“I’d be too intimidated to approach you.”
“You are so full of crap,” I said.
“It’s okay if you don’t have feelings for me, Noa.” And like with everything else DJ said, he meant it. He would be hurt, but he would survive.
“It’s not that.”
“Then you do like me?”
“DJ…”
DJ pulled me closer. He leaned forward to kiss me, but I pushed him away. I didn’t mean to shove him hard, but he tripped over a root protruding from the earth and fell. He hit the ground hard, knocking the wind out of him.
“I’m sorry!” I said. “I didn’t mean… See? I screw everything up.”
DJ stood, brushing himself off. “I’m fine, Noa. It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay!” I marched back the way we came until I’d reached the pond. I took off my shoes and socks, rolled up my pants, and dipped my feet in the cool water. I heard DJ approach, though I wished he’d taken the hint and left. I couldn’t wait for this day to end so that DJ would forget this had ever happened.
“What did I do, Noa?” DJ asked. “Whatever it is, I’m sorry.”
“It’s not you.”
“Then what?” he asked. “Sometimes I feel like you might want more from me, but every time I get close, you push me away. Literally.”
DJ was right. There were times, like while we were watching the movie in the cargo bay, when I’d felt like I wanted to be closer to him. There were moments when I looked at him and it was like I was seeing someone I’d known my entire life. Someone I never wanted to spend a second without. But then the past came rushing in, and I couldn’t get away from DJ quickly enough. Maybe it wasn’t DJ I was running from, though. Maybe it never had been.
“I met Billy on the bus. I was fourteen; he was eighteen and a freshman at the University of Washington. He smiled at me in a way no one had ever smiled at me before. In a way that made me feel visible.
“That was Billy’s magic, really. When he looked at you, you were the sun around which everything orbited. I could hardly believe he wanted to talk to me. That he wanted to go out with me. This skinny, awkward, bookworm with big ears and acne.”
DJ sat beside me, though he kept his feet out of the water. Not that I blamed him. I hadn’t taught him how to swim in this loop. He sat close enough to hear me tell my story, but left enough distance between us that I didn’t feel crowded.
“I didn’t tell anyone about Billy. Not my mom or Becca or any of my friends. Billy belonged to me, and I belonged to him. We went to movies and out to dinner, and we sat around coffee shops arguing about books. Every moment I spent with him, I fell a little more in love.
“And he never pressured me to have sex with him. He knew I hadn’t been with anyone, and he was cool about it. He told me we could wait until I was ready, which I thought I might be, even though I definitely wasn’t.
“One night, after we’d been together a couple of months, he invited me to a party. I lied to my mom, said I was spending the night at Becca’s, and snuck out of the house. I’d never done anything like that before. It’s not who I was. My mom and I had an understanding, but I was worried she wouldn’t understand this. I was afraid if I told her, she wouldn’t let me go, and I didn’t want to disappoint Billy.
“I was so excited. I was going to a college party with my college boyfriend, where everyone would be discussing literature and art and philosophy. The reality turned out a little different than I’d imagined. It was a party, but there were more keg stands than intense arguments about the deeply rooted damage caused by American colonialism. I didn’t care, though. I had a couple of drinks. Billy introduced me to his friends, and he didn’t seem the slightest bit embarrassed to tell them I was younger and still in high school.
“Whatever happened next, I don’t remember much of it. I opened my eyes in a dark room. My head was swimming and someone was hurting me. I heard their grunts in my ear and felt their breath on my neck, and my pants were bunched around my ankles.”
Tears ran down DJ’s cheeks, but I kept talking because if I stopped now, I knew I would never work up the strength to start again.
“I was confused at first, but it didn’t take long to understand what was happening, what Billy was doing. I knew it was him; I recognized the smell of his citrus body spray and the shape of his hands pressing into my back. I used to love the way his hands felt against my skin, but that night they were cold and callous.
“Maybe I should have struggled, maybe I should have cried out, but I just lay there like I was dead. Waited for him to finish and roll over and pass out.
“The second Billy started snoring, I got dressed and ran. My mom caught me sneaking back into the house, looking like I’d been mugged, and she smelled the alcohol on my breath, but I didn’t tell her what had happened. I still felt the weight of Billy on top of me, and I was terrified if I tried to speak, all I would do was scream and scream and scream and never stop. So she grounded me. Took away my phone, which I was actually grateful for because it meant I wouldn’t have to avoid Billy’s calls or pretend to not read his messages. And he sent a lot of them.
“A week later, when my mom returned my phone, I read what Billy had written. Just seeing his name on the screen brought back the smell of his breath and the sounds he’d made as he’d pushed into me. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Billy had been texting me like nothing was wrong. Like he was genuinely confused about why I was ignoring him. Like the party had been amazing and he hadn’t done to me what he’d done.
“I threw my phone away and changed my number and stopped riding the bus line I’d met him on. I got tested for STDs. But none of that helped because I still loved him. I loved him and I trusted him, and he fucked me.”
DJ didn’t speak, and I thought I never should have told him because now he knew the truth and he hated me for it. And the longer it took DJ to say something, the more certain I became that DJ regretted bringing me on this farce of a date. He deserved better.
Finally, DJ said, “You have nothing to be ashamed of, Noa. You get that, right? You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I didn’t say no. I didn’t try to stop him.”
“You shouldn’t have had to.”
“Maybe.”
“Why didn’t you tell someone?” he asked. His voice was choked with tears. I could hardly look at him.
“Because as soon as I did, people would have stopped talking about how I showed up to the eighth-grade Halloween dance dressed as Ursula from The Little Mermaid; they would’ve stopped telling the story of the time I fell asleep during Mr. Martin’s class and snored so loudly that everyone, including Mr. Martin, recorded it on their phones for a laugh. They would’ve stopped telling those stories and would’ve only told the story of how I was raped. And maybe I didn’t want that to be the only story anyone told about me.”
DJ knuckled the tears from his eyes. “Telling your story doesn’t make you a victim. It doesn’t signal that you’re this one thing and nothing else. Telling your story in your own words shows the world that you’re here. That you are still here, and that you’re not going anywhere without a fight. It tells others who haven’t reached a place where they feel safe that they’re important too. You’re not a story, Noa. You’re a storyteller.”