Raj drives us over to Manakow Park, where there’s an old swing set and hardly any kids. They’re revamping all the parks in town one by one. Taking out the old swings and putting in these ugly colorful playgrounds, stupid metal climbing structures. No swings. Too dangerous, the mayor wrote in a letter that went out to all the parents. I only know about this because my father actually went to a town council meeting to complain. “How can you take swings away from kids?” he asked. But they told him that the older kids use them to hop off from a high distance. That three kids broke their ankles. That almost all the existing swings violated safety recommendations. No more swings in public playgrounds, the mayor said, and that was final.
When was the last time you were on a swing? When was the last time you kicked your legs up and down, pumped them across the wind, pulled your body back into a curve so hard that when you came down in a swan-like dive, your belly rose up, sharp? I look over at Raj, and the wind blows back his hair. His cheeks, still red from practice. His lips dry.
“I’m scared.”
“You just stood up to Nessel. I don’t think you have anything to be scared of.”
We crisscross each other with our feet, swinging back and forth, a breeze trailing between us.
38
BLYTHE
It’s after school. Loud knock on the door. Pounding.
My mother is on a new pill. Sleeping all day is the side effect. Better than her taunting me. Better than her wanting to spend time with me.
I run downstairs, swing open the door. It’s Sean. Sean sweaty with his hair pulled back in this new man bun he’s doing. His eyes red, as if he’s been crying.
“She’s going to ruin my life.”
“Sean—you’re getting paranoid.” I push him outside, shut the door.
“No, you don’t understand, B. She and Rerun. Today after practice. I went to talk to her. I apologized to her. You know. For getting so, you know, getting carried away that night.” He’s panting. His face in a panic. “She made me chase her across the bleachers. She’s crazy, B. What the fuck am I going to do?”
I look around my neighborhood. Anyone can see us. Anyone can see the captain of the varsity soccer team falling apart on my front porch.
“Lower your voice.”
“She said I raped her.”
“She said those exact words?”
Every part of me tenses up, a weird tingle all over. Here he is, standing in front of my door, like nothing happened at all. A desperate, broken-down man who I need to take care of.
“She said she was a virgin. She said all this other crap.”
“Interesting. What did you say?”
He raises his voice again. “What do you think I said? I said, ‘That’s not the way it went.’ But then Rerun tells me to get away from her and that I need to take a step back. I tower over that kid, and he’s telling me to take a step back.”
And where does that leave me? I’m the girl who swept in. I’m the girl who tried to be friends with Ali because Sean Nessel told me to. I’m the girl who told Ali to forget about it. To move on. That Sean is a good guy.
I flash to that night before the party. Sean’s face. Salivating about Ali Greenleaf. The way she stares at me in the hall, he kept saying.
Every girl is a conquest. Maybe I was a conquest.
If anyone connects the dots to why I’ve become friends with Ali, then I become the girl who hid the information.
I become the person who tried to get her not to admit it. I tried to erase it from her mind.
If Ali tells this whole story to everyone, she is going to mess with my reputation. I was there, people will say. I knew how it went down.
Blythe Jensen knew all about the rape, and she did nothing. She just tried to protect Sean Nessel. That’s what they’ll say.
I knew what he did to her as she tore down the stairs, her eyes popping out of her skull as I left the bathroom. How she almost ran me over. Leaving so soon, I said to her. How callous. How inhumane. I pretended it wasn’t happening. That Sean wasn’t capable of this. Or not to this degree. That she should have known. People will talk. They’ll say she was my puppy dog. That I let it happen.
And Sean? Well, Sean will be forgiven because he’s every other golden athlete. Their coaches scream from the sidelines. Go all the way. Press them until it’s over. Be relentless. They do not stop.
Can it be that what Amanda Shire told me that night is true? It might seem humiliating at first, but in time you’ll see that it puts you in control. Can it?
I feel for my doorknob and slowly open it. Sean is still whimpering about how his life is ruined. I walk backward into the house.
Sean is beside himself. Hands on his knees. Saying he’s going to puke.
“You’d take the moon if you could, wouldn’t you? You would lasso the stars right from the sky just to brighten your little section of the soccer field while the rest of us sat in the dark.”
“What are you talking about, B? Moons—what?”
“For the future, when a girl is wasted, don’t have sex with her.”
“Oh, Jesus, not you too. You’re going against me too?” He takes my hand and pulls me toward him. “Don’t you have feelings for me, B? I thought it was me and you?”
I push him back. I want to spit on him.
“You ruined your own life. You’re in the process of ruining mine too.”
His face crinkles up. He tries to go for my hand, but I slap him away.
“So you’re not going to help me?”
I slam the door in his face.
39
ALI
The sign on the door says PRESSROOM on legal paper scribbled in thick black marker. The newspaper crew takes their shit seriously. This is where you come when you want the first copy. Thursday mornings. After drama class, I’d stand outside the pressroom door like a cultish doe-eyed moron to satiate my Sean Nessel fix for my collage book.
Now I need the school paper for another reason. I need them to tell my story.
Terrance is sitting on top of a large desk with his laptop. He turns to me, surprised.
“Haven’t seen you here in a while, Greenleaf. We’re all out of papers.”
“I don’t want a paper. I want to write for you, actually.” I shift nervously.
“Well, you’d have to know how to construct a sentence,” he says, dryly.
“I can do that.” No flinching.
A girl with pink hair and cat-eye glasses who sits in the back corner of the room with her laptop looks up at me, blinks her eyes a few times, and then buries her head again, furiously typing.