Dangerous Play

by Emma Kress

“Heeeeeyyyy, where you going, my slippery salamander?”

  “Ha. Good one.” I try to move around him, but his other arm blocks me. “Okay, Reilly. Let me go.” I force a smile. I don’t want to sound bitchy. “I need to get back to my friends.”

  “Well, I have needs too, little salamander, and you are looking hooooot tonight.” He presses his body closer and the wall at my back is unyielding and unforgiving. He snaps my bra strap against my shoulder.

  “Stop.” I look left, right, anywhere but in his face. There’s nobody here in this dark hallway.

  “Did you give him a blowjob?” His breath is hot on my neck.

  “What?” I push him, but he just leans his weight against me, and he’s so much bigger, so much heavier than me. A mountain. I push again. All that weight lifting all these months and I can’t move him. “Get off me! Now!”

  His hands press my shoulders hard against the wall but the wall is too hard and his hands are too hard and there’s nowhere for them to go nowhere for me to go and he ducks his head into my neck and his breath is hot and sticky and he’s kissing me and it’s so wrong and wet like a dog. He yanks my shirt off my shoulder and I’m wriggling but his hands shove and push and I pull my knee up hard but he’s too tall and I hit nothing and he shoves his hands up my shirt and mashes my breasts and I’m crying and trying to hit but I’m pinned like a butterfly and this can’t be happening and his elbow is on my neck and I can’t breathe and then I see his other hand pull down his basketball shorts no zippers no buttons down in seconds and he’s ripping at my jeans and oh my God he’s really going to and I want to leave my body just float away but I push and shove and lift my knees hoping they hit him somewhere but nothing—

  “Reilly!” someone calls from the other room.

  He lifts off me to look—and I run. I run so fast that I fall and slide but I run—

  “Hey wait!” he calls after me, and then I hear him burp. A great echoing burp that reverberates off the white walls. Followed by a laugh.

  I run out the front door, through the gate, down the drive, onto the road.

  I run and run and run until a car swerves and slams its horn. I crash into the ditch on the side of the road. I dry heave again and again.

  Nothing comes up.

  I hear steps behind me and I shrink down.

  “Zoe?!”

  Liv. Oh thank God. Liv. I want to stand but I can’t unbend.

  “Zoe!” She wraps her arms around me, and for a second it’s like she’s holding me together. But it only lasts a second. “What happened?”

  I turn to the side and try to throw up again.

  She pats me on the back. “I’ll get the car. Can you wait here? Are you okay?”

  I’m so far from okay. I sink to the ground and hug my knees. I look down at the shirt Liv had me borrow. This shirt that she said revealed just the right amount of everything. I turn to heave again, but there’s no getting rid of any of it.

  Soon a car drives by slowly. “Zo?” Liv’s voice.

  I crawl out of the ditch. The car door is so heavy but somehow I get it open and sit down. Even though it’s warm, I start to shake. The car pulls away. I grab a tissue out of the box on the floor and pull down the visor. I scrub at the makeup, but my skin just gets raw and red.

  “I’m sorry about your shirt,” I say.

  “Screw my shirt. I’m worried about you,” she says.

  I shake my head. “I guess this is what I get for dressing like this.”

  “What? That’s ridiculous.” Liv pulls over and clicks on her hazards. “Zo, I have no idea what happened”—she puts her hand on my knee, and I flinch—“but you looked beautiful tonight. Did Grove—”

  “No.”

  I’ve never felt less beautiful in my life. I think of Reilly’s face pressed into mine. I open the door and lean out, only to dry heave again. I clutch my stomach, but it won’t do what it’s supposed to do.

  I can’t get rid of it.

  THIRTEEN

  I’M UP BEFORE THE SATURDAY sun. I’m not sure I ever fell asleep. I run where I always do—the trail toward the lake. I’ve always loved it because it’s deserted in the mornings. But a few minutes in, my mind’s still whirring, my skin’s too sticky, my feet don’t work, and I’m dry heaving in a ditch. Again. A crack of a branch in the woods, and I close my mouth against a scream. I run home so fast the tears on my cheeks don’t have time to fall.

