The scene changed. No longer was Hanna the victim. Instead, she was back in the alley, gun in hand. Only it wasn’t the John staring back but Brett, and he was smiling, showing off his perfect white teeth.
His teeth parted and he said, “Yeah, next time—you liked it, right?”
Hanna’s imaginary finger squeezed the trigger.
“Yeah, I really hope there is a next time, Brett.”
She sighed and finally opened her eyes. The water flowed clear now, but Hanna washed her entire body a second time to make sure that none of Brett’s stink remained on her. After drying off, she popped two Advil for the pain, tied her still damp hair in a ponytail, and slipped on her pajamas.
It took all of three minutes lying on her back and staring at the ceiling for her to know that sleep wasn’t going to come, at least not yet. The Advil hadn’t done its magic and it felt as if her vagina had its own heartbeat. With a grunt, Hanna pulled herself out of bed and made her way slowly to the kitchen. In the freezer she found the faux fur wrapped ice pack that was reserved for her most uncomfortable periods. Back in her bed, Hanna placed the ice on her stomach, just below her pubic bone. That took care of the throbbing, at least.
Exhausted as she was, Hanna didn’t think that she was going to sleep at all that night.
She was wrong.
***
“Is this your first time, Hanna? Is it? Is it?”
The voice was distorted, with a slight warble to it, and appeared to come from the darkness itself.
“It only hurts the first time, Hanna.”
They were Brett’s words, but it wasn’t him speaking them.
“Next it’ll be better… I promise.”
Now Hanna recognized the voice.
“Jill?”
Jill’s face materialized out of the dark as if summoned by Hanna. She had no body, no head, just a face.
“I’m staying, Hanna. Don’t be such a prude.”
“I’m—I’m not, Jill,” Hanna stammered. She knew that she was arguing with an apparition, a figment of her imagination, but she couldn’t help it. “I’m not. But Brett—Brett he—”
“He what?” Hanna didn’t need to explain. Jill already knew what she was going to say because she was inside Hanna’s head. “You wanted it. You’ve always wanted it.”
“I didn’t—”
“It only hurts the first time, Hanna. The next time it won’t hurt at all. It’ll feel good.”
Jill’s face dissolved and was replaced by a set of teeth.
Big, giant, white teeth.
Brett’s teeth.
“You raped me,” Hanna gasped.
“You wanted it,” the boy mocked.
These words were repeated, but not by Jill or Brett, but a chorus of people.
“You wanted it,” they chanted. The faces of her classmates swirled about her, ebbing in and out of the black horizon. “You wanted it. You wanted it. You wanted it.”
“No, I didn’t,” Hanna shouted. She tried to shake her head, to close her eyes, to sit up, to do anything, but like those around her, she was just a face in the void. “No, I didn’t! I didn’t want it!”
“You wanted it. You wanted it. You wanted it.”
“I didn’t want it!”
Hanna’s scream shattered the reverie.
Finally, she thought. Finally, some quiet.
But the demons weren’t quite done with her yet.
“I told you not to go to that party, Hanna. I warned you.”
One final face, one that Hanna knew well filled her mind.
“Mom? Mom, I need to… we need to call the police.”
“I warned you, Hanna.”
Lucy Whitmore was angry now.
Furious.
“Mom?” Hanna whimpered. “Please… mom?”
Chapter 39
“Hanna, wake up. Hanna, wake up.”
Hands were on her now, roughly shaking her out of her slumber.
Hanna sat up so quickly that the ice pack on her stomach slid off and fell to the floor.
“Mom?”
It was her mom, in the flesh this time. Lucy Whitmore’s mouth was twisted in a frown and the woman’s arms were crossed over her chest.
Hanna was confused. She remembered everything that happened the night prior, starting with her decision to go to the party, to Brett raping her, to meeting up with Robin.
But that had happened on Friday night and Saturday morning and her mother wasn’t due back until Sunday.
