“Oh, I’m going to throw up,” I whispered. I held my stomach and tried to steady it through sheer willpower. Simone waited patiently until I looked up and nodded at her. “Sorry,” I said. “I won’t interrupt you again.”
Simone took a cigarette out of her purse. “I’m going to smoke if that’s OK,” she said.
I nodded, and she laid a soot-stained, empty lip balm tin decorated with enameled roses out on my bedspread—a travel ashtray. Even when her hands shook slightly as she lit the cigarette, I couldn’t help but admire the endless style of Simone Moody.
“Thank you,” she said, her shoulders lowering, visibly relaxing. She smiled tightly. “I’m just not used to it. Seeing people react, I mean.”
“You didn’t tell your parents?”
She smiled wryly. “Eventually. Right when it happened, I was kind of numb. I acted very . . . mechanically. Methodically. Like I was going down a checklist in my head of how someone should act in this situation. I even”—she smiled again here, shaking her head—“I even stopped at the pharmacy on my way home to get the morning-after pill. Stood there in line at the counter like a big girl and asked for it like it was the most natural thing in the world, like I was at Starbucks or something.”
“You didn’t go to the police?” I ventured.
She put her cigarette back into her mouth and shook her head silently. She was quiet for a moment and then sighed. “I didn’t know what to do,” she said simply. “I didn’t know if it . . . counted.”
“Counted as what?”
Simone looked me in the eyes. “As rape.”
I winced and she snorted. “See?” she said, pointing at me. “Even hearing the word is so . . . stark. Strange. It didn’t seem violent enough to me for it to count. For it to make sense for me to feel that bad. I mean”—she ticked it off on her fingers—“one: These weren’t strangers; two: I was voluntarily under the influence of alcohol and drugs, even though it wasn’t quite the incarnation of the drug I had purposefully taken; three: Maybe I had seemed totally OK and awake, maybe it wasn’t their fault, maybe this was just what grown-up drunk sex was. What did I know?” She flicked ash into her tin.
“Of course, now I know that just the fact that they put a drug I didn’t consent to taking in my drink would almost definitely translate into actionable assault charges,” she continued steadily. “And I wish I had gone and gotten a rape kit immediately. If only to scare the shit out of those disgusting, fucking creeps. But honestly, I don’t think they would have been convicted.”
“What!?” I sat bolt upright. “But it definitely would be assault. I’ve been watching Law & Order with my mom for over a decade. Believe me, it’s assault.”
She turned slightly to face me, smiling a sad, patronizing smile. “Technically, maybe by the letter of the law, it was assault and sexual misconduct. But think about it. Two rich boys with excellent lawyers go in front of the jury and say, ‘Oh, she was just drunk and now feels stupid about it; she was taking the ecstasy all on her own.’ I wouldn’t be able to deny it. I’d just end up looking like the slut I’m sure they would somehow make clear everyone already thought I was anyway. Just now I’d be a vindictive one.” I looked at her, appalled, and she shrugged. “I’m not saying it was the right move not to go all SVU on their asses. Just . . . I couldn’t face it. I handled it another way.”
I shook my head. “How did they get away with it? I can’t believe it.”
“And that is the point,” said Simone, stubbing out her cigarette. “Think about how you would have reacted if you had heard this story just after it happened. Two years ago. What you would have thought.”
I blanched. “It wouldn’t have made a difference,” I said quickly. “Drugged is drugged.”
Simone pursed her lips and looked at me so sternly, I had to look away. Miserable, I lay down on the bed, if only to avoid her gaze.
I would never have believed that that thing, that horrible thing I had been training my whole life to avoid, could have happened like that. So casually. Almost as a joke. Like snapping a girl’s bra strap in seventh grade. Sure, it was bad behavior, but nothing to get worked up about. Just boys being boys. Just spoiled, funny Pete and Burke being their normal, entitled selves.
I felt like I was rotting from the inside out as I pictured Simone steeling herself to walk back into school, knowing what she knew, not able to acknowledge it. Passing by a smirking Pete or Burke and wondering what everyone knew. If they were laughing.
