I kick the locker with my poor kitten heel and the stupid tiny heel gets caught in the locker slat. I can’t pull it out. I take my other shoe off and throw it at the stuck shoe. It bangs against the locker, sounding like an explosion. Then I collapse down to my knees, curl my feet under me, my red tights so bright and wild. They’re tights for a confident girl. Not a girl like me. Not a messed up, damaged girl like me.
“I think I may have broken my toe.”
Raj kneels next to me.
“Talk to me, Greenleaf.”
“It’s him, don’t you understand?”
Raj is so sweet. He always has the right answers. But he’s not going to have the right answers for this. I don’t know if he’s going to want to be around me anymore when he hears this.
“It’s him. It’s Sean Nessel. He did this. I’m out of control now and I can’t get rid of it. I feel like I have no brain. Like someone else owns me. Like I’m going to have a nervous breakdown.”
I cradle my foot in my hand. My black eyeliner drips down my face like a swarm of black ants. Messy glitter across my cheek. I can feel it.
I want to get a big giant marker and scribble all over the locker so that everyone can see.
Something happened to me.
No one would know what it means. But I would know it was there.
Something happened to me.
I know what it is, but I haven’t been able to say it.
I was raped.
I can’t say this out loud. I don’t want to. How would I even begin? It’s quiet between me and Raj for at least ten minutes. Electronica in the background. The music pumping from the dance.
“I don’t know how we’re going to get out of here,” I say.
“We’re going to walk out.”
“Everyone’s going to stare.”
“Not if I protect you with my invisible shield.”
“What if Blythe comes looking for me?”
“I have a special invisible spray, so she’ll have to stay ten feet away. And a golden lasso.”
Hands over my face. Breathe. Try to breathe.
“I never told you about my sister?” he says.
I shake my head. He always has a story.
“In college last year. She was raped by someone at a frat formal.”
I don’t look at him when he says this. That word. That word. I want it to drift away into the clouds. I want to lock it up in the locker and get rid of it. Never see it again. But I breathe. Stare ahead. He asks me, “Should I go on?”
“Go ahead.”
“She had to drop out. She had to go to the police. She switched schools. That’s why she goes to NYU now and lives at home.”
I look at him with wild eyes. “Was your sister rape raped?”
“What’s rape raped? There’s only one rape, Ali. It’s not a do you like me, or do you like me like me.”
I think of the different ways that rape could happen. I think of women who get grabbed in the subway in Manhattan or get pulled into a dark alley. Girls who get dumped on their front lawn. Not remembering the night before except for bruises and a video on social media. Isn’t that rape? Is that the same kind of rape that happened to me?
“It was a guy she knew from the fraternity,” Raj says. “She was really wasted. It was a pledge party. She didn’t remember any of it. And a bunch of guys watched until someone pulled him off her because she was basically unconscious. She’s okay now. But it’s affected her. It’s affected me. At first I wanted to go to her school and kill those guys. But me against a hundred frat bros?”
I imagine Raj’s reaction when he heard the news about his sister for the first time. How helpless he must have felt. So helpless that he’s kept this all to himself. That I’m hearing this story for the first time now. I think about how his sister felt, people watching her. Not moving while some guy had sex with her. Imagine that no one stopped it.
“That night you ran out of the party?” his voice stutters. “Did—did it go down, you know, like it went down with my sister?”
I smooth out the translucent ruffle of my black dress. It’s a glacier. I am ice, black and cold. My red tights, fire. I will freeze you or I will burn you down.
I nod my head up and down. Look at his face. Right into his eyes.
Yes.
He bangs the back of his head against the locker. Then turns to the opposite side and slams the locker with his fist. The sound of him punching the metal echoes in the empty hallway. And I’ve never seen him like this. In all the years I’ve known Raj. I’ve never seen him like this, and it does something to me. It makes me angry too. A feeling I haven’t felt yet. Anger, stabbing into me.
29
BLYTHE
Donnie folds her arm around mine, locking us together.
“So you and your little minion got into a fight, Jensen? She’s not listening to the rules?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Oh, we’re going to talk about it.”
“Oh, are we? Don’t make me get loud with you, bitch. Too much has happened tonight. I need someone to solve my problems. Not make them worse.”
“Fuck me gently with a chain saw. Do I look like Mother Teresa?”
“Stop it,” I say. I’m not in the mood to quote Heathers right now.
Donnie curls her head into my shoulder. She takes the sweet approach. I can feel her heavy breath against my ear.
“Is he worth the fight?”
“Worth the fight? What does that mean?”
“You know what it means.”
I take a quick peek around. Any person could hear her if she says it. If she opens her mouth. If she gets any messier.
“Isn’t he what you’re fighting for here? If you get Ali to forgive him. If you get her to drop whatever happened between them that night. Then you get his love. Isn’t that what this is about? Otherwise, why waste your time with that novice? That girl. Ali. What does she know about anything? What does she know about what we did to secure our spot?”
I just want her to shut up. I’m tempted to slap her. She reminds me of my mother right now, the way when she’s off her meds, how she rants.
“Just walk.”
“To where?”
“Anywhere. I just need to sit.”
Suki runs up behind us.