“What—what day is it?” she asked.
Her mother ignored the question.
“What have you done?”
“What? Nothing. What are you doing here?” Hanna started to swing her legs over the side of the bed but stopped when the pain struck. She winced and held her stomach.
“What in God’s name have you done, Hanna?”
There was a look of disdain on Lucy’s face and Hanna carefully placed her feet on the floor.
“What do you mean? What day is it?”
“It’s Saturday morning—get dressed. Get dressed, now.”
None of this was making sense. She shook her head.
“I have to tell you—”
Lucy turned her back on Hanna.
“Just get dressed and come downstairs. Do it and do it now.”
Hanna watched her mother leave.
What the hell is going on?
The sound of male voices—two of them, one her father’s and one she didn’t recognize—got her moving. Hanna slipped on a pair of soccer shorts and a plain white T-shirt. Every step was painful, but she forced herself to move out of her room and onto the landing. When she peered into the foyer below, her heart jumped into her throat.
Her father was there, looking serious as ever, and her mother was annoyed as always.
The third person, the man whose voice she didn’t recognize, wore an NYPD uniform.
David Whitmore’s eyes met Hanna’s and there was an unexpected measure of softness in them.
It didn’t last long.
“Get down here, Hanna,” Lucy said.
“What’s—what’s going on?”
“That’s something I was hoping you could tell me,” the police officer said. Hanna was trying to get a read on the man, but her eyes were drawn to the object in his hands.
A backpack. Her backpack.
Hanna swallowed hard.
Her first thought was that the John had somehow identified her and called the cops. But that didn’t make sense. The man with the ratty mustache had tried to solicit a fifteen or sixteen-year-old girl, he wouldn’t have gone to the cops, especially not for eighty-odd dollars. That’s what made the scam so perfect.
“I’m sorry,” Hanna said, making her way down the stairs. “I didn’t sleep well last night.”
She reached the bottom step and her knees wobbled. Her mother grabbed her by the shoulders and held her firm.
“What happened last night?” Lucy demanded. There was no softness in her eyes, only iron.
Hanna looked down.
Brett… this is about Brett.
She recalled what Robin had said to her when she’d stepped into the light and had seen Hanna crying on the bus stop bench.
People care about you, people love you. Go home, tell them what happened.
Did Jill say something? Someone else at the party, maybe?
Tears started to well.
“Hanna, can you please tell me what happened last night?”
Hanna focused on the police officer. She wanted to tell him what happened, what Brett had done, but wasn’t sure how to start.
When she opened her mouth to speak, no words came out.
The officer sighed. He looked tired.
“This will be much easier for everyone if you start talking, Hanna. Now, the only reason I haven’t taken you down to the station is because I know your father. But if you don’t explain what happened I will have no other choice.”
There was something wrong with the
officer’s tone, his words. They seemed accusatory like she was the one that needed to be cuffed and not that asshole Brett.
“I—”
“Just tell us where you got the gun, Hanna. You tell us that, and we can make it all go away. But if you don’t, then Officer Bailer is going to take you in. I’m not letting you soil the family name. We’ve worked too hard to let you mess this up.”
“Gun?” she gasped, pulling free of her mother and backing away.
“Yes, the gun—”
“Mom, I was raped.”
Tears flowed, but only from Hanna’s eyes. Her mother’s response was unexpected, and it stung her deeply.
“No, no, no,” Lucy Whitmore said, wagging a finger. “I knew you’d pull something like this, make up a story. Tell us where you got the gun from. And don’t start that rape bullshit. Don’t start that with me. I won’t have it.”
Hanna couldn’t believe her mother’s words.
I won’t have it? Did she mishear? She must have misheard. That’s the only thing that makes sense.
“It’s not even real,” Hanna sobbed. “It’s not even a real gun, but mom, you’re not listening. I was raped—Brett raped me at the party!”
Officer Bailey was reaching into the backpack when she said this, and his eyes shot up.
