by Chessy Prout
Was I really going to do this? It was already after midnight. Mom was staying at Grandma Prusaczyk’s house in Connecticut, and she was probably curled up in her childhood bed, cuddling Christianna. I knew I had to call; Mom always made things better. As soon as I heard her soft, sleepy voice, I lost it.
“Honey, are you okay?”
“Nooooo,” I howled.
“Chess, what’s going on?”
I could barely breathe, let alone speak. I felt my lips forming words, but my mouth released animal noises.
“Something . . . bad . . . has happened.”
“What’s going on?” Mom whispered urgently. “Tell me, honey, what’s wrong?”
“A boy had sex with me and I didn’t want it.”
I expected Mom to freak out, but instead she spoke in a calm voice that flight attendants use when there’s terrifying turbulence and everyone thinks they’re going to die.
“It’s going to be okay. Are you safe right now? Are you going to be able to sleep tonight? What can I do to help you right now?”
“I’m okay, Mom,” I blubbered incoherently. “I’m going to sleep with Catie tonight. I’m safe.”
“I’ll come first thing in the morning,” Mom promised. “When you wake up, go see Buzz at Clark House and I’ll be right there.”
I hung up the phone and looked at the floor. My T-shirt clung to my skin, a soggy rag soaking up tears. I could feel my clenched jaw slowly releasing, my shriveled lungs filling up with oxygen, the protective armor sliding off my skin. It was as if somebody had poked a hole in the hell bubble I’d been trapped in since Friday. I could breathe again.
I woke up on Tuesday and briefly considered ditching my geometry final and following Mom’s instructions to go straight to Clark House. My brain had liquefied, no longer holding solid thoughts, much less math formulas. But I couldn’t let some guy wreck my grades. I kept my head down and ignored Owen MacIntyre’s attempt to talk with me before the exam.
I blew through the questions and bolted across campus to Clark House. Mom had called Buzz in the morning on her drive up to New Hampshire and told my counselor that I’d had an “unwanted sexual experience.”
“Susan,” Buzz responded, “that sounds like rape.”
I wasn’t ready to utter the R word when I sank into one of the navy-blue swivel chairs in Buzz’s office. I inhaled some Hershey’s Kisses from the candy bowl on the table and read one of the posters covering the lilac walls. It was a quote from Margaret Mead, a famous American anthropologist: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
I was bawling again; crumpled white tissues were my new accessory. I finally looked up at Buzz, her eyes crinkled with kindness. We’d been meeting regularly since my health leave in November, and I was grateful to have a safe space on campus to unpack my feelings. I could talk to her with zero judgment. Buzz helped me learn how to be myself and not accept the status quo at St. Paul’s.
Buzz asked me what happened on Friday night. I wrapped my arms tightly around myself and I eventually muttered some words.
“I felt manipulated by Owen, and I think he’s manipulating another friend, who pressured me to go,” I said.
“Chessy, because of what you and your mom told me, I’m obligated to call the authorities,” Buzz said. “There are safe school zone laws that require me to notify the police and the Division of Children, Youth, and Families.”
“Uh-huh,” I said distractedly.
“When your mom gets here, we are going to head over to the hospital to get a rape kit done, and a detective from the Concord Police Department will meet us there.”
I couldn’t process most of what Buzz said, but I was relieved that an adult was telling me what to do. Navigating this on my own had been exhausting.
“Wow . . . okay.” I sighed deeply.
While we waited for Mom, I saw another message.
Owen: . . . people have been saying some scary things considering we never had sex. since i’m not there i have to trust you’ve got my back and you make sure the right people know what’s actually up.
I read it out loud to Buzz along with another note he had sent.
Owen: a couple of my friends have called me tonight asking about some rumors they heard . . . we need to make sure people don’t think the wrong thing.
“Oh my God.” I froze. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Don’t answer,” Buzz instructed. “And you need to preserve the messages. Can you save them?”
“Okay, I won’t answer. And yeah, I can take screenshots.”
