I take a step back. Once she was so broken. Now look at her. This self-assured girl. So self-assured that she’s going to destroy everything in her path. Bring down the big man. And the lady. Me. She wants to punish me.
“I promise I’ll make him apologize to you,” I say. “He has to apologize to you. It’s stupid that this hasn’t happened already, in fact—”
“You don’t understand,” Ali says, seething now. Face-to-face. Turned to me. Back down the steps. “I don’t want an apology from him. I don’t want him near me. I wish you could just support me. And just be honest about how this all started. You could come clean. You were manipulated too. But you could say you made mistakes. It would be better.”
“Better for who?”
She doesn’t answer me.
I feel tears on my cheeks. I don’t even know why.
“I’m the only person in control of my own destiny, Blythe. I’m the only one. You know that’s my only option. You would never let anyone be in control of the story if this was happening to you. Don’t wait for them to get out of the way. Make the room yourself. That’s what you told me when you were talking about managing the stupid hallway. Well, guess what? This is my life.”
I can see people looking at us from a lower staircase. I don’t want to wipe the tears away from my cheeks because then it would really look like I am crying.
* * *
* * *
In C-wing. The Core Four. One cigarette after another.
“Don’t tell Ali anything,” I say. I instruct.
“What does that mean?” Suki says.
“It means she’s writing an article for the school newspaper and talking about what happened to her.”
“I don’t want to say I told you so,” Cate says.
“That’s your response? That’s the most original thing you can come up with? ‘I told you so’?”
“Actually, it’s kind of badass. To out Sean like that,” Cate says.
“How insane would that make Sean?” Suki says, smiling, then looks away, inhales deep on her cigarette. “I kind of love it.”
“I don’t kind of love it. I really love it,” Donnie says. “Dude gets what’s coming to him, B. I’m sorry, but it’s true. I have so much more respect for her now. I’ll pass that paper around. I’ll take screenshots of it and ’gram it until someone presses charges.”
“I hate to bust your bubble,” I say. “But will you love it when she goes after all of us? How we’re bitches and how we’re manipulators? How you basically slut-shamed her and how I orchestrated my friendship with her to cover up how Sean raped her? How we created a situation, an environment, so that she couldn’t talk about it?”
Suki’s face goes blank.
“But why would she do that?” Suki says.
“It’s not like any of you were nice to her. You think she cares?” I say. “She wants to tell the whole story. That’s what she told me. She said that I should ‘come clean.’ And trust me. I fucking begged her.”
“You begged that bitch and she, what? She said no to you?” Donnie says.
“Yes.” That’s right. I knew that part would fire Donnie up. “The police could question me, do you understand this?”
“People will ask why you didn’t report it,” Cate says. Her eyes dumb and wide.
“No shit.”
“You’re part of the story,” Donnie says.
“So are you, Donnie,” I say. “So are you.”
41
ALI
“Hurry up,” I say to Sammi at her locker.
Sammi shoves her books in her bag.
“They don’t scare me,” she says. “The Core Four. What a stupid name.”
“I know. I’m not scared of them. But after the thing that happened with Blythe today—I just don’t want them doing anything. Any retaliation. They’re like animals, those girls.”
“Can I tell you what I’m afraid of?”
“What?”
She looks down at the ground. Shakes her knee. “That you’ll still be friends with Blythe after all this is over.”
Sammi’s face drops, wary of the future, and I can see why. I can see how I just left her. And how that’s been for her.
“I don’t see my friendship with Blythe being the same.”
“There was a real friendship?”
“Yes. I know it’s hard to believe.”
“No. I’m trying to understand. I am.”
“There was something. We had things in common. Some stuff that’s hard to explain.”
There’s this feeling, this sadness, when I think about Blythe. That conversation in the stairs—I haven’t seen that desperation on her before. All the years I’ve spent watching her from afar and now I know her. And she knows me. The two of us share something so awful. Experiences with these boys, these men, who have done such horrible things. I don’t know if I want to share that with Sammi. I don’t know if I want to share that with anyone.
Sammi and I catch up to Raj, and the three of us walk down the hallway together, just like it used to be. For a second, for the first time in a while, I feel satisfied, like I can do anything now.
Terrance and his giant trench coat appear around the corner. Savannah by his side.
“I’ve been looking for you,” he says, his voice booming, panting. “We read your story. It’s really powerful, Ali.”
Terrance has questions for me that are going to sound judgmental, he says. But he has to ask. Go ahead, I tell him.
Did I tell anyone right away? Yes. I told Sammi right away. I told Blythe. I told Raj. I even confronted Sean Nessel himself. People saw me run out of that party. Blythe saw me run out of that party. My story holds up.
“So there’s a protocol—” Savannah says, and glances over at Terrance. She bites her lip.
“Because the school paper isn’t its own entity. It’s part of the school—”
“And you’re writing about rape—”
“And underage drinking—”
“Wait, wait, wait,” I say. I’m confused. The two of them. Explaining school codes and regulations and my constitutional rights. And none of it makes sense.