“Brett? Brett McDowell? He raped you?” At least the officer was taking this seriously.
Hanna nodded. She was sobbing now, her face a wet mess. And yet nobody was offering her anything. Not a shoulder to cry on, not a fucking tissue.
“Hanna, please, I’ve known Brett since he was a boy. He would never do anything like that,” her father said, placating as ever.
Hanna swiped her nose with the back of her arm. Strings of spit and snot clung to her skin.
“Why the fuck aren’t you listening to me?” she said, hysteria setting in. “He raped me… he raped me!” Her parents’ deadpan expressions stared back. The officer looked extremely uncomfortable, his gaze darting nervously at David. “Why are you looking at him? You’re the cop! Do something! Why don’t you believe me?”
“Maybe because you brought a gun to a party, Hanna?” her mother said. “That tends to tarnish your credibility. And you’ve done something like this before, remember? When you went to Nancy’s? You said that she pushed you, that’s why you had scrapes on your knees. But that wasn’t true, was it? It was because you were doing… things… with that Trever boy. Isn’t that right? Isn’t that why your knees were all banged up? Hmm?”
“Mom! Mom, that was different!” Hanna pleaded. “That was—”
As if on cue, the officer pulled the handgun that Robin had given her out of the backpack. He held it with two fingers from the butt as if it were made of biohazardous material.
“It’s not real,” Hanna whined. “It’s a fucking fake gun.”
“It’s plastic,” the officer confirmed.
“See! See! I told you.”
“But I’m going to take it in, anyways. The McDowell boy—”
“He raped me!”
What happened next was nearly impossible for Hanna to understand. Lucy stepped forward as if to comfort her, but instead, slapped Hanna across the face. Her ear immediately started to ring, and she could feel a scalding hand imprint on her cheek and temple.
“Don’t you dare, Hanna,” her mother hissed, glaring at her. “Don’t you dare.”
That’s when Hanna understood. This wasn’t about the gun, or about the rape. It was about Brett McDowell, or, more specifically, it was about the Whitmores trying to save face with the McDowells.
She had one more shot. Hanna looked over her mother’s shoulder and focused on her father.
“Dad?” she whispered.
“Don’t,” Lucy said simply.
David turned his back on her, guiding the officer toward the door.
“You heard her. She didn’t get much sleep. If you can talk the McDowells down about this gun thing, especially now that we know it isn’t real, I can make sure that Hanna catches up on her rest.”
The implication in her father’s words was implicit, that he would make this rape ‘thing’ go away.
To the officer’s credit, he stopped and peeled David’s arm off him. Then he looked back at Hanna.
“You okay, Hanna?”
With her mother glaring at her, and Hanna’s face still hot and stinging from the slap, there was only one thing she could say.
“Yes.” The word was barely audible. “I’m just… tired.”
“See?” her dad said, replacing his arm on the officer’s shoulder.
“Not only that, but I’ll make sure that Hanna apologizes to Brett the next time she sees him. Isn’t that right, Hanna?”
“What?” A gasp. “Mom—”
“You’ll do what I say, Hanna. If you want to continue living in this house, you will do exactly as I say.”
Chapter 40
Hanna returned to her bedroom in a daze. If she’d put thought into how her mother would have reacted to her rape, this result wouldn’t have been wholly unexpected. Still, there was always hope that for once, Lucy Whitmore would come to her defense.
Stand up for her.
Treat her like a real fucking human being.
Hanna was done crying, but she wasn’t done sleeping. After popping two more Advil, she put the ice pack, now lukewarm, on her lower abdomen and crawled back into bed. As before, she didn’t expect sleep to come, but running the emotional meter on red for so long had a way of exhausting you unparalleled by physical activity.
Hanna closed her eyes and sleep came fast and hard.
Sometime later, a voice pulled her out of her slumber.
“Hanna, you coming for dinner?” Her mother’s tone was unexpectedly warm, and the knock on her bedroom door was gentle.