  For the first time in my life, I skip practice. With Mom always working and Dad laid up, it’s on me to do chores. But I skip those too. I silence my phone. I curl back into bed and pull my pillow tight over my head. I want to sleep through everything. But I can’t.

  Can’t run. Can’t sleep. Can’t throw up.

  I’ve been stripped raw and every little thing hurts. My dry eyes itch. My sheets scrape my skin. My heart’s in my ears—thump thumping, closer and closer. I throw the covers off, begging the rush of cool air to change me, numb me.

  I hear everything. Mom fixes coffee, goes to work. Dad exercises in the living room, watching Sports Today. Outside my window, leaves push against one another. But it’s all background music to the real show: his face, his breath, his hands, his shorts pulled down. I tug the covers back around myself and crawl farther into my bed.

  My insides are shattered. Like all those months of training never amounted to muscles at all. All this time I thought I was made of rock, I was made of glass.

  There’s a light knock on my door.

  “Yeah?” I ask from under the covers.

  The door creaks open. “Mmmm.” Even buried beneath my comforter, I recognize the sound of Dad eating Big Bob’s ice cream.

  I burrow farther beneath the covers.

  “Best ice cream in the universe,” he croons. The spoon clinks against the bowl as he scoops it up. “And I’ve brought tunes.”

  I pull the covers tighter.

  “Tunes and ice cream are well known to possess mysterious healing powers,” he sings.

  I think of how I looked last night—that shirt, that makeup. At least he doesn’t know that. A sob erupts, and I almost choke on it.

  “Isn’t any of this tempting?”

  I gather the comforter in my fists and press it against my eyes, willing the tears to stay inside. I love him more than anything—but he is the last person I want to see right now. I’ve never felt further away from him. I’ve never felt further away from myself.

  Sighing, he sits on the bed. Everything feels tight and close, I can’t breathe under the covers, and I don’t know how much longer I can hold it in. I hear him set the bowl on my desk. “Well, I guess I’ll leave you alone.” He pats my arm through the comforter, and I tense. If I let go, the tears will drown us both.

  He walks to the door. As he’s pulling it shut behind him, he says, “Don’t leave the ice cream too long, pumpkin. It’s never as good when it melts.”

  When the door clicks closed behind him, I cry an all-over cry that rocks every part of me. It’s a silent kind of wailing, but I’m thankful for the TV and Dad’s less-than-perfect ears. When the tears finally stop, they stick me with a headache that presses down into my eyes. I look past the bowl of now-melted ice cream to the CD. I reach for it and flip it over to see Dad’s lopsided writing: ZoTunes—not to be confused with Show Tunes. Haha. I stand, legs unsteady, and cross to my dresser, placing the CD among the photos and medals. The face in the mirror draws me in—puffy, pale, weak. I slide my sleeve up to see dark red splotches eating at my skin. One, where my shoulder meets my chest, isn’t as shapeless as the rest. A thumbprint.

  I used to love to count the bruises on my legs, proof of fockey, of grinding. These are different. Like when it first snows how the whole world is papered in white and it’s clean and fresh. But the second a truck drives across it, the snow spoils into slush. Because snow isn’t much of anything really. It can’t fight back either.

  I take a picture. Pull down my sleeve. Put on a hoodie.

  The doorbell rings. Grabbing
the box of tissues, I climb back into bed, rewrapping myself in covers. Dad’s footsteps are heavy and uneven. The front door opens to voices. Feet climb the stairs. I tunnel deeper.

  The door creaks open, the covers get thrown back. All the girls are here—Liv, Ava, the triplets, Cristina, Kiara, Nikki, Dylan, and Michaela. They pile onto the bed.

  “We decided you needed a care package of our love.” Quinn flops herself across me.

  They squeal and topple and hug until I can’t breathe, until it’s Reilly’s arm against my throat, and I gasp. They pull back, laughing. I grab for the comforter.

  “We missed you at practice,” Liv says.

  “What happened last night, Cap?” Bella asks.

  I begin a thousand sentences in my mind, but none of them work. “I just got sick.” Liv’s face is so open I can’t bear it. I look back at Bella. “How was your date?” I don’t even know how I remembered. It’s like someone else is talking, functioning.

