by Mila Gray
We should be at the store, but Toby and Em’s mom are covering for us. Apparently, the phone hasn’t stopped ringing all day. Out here in the woods, up in the tree house, with just the scratch of Em’s pen and the birds singing, it’s easy to believe that the world beyond here doesn’t exist—and right now that’s how I want it to be.
I think about calling Sarge to check in with him, but I can’t stand the thought of turning on my phone and seeing all the messages I know there will be, and I’m worried too about finding out what trouble he’s in because of me. I’m also tempted to call Lauren and find out what the hell she was thinking, but Em’s convinced me that would be a bad idea.
“What are you writing?” I ask Em, trying to distract myself from my thoughts.
She barely glances up at me. “Just something. A story.” She pauses, chewing the end of the pencil. “No, not really a story—more like an essay.”
“An essay?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“What’s it about?”
She sits up and squints at the forest for a long moment before turning to face me. “It’s about what happened.”
“Can I read it?”
She hesitates for a moment, looking down at the notebook in her hands.
“Okay,” she finally says. “It’s messy, though. And it’s just a first draft.”
She hands me the notepad and then gets up, stretching her arms above her head. I long for a moment to pull her back down onto my lap, but she disappears inside the tree house and I turn back to the notebook and start reading. . . .
When I was thirteen years old, I was sexually assaulted by my hockey coach. One action by another—an adult in a position of trust—and I lost everything; my sense of self, my understanding of truth, my belief in what the world was, my faith in justice, my reputation, and my best friend. I lost the image of myself as a child in my parents’ eyes. From that split second in time I became someone new. Someone I didn’t recognize. A stranger to myself. The man who assaulted me was never charged with any crime. He was never punished. Instead, it was me who was punished. For coming forward. There is something wrong with a world in which a victim, a child no less, is punished.
It took five years for me to learn that “victim” is a word I can discard too. Just as I once discarded the identity of champion hockey player, girl, friend, winner. Just as memory bound me for so long, memory also helped set me free in the end. Someone reminded me of the person I used to be before it happened, and with it came a glimmer of hope that somewhere inside she still existed if I could just find a way to set her free. . . .
I keep reading, flipping rapidly through the pages, wrapped up in Em’s story and her words, in the reality of all that happened, feeling as if I’ve opened a trapdoor into her mind and am finally seeing what it was like for her. All those questions I’ve had but never asked for fear of prying or upsetting her, are answered here. She details the hate mail, the insults, the time she walked into my uncle coming out of a coffee shop on Main Street and how he stepped aside to let her pass with a smile and a nod of his head. How she smiled back before she could stop herself and then spent three weeks playing over the episode in her mind, wondering whether he took that to mean she was complicit. I’m rapt by her account of turning around one day on a beach coming face-to-face with her past in the form of her ex–best friend and childhood sweetheart and how it opened up a Pandora’s box of emotions, but that hope too was one of them. And how it took putting on a pair of skates to finally feel like her life was hers again.
I put down the notebook and let out the breath I’d unwittingly been holding. For a long minute, I stare at the tree branches, and then I get up and walk inside the tree house, ducking my head. I find Em crouched down on the floor with her back to me.
She turns her head and I see she’s holding a penknife in her hand, and then I glimpse over her shoulder that she is carving something into the wall. I know what it is before I even step toward her. It’s our initials.
I kneel beside her and take the knife from her hand. I finish the L as she watches, her hand resting on my shoulder.
“What did you think?” she asks me, casting a surreptitious sideways glance my way.
I put the penknife down. “I think,” I say, turning to face her, “that you need to publish it.”
She laughs. “What? No. It’s stupid. It’s just for me, really. You know, journaling, cheaper than therapy.”
“Well, I think you should share it.” She looks at me as if she can’t tell if I’m joking. “I’m serious,” I tell her.
She picks up the notebook and shakes her head.
I want to keep arguing with her, but I suddenly remember the time. I agreed to swap with Toby at the store so he could get to Em’s house to oversee the plumber who’s coming to fit the bathroom, and I’m late.
“I need to go. I’m covering for Toby,” I tell Em.
Her face falls.
“Come with me,” I say.
“No. I think I’ll stay here. I want to finish this.” She holds up the notebook.
“Okay,” I say. “But I’ll see you later, yeah?”
She nods and I pull her closer.
“At my place?” I ask.
She looks up at me and smiles sneakily. She stays over every night, but I don’t take it for granted.
“Jake?” she says as I pull away.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks,” she says, her fingers trailing through mine.
“What for?” I ask.
“For coming back.” She pauses a moment. “And for the notebook.”
Em
I reread my essay, wondering if Jake’s right about it being good enough to publish. I’m not sure I want to go public with this. It’s like carving out a piece of my soul and offering it on a plate to the world. What if I’m laughed at or sent more hate mail? It can’t be worse than what I’ve already experienced, though, and what if it helps someone else who’s going through what I went through?
A rustling makes my head snap up. I’m smiling, expecting it to be Jake coming back for his sweater, which he left behind and which I’m now wearing, but it isn’t. It’s Reid Walsh. Great.
