One from the night of the party.
One from the night of Wren’s death.
Vanessa’s hand flew to her mouth, playing with her lips. What the fuck was happening here? She didn’t know what to do. Why were these recordings on his phone from those particular dates? What did Wren record? She was too scared to listen; she didn’t want to know, but she had to know. She put her headphones in and plugged them into the phone. With a shaking finger, she pressed the first recording: the speech. The sound of Wren’s deep, melodious voice filled her ears. She could almost feel him with her, sitting beside her, holding her hand. She listened to the words, beautifully written. Wren had always had such a way with words, whether it was making an argument for staying up late or comforting her after another one of Mark’s beatings. The speech finished; Wren’s words now gone. She was going to listen to it again, but decided to see what the other recordings were.
Hesitantly, Vanessa touched the next recording from the night of the party.
At first there was nothing, then Vanessa heard a loud scratching noise, like when you have a phone in your pocket when you accidentally butt-dial someone. It squeaked and squawked loudly in her ear before she heard voices. At first she couldn’t make them out, then she heard someone.
‘Fuck! Hold her down, will you? I can’t—’ the voice hissed. Justin. It was Justin’s voice. Vanessa gasped and paused the recording, not believing her ears. She was listening to the attack on Olivia. She was sure of it. Vanessa wasn’t sure she could go on. It took her back to a dark place in her own life, the first time that Mark had raped her. The fear and pain she had felt, the sheer terror. She knew what she was going to hear when she pressed play. Olivia, suffering the same fate as she had. She had the proof now. She recognized Justin’s voice, but could she bring herself to listen to the rest of it?
She had to. For Olivia. As Wren’s mom, she owed her that.
She put her headphones back in, took a deep shaky breath and pressed play.
‘Stop it, Justin! You’re hurting her!’ Wren. Although she had expected to hear his voice, she was still shocked when she did. She heard the ripping of material, and the sound went scratchy for a period of about five seconds. Wren’s voice again, pleading for Justin to get off her. There was silence again, covered by a layer of static, then she heard the sound of flesh striking flesh. It was close to the phone and she heard Wren grunt. Justin or Wade had hit him. She felt incensed. It happened again.
‘Stay down!’ Justin yelled. Justin hit him, his best friend.
‘Fuck you, Justin!’ Wren yelled. She heard a grunt from Justin, Wren must have got in a punch or two, then there were sounds of a scuffle and a cry from Wren, followed by a heavy thump. He was on the ground. Vanessa sat forward, listening intently to the sounds of silence. She was crying, tears running freely down her cheeks.
Justin was the one who’d dropped Wren, which meant Wade was with Olivia. Wade, who towered over the rest of them. It must have been terrifying for Olivia. She heard her muffled cry. She knew that cry well. It had begun.
There were no more sounds from Wren and with a sick feeling, Vanessa realized that he must have been unconscious and that there was no one to stop Olivia from being attacked. Overlaying her own experiences with Olivia’s made her heart ache. She knew the terrifying feeling of wishing you were dead, anything but this. A violation of body and mind. The phone kept recording. It recorded every little detail. Every moan of pain from Olivia, every word uttered by Justin and Wade, when Wade had his turn, grunting when he finished. They laughed.
They laughed.
When it was all over, Justin threatened the silent Olivia that if she told, they’d be back. Then they left. For a long while, there was silence, yet Vanessa kept listening. Eventually there was a noise. Crying. Olivia was crying. Vanessa was crying right along with her. The phone cut out; the battery must have died. The recording was over. She had her proof.
Vanessa was overwhelmed, exhausted, emotional. Wren had tried, tried his best to save her, but he’d been knocked unconscious. The horror Olivia must have felt when she realized that she wasn’t going to be saved after all. Vanessa wasn’t sure if she could listen to the last recording. She was raw, beaten down, memories from her past swirling inside her head. That recording had been confronting to say the least, but it had also made her remember things that she had worked so hard to forget. She pulled out her water bottle and took a little sip. She felt like she needed a shower, but all she had was a small container of hand sanitizer. It would have to do. She put it on her hands and her arms, trying to scrub away the stain that she and Olivia knew.