“You had to go away,” I said. “I see.” My voice broke a little at the end.
If she had told me two years ago, I’d have blamed her. For being drunk. For liking sex. When had the world become so sneaky? Good and bad was supposed to be easily quantifiable. People doing bad, stupid shit to each other was a given, but everyone should at least be able to agree on what was bad and stupid. Instead, everything was blurry, seen through a scratched school bus window while your seatmate got carsick all over you.
I sat up finally. Simone was waiting for me, her mouth tight but her eyes dry and clear. I quickly wiped my eyes.
She took a deep breath and said, “So that’s the story of how I got my car.”
I nodded solemnly, and she burst out laughing, a hoarse, wild laugh. It was contagious.
Obviously, Simone calmed down first. Frowning, she said, “I hope Powers doesn’t shoot his big, slobbery mouth off about this. I’d rather not do this once a week.”
I nodded. “The last thing I’ll say about it is, my mom is a lawyer,” I ventured. I pictured my mom hearing this story, how her face would turn to stone and her eyes would blaze with focused rage.
It suddenly hit me that I hadn’t had an honest conversation—or really much conversation at all—with my mom in weeks and weeks. If I was being honest, maybe it had been longer.
I shoved that away. “If you ever want to talk to her . . . I bet the statute of limitations hasn’t run out.”
“Forget it. I’ve dealt with it. I’m done with it.”
I frowned. “You know, that is weird.”
“What is?”
I stood up and paced to my desk, then back across and over to the window. “Why would Grant drag this up now? I mean, he said he just found out, but that’s probably a lie. Even so, why would he come to me with it now, two years later? What does he care what I think about him or it?”
“He wants to make sure you still know what a sensitive, evolved man he is.” She shook her head. “All’s fair in love and ass-tapping, right?”
“But, my ass has pretty much been thoroughly tapped, no? I mean, mission accomplished, right?”
Sneering, she said, “Trev likes you. So does Jerry. Cool people talking up his former second-string groupie must have made him even more insecure than usual. No offense,” she added, inclining her head.
A tiny lightbulb exploded in my head. “Mason,” I said, sitting down heavily.
“What about him?”
My foot was at the threshold when Mason said, “You want a shot before you go? You’re having a hell of a week, I’m betting.”
“You said Pete and Burke had bought those capsules from Trev, right?” Blood was pounding through my veins, thunderously loud.
Before I could reach the door, my nerve endings started to bubble and fizz.
“Actually, no,” she said, sighing. “Poor Trev. Somehow I can’t help liking the dope. But, anyway, he only sold us the tabs, not the capsules. I’m not sure where the guys got the capsules.”
. . . the room flickered. As quickly as the colors had brightened, the world started turning black from the outside in, tunneling my vision until it disappeared completely.
“Kendall, are you OK? You look . . . gray.”
I had passed out in that basement, and wiry arms had caught me. Long, tapered arms, rigid with muscle, softened by golden hairs. Mason’s arms.
And then I woke up twelve hours later on stone steps, with no memories and a note: Hi Kendall. Don’t be mad.
&nbs
p; Suddenly Simone was in my face. “Hey,” she said, shaking me a little. “What’s wrong?”
I didn’t find out until later that the liquid doses did that.
The doses. The fucking “doses.” Liquid doses, designed to do that.
“Kendall? Wake up!”
I looked at her, my eyes wide. “Grant got the liquid doses from Mason. Mason sells those drugs. And I’ve been delivering them.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Well, fuck,” said Simone, pacing my room and lighting her third cigarette. She paused for a moment and then started pacing again, shaking her head. “Fuck.”
“Do you have to chain-smoke?” I whisper-moaned, face in my hands. “I’m getting a headache.”
“Yes, Kendall, this is really very bad,” she continued, yanking the window open. “You realize what this means, right? You’ve been working on behalf of a roofie dealer, protecting his interests, fraternizing. . . . I’m going to fucking smoke.”
