But it’s the game for him. It’s the act of bowing down that he likes.
For a second. Just a brief second, because I can’t bear to take it anymore than just a second, I think about Ali that night. Tearing down the stairs. I remember the terror in her eyes.
“So then change the Initiation, B. You have the control. So fuck it. You’re right. It’s stupid. Sick.” His mouth smacks of anger. He flings open the car door. Slams it shut. He stands there, his big-man body and his big-man muscles and his big-man sexy hair and his big-man cheekbones. He’s hypnotizing. Evil.
“I will,” I say.
God forbid one of those fourteen-year-old girls tells their parents they’re giving eighteen-year-olds head. And that I set it up? That I’m attached to rape or something worse? It’s a fucking miracle that it hasn’t gotten out in the past five years.
It takes everything I have, every last bit of willpower, to turn around and drive away. I don’t even look in the rearview mirror. But if I know Sean well enough, it doesn’t matter, because he’s not looking back.
34
ALI
Picking you up in 5 mins be ready
A blaring text from Blythe.
Get me at the corner not at my house
Why? Ashamed of me? Haha
I don’t respond. My dad and my aunt Marce are sitting outside by the firepit when I tell him I’m going out.
“It’s just time you start coming back to the living,” he says.
“I’m socializing with my friends, Dad. That’s living. Isn’t it?”
“Let her go. I’ll hang out with her another day,” Marce says. I haven’t spent time with her since that day at the gynecologist. She’s been trying to set up a lunch date, but I keep blowing her off. There are too many unread texts from her. Too many missed calls for her to think it’s just me being busy now.
I don’t mention Blythe. I don’t want my father to know that I’m going out with her. He has too many questions when I go out with Blythe. I’m lying so much lately that I don’t know where it begins or ends.
Blythe is smoking a cigarette when I get in the car; when she sees me, she tosses it out the window.
“I’m starting to become a chain-smoker. I just want one after the other. I went through a pack today. An entire pack. Can you believe that I had to leave my house to buy more cigarettes?”
“Think of all the old people in those commercials who have those voice boxes they have to talk through.”
“I just think of Winona Ryder with that cigarette hanging out of her mouth in Heathers, realizing that she just killed those two jocks. How stoic, yet how depressed she looks.”
She drives a little and we say nothing. Someone has to break the silence.
“You know why I wanted to see you, right? I’m sure you heard already.”
“I actually have no idea.”
“Sean. It’s because of Sean.”
Everything has to do with Sean Nessel. It’s always Sean Nessel.
“I’m sick of hearing about him. I don’t want to hear his name anymore, Blythe.”
Blythe rubs her eyes. Sticks her long blond hair behind her ears.
“I know what he did to you.”
I feel my body getting hot. Like this car is the smallest car in the world and the metal is creeping in on me.
“I know what he did to you because the night it happened, he told me everything. He told me about the blood. He told me how you were crying. He was really scared, and I was really wasted, and I just sat there and listened to him. I didn’t know you then. I didn’t know a thing about you. I’m sure you were scared too. I’m sure you were terrified. I remember your face. I saw you when I came out of the bathroom. How spooked you looked. I’ve been on the other side of a lot of these girls that Sean hooks up with. I’ve seen a lot of aftermaths.”
I don’t say anything. I just stare. A small speck on her dashboard. A little white smudge. Who knows how it got there. But I stare into it like it’s the universe and I’d like to disappear.
“Ali?”
She’s saying my name. And I have to respond. I have to.
“It wasn’t just a hookup, Blythe.”
I don’t know what Blythe wants from me in this moment. I don’t know what she wants me to say or do. If she wants me to back down. Or feel sorry for her. Understand her. But I don’t care anymore.
“Why did you become my friend in the first place? To protect Sean Nessel?”
“You have to understand, Ali. It’s more complicated than just saying I was protecting Sean. You don’t go into it thinking this is what you’re going to do. It wasn’t like I was part of some extravagant cover-up. But, Sean, he’s this magnetic creature. . . .”
“Oh, I’m aware, Blythe. I’m keenly aware.”
“Things changed, though. We became friends. You know that,” she says, on the defense. “And friendships aren’t perfect, Ali. I wouldn’t be sitting here with you after that shit you pulled at the dance if we weren’t really friends.”
“The shit I pulled? You were trying to drag me over to hook up with the person who . . . who raped me.”
I’ve said it now. There’s no pretending that it’s not there. Blythe has a look on her face like the world has stopped. That it’s all spinning around her and she can’t catch it.
But for me, it’s the first time in a while that things are falling into place. That I’m starting to understand myself again.
“I was trying to help you, Ali. I wasn’t trying to hurt you,” she’s saying. “You have to believe me.”
I don’t let her see any reaction at all. Because it feels like she’ll never let me out of this car if I don’t reassure her. At least for now.
I call Sammi when I get back in the house. The first time we’re really talking since I texted her after the dance. I haven’t even told her that I admitted it all to Raj yet.
“I have so many apologies that I owe you; I don’t know where to start.”
I hear her breathing heavily. Not talking.
“Sammi? Will you talk to me? Like really talk to me?”
“Yes, Ali. Haven’t I through all this? Haven’t I?” She’s exasperated. I get it.
“I admitted everything to Raj. I told him everything. I told Blythe everything. It’s all out in the open now.”
She gasps loudly and then makes this loud curdling noise.