He steps out from behind a tree. How long has he been there? Was he waiting for Jake to leave? Has he been spying on me?
“What are you doing here?” I ask. My spine prickles, and my hands go clammy. From up here in the tree house, I have the advantage of height. But I’m also trapped, and it’s not like I can pull up the ladder, either. Reid walks slowly toward the tree. Where’s the boiling oil when you need it?
Reid rests his hand on the first rung of the ladder, and my pulse leaps and flies. I tell myself I’m being silly, but the last time I felt like this, something bad happened, so this time I decide to listen to my gut. I scan the inside of the tree house, my gaze landing on the penknife lying on the floor. I’m being stupid, paranoid, but something tells me—urges me—to pick it up.
Reid starts climbing up the tree. That’s it. I move, darting toward the penknife. I hide it behind my back and as Reid heaves himself onto the ledge, I walk out to confront him. It’s better to be outside on the ledge than inside, where I’m even more trapped. Why am I even thinking this way? I wonder. Why am I so paranoid? The problem with having been a victim of assault once is that forever after you judge every other situation by those terms. You lose all sense of proportion. Maybe I’m reading into things. But then again, I’d rather be paranoid than assaulted again. Not that I think Reid’s capable . . . but yeah . . . once burned . . .
I watch Reid clamber to his feet, wondering if the platform can take his weight. He’s got six or seven inches on me and easily made it to college on a wrestling scholarship.
Reid glances inside through the open doorway. “You’ve fixed it up. It looks great. Remember how we used to come here all the time as kids?”
I raise my eyebrows. He’s smiling fondly at the memory. I guess he’s remembering the porn magazine. I wonder if I can do
dge past him to the edge of the ledge and climb down. Would it look like running away? An angry voice inside my head tells me to stand my ground, but then I realize that I’m not twelve and it doesn’t matter. I can choose my battles.
I make for the ladder, happy to cede possession of the tree house to Reid for now.
Reid steps sideways, blocking me. “Where are you going?” he asks. It doesn’t seem to be a threat, more a genuine question, and it confuses me.
“I have to get back home,” I tell him. “My dad needs me.” I move once more to step around him, and this time he doesn’t block my way.
“How is he?” Reid asks.
I freeze and turn to study him. He’s not smirking, but why is he asking? “Why do you care?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I’m just being nice.”
“Nice?” I ask, eyebrows leaping up my head.
“What?” he asks. “I can’t be nice?”
I shake my head at his weirdness. “Nice” is the last adjective on earth I’d use to describe Reid. Up there with the words “thoughtful,” “intelligent,” and “sensitive.” “Can you move? I want to go.”
Reid stays blocking the ladder.
“Are you dating him?”
I pull back to look at him, frowning. What is he talking about now?
“Is that why you . . . you broke up with Rob?” he stammers, his face starting to flush. “Because Jake came back? That’s what Rob thinks.”
“No,” I say impatiently. “I broke up with your brother because he’s a jerk and I should never have dated him in the first place.”
Reid grins. “Yeah, I know. Took you long enough to realize it.”
That makes me pause. Is he messing with me? I’m not staying around to find out.
I push past Reid, sit down on the ledge, and start climbing as fast as I can down the ladder, but I’m in such a hurry to get away that I forget the rusting nail and catch my palm on it. Yelping, I miss my footing and fall the last five feet, landing on my butt on the soft ground at the bottom of the tree.
“Shit. Are you okay?” Reid calls down to me.
He starts climbing down the tree, landing beside me and offering me his hand to get up. I don’t take it. Instead, I use the tree trunk to steady myself as I climb to my feet, rubbing my lower back, which is bruised from the fall. Without a word, I start walking away.
“Wait,” Reid says, chasing after me.
I whip around to face him. “What? What do you want, Reid?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you,” he says, holding up both hands in a defensive posture.
I shake my head again in confusion. “I don’t get it, Reid.”
Don’t get what?
“Why are you being nice—apologizing, and . . . I don’t know, trying to be my friend?”
He looks suddenly forlorn. “Aren’t we friends?”
“Er . . . no.” Is he crazy? Are all those steroids poking holes in his brain?
“But we used to be friends.”
“Reid, you and I have never been friends.” It’s like explaining two plus two to a six-year-old.
“That’s not true. We were always hanging out together.”
“We were on the same hockey team. If you call practice ‘hanging out together,’ then yes, we hung out a lot, but it wasn’t by choice.”
His face falls some more, and now I really am starting to wonder if this isn’t just a big joke. No one in their right mind would ever think Reid and I were friends, not unless they had a really warped idea of friendship.
“You were mean to me all the time,” I say. “You were always teasing me and laughing at me.”
He swallows. “I liked you.”
I stare up at him, at the sweat trickling down his temple and the nervous way he is licking his cracked lips. “What do you mean?”
“I always liked you,” he blurts, unable to meet my eye. “Like, liked you liked you.”
Is he joking? I can’t tell. The rash of acne on his chin flares even redder.
“I just . . . you know . . . didn’t know how to tell you.”
He lifts his gaze to meet mine—briefly. Oh my God. He’s serious.