Hanna rolled onto her side, once again sending the ice pack crashing to the floor.
Dinner? Really? With you?
“Hanna?” Her mother knocked again. “Hanna, can I come in?”
Hanna didn’t say anything; there was nothing to say. She knew little about motherhood—in fact, hadn’t thought about it at all, seeing as she’d never had sex until a few nights ago—but the idea of protecting one’s offspring was ingrained in human DNA.
It was a construct of evolution.
Lucy Whitmore’s DNA, however, was obviously methylated in all the wrong places.
Hanna watched as the doorknob turned and her mother stepped inside her room. When the woman sat on the edge of the bed, Hanna ignored the dull throb in her groin and pulled her feet up so as not to make contact with her. At least her mother had the courtesy to bring Hanna’s backpack up to her, which she laid on the floor.
“Hanna, I’m sorry,” Lucy whispered.
This was so unexpected that Hanna wasn’t sure how to react. Her mouth fell open and she gaped.
She’s sorry, she realizes she made a mistake and now she’s going to tell me that they discussed it with the officer and—
“I’m sorry that your first time wasn’t what you expected.”
Hanna’s eyes rocketed to her mother, but her gaze was not met. Lucy was staring at her small hands, which were folded in her lap.
“Mine wasn’t either. Can I… can I tell you about my first time?”
After what had happened downstairs, Hanna didn’t think that anything her mother did would surprise her.
She was wrong.
Once more, Lucy Whitmore did not wait for her daughter to answer before continuing.
“I was… well, it doesn’t matter how old I was, but this was before your father. I went to a high school party and there was this boy there, a boy I had a crush on. His name was Kurt, and he was big and strong and, my God, he was cute. But I was a late bloomer, Hanna, and wasn’t as developed as other girls. Just wasn’t lucky that way, I guess. Kurt didn’t even look at me.”
Please stop, Hanna pleaded. Please just make it stop.
“Then there was my friend Eliza—my best fr
iend. She was more, how do I say this, outgoing. She knew that I liked Kurt, but that didn’t matter. She made out with him at the party and not even in a bathroom or anything like that. Right out in the open, as if she wanted me to see.”
Hanna pressed her chin between her knees and closed her eyes so tightly that she saw stars.
Stop!
“Anyways, I decided, what the hell, I’ll make Kurt jealous. Ha! Thinking about it now, this made no sense. After all, Kurt didn’t even know my name. But at the time I had like four beers, and I didn’t really drink that much. I was buzzed and found the first guy and we went upstairs and did the deed. He was chubby and awkward, and I don’t even think he enjoyed it. The point is, Hanna, not everything is going to turn out—”
“Stop,” Hanna begged, finally speaking out loud. “Just stop.”
“Hanna, I’m trying to help you,” Lucy said. “I’m trying to—”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Hanna opened her eyes. “Seriously. What the fuck, ma?”
“That language is not befitting of a lady.”
Hanna’s anger was so potent that it stripped her of her words. The idea that what had happened to her was in any way remotely similar to her mother’s bungling first time was not just asinine but offensive.
And it was the final straw.
Lucy Whitmore’s DNA wasn’t just methylated, it was fragmented.
Her mother was frowning when she rose to her feet and started toward the door. On the way, she spotted the floral skirt that Hanna had worn to the party and she picked it up.
“I thought you returned this,” she muttered. Despite not saying anything else, the way she disapprovingly looked at the fabric in her hand spoke volumes.
When her mother made it to the door, still holding the skirt, she looked back.
“There’s dinner if you want it. Don’t let it get cold. And Hanna? This is the last I want to hear about your… adventures. Keep them to yourself from here on out, okay?”
Chapter 41
Hanna let her dinner get cold. If it were up to her, she’d also let it rot. The very idea of leaving her room and having to interact with her parents was enough to keep her on her bed, knees to chest, chin to knees.
Straw Man Page 17
