She stopped, took a shuddering breath, and uncovered her eyes. They were red and puffy, but she wasn’t crying. If anything, she looked closer to anger than tears.
“If you don’t—” Auggie began.
Theo touched his shoulder and shook his head.
“When he came back, he grabbed my neck, like this, hard.” She demonstrated, grabbing the back of her own neck. “He was holding me down. I said something, I don’t know what, and then his hand was up my skirt. He got a finger—” She stopped, exhaling slowly. “He kept saying, ‘You’re such a dirty girl. This is what dirty girls need, isn’t it?’ Weird, sick stuff like that. I just lay there. I was scared. And he was hurting me. But mostly I was just so surprised. You never met Cal?”
Theo and Auggie shook their heads.
“Then you can’t understand why it was such a surprise. In a million years, the Cal I thought I knew never would have done something like that. So I just lay there.”
“You can’t blame yourself,” Auggie said. “I just—I just got attacked, and I didn’t do anything either. Sometimes surprise makes it hard to act.”
“Oh, I did something. As soon as I processed what was happening, I screamed. He flinched, and it was enough for me to sit up and push him off me. Then I hit him. I kept hitting him until he got out of my way. He was shouting at me, telling me I’d misunderstood. How the hell am I supposed to misunderstand him sticking a finger in me? As soon as he was out of my way, I ran for the door. I ran all the way home.”
“But you didn’t tell your parents,” Theo said quietly.
Wiping dry eyes, she studied him. “No. I didn’t. Not for a while, anyway. How’d you know?”
“No assault charges. No rape kit. No physical evidence collected from both of you. What you described, the way he touched you, the way you hit him—it would have left plenty of proof to confirm your story.”
“I took a shower,” Genesis said. She laughed softly, playing with her braids. “God, I just felt dirty. And I didn’t tell my parents because everyone loved Cal. They loved Cal. I loved Cal. And I kept thinking he was right—that somehow I’d misunderstood. But I couldn’t go to practice anymore. I tried, once, and had a panic attack. He was just standing there, talking to the girls, laughing, all of them in love with him the way I’d been a few days before. I skipped. I lied. Eventually it caught up to me, and my parents wanted to know where I’d been. I told them. I didn’t even mean to—it just came out.”
“But by then,” Theo said, “Cal’s bruises were gone.”
She nodded. “If I even left any on him. I couldn’t tell very well from a distance, but he didn’t look like he had bruises. I mostly hit him in the arms, the chest, trying to get him away from me. I asked some of the other girls if they’d seen anything, marks on him, anything that looked like he’d been in a fight. They all said no.”
“Did you file charges?”
“It had been months. We talked to the police, but nobody could confirm my story. Nobody remembered me staying late with Cal. Nobody could prove that I’d been alone with him. Nobody believed me. That’s not what they said, but I knew what they meant. My parents want to go ahead with the civil lawsuit, but apparently that’s pending too because the county attorney’s office is still trying to decide if they’ll charge Cal, and the lawyer told us to keep it quiet until we see what they do. It’s been unreal; everybody talking about him, not knowing what he really was. I mean, he’s dead, so I guess they’ll never know. I don’t know. It’s been this nightmare that just won’t end.”
“Until Cal died.”
Swallowing, she nodded.
“Where’s Orlando in all of this?”
“I met him through Cal and Wayne. He’d come by the training facility in the summer to do odd jobs. He’s sweet, you know? A little . . . a little intense, I guess is the right word. He comes on really strong. And he can be clingy.”
“Obsessive, I’d say,” Theo muttered, but he ducked his head when Auggie shot him a look.
“He really liked me. And I liked that—that he’d do whatever I asked him to do, put up with me being at practice for long hours, put up with me not bringing him over to my house, put up with me never having a weekend free. Wayne gave him so much crap about being whipped.” Her expression softened. “You ever see how his family treats him?”
“Yes,” Auggie said.
She nodded, as though that explained everything. “After what happened with Cal, though, I couldn’t be around him. The whole family, they all look the same, and every time I even thought about Orlando, I would see Cal, feel him touching me. I didn’t even break up with Orlando. I just stopped talking to him. I couldn’t—I couldn’t be around him.”
“Shit,” Auggie said. “And Orlando did what pre-therapy Orlando always did: he kicked it into overdrive.”
“My parents thought he was this crazy psycho stalker.”
“They weren’t wrong,” Theo said.
Auggie shot him another look.
“I tried telling them,” Genesis spread her hands, “he was sweet, he was just intense, he wouldn’t hurt anyone. But my brother and Orlando got into it one time. Wise is just as strongheaded as my dad, and when he ran into Orlando, they started fighting.” She snorted. “Wise hasn’t ever thrown a punch in his life. He’s a big guy, though, and Orlando can be scary when he gets intense—he’s a wrestler, you know, and he knows how to hurt people. My parents separated them before they really did any damage, but I told Orlando I never wanted to see him again. I still don’t. It’s not his fault; I know he’s a good guy. But I can’t ever be around him again. I can’t.”
Theo opened his mouth, but Auggie spoke first. “You messaged me for a reason,” he said quietly. “And I don’t think it was just to tell us this story.”
After giving her braids a tug, Genesis shook her head. She pulled out her phone, tapped the screen, and a recording began to play.
“—and I said I don’t care. Fifteen thousand dollars—”
“Fifteen thousand dollars is a lot of money, Dad!”
“Not enough for what he did to your sister. That man deserved to die. I don’t have any regrets.”
Then a door slammed in the background, and the recording ended.
“My dad,” she whispered, “and Wise.”
5
“Fuck, Rambo,” Dylan said, spotting the barbell as Auggie lowered it. “You’re getting some legit guns.”
Auggie exhaled sharply, lifting the weights, ignoring how his arm screamed at him.
“Fuck yeah, Rambo.” Dylan held the other end of the bar, enabling Auggie to lift it one-handed without using his broken wrist. “Fucking get it.”
He made it through six reps before he grunted, and Dylan helped him rack the barbell.