“Polly says when you shiver like that, it means someone just walked over your grave,” Violet said.
Casey squinted at Violet. “That’s bizarre, Violet.”
Violet looked down, embarrassed. “Well, it’s what Polly says.”
Casey was sorry for what she’d said. She was older than Violet. The kid looked up to her. “Sorry,” she apologized. “I’ve just never heard that before.”
Violet shrugged. “Neither had I. Polly says lots of things I’ve never heard before.” She cocked her head. “So if it wasn’t someone walking over your grave,” she countered, “what was it?”
“What was what?” Casey asked.
“What made you shiver? It’s not like it’s cold in here.” Violet watched her, her gaze like a laser cutting through Casey’s resolve to keep it all inside. Casey tried to dodge the question, wanting to tell Violet that everything was fine. To lie. Again. But the same thing that had led her to walk into this room unannounced now told her that she should be honest with the kid, that now was finally the time to tell someone what was going on, and that, surprisingly, Violet was the person she should tell.
“Did you find anything the other day? When you went with Micah?” She would ease into it, give herself a way out of the conversation if she chickened out.
“No,” Violet answered. A funny expression crossed her face when she said it, one that told Casey that if she wanted to distract Violet, she could by probing for what Violet wasn’t telling. Casey wasn’t the only one keeping secrets in this room. But Violet’s secrets were hers to tell when she was ready.
“Too bad,” Casey said, still hedging, still circling around what she needed to say.
“It was for Micah,” Violet replied with a shrug. “Not me.” Violet tried to sound nonchalant, but Casey wasn’t buying it.
“How’d it go with you two?”
“It was fine,” Violet said. “He’s nice. Not like you think.”
“That’s good,” Casey said. She moved over to Violet’s desk and pulled the chair out. She perched on the edge, took a deep breath, then went for it. “I shouldn’t have blown you off the other day. When you asked me to go with you guys.”
Violet sat up a little more. “No,” she agreed. “You shouldn’t have. Micah’s not a bad guy. There’s stuff you don’t know. Stuff only Micah and I know.”
Casey narrowed her eyes, tempted again to go down a different conversational path, one also about secrets, but not hers. It would be so easy, and yet, it was not what she needed to do. She’d scared herself the other day with the cop; she’d gone too far. The only way to keep from doing it again was to talk about it, to tell someone the truth. And poor Violet had drawn the short straw.
“There’s stuff you don’t know, too,” she said. “Stuff about me.”
Violet’s hazel eyes widened, turned greener than Casey had ever seen. Casey looked at the girl as if seeing her for the first time. Was it possible that in a few short weeks Violet had changed enough that it was visible, even to her? Casey had always thought of Violet as a child, but she saw now that she wasn’t anymore. She had to repress a sudden urge to wrap her arms around the girl, shelter her from harm. The same kind of harm that had been done to her. But maybe, in telling Violet what she was about to tell her, she would be doing just that. In knowledge, she thought, there is power. In relationship, there is strength.
“I slept with the guy I had lunch with.”
Violet sucked in air. “You cheated on Eli?”
“This isn’t about Eli,” Casey said. She had to stop herself from laughing at the absurdity of this having anything to do with Eli. Granted, Eli would be hurt if he knew—and she supposed he probably had a right to know, since she once loved him and probably, deep down, still did. But this was more than her and Eli. More than her and that cop. It was about what was broken inside of her. And who broke it. Russell Aldridge.
“I did it because I was trying to convince myself I was OK. That what happened to me didn’t matter.”
Violet’s words were a whisper. “What happened to you?”
Casey felt her body start to shake, but this time, instead of an outward shudder, it was a tremor inside her, building like an earthquake.
“I came home,” she said. She forced herself to look at Violet, who nodded in agreement. She knew Casey had come home. She’d gone on a walk with Casey the day she had arrived, the day Violet’s mother had been arrested. That seemed like a long time ago now, but really it had been a matter of weeks.
The dean had called Casey again today, urging her to return to school, pleading with her to file a statement alongside the other girl, the one Russell Aldridge had also assaulted, the one who’d upset her so much the night before, she’d fled. Perhaps this was the real reason that Casey was talking about it now, because she knew it was time to stop fleeing. She’d run home. She’d run into Eli’s arms. She’d run into a stranger’s arms. She’d even run here, to this house, to avoid telling her mother. But no matter how much she ran, it kept catching up to her.
So now here she was, blurting the truth out to a fifteen-year-old kid. Casey didn’t know if this was fair to Violet, but she couldn’t stop now that she’d started. She had to unburden herself, finally. And besides, Violet was the toughest kid she knew. She could still picture Violet announcing that it was probably best she leave their house after Nicole was such a bitch to her. She’d handled that. She could likely handle this.
“I left school after a girl told me that she knew that I’d been assaulted by a guy we both knew. He assaulted her, too. And she wanted us to go and report what had happened to the school officials. She wanted to make it public. She didn’t want him to do it to anyone else. She wanted us to stop him from hurting anyone else. She wanted . . .”
Inside of her, the shaking intensified. Her jaw began to quiver as she went on, making it hard to talk, but she forced herself to keep going. “She still wants justice. But I hadn’t allowed myself to think of what had happened in that way. I didn’t think of it as a crime. I’d been telling myself it was my fault. I dressed too slutty that night. I agreed to go alone with him to his apartment to get more beer. I told myself that going with him like that was the same as consent. I’d been drinking too much. I’d brought it on myself. And when it was happening, I froze. I didn’t fight back. I let it happen. So I told myself it wasn’t really an assault. I convinced myself it was no big deal. Just something that happened—that happens to a lot of girls in college who are stupid. Then they learn, and then they get smarter. I tried that the other day, with that guy. I tried to be smarter, to be in control.” She inhaled deeply, needing the oxygen.
As she did, Violet’s voice was quiet but clear. “And were you in control?”
Casey felt hot tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. She shook her head. “I’m starting to think there’s no way to control it. For anyone.”
“My mom tried,” Violet said with a sigh. “And it didn’t work for her.”
The two of them looked at each other, and for a few seconds, neither of them said a word.