“I can’t remember if I sold anyone capsules,” I whispered. Everything had been in unmarked pill bottles. I hadn’t known to check for tablets versus capsules. “Oh god. Oh god, did I?”
At my wail, Simone collected herself. “I’m not angry at you,” she said, leaning against the desk. “You are not the enemy. They are the enemy.” She kicked the desk. “But, god, look at how I’m looked at! Look at how you’re looked at. I know exactly how people see me, Kendall, and it’s why I didn’t go to the police. It’s why they got away with it.” She balled up her fist. “This is the way it is, and girls like you and me are going to continue to participate in the system, because celibacy is the only alternative, and we’re human beings with desires, and that’s not fucking fair either. It’s fucking criminal.” She laughed, sounding manic. “There oughta be a law, right?”
I stared at her. “That’s it? You just accept it?”
Her eyes narrowed. “I’ve had to.”
Hearing Simone say those words sent a shudder through my body. I made a decision.
“Unless I finally take Gilly’s advice and go to the police,” I said. She looked at me. “Do you have enough to take to the police?” I could go to Rockford, but without hard evidence he might just tell me to stay out of it again. I needed to show him I had access to the drugs. I thought back to the office, to the new stock I had seen Mason lock in the desk. There was just a combination lock on it now—I could pick it. I had my phone, filled with addresses and names. I nodded.
“What about YATS? I doubt Howell’s going to rat you out for the suspension, but selling drugs. . . . That’s a different story.”
I thought about how much I had already done to keep that dream. Lying, spying, breaking into lockers. Selling drugs. I thought about how much I had wanted to escape my life, how desperate I was for a new one. Well, I’d certainly gotten a new life now.
Then I thought about why I had needed to escape my old life, what had gotten me excommunicated in the first place: I was a slut. I had called myself a slut just before Jo knocked my lights out.
And people thought Simone was a slut, and so Burke and Pete got away with rape.
I stood up and paced. Maybe we were sluts. But thinking of that as a bad thing had sent me down a criminal wormhole and Simone to the woods.
I stood up and looked at Simone. “We are not worthless because we wanted to have sex,” I told her. “I’m going to Rockford.”
Simone didn’t answer. But she did stub out her cigarette, walk over, and hug me.
She didn’t quite know how to do it. Her arms tangled around my neck, and she conscientiously kept her mouth away from my hair. But she hugged me, tight. And said, “Thank you.”
Later that night, a few hours after Simone left, I found my mom sitting alone in the kitchen with yet another glass of wine.
“Where’s Dad?” I asked, standing in the doorway. Silently, she pointed to the chair across from her. I took it, and she grabbed an empty wineglass from the counter behind her, filled it with the sauvignon blanc, and pushed it toward me.
I accepted carefully, scanning her face for red flags but finding nothing but slight circles under her eyes. “Thank you,” I said finally.
Only when I was mid-sip did she speak. “I fixed your suspension,” she told me, her voice neutral.
“Really? How?”
She smiled wryly. “It may have escaped your notice, Kendall, but some people find me quite intimidating. I called your principal this morning. After calling two members of the board who owe me favors.”
“Wow . . . I mean . . . thanks. Thank you, Mom. That’s amazing.” She definitely looked tired, but, watching her sip wine, it occurred to me that only I would be able to tell that. Any stranger would just see the straight spine, the sleek golden bob, the implausibly dewy skin; to a stranger, she was simply not to be fucked with.
“Thanks, Mom,” I repeated, not sure what else there was to say.
She laughed a short, ugly laugh. “Yeah, well. It’s my job, right?”
I stiffened. “Are you mad at me?”
She opened her mouth and then pressed it shut, laughing that same unfamiliar laugh.
“What?” I asked, getting more nervous the longer she laughed. Mom got up. “I don’t know, Kendall. I know that I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
She looked at me with the look she used to smoke out liars.
“For messing up. Apparently I no longer know my daughter, and she seems to be just fine with that. So I’ve failed. So don’t thank me. I did what I do; I defended my client. Just not my daughter.”