I frantically snapped photos of every communication between me and Owen: questions about condoms, ejaculation, and birth control pills; my apology after Lucy punched him; his subsequent denials that he’d taken my virginity.
I started to spiral when Mom texted that she had arrived. I ran downstairs and jumped into her arms like I had after the earthquake. This time I didn’t care whether people saw my hot tears.
“It’s all going to be okay, it’s all going to be okay,” Mom said as she wept and rubbed my back.
Mom and I followed Buzz on the five-minute drive to Concord Hospital. As we parked near the emergency room entrance, I began breathing rapidly and my heart pounded so hard it rattled my ribs. This was all getting too real. How bad was what happened to me that I needed to go to the hospital?
I despised anything medical, especially shots. I’d staged various forms of protest over the years. When I was a baby, I gave the doctor a death stare instead of crying after he injected me with a needle. At five years old, I refused to walk to the exam room to get my shot, so the nurse carried me and the chair I was sitting in all the way to the doctor.
I didn’t see any immediate getaway options. Mom put her arm around me as we made our way inside Concord Hospital. Thankfully, the emergency room was empty, and we didn’t wait long before a nurse brought us into a spacious room with a private bathroom.
Everything was bright and white. When I sat on the exam table, the blood drained from my face so that I blended in with the walls. My nerves were eating me from the inside out but I wore my Japanese mask, trying to hide any emotion at all. I crawled inside my head while Mom and Buzz made small talk. I’d never seen a gynecologist before or had any doctor examine me down there. What were they going to do? What if I had an STD?
A woman wearing a black blazer and pink blouse knocked on the door and introduced herself as Detective Julie Curtin. She was with the Concord Police Department and had spoken earlier on the phone with Buzz. Detective Curtin had a no-nonsense attitude, a stocky build, and an intense stare. I immediately feared that she wouldn’t believe me. She would criticize me for being a baby and for wasting her time.
“Chessy, we’re going to talk a little now, if that’s okay. I know this might be difficult for you, but tell me what you can,” Detective Curtin said softly after Mom and Buzz left the room. “Don’t worry about all the details, because we’ll have the chance to talk more later.”
I walked her through the night: the rooftop, the kissing, the bra straps, the underwear, the thrusting inside me.
“I have all of these emails and messages from him and I started grabbing screenshots,” I said.
“That’s very helpful,” Detective Curtin responded, nodding in approval. “Why don’t you finish taking screenshots and forward them to me.”
“Okay, I’ll do that.”
Detective Curtin brought Mom and Buzz back into the room.
“Chessy, this is a serious matter. I’d like to have a more in-depth conversation at the Child Advocacy Center. It’s a place in town where we conduct interviews with young people who have been through situations like yours,” Detective Curtin explained. “It will be just the two of us talking, but our conversation will be recorded so that other people can watch it from another room.”
“Who else needs to see it?” Mom asked.
“Usuall
y we have people from the police department, the prosecutor’s office, the advocacy center,” Detective Curtin said. “This way, Chessy, you only have to speak with one person and not repeat what happened over and over again.”
“Okay,” I said. “I can do that.”
“Do you have time tomorrow?” Detective Curtin asked.
I looked up at Mom and shrugged.
“Chessy has finished her exams so we’re going to be leaving tomorrow afternoon,” Mom said.
“We can try to schedule something for the morning,” Detective Curtin said.
“Thank you. Thank you so much for helping me,” I said.
An emergency room nurse named Samantha eventually arrived and explained that she specialized in treating victims of sexual assault as a sexual assault nurse examiner, or SANE.
Samantha was disarming and sweet. She launched into a lengthy checklist of questions before the poking and prodding began. My body was no longer a body. It was a cavity of potential evidence: my blood, my urine, my cheek cells, even my tampon. I shuddered thinking that someone would have to examine my tampon. Samantha showed Mom some fingerprint bruises on my back near my shoulders, something that never made it into her report.
