a few hours of tossing and turning, and later a gut-wrenching nightmare, Sara headed downstairs to the kitchen for a late-night snack. She had eaten almost an entire bag of Doritos before it occurred to her that the reason the police hadn’t charged Jason for hurting her was because of what she was currently doing. She didn’t even know why she was eating. She wasn’t hungry, and chips no longer cured whatever ailed her. But they tasted so good! She didn’t understand why it was so horribly wrong for her to eat simply for pleasure when other people partook in all sorts of things that were bad for them, yet no one made a big deal about what they did. Like that slutty asshole Jason: he screwed anything with a set of boobs, putting himself (not to mention others) at risk for contracting every STD known to man (assuming he didn’t already have them) and putting himself (not to mention others) at risk for becoming a teenage parent (assuming he wasn’t already one), but everyone treated him like royalty, because slutting oneself around was the cool thing to do, but her eating an extra chip here or a second burrito there made her persona non grata. Fucking dumbasses and their double standards! She threw the now-empty Doritos bag in the trash and then headed back upstairs to bed.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The next day at school, while on her way to lunch (her car was in the repair shop, so she intended to eat lunch in the girls’ bathroom on the second floor), Sara saw Jason in the halls, kissing some girl. The sight of this asshole carrying on as though nothing had happened while she languished in hell incensed her so much that she shook with rage, and before she knew what she was doing, she had hurled her backpack at Jason, hitting him in the back of the head. She was on him as soon as he turned around, delivering punch after punch to his face. He staggered back, in shock, and then started fighting back. He managed to pin Sara to the floor.
Jason straddling her and holding her down made Sara’s mind travel back to the rape. “No!” she cried, bucking Jason like a wild horse with an unwanted rider on its back to break his grip on her. He was not going to get the best of her, not again, not while she could still breathe. “Get off of me! I hate you!” she roared, sweat dripping down her face.
A throng of students gathered to watch the fight and film it with their phones.
Mr. Peterson, one of the physical education teachers, happened on them. “Hey, what’s going on here, get off her!” he shouted, pushing students out of the way to get to Sara and Jason.
Jason released Sara, and she went at him again as soon as she was free, but Mr. Peterson blocked her. “Whoa, settle down, cowgirl,” he said, grabbing her by the shoulders. He turned to the crowd of students. “The rest of you, get out of here! Go to your classes or lunch.”
The crowd stayed put.
He turned his attention back to Jason and Sara. “Both of you are going to the principal’s office. Follow me.”
“But I’m innocent, Mr. Peterson!” Jason said.
“Innocent, my ass!” Sara shouted.
“Hey, cool it! Principal’s office, now!” Mr. Peterson instructed.
“But she started it!” Jason continued to protest.
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“You started it!” Sara countered.
(Other teachers arrived on the scene and dispersed the gaggle of students.)
“I don’t care who started it!” Mr. Peterson told them. “We are going to the principal’s office, now!” He marched them to the principal’s office.
Sara had always feared getting in serious trouble in school and facing the principal—the school’s top authority—but today, she didn’t care; today, she was fearless.
“What happened?” Principal Kallens asked Mr. Peterson.
“She—” Jason began, but Principal Kallens cut him off.
“I was talking to Mr. Peterson.”
“I walked right into the middle of this, Selena. They were on the ground, beating the tar out of each other, Pruitt on top, when I found them.”
“You’re both suspended for three days.”
“What? But . . . but you didn’t even listen to my side of the story!” Jason said. “That’s not fair!”
Sara snorted. “That’s life.”
“You’re lucky you have all these people here protecting you.”
“Bring it, pretty boy!”
“Enough!” Principal Kallens bellowed. “Mr. Pruitt, you’ve just earned yourself another two days of suspension, and you will be sitting out of Saturday’s game.”
“What? I—” Jason started to whine.
“I’m talking, young man. Now, I don’t know how you were raised, but where I come from, threats aren’t taken lightly.”
Sara did something she hadn’t done in weeks: a smile—a genuine, exuberant smile—expanded across her face as she watched Jason stew in his own juice. Now he knew how she had felt at the police station. Now he knew how it felt to lose and to not always get preferential treatment, simply because he was handsome and had a great arm. A chortle escaped Sara’s lips; a rebuke from Principal Kallens followed immediately, but Sara didn’t care, because she felt happy for the first time in a long time. She had done something to hurt Jason. She had caused him pain, and it gave her more satisfaction than chips, more satisfaction than anything had ever given her. But it wasn’t enough, and she had gotten herself in trouble as well.
“You can both go call your parents to come pick you up,” Principal Kallens said.
Sara’s father came to pick her up an hour later, and to say that he was livid would’ve been a gross understatement. “What the hell’s gotten into you?” he shouted as they walked down the school’s steps toward his car. “You’ve never even gotten so much as a detention in school before, and now you’re getting suspended for fighting? What happened? Why were you even fighting in the first place?”
Sara didn’t say anything. She couldn’t tell her father what she had been through, what Jason had put her through, so she didn’t say anything.
“Hello! Earth to Sara!”
She still didn’t say anything.
“Fine,” her father sighed, giving up on trying to make her talk. “There wasn’t anything you could’ve said that would’ve made much of a difference anyway. You’re grounded for a week. You’ll come home and go to school, that’s it.”
Her father was so clueless about her life: that’s pretty much what she did even when she wasn’t grounded. And even if her punishment had been more severe, she still wouldn’t have cared. She had stood up for herself and was proud of it.