I burst out laughing. I can’t help myself.
“Why are you laughing?” he asks.
“Reid,” I say, shaking my head in amazement. “You bullied me for years. You told me that Jake thought I was a liar. I believed you.”
“I was jealous of him,” he interrupts. “You never noticed me. It was like I didn’t exist. And then you start dating Rob and he treats you so badly and you don’t even care. And I’m right here. . . . I’ve always been here. And I tried to be nice to you and you never even looked at me.” He takes a step closer to me, swallowing dryly, and it’s only then that I figure out that what Reid is trying to tell me is that he liked me back then and that he still likes me.
The shock is so enormous that a meteor could crash down beside us and I wouldn’t notice.
Reid takes another step toward me, his expression pleading.
“I’m dating Jake,” I blurt, stepping backward, away from him.
Reid freezes. Color floods his face—and his cheeks turn a mottled red. He shrugs. “Whatever. Like I care.”
I raise my eyebrows. Confusion replaces the shock.
He makes a face. “You didn’t think—that like, just because I said I liked you back when we were kids, I still like you?” He snorts. “Because, yeah . . . that’s not what I was saying.”
I take another step backward. “Okay, Reid, well, I’m going to go.”
He looks like he might be about to say something else, but then he bites it back and gives me one of his trademark shrugs. “Fine.”
I start running through the woods, my ears ringing from his words, my mind doing a loop-the-loop as I try to place this new information over the top of my memories and recalibrate them all.
Jake
He said what to you?”
“That he liked me.”
I’m laying the wood in the stove on the deck, but I freeze and turn toward Em. “Wait, say that again.”
Em hugs her arms around her waist. “He said he liked me liked me, but then he tried to walk it back when he didn’t get the reaction he was hoping for.”
I drop back onto my haunches beside the open door of the stove, lighter in hand. “Shit,” I say, shaking my head that I never saw it before now. “It makes total sense.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know they say that the boys in school who are the meanest to you and tease you are the ones who secretly like you.”
“You were never mean to me,” Em argues.
“Yeah,” I say, lighting the paper beneath the wood and then slamming shut the door to the stove. “I was too scared. But this is Reid we’re talking about. His only means of communication is being a jerk. I mean, look at his father. They had the perfect teacher.”
I watch the flames roar to life inside the stove and walk over to Em. “What did you say to him?”
“I told him I was dating you.”
I frown.
Em’s smile fades. “What?”
“You shouldn’t have to qualify your reasons why you don’t want to date him. It’s enough you told him no.”
My instinct is to drive right around to the Walsh house and have a word with Reid. But I’m walking on eggshells at the moment, and the fact that his dad is trying to lock me up makes it kind of difficult.
“Jake,” Em warns, reading my mind.
“I don’t trust him.”
I scan the woods. They’re turning blurry and pixelated in the dusk light. “You think he was there in the woods?” I ask. “Watching, waiting until I left so he could get you alone?” The idea makes me feel sick with fury.
Em chews her lip. “Yeah, but I don’t think he’d ever try anything. I mean, I made it very clear to him how I felt.”
I grimace. That’s probably the worst possible scenario. Most guys don’t deal well with humiliat
ion, especially not bullies like Reid Walsh. “Do me a favor,” I say now, turning back to Em. “Don’t go to the tree house by yourself.”
Em pulls back. “No,” she says.
“What?”
“I’m not going to give up one of my favorite places to hang out just because of Reid Walsh. It’s our tree house. Not his. Besides, I mean, Reid’s always been all talk and no action. Rob was the one with the big mouth who followed through.”
I huff and stare at the crackling wood, most of it leftovers from the construction site in Em’s house, which she miraculously still hasn’t discovered. While I admire Em’s defiance, and her decision not to let Reid threaten her, I’m not happy.
“I’m going to speak to him,” I say, getting to my feet. It’s the only way. I can’t have her feeling intimidated or threatened. And I don’t like the idea that he might follow her again or confront her.
Em reaches out and grabs my arm. “Jake, don’t. It’s not worth it. He’s going back to college soon anyway. I won’t have to see him again.”
I glance down at her fingers circling my wrist, then up into her face. She’s anxious, fearful, and I force myself to relax and calm down. I remember what Shay’s mom told me about staying out of trouble and my coach’s warning to keep a low profile. The chances are any conversation I have with Reid is not going to end in a handshake agreement and niceties. After all, I still have an argument to settle with him over the letter he never gave Em.
Em strokes her fingers up the inside of my arm, over my scar. “I shouldn’t have told you.”
My gut twists. I drop down by her side. “Don’t say that,” I whisper. “I don’t want you to keep secrets from me ever. I’m glad you told me.” I take her hand again and slip my fingers through hers. “I won’t do anything, okay? I promise.”
She studies me for a moment and then nods. “Good.”
She gets up and I wonder what she’s doing, but the words don’t even make it past my lips before she sits down in my lap, facing toward me. I wrap my arms around her waist and she loops hers around my neck. Instantly, my senses are in overdrive. I watch Em reach back and tie up her hair. All thoughts of Reid Walsh scatter. If that was the plan, it’s definitely working.