Proof. Proof of what they did. Irrefutable proof. She had them now. A big chunk of the puzzle had been caught on Wren’s phone. That’s what Olivia had meant when she said Wren knows. He knew that she’d been raped because he had been there and failed to stop it. No wonder she hadn’t gone back to school. She would have had to have seen them, including Wren. The one who’d tried for her and failed her. He would always be the boy who failed in her mind. The young man Vanessa had raised to respect and care for women had tried yet failed.
It was no surprise, given what she had been through, that Olivia had committed suicide. How many times had Vanessa been in that position? But she’d had Wren to make sure she got up every day, giving her something to live for. Olivia didn’t have that. She felt too much pain to handle and had swallowed two bottles of tablets to make it stop. Permanently.
Vanessa heard the sound of a lone bird singing above her. It sounded so out of place given what she’d just heard. She wanted to tell it to fuck off. She wanted to find Justin and wring his fucking neck for what he’d done to Wren and Olivia. There’d be no talking his way out of this. Justin was popular and got away with things that average kids didn’t. He was the captain of the soccer team and commanded a certain amount of respect, but he didn’t respect women. A few times he’d talked down to her and due to her conditioning over the years, she had fallen into old patterns and not called the seventeen-year-old boy out on his behavior.
Finally ready, she steeled herself to play the last recording. Instantly she heard the familiar scratching, followed by a whining noise. Immediately, Vanessa knew that this recording was taken in Justin’s car. Someone cleared their throat. More silence. A brief blast of music before it was turned down, then turned off altogether.
‘Your taste in music is shit, Wade,’ Justin said, Vanessa recognizing his voice easily. Then she heard something else familiar. Wren’s laugh. She wondered if he knew that his phone was recording. If he had it open before and forgotten to close it, this could very well be an accidental recording. The timer on the list said that this recording went for almost ten minutes. Maybe there was no great revelation as to why they crashed and Wren died. Maybe she’d been chasing ghosts this whole time and Justin really did swerve for a deer and it really did happen so fast that he didn’t have time to react, and maybe Wren’s death really was unavoidable.
More static followed her line of thinking. Should she even listen to the last recording? Did she want to hear what was said? Most likely hear the crash? Could she handle that? She was now convinced that Wren didn’t know that he’d turned on the recorder. There was a loud rustling noise, Vanessa quickly thumbed down the volume but turned it back up when the noise went away. She was hoping Wren would start talking soon. Not about an English speech, not while being beaten, but just a conversation with his friends.
‘Did you see her face? She actually bought it. That was until she saw me smile at you. Fuck. Then she knew. By the way, Justin, you went way too hard on me, I didn’t bloody wake up until the next morning. Could’ve killed me. A few punches, just like last time, that’s what I said.’ He laughed, a hard, brittle sound.
Oh my God! That was Wren talking.
She quickly stopped the recording, turned to her left-hand side and vomited in the weeds until she was left a heaving mess. The acrid taste in her mouth made her want to vomit again. She wipe
d her mouth with the back of her hand, spit clinging to it. She wiped it on her jeans. She couldn’t even comprehend what she’d just heard, but there was no denying that it was Wren’s voice, she knew it as well as she knew her own. He obviously didn’t know that his phone was recording, otherwise he would never have admitted to his part in the rape of his girlfriend. She wanted to say that she didn’t understand, but she did.
All of those years spent living with Mark had helped shape the man that she heard on that recording. Mark had him at his most impressionable years and he’d learned to hate women. To treat them as dirt beneath his heels. Every time he condemned his dad, he was lying. Every time he said he loved her, he was lying. He had nursed her after beatings that left her with black eyes and broken bones and tended her wounds when she’d been whipped. What kind of monster had she raised? Vanessa was struck with how wrong she had been about Wren: he wasn’t her savior, he was his father’s son after all.
