“We don’t mean
to hurt each other
but we do.
and perhaps
no matter how
right we are for
each other,
we’ll always be a little
too wrong.”
— Beau Taplin
Sarah
I was the girl who cried wolf.
That was one story I never forgot from my childhood, the one that warned me against lying. Don’t cry wolf if there’s not really a wolf, my parents would say, or when there is a wolf, no one will believe you.
It seemed simple enough. And I’d held that story in the back of my mind ever since, weighing the possible consequences of lying. I never said I’d cleaned my room if I hadn’t truly done it, nor did I say I was sick if I wasn’t. That story had scared me honest. I’d learned from it.
Or so I thought.
Now, as the twenty-one-year-old version of me, I was sitting on the old, musky floor of my college dorm room in north Florida, tears staining my now-numb face, wondering if the lesson had been lost on me. Because they taught me what would happen if you lied, if you became known as a liar… but they left out what would happen if you were telling the truth.
It turned out, it didn’t really matter.
No one would believe you either way.
I was the girl who cried wolf.
My wolf was not the kind that walked on four legs and hunted in a pack, nor was he the kind who mercifully killed his prey before devouring it. No, my wolf walked on two legs, dressed in the finest suits, and spoke with the elegance of a well-educated man. His hair was black with a touch of gray, though, and maybe that’s why I saw him as a wolf. Maybe that’s why the story I’d heard as a child was all I could think about while my wolf — disguised as my respected piano professor — bruised my wrists and spread my thighs in the same room where he’d taught me to play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata.
I blinked, unwrapping my arms from where they’d held my knees and letting my legs flop out in front of me. For all intents and purposes, they were the same legs I’d had before. They looked the same, but they felt foreign to me, like someone else’s legs. Surely, it couldn’t have been my own that had been hitched up, spread wide for a man who assured me everything would be okay if I just cooperated.
I wished I could feel something — anger, sadness, resentment — anything. But it was as if I’d been submerged in the iciest, blackest depths of the Pacific Ocean, like my entire body had seized up, yet I was still breathing.
I was still alive.
And perhaps that was the worst part.
My phone buzzed with a text from my mom, asking when she should expect me home — home being our little two-bedroom apartment in Atlanta, Georgia. As far as she knew, the only notable event yesterday was my last final before winter break. As far as she knew, the only thing on my mind was getting home to her and her holiday cooking.
As far as she knew, her baby girl was still a virgin.
I blinked again, shooting back a text that I was loading up my car now, and I’d be pulling in a little after midnight.
Only a partial lie.
I would make it back to my mom’s two-bedroom apartment outside of Atlanta a little after midnight, and I was loading up my car — with the very little I wanted to keep. For the most part, I was leaving everything behind. I wanted to light it all on fire, but settled for abandoning it in the hell hole that was my university.
Up until yesterday, it had been my home. Up until last night, it had been everything I’d wanted as a starry-eyed, music-loving girl who sacrificed going out with her friends in high school just to practice piano. Up until now, Bramlock University was everywhere I wanted to be.
Now, it was my prison.
And I knew one thing for sure — I was leaving for winter break tonight, and I was never, ever coming back.
As if that truth was the last bit of fuel inside me, I popped up off the floor and shot straight into my tiny bathroom. I shared it with my roommate and closest friend, Reneé — but she’d already finished her finals and headed home for break. I knew I’d miss her.
I also knew I’d never tell her why I wouldn’t be back.
I ran the shower as hot as I could, so hot the steam fogged the mirror before I could undress. I didn’t bother throwing my clothes in the laundry basket I already had piled high and ready to take care of when I got to Mom’s. Instead, I tossed the ripped leggings in the trash. The skirt, tank top, and sweater quickly followed, and I didn’t so much as give them a second look before I stepped into the piping hot shower.
I didn’t pull away from the water, even though it burned. My dark, umber skin grew an angry red in protest, my nervous system warning me against injury, but I knew it’d survive.
If I could survive last night, I could survive anything.
I was the girl who cried wolf.
I’d waited to shower, because that’s what they always told you. Don’t shower after being raped. They give you a whistle at freshman orientation and a list of what to do if it ever happens to you, as if it’s as simple as getting lice or the flu. Here’s how to remedy that rape, my child. Take this pamphlet.
I laughed out loud at the audacity of it all, finally used to the water as it spilled down my bare back. That whistle they’d given me was buried somewhere in the bottom of my desk drawer. If I’d had it, would I have been able to get to it, to blow it loud enough that someone would have heard?
But I shook that thought away, because it wouldn’t have mattered, anyway.
I did what was right.
I took all the proper steps.
I didn’t shower and I went to the music director and I told her my story.
I showed her the bruises and relived every torturous moment while she pressed her lips together with a sympathetic bend in her brows, nodding as I replayed the assault.
And then, she grabbed my hand, squeezed it, and told me it was best to keep this between us.
This.
As if this was referring to something like a little white lie I was keeping from my roommate, or to something I’d walked in and witnessed her doing wrong. Let’s just keep this between us, Dr. Chores had said. These are strong allegations, and you will have a lot of rough years ahead if you follow through with them. Go home tonight and think about what you’re saying, and more importantly, about who you’re saying it about.”
Because my wolf wasn’t a wolf in the eyes of Bramlock University.
In their eyes, he was a god.
He was a piano legend, a blessing to our music program. Thank God he’d wanted to retire in Florida, they’d say, since that was where our university was. And how could it possibly be that such an accomplished man with so much respect could ever do something as horrendous as rape his student?
As the water started to run cold, I felt the soreness from my wolf between my legs. That’s something else they don’t tell you about in those stupid rape pamphlets. No one tells you that, when you’re a virgin, rape doesn’t just feel like an invasion. It feels like you’re being ripped from the inside out, like your assaulter is splitting you in half. And I guess, in a way, he had. Half of who I used to be was still there, somewhere, but the other half?
I didn’t even know who she’d become.
My eyes watered, the dream I’d have of giving myself to a man I loved one day shattered like a fragile tea cup thrown carelessly against a cement wall. I curled in on myself, as if I could shelter myself now, as if I could protect what damaged goods still remained.