When I told Samantha that I had physical pain in my vagina, she found redness and an abrasion where I had lost a layer of skin. Then she explained that she was applying a blue skin dye with cotton swabs so she could see the area better.
Blue. My vagina was blue. Blue was my favorite color. I didn’t know if I could ever look at blue the same way.
Samantha stayed in the room while a male physician conducted the dreaded internal examination. I cringed when he inserted a speculum inside me. It was cold and hard and hurt. I squeezed my eyes shut. Why were there so many unwanted things in me? When had my body become a place occupied by other people?
The day had evaporated by the time we stepped outside. I slid down the seat of the rental car in a state of disbelief: I’d just spent five hours in the hospital going through the most intrusive, grueling probe of my body. My arm was throbbing from the shot I’d been injected with to prevent gonorrhea, and I felt light-headed from the antibiotics I’d taken to protect against chlamydia. I opened the car window to let the cool breeze sweep across my face, the first gentle touch that day.
“You did great, Chess,” Mom said. “I’m so proud of you. We’re going to get through this.”
We sat in the hospital’s hilltop parking lot and called Dad. He’d been in all-day meetings in New York and had a flight out of the country that night.
“I’m coming up to Concord now,” Dad said. “I’ll cancel my trip.”
“I can handle it,” Mom said.
“No, I’m coming right away.”
I had initially agreed to stay with Mom and Dad at their hotel, but I changed my mind because I wanted to say good-bye to some friends and pack up my stuff. I’d also promised to meet Lilly for dinner. I felt bad that I’d been avoiding her since Friday.
The coast was clear at the Upper since all the seniors had left campus. I pushed the food around my plate—the medications had my stomach doing somersaults—and filled her in on the last few days.
“I’m so sorry. I should have told you what’s going on,” I apologized. “I just knew that if I saw you, I’d have to deal with what really happened.”
“No problem at all. But know that you can talk to me anytime,” Lilly said, running her hand through her dark brown hair.
“I just want to forget about it all for now,” I said.
“Of course, I understand,” Lilly said.
Later I walked down to the crew docks with Ivy, Catie, and a bunch of other third formers. We piled into a dinghy and jumped into the lake. The cool water numbed my skin and anesthetized my brain. I was just a normal kid, floating in water so deep that I couldn’t feel the bottom.
Tabitha sat on her bed as I rummaged through my closet and debated whether to change my outfit for my meeting at the Child Advocacy Center. I still couldn’t bring myself to tell Tabitha exactly what was going on. Instead I talked around it.
“What am I supposed to wear to a police interview?” I asked, my voice catching in my throat.
“You look fine,” Tabitha said. “It’ll be okay. Just breathe.”
Mom and Dad were waiting in the car outside my dorm. Dad was usually the ringleader of fun in our house, always joking and finding ways to make us laugh. This was not the Dad who showed up in Concord. His eyes were red from crying, something that he unsuccessfully tried to hide. He gripped the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned white.
“It’s okay, I’m okay, Dad,” I reassured him. “I’ll be fine.”
“Chessy, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. We’re going to do whatever we can to help you,” Dad said. “Anything. Everything.”
I sat quietly in the backseat with a small cloth bag in my lap that contained the underwear I’d been wearing on Friday night. Detective Curtin wanted it as evidence.
We pulled up to the Merrimack County Child Advocacy Center, a blue Victorian home on a narrow street in a residential neighborhood. The walls inside were a pale yellow and plastered with children’s handprints in all the colors of the rainbow. Stuffed animals and picture books crammed a small shelf near the entrance.
I couldn’t imagine young kids having to share horror stories like mine with strangers. Or even friends like Tabitha. I swept the thought out of my mind before it could leave an imprint; it was too painful to think about.
Mom, Dad, and I never questioned whether it was a good idea for me to talk to the police. We were big rule followers in our family, and when law enforcement asked us to do something, we listened. We assumed everyone else did the same.
The gravity of what was going on—that I was the victim of a crime—hadn’t sunk in. Things couldn’t be that terrible, I convinced myself, because I was still alive.