  “Swee-eet,” she says. She holds up her phone. “She already texted me.” She smiles. “Twice.”

  “My sister’s got game,” Quinn says. Everyone laughs. I can’t take it.

  “That’s so great, Bels,” says this other me.

  “Let’s let her sleep, you guys,” Liv says, and I feel so grateful I want to cry. Again.

  They say things I don’t hear. Liv squeezes my hand, and I feel like everything might burst if she doesn’t leave now. Call me, she mouths.

  They close the door behind them. Finally. And I burst into tears.

  “Hey.” Nikki’s voice is quiet as she steps back in and shuts the door.

  I pull the covers tight, but the tears have already escaped.

  “Listen.” She sits on the edge of my bed and looks down at her hands. “I think something happened last night, to you, and I just want you to know that I’m here—if you need—if you want to talk.”

  I concentrate to untangle her words, to get them through the distance to me. The functional me needs to step in and tell her nothing’s wrong, but then she looks at me.

  I remember the way she looked when she crashed onto the beach that night, and how she looked at the soccer game, and the truth of it settles like the crushed glass inside me.

  The words pile up on my tongue but nothing comes out.

  She’s quiet.

  “It’s stupid,” I finally say. “It’s not even that big a deal. Nothing happened.” I try to laugh, but it doesn’t come out right and sounds kind of strangled.

  She stays quiet.

  “What happened that night we met you on the beach? Was it Jamison?”

  The muscles in her face tense. She nods.

  I sink back against my pillows. “They’re assholes.” I shake my head at the ceiling. “I don’t even know why I’m upset. Nothing happened.”

  “You said that already.”

  “Yeah.” My fists bunch the comforter. “For a minute I couldn’t breathe. For a minute I didn’t think I’d get away.”

  “That doesn’t sound like nothing.” Her voice is soft.

  I grab a tissue. “I don’t even know why I’m crying.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Dave Reilly,” I say. “He shoved me up against this wall and—” All over again, his face closes in, his hands push, the wall’s too hard against my back, and—I dig the heels of my hands into my eyes. It needs to stop.

  She pulls my hands away gently. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Ugh. I hate that I feel this way because of him.”

  “I know. Nobody should get to make someone else feel like this.” She reddens. But not out of shame or embarrassment. It’s anger. She rearranges a bracelet on her arm before looking back at me. “Jamison raped me. And I will never, ever, forgive him.”

  I take her hand, hold it for a minute, while her breath—our breath—steadies.

  Something shifts in me. Like she walked right across all that jagged glass and opened a door I didn’t know I had.

  FOURTEEN

  MONDAY MORNING, I WAKE TO a phone filled with unread texts—from Liv, the girls, Grove. I don’t have words for any of them, so I say nothing. I wear long sleeves.

  At least it’s raining. Shitty weather for a shitty day.

  In the summer, when I was a kid, the first thing we’d do after we came home from the beach was turn our bags inside out, shake the sand loose, and hose the bags off in the backyard before letting them bake in the sun. I want to turn myself inside out, let the rain scrub away that night, and dry for days.

  But no matter how many times I’ve tried to throw up, no matter how inside out I feel, I can’t get it out. I can’t claw him out of there.

  I text Liv I’ll meet her at school and head to the bus stop for the first time since last year.

  There are two girls and a few boys at the stop. I put my hood up to keep the rain off, praying nobody will talk to me. One girl holds a textbook over her head. This lifts her shirt, and two of the three boys at the bus stop stare.

  She’s just trying to stay dry while we wait for the stupid bus.

  When I get to school, I notice more. The way guys look at girls as they walk by. The way they let their gaze land wherever they want. The way they don’t even bother to hide it. The way they get away with it.

  And I wonder how many girls?

  In AP US History, Mac calls me Salamander. And his voice turns into Reilly’s and I run out of the room to throw up. But I can’t.

  Later, I’m so distracted I take a different way to Math and at the end of the hall, he’s there. Reilly. His laugh is so big it blows through the hall and I can’t breathe all over again. I run back the way I came, but I’m sweating and shivering and can’t catch my breath and nothing looks the same.