Over the next week, Sara’s focus was on nothing but hurting Jason, a wonderful shift from the fear of him that had previously dominated her thoughts. Instead of breaking down at the sight of him, she imagined how awesome it would be to beat him to a bloody pulp (someone had beaten her to the punch: Jason returned from suspension with a black eye). Instead of avoiding eye contact with him and other people, as she usually did, she looked Jason straight in the eyes and did her best to make her eyes convey the intense hatred she felt for him (she wanted Jason to know she hated him, and she wanted him to care, to hurt because she hated him). Instead of having countless nightmares of Jason harming her, she had the most delightful dreams of killing him and of him begging for mercy and for forgiveness before she performed the coup de grâce (she’d stare at his face as he took his final breath: his face would be frozen in sorrow for what he had done to her—and knowing Jason, for the loss of his potential life as a professional football player).
And then one morning, after she awoke from a particularly rejuvenating repose (and after discovering Jason had somehow finagled his way into playing last Saturday’s game—and had helped Tallis win), she knew what she was going to do. She was going to kill Jason Pruitt.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
After Sara’s punishment ended and after she had her car returned to her, she resurrected her visits to her father’s shooting range. During her first time back, her shots were extremely off the mark. She wished she had accepted her father’s offer: a respite from her punishment to attend their annual turkey hunt the weekend before Thanksgiving (she hadn’t used a gun in almost a month; if she was going to kill Jason, she needed practice, and what better way to get it than with a sentient target with self-preservation instincts?). She had started menstruating that weekend, though, and hadn’t been in the mood to go anywhere. But on the bright side, at least she no longer had to worry about having Jason’s bastard. She would’ve never thought that bleeding and bloating and cramping could ever be positives.
Sara also started tailing Jason, now that she was free to do as she pleased again, so she could get his schedule down pat. Wherever he went, she followed. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, Jason stayed at school until seven for football practice. After that he usually headed home, making it there around eight, although he sometimes stopped by someone else’s house, usually a girl’s, or Larry’s. On Sundays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, he didn’t have such a regimented schedule: the only certain thing was that he played a football game on Saturday afternoons. The rest of the time, he took her to either the mall, the movies, a house party, a restaurant, or a guy’s or a girl’s house (he was more often than not at a girl’s house; he was quite the slut). One Sunday she followed Jason out of town to the Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, where he attended a football game instead of playing one. There were also days where he simply stayed in, but they were few and far between, much like Jason’s brain cells.
Sara brought a digital camera with her on her excursions. She used it to take photos of Jason. She would then come home, and print the photos out to use for target practice at the shooting range. Filling the glossy 8” x 11” version of Jason full of holes gave her such a feeling of exhilaration that she couldn’t wait until she was a better shot, so she could do the same to the real thing.
“This project you’re working on for school must be a huge part of your grade,” her father said in passing one night after she came home from stalking Jason. Working on a school project was the lie she had told him to explain why she wasn’t around as much and wasn’t doing as much as she used to do around the house. “What’s it about?”
Sara thought for a moment and then said, “The extinction of a popular kingdom.”
“Will I get a chance to see it before you turn it in? I’d sure like to, with all the effort you’re putting into it.”
“Count on it.” She smiled sweetly and then retired to her room.
Two weeks before Christmas break, Sara had become an excellent markswoman again and had formulated a plan: Jason would be home after dark on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, because he had football practice. She would hide in the park across the street from his house. She would shoot him with one of her father’s guns after he pulled up in his driveway and before he had the chance to enter his house. She would wear all black and travel on foot, so no one would see her car or make out its license plate. She would carry out her plan the following Monday.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Sara stopped by Planned Parenthood after school: it had been over a month since her attack, and she wanted to make sure she was still STD free. She didn’
t want Jason to have any hold on her life after she rid herself of him next week. She had done some research on the Internet and discovered that she could get tested at Planned Parenthood for only fifty dollars, and they didn’t require parental consent.
She sat in the crowded waiting room for two hours before a nurse finally called her name. The nurse took her to an examination room covered with posters about pregnancy and STDs, and had her change out of her clothes, underwear included, and into a hospital gown. The nurse tried to weigh her, but Sara refused (she didn’t know her weight, and she wanted to keep it that way); she did, however, allow the nurse to check her blood pressure, respiratory rate, and temperature with no fuss (she had recently found she could tolerate human contact if she knew it was coming and had time to steel herself for it).
Twenty minutes later, the physician’s assistant came in, carrying a clipboard. She was a petite Asian woman who didn’t look more than twenty-five.
“Hi. Sara, is it?” she said, consulting her clipboard.
“Yes.”
“I’m PA Nguyen. I’ll be doing your examination today.” She put her hand out. Sara took it, and they shook hands. “Are you currently sexually active?” PA Nguyen asked.
“Oh no. I was . . . raped”—she grimaced; she was never going to feel comfortable saying that word—“about a month ago, and I just want to make sure that I didn’t catch anything.” She nervously tucked her hair behind her ear and chortled. “I’ve had no other sex before or after that.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry. I’ll make this as quick and as painless as possible.”
I’ll make this as quick and as painless as possible. PA Nguyen was the third person to say that to her since this whole ordeal had begun. Sara wondered whether the saying was in some manual, and everyone had to say it to sex-crime victims the way retail workers had to say, Thank you, have a nice day, please come again, to customers.
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