She needed to listen to the rest. She wanted to be anywhere but here, sitting under this tree where he’d died, but here she was and here she’d stay until she knew every dirty detail of what he’d done.
‘She was pretty fun, have to admit that. They never see it coming, do they? Girls are fucking stupid,’ Justin weighed in, laughing. She could hear deep laughter in the background and recognized it as Wade’s.
‘Yeah, they always believe that it’ll never happen to them and when it does, they’re shocked. Like you didn’t play hard to get, you wanted it,’ Wren said.
Vanessa retched again, this time down the front of her shirt. She coughed, more bile sliding down her chin. She took her shirt off, sitting there in her singlet, wiping her mouth with the balled-up material.
‘Can’t believe she killed herself over it, though. It was just a bit of fun, for fuck’s sake.’ Wren didn’t even sound like her baby anymore. She felt such a disconnect that she’d never felt with him before. With each word that he said, she felt a tiny chunk of her heart chip away, falling into the abyss.
His laughed swallowed the car, filling her ears with poison as she listened to their disgusting conversation, led by her sweet boy.
‘Yeah but, Wren, while it was fun and everything, we didn’t know she was going to kill herself. I mean, no one could have seen that coming,’ Justin said.
‘I did.’ Wren sounded proud of himself. ‘She confided in me that she had tried to commit suicide before because she was teased at her old school. I figured she’d try again. One less mess to worry about.’
Who was this person? Speaking so casually about setting up a young woman to kill herself. Her hands shook so badly that she had to put the phone, Wren’s phone, on the ground. She thought she was going into shock. Her head was fuzzy and she was missing some of the words, but then her world snapped back into focus. She was so confused. Where was her empathetic boy who cried when other people cried, who had been the only one there for her when she’d had Ty?
‘We need to forget this ever happened, make a pact right here, right now to take this to our graves with us. No one can ever know what we did,’ Justin said.
‘What you two did,’ corrected Wren. Vanessa’s blood ran cold.
‘What?’
‘Did I forget to tell you that I made a recording of you raping Olivia? A recording where I say both your names and am beaten unconscious while you rape my innocent virgin girlfriend?’
Who the fuck was this kid? ’Cos it sure as shit wasn’t the boy she had raised.
‘You did what?’ Wade said.
‘You did what?’ Wren mocked. ‘I recorded you, you bloody idiot. For insurance.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’ asked Justin.
‘So you’ll never bother me again. When I leave this town at the end of the year, I don’t want anyone hanging on to me. Not a clingy girlfriend, not two fuck-up friends and not a mom who relies on me for everything.’
Vanessa cried out, startling the birds above. She watched them fly off into the distance. She was a burden that Wren wanted gone?
‘I want a clean slate and that was my chance to do it. Don’t get me wrong, I had fun with Olivia, but she was a means to an end. Now I have leverage over you two; you won’t be bothering me anymore.’
There was more rustling. Vanessa leaned forward, the tension making her muscles rigid and tired. The whine of the engine grew louder. ‘What the hell are you doing? Slow down, Justin!’ Wren yelled.
‘If you’re going to take us down one day, and we’ll never know when, then I might as well do it now – save you the fucking trouble.’ Wren yelled at him again to slow down, but the whining just got louder as the revs got higher. Justin must have been going well past the speed limit.
Over the din of the engine, there was a click, just loud enough for Vanessa to hear. She was about to rewind it, sure that she had misheard, but with a sinking feeling, she knew she hadn’t. She had just heard one of the other boys unclick Wren’s seat belt.
A second later, there was a hoarse yell from Wren, then the scream of metal on metal, then a huge a crash where they hit the tree.
Silence.
Vanessa stood, pulling the headphones out of her ears, hands on hips, shaking as she walked up and down past the tree. She reached out and touched the gouges which she once touched with reverence, now wishing she had a knife so she could obliterate them. Coming round to the side of the tree, she saw the colorful flowers, stuffed teddies and cards, all mourning a monster. She began kicking them, scattering petals to the wind, ripping the heads off teddies and tearing up the cards.