She walked out of the kitchen, leaving me alone with my shock and my wine.
×
Instead of going to school the next day, I simply cut and took the train to the Upper West Side. It didn’t matter anymore what I did. It didn’t matter how many suspensions I weaseled my way out of. I was going to be disgraced no matter what.
The office door was locked. I knew it would be. But, as Simone had said, in for a penny, in for a pound.
I had done my homework last night, even stooping to consult a site called TheArtofManliness.com. I reviewed the notes in my head and studied the door.
Luckily it opened away from me. I stepped away from the door and raised my right leg, bringing my knee in close to my hip, balancing myself with outstretched elbows. I pulled my knee in a little closer and then kicked straight out, right next to the lock. The wood splintered but didn’t break.
Maybe I’m just not manly enough to kick down a door. I pulled my leg back up and shot it forward again, into the door.
“What are you doing here?” slurred a familiar male voice. I lost my balance and twisted to the ground onto my knees, straining a muscle in my groin.
“Simone’s home sick, and I came up to see her during my free period,” I lied, turning around. “Hey, Jerry.”
Jerry looked ragged. His eyes were wide with fatigue, and the hair around his temples was sweaty and disheveled. Pale and shaky, he nodded dismissively and moved past me toward the door, unlocking it without commenting on the battered lock. He flung himself sideways onto the couch, stretched his arms out over his head, and sighed.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, sitting down on the metal chair he’d deposited me in our first time together in this office.
“Napping,” he grumbled, with his eyes still shut.
He was way too tall for that couch. His feet were dangling off the edge. “Why don’t you nap in your own apartment?” I asked, studying him. Was he drunk? At eleven in the morning?
“It’s quieter here.” He opened his eyes and took a second focusing them on me. When he finally seemed to see me, he asked, his voice harsh, “How have your deliveries been going?”
“They’ve been going fine.”
“No one’s been giving you any trouble?”
Did he care? “No. Or nothing I haven’t been able to handle.”
I got up and dragged my chair closer to the couch. He nodded briefly, and his eyes seem
ed to shut of their own accord.
I took a chance. “Mind if I ask you a question?”
Jerry opened one eye. “If I answer, will you go away and let me sleep?”
“For sure.” He nodded. “Why were you talking to Vin and Rockford about me?”
Jerry sat up, rubbing his eyes. He glared at me. “You had to bring that up?”
“Um, they kidnapped me. Forgive me for being curious.”
Jerry pulled out a cigarette with a resigned look on his face. “Me talking to Rockford wasn’t anything sinister,” he said, putting it in his mouth. “We’re friendly. They go to Columbia, too. We hung out some last semester.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Does Mason know about that?”
He laughed as he shook out a match. “He introduced us.”
I paused while I digested that information. How long had Rockford been after Mason?
“But why did you tell them about me?” I asked. The factors didn’t add up. “I understand how you know them, but why would you think they would be interested in a high school girl being blackmailed by Mason? Unless . . .”
I stopped talking. Jerry was looking at me through wary eyes. I looked down at his fingers and saw that they were fidgeting around his cigarette.
Unless he knew that Rockford was looking for some way into Mason’s routine, Jerry would have had no reason to mention me. So there were two options: Either Jerry believed himself to be helping a rival dealer, and was therefore secretly working against Mason, or . . .
Jerry knew that Rockford was a cop.
“How did you start working for Mason?” I asked, trying to sound casual.
Jerry exhaled. “Mason knew I needed money. What’s your excuse?”
I recoiled. “You know why I’m doing this. I’m being blackmailed. I don’t have a choice!”
He looked at me blankly and then laughed. “Oh, right. You won’t get to go to Space Camp. How terrifying.” He smiled at me in a way that seemed fond. “I’m glad Rockford hasn’t been bothering you anymore. Getting involved with him raises the stakes a little bit.”
“To what?”
“Freedom.” He practically spat out the word, and suddenly I understood. Jerry had to talk to Rockford or he would be arrested. He would go to jail.
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