  This doesn’t even feel like my school anymore.

  * * *

  That night we play East Ridge. Grove sits in the stands next to Jake, even though it’s raining, announcing a level of commitment that makes me want to scream. Liv elbows me when he looks at me, but I don’t have the words to explain it. Grove’s face moves from hopeful to hurt, and Liv’s from confused to worried, and I just want out.

  This time, they scream “Believe!” when we clash sticks. But I don’t shout it with them. I don’t know what I believe anymore.

  The whistle blows, and I know straight off that it’s not right. That I’m not right. Ava’s directing, but I can’t see the game the way she can, and I can’t find my voice in time. My legs are weak. My stick feels heavy and wrong. I’m all fumbles. My cleats catch in the turf twice. In the second half, I trip over my own stick. Like a seventh grader. Just like on Friday night, my own body is a traitor.

  We lose: 1 to 3.

  After the game, we trudge out together in silence. We splinter off toward our cars, and I’m left trailing Liv and her parents, my ride home.

  Then there’s Grove, expecting something.

  I feel like I’m standing in the ocean, getting beaten by the surf. Everyone knows the only way through is to let go, to let the waves take you. But the last thing I want is to get taken.

  I walk faster and step hard in the middle of a puddle. Perfect.

  “Hey, Alamandar!” His voice snakes down my throat, finds the glass.

  I hurry to put in my earbuds, hoping he gets the hint.

  “Zoe?” He grabs my arm, the earbuds fall out.

  Heat and pain rush to my arm. I yank it back, glaring at him. “What?”

  His head snaps like I hit him. “Whoa.” He holds his hands up. “I get that you had a bad game, but you don’t need—”

  “How would you know anything about what I need?” I dig my nails into my palms. My fists are right there. Ready.

  Grove shakes his head like he’s clearing it, like it’s that easy to change things, to go back in time. “Look. I’m sorry if I screwed up somehow. Last I knew, we were having a great night and then you just … disappeared.”

  And I’m right back in the Before. How amazin
g it felt to be kissing him beneath the stars on my favorite lake in the world. It was one of the best nights until—and Reilly’s arm is at my throat. I cough. I can’t stop coughing.

  “Are you okay?” His arm reaches around my back.

  I jerk my shoulders away. “Don’t.”

  His eyebrows scrunch up. “I don’t get you at all.” His voice finds an edge. “You’re acting crazy. I just—”

  I step back, the tears pricking at my eyes. “Crazy.” The word burns. “Well, you better save yourself and run along.” I fumble to put my earbuds back in.

  “Fine. But for what it’s worth”—his voice rumbles low—“I liked the girl I hung out with on Friday. This girl”—he gestures toward me—“isn’t her.” And he walks away. Like it’s the easiest thing in the world.

  He keeps walking while the rain beats down. He doesn’t look back. Somehow I still got battered by the surf.

  * * *

  I fantasize about sneaking up on Dave Reilly and punching him until he falls down, and I’ll kick and kick and kick his stomach until he’s curled into a ball of tears and blood.

  But I say nothing. I do nothing. My bruises turn green at the edges, then purple like rotting fruit. I press my thumb into his thumbprint to see just how small I am. I press my thumb into my thigh, but I can never make a print like his.

  In the halls, I turn. Run. Hide.

  Grove stops trying to catch my eye. Sometimes I catch myself glancing his way during AP US History, out of habit. Liv asks me a dozen times what happened between us, but even she gives up. And I don’t answer.

  I can’t answer. Because I’m not even sure myself.

  My night with him got tangled up with what happened with Reilly, and I can’t look at Grove without seeing Reilly’s face, feeling his hands. I feel so pathetic and small it hurts.

  I find myself watching Nikki. Wondering how she gets up in the morning. How she gets dressed. How she looks in the mirror. How she talks to anyone. Because if I feel like this and Reilly didn’t even do anything, I can’t imagine how she must feel. I have a raging hatred for Jamison. My fists clench when I pass him. I imagine slamming him against the locker, jamming my stick against his neck until he chokes.