Detective Curtin brought Mom and Dad to the back room and briefly introduced them to the people who would be watching me on the live video. Mom and Dad stayed in the waiting area while I followed Detective Curtin down a long hallway lined with photographs of children walking on grass, a ladybug crossing the sidewalk, and two llamas peering over a fence.
We entered a room on the right, with pumpkin-colored walls and two brown leather chairs. Detective Curtin showed me a small circle attached to the wall where a camera would record our interview.
“All right, just so you know, I think you already do know, everything in here is audio and video recorded, and the team of people that I work with, they watch us from the other room. And you’ll hear me after check in with them to see if they have any questions.”
“Okay.”
Detective Curtin waited for me to pick a seat. I chose the chair closest to the door. I tried to make myself as small as possible in that chair. I was a vacuum sealing gross, dirty particles into a tiny compartment so that no one could touch me, no one could hurt me.
Detective Curtin perched on the edge of her seat and folded her hands in her lap. She looked me in the eyes and held my gaze. “The number one rule is that everything we talk about is the truth.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Do you promise to do that today?”
“Yes, I promise.”
My hands trembled as I laid out exactly what had happened in the mechanical room. I had nothing to hide. Yes, I was okay with kissing. Yes, I put my arms above my head when he stripped off my shirt.
“I said no to him pulling down my underwear, which I thought would send him the message that I didn’t want him to do anything below there. And I thought it was going to be like, okay, she doesn’t want me down there, I understand, I’m not even going to try to have sex with her, but he kept on trying. I said no twice, and then he just went on down and around anyways.”
Detective Curtin asked me to explain the Senior Salute and the competition among the boys. I told her that senior guys are constantly targeting third formers, particularly those with older sibl
ings. I mentioned the secret snuggle invitations I’d received from Andrew and Duncan. I shared that Owen was aggressive with other girls. Someone from the other room told Detective Curtin to ask me for names. I gave them.
After talking for more than an hour, Detective Curtin asked if I could take her to the top of the Lindsay building. Maybe they could find the flannel blanket Owen brought. Maybe he’d left behind a condom.
“Would you remember how to get there if we were in the building?” Detective Curtin asked.
“Yes, I think so,” I said.
Dad drove me and Mom back to St. Paul’s, and Buzz met us out front of Lindsay. I was sandwiched between my parents as we climbed the stairs—Dad up front, Mom following behind. Panic jumped up my ribs with each step.
“You only have to stay for a few moments so that we know where to search for evidence,” Detective Curtin said.
As the school’s security officer opened the door at the top of the stairs, we could hear the roaring machines. The police and security officer walked ahead and turned on the lights. I saw thin copper pipes, white PVC tubes, a red fire hose, and metal vents. The vents I’d stared at when he was inside me.
My feet were cemented to the floor. I couldn’t go any farther. The harsh lights exposed what this was: a trap. A locked door with noisy machines. No one could have heard me even if I had screamed.
“Where did he lay down the blanket?” Detective Curtin asked gingerly.
All I could do was point to the ground before crumpling into Mom’s arms.
“I want to go, I want to go,” I bawled. “I can’t do this.”
I collapsed on the landing outside and faced the wall. Dad tried to hug me from behind, but my body went rigid.
“I just want to get out of here,” I pleaded.
I couldn’t wait around to see if they found any evidence.
“Yes, sweetie, let’s go,” Dad said.
Mom and Dad each took one of my shaking arms and guided me down the stairs.
“Let’s get your stuff and leave,” Mom said.
Back in my dorm, we quickly shoved clothes and posters into bags and boxes as if there was a ticking time bomb. Mom, usually an organization wizard, angrily hurled things into cardboard boxes. Dad tried his best to stay calm and dutifully taped up boxes and hauled them out to the car. Mom and Dad were like that—when one got upset, the other tried to keep their cool. No one stopped by to say good-bye or ask if I was okay or needed help packing.