‘You fucking liar!’ she screamed. ‘I fucking hate you!’ She began to cry, but she swiped at them angrily. ‘I will not cry for you! You hear me?’
Vanessa stomped back around to the other side, not even looking at the carnage she’d left, picked up the phone, shoved it in her bag and stormed back to the car. She probably shouldn’t have been driving because she was sure she was in shock, running on adrenaline, but she took off anyway, tires spitting gravel behind her.
She knew exactly where she was going and what she was going to do. No one was going to stop her today, not even the memories of Wren that popped randomly into her mind. She couldn’t deal with this, so instead she focused on Justin. She charged up to the front of the bar, ripped the handbrake on and ran down the driveway. She banged on his door, screaming his name. He came to the door, face ashen, crutches angled awkwardly under his arms.
‘You alone?’ she asked as she barged in.
‘I’ve got some friends over.’
She walked into the lounge room and saw three boys sitting there, staring at her. ‘Get the fuck out,’ she demanded. They just sat there. ‘Fucking go! Now!’
Justin nodded weakly and they picked up their bags and left.
‘Stay there,’ she said, steel in her voice when he went to move.
‘What are you doing here, Mrs Wright? My mom would call the cops if she knew you were here.’
‘Oh yeah? What about if I told her you were a rapist and that I had proof?’
His face paled even more, and he looked like he was going to throw up. He put his hand up to his mouth.
‘I’m… not…’
‘Save it, Justin, I heard the recording that Wren made. It was on his phone and in case you get any ideas, I’ve already emailed it to myself. You know, insurance. I learned from the best. You raped Olivia.’ It was not a question.
‘Yes,’ he whispered, meeting her eyes.
‘There were others.’
‘Yes.’
‘And Wren took part in all of them?’
‘It was his idea. People think I lead, but I follow too, just like Wade.’
Vanessa glared at him. ‘Don’t try to get out of this, ’cos I heard you. You were laughing. Laughing.’
‘What do you want?’
‘I want to make a deal,’ she said, her voice hard, her eyes even harder. ‘I’ll keep the recording safe, but you have to swear that you’ll never reveal Wren’s
involvement in any of the incidents. If you do, the recording is emailed to the police straight away. Got it?’
‘Sure.’
‘Three questions.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Who undid Wren’s seatbelt?’
‘How—’
‘How did I know about that? I heard it, you moron. Who was it?’
‘It was me.’ He stared at her in defiance. She slapped him across the face so hard he fell onto the couch.
‘How did you know the airbag wasn’t going to go off?’
Justin looked on the verge of tears. ‘It was faulty when I got it – we never got round to having it fixed. Figured it might come in handy one day.’
‘Why did you hit the tree? You could have killed yourself and Wade. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t have mourned you, but how were you to know for sure?’
‘I didn’t. I thought my life was over so I’d see if I could take Wren with me. I lined up the tree to hit his side, undid his seatbelt knowing that the airbag wouldn’t go off. And it worked. He died and we didn’t.’
Vanessa strode over to him and he shrank back into the couch, probably thinking that she was going to slap him again. Instead, she kicked his damaged leg. He screamed in pain.
‘You don’t keep up your end of the bargain, I will ruin you, you and Wade, so fill him in too. Wren’s name stays out of it all. Got it?’
He was openly crying now, snot leaking from his nose, holding his leg.
‘Are we clear?’
‘Yes! Yes!’
Vanessa gave him a brittle smile that felt odd on her lips. Her whole perspective had changed. The world was not as it seemed. Wren was not as he seemed. Had she ever really known him? Had he ever really loved her? So many questions. It was hurting her head. She wanted to cry but found that she was out of tears, just like she was out of fucks. She had solved the mystery, but at what cost? He wasn’t depressed, he was worried. Worried that Olivia would tell, that his involvement would come out. Then after she died, he was trying to distance himself from those he considered anchors, her included.
Never Ever Tell Page 27