“Take. Me. Home.” Words, even that much, came out slow and labored.
Suddenly, it was as if Emma left her body and was watching everything take place. She yelled at herself to get up and run. Climb out a window. Lock herself in the bathroom. Nothing worked. Her body was only semiconscious and couldn’t move.
“I’m sorry, darlin’.” Dallas kissed her on the neck and whispered, “But I owe him a lot of money that I don’t have. He’ll forgive every dime of it for a virgin.”
Dallas laid her on the bed that had black satin sheets on it. She remembered a white fur–looking rug beside the bed and the thought had gone through her mind that everything wasn’t black and white. Sometimes, things were a gray fog, like her mind was in that night. She raised her voice—or thought she did—and told him again to take her home. Then Terrance, the star football player for another college nearby, came into the room, patted Dallas on the back, and told him he’d done a good job. Dallas closed the door as he left the room. Then Terrance jerked her jeans down around her ankles. She fought and clawed at the six-foot, beefed-up guy. She yelled at him to stop, but she was helpless in her semidrugged state. The last thing she remembered before she passed out was excruciating pain and a heavy weight on her whole body.
Then she was back in her body, and it wasn’t a dream. Her stomach lurched, and she leaned over the side of the bed and threw up on the white fur rug. Pain radiated through her female parts, and her legs ached where Terrance had forced them apart with his strong hands. There was blood on the sheets. When she pulled up her underpants and jeans, even more blood stained them. She was still wobbly when she eased the door open and pulled a small pistol from the side pocket of her purse. Terrance and Dallas were sprawled out on a nearby sofa, playing a video game, drinking beer and laughing, but the apartment went quiet after she put a bullet in the back of each of their heads. She staggered out into a long hallway and held on to the walls to get to the front door. When she made it outside, a hard, cold wind slapped her in the face, and that helped to steady her so that she could get into her car. She drove straight to the hospital.
“I’ve been raped, and I killed the both of them,” she had told the nurse. “My mother can’t know.”
“How old are you?” the nurse asked.
“I’m eighteen,” Emma answered.
“We don’t have to call your parents if you don’t want us to, but, honey, we should call the police,” the woman said. “You take off all your clothes and put on these scrubs. I’ll be back to process you for evidence, and then we’ll make some phone calls. And remember, none of this is your fault.”
“No, no, no!” Emma yelled.
She was sitting up in her bed, eyes wide-open and seeing nothing, when Sophie switched on the lights. For a moment, she didn’t know where she was or even if she was still dreaming. She wiped tears from her eyes with the sheet and begged Terrance to stop.
“Wake up. It’s just a dream. Come on, Em, wake up.” Sophie sat down on the edge of the bed and wrapped her arms around Emma.
Emma hugged Sophie tightly and sobbed into her shoulder. “It wasn’t a dream. I know what happened. I saw it. I felt it.”
“Talk to me, Em. Tell me about it. Maybe it was only a nightmare.”
Emma shuddered and told her what had happened in the dream in full detail. “It was real, Sophie. I killed them both. I shot them in the back of the head. There was blood on them and blood on the bed and even in my underpants and jeans, and there was blood in my car. The reason my legs and chest hurt was because he was a big guy and he was heavy on my body. He forced my legs open and he”—her chin quivered—“raped me. That’s what I couldn’t remember all these years. I’m sure of it. It’s all so clear now.”
Sophie’s blood ran cold, and she shivered right along with Emma as she continued to hold her tightly. “Are you sure you killed them?”
Emma’s eyes popped wide-open, and her back stiffened. “I was raped, and I killed both of them in the dream. Dallas and Terrance were laughing about it, and I shot them in the back of the head. There was more blood on them than what was on me. I stumbled down the stairs to the lobby of the apartment building where Terrance lived. That’s why I hate big houses, isn’t it?”
“Did you dream that they both . . .” Sophie couldn’t bear to even think that Emma had been gang-raped, much less say the words.
“Not Dallas, but he was guilty of tricking me into going to Terrance’s apartment and then convincing me to drink the champagne. It had to have been drugged, but I only drank half of it.” She jumped up and began to pace the floor. “It all makes sense now why I blocked it. Dallas gave me to Terrance because he owed him money. Terrance wanted a virgin. I remember being wobbly and my hand shaking when I pulled the trigger, but I didn’t care. They both deserved to die after what they did to me. The gun was heavy in my hands, and . . .” She stopped and stared out the back doors. “Why would I figure out this much and all if it isn’t true? I couldn’t tell Mother, so . . .” The words trailed off to nothing.
Sophie didn’t believe for one minute that her friend had killed someone. Emma couldn’t swat a mosquito when they were kids without worrying if it had a family or children.
Emma’s eyes had glazed over, and she stared off into space. “I went to the hospital, and the nurse told me to take off my clothes and put on gray scrubs. Then she said she was going to call the police and my parents. The police wouldn’t do anything, not when Terrance was the big hotshot star of the football team. And Mother . . .” She stopped and put her hand over her eyes.
“Sweet Jesus!” Sophie gasped. “Victoria would be awful if she knew that you had been raped or had killed someone.”
“She would have locked me away forever, after she screamed at me that it was all my fault for being weak like my father, and that’s pretty much what Mother did after all, even though she didn’t know what happened.” Emma’s face was totally without color when she dropped her hand. “I thought if I left the hospital, that if I pretended it didn’t happen, then no one would know, and Mother wouldn’t be angry with me.”
“Are you sure you killed them?” Sophie asked.
Emma shook her head. “Right now, I don’t know for sure what’s real and what’s nightmare, but I know down deep in my heart that Terrance raped me. Can we look them up on the internet and see if they’re still alive?”
Sophie took her by the hand and led her to the living room. She opened her laptop and nodded for Emma to research those two horrible guys. Sophie sat down beside her. “There’s no way you killed anyone. There would have been dead bodies, and they would have found your DNA all over the bed. Look at me, Em. You did not shoot those two bastards, even though they deserved it.”
“If I did and it’s still an open case . . . ,” Emma whispered, “there is no statute of limitations on murder.”
But there is a statute of limitations for rape, and that’s long past, Sophie thought. That meant they couldn’t be brought up on charges. Not even if Emma was strong enough to face them in a courtroom, or if she had the evidence to back her accusations. A nightmare and years of treatment for depression sure wouldn’t look good for her defense.