by Sandra Block
“Ah,” I say with some relief. “The revenge plan, right.” I smooth the armrest of the fake brown leather. Then I stand up, walking over to the windowsill. “Here’s the thing. I’ve been thinking about that…”
He leans back in the couch. “You don’t want to do it?”
“No, it’s not that. I do want to do it. It’s just…” I turn toward the window, the rows of gray streetlights below. A car zooms by. “I don’t want to drag you into all this. This is my fight. You are under no obligation here.”
“I know,” he says, seemingly undeterred. “It’s not about obligation. I want to.”
“Yeah, but I don’t even know what’s going to be involved. It could be dangerous. We could get in trouble.” I throw up my hands. “All sorts of things.”
“I’m fine with that.”
“Right. But I’m not sure if I’m fine with that.”
James sucks in his lower lip, then stares down at the coffee table. His face is blurrily reflected on the veneer. “I couldn’t help my sister,” he says in a deep voice. “She got hurt, and she jumped. And I have to live with that.” He looks up at me. “But I can help you.”
“James,” I say, softly. “This isn’t about Ramona.”
“No. I know that. But…” He puts his hands on his knees. “It’s just… I like you. And I want to help you.”
“I like you too,” I admit. “But we hardly know each other.”
“True. And you have no reason to trust me.” He squares his body to me. “But I promise that you can. I’m…” He pauses, searching for the right phrase. “I’m like…a QWERTY keyboard.”
I stare at him in confusion.
“No, that’s not quite right…” He drums his fingers on his thigh, thinking. “I’m…WYSIWYG,” he says with a decisive nod. “That’s it. I’m WYSIWYG.”
I stare at him another second. “I’m sorry. I really don’t understand.”
“WYSIWYG,” he says, as if it’s obvious. “‘What you see is what you get.’ It’s a type of programming. Lets you program without even knowing code. That’s me. Easy. What you see is what you get. No surprises.”
Smiling at this, I sit back down. “You’re WYSIWYG.”
“A hundred percent.”
I consider this. I don’t trust many people, for obvious reasons. I trust Eli. That’s about it. Not Shoshana, not Daisy, not even my parents really. But James is WYSIWYG. And a little piece of me wonders if I could trust him too.
“Okay,” I say. “Let’s do it.”
• • •
James reaches over to pet Simone, who purrs in delight.
“First off,” I say. “We need to have rules.”
“Uh-huh. Rules are good.” He glances at his laptop on the coffee table. “Should I write this down?”
“Oh, no. I don’t think we need to. It’s really just one basic rule, as I see it,” I say. “We can do whatever we have to do to get justice. But we can’t physically hurt anyone.”
He scratches his chin, which I notice has the tiniest cleft. “That makes sense. I’d rather not hurt anyone either.” He takes his hand away from his chin and starts stroking Simone again, his biceps rippling with the motion. “So what exactly do you mean by justice?”
“Good question,” I say and reach over to the plate of Rice Krispies Treats on the coffee table. “Prison.”
“Prison,” he repeats.
“Do you want one?” I ask, between chews.
He shakes his head. “I hate Rice Krispies Treats.”
This almost makes me chuckle. WYSIWYG. He would have told Brandon he wasn’t a fan.
“Anyway,” I say, “prison. That’s it, quite simply. I just want to put each and every one of them in jail where they belong. Where they should have gone for what they did to me in the first place.”
He uncrosses his arms, and Simone takes the opportunity to mold her body against him. “How do we get them there?” he asks.
I brush some Krispies off my jeans. “Obviously not for the rape. Because no one ever goes to jail for that. And I’m not dealing with the police.”
“Right.”
“So, we frame them for something else. Anything else that works.”
He squints, thinking. “And if we have to lie and cheat to do it?”
“So be it.”
“That’s not against the rules, then?”
“Not at all.”
He crosses his arms, “Good then. We have rules. So, who should we nail first?”
I smile at him, quite taken with his enthusiasm, and swallow the last of my Rice Krispies Treat. “Okay. Let’s be methodical here.”
“Methodical. Yes. Good.”
“We have four men in all,” I say. “Three should be easy to identify. The guy filming will be harder.”
“Agreed,” he says.
“We know the first guy, rapist number one. Terry Somebody, from my Civ Ed class.”
James starts typing into the laptop.
Rapist #1—Terry BLANK.
Rapist #2—unknown.
Rapist #3—unknown. Redhead.
Rapist #4—unknown. Filming.
We both stare at the computer screen, acutely aware of how little we actually know.
“Not looking promising,” I say, voicing our predicament.
James stares at the screen another moment, then nods his head, as if he’s reached a decision. “We need a funnel.”
I turn to him. “A funnel?”
“Yes.”
“I…I don’t know.” I glance around the apartment. “I probably have one in the kitchen somewhere.”
“No, not that. An informational funnel. Cloudlock. EverString. That sort of the thing.”
I shake my head. “Different language, James.”
“A data funnel. So we can find these guys. We need to start with the correct data, then funnel it.”
I’m still staring at him blankly, which he registers. “Here, let me show you.” He starts typing. “What’s it called again, the Hawk Place?”
“Hawk Club,” I correct him. “It’s a final club.”
James moves in toward the screen. “Which is…?”
“Kind of like a fraternity. Only snobbier.”
He moves farther in toward the screen, while Simone takes the opportunity to crawl onto his lap. “So that’s our first data set. The names of all the members.”
“Yeah, but how do we get that?”
He shrugs. “We hack into it.”
“Ah,” I say with approval. “Of course we do.” I chuck him on the shoulder. “You are so smart, James Gardner.” He smiles, self-consciously. I feel a bit foolish, like a kid playing detective or something. But there’s no script for this. No Revenging-Your-Rape-for-Dummies out there.
“So step one, we identify them,” he says. “Step two, we frame them.”
“And step three,” I say, “we watch them wriggle on the hook.”
He smiles. “I think that’s my favorite step.”
“Me too,” I agree. I stare at his computer screen, a Wikipedia page on Harvard final clubs. “Step two is going to be the hardest one though. Framing them for something.”
Again, we pause, considering this. “It might help to do some field research,” James says.
“Go on.”
“It wasn’t really my thing. But my friend Allison did it. She watched meerkats for an entire summer. This could be kind of like that.”
“Interesting,” I say, warming to the idea. “Only hawks instead of meerkats.” I push the plate of Rice Krispies to the side. “I like it. We examine them in their natural habitat to plumb out any weak areas. Come up with something plausible but illegal and then…”
“Step three,” he says, and we both grin. As I shift on the couch, my knee touches his. Not a
light touch, more of a smack. Bone on bone. We stare at each other for a second. Then a loud knock rings out, and we both turn to the door as it squeaks open.
“Hey,” Eli says, cradling a six-pack of beer.
• • •
Eli surveys us both.
“I didn’t know you had company,” he says, but he doesn’t motion to leave. James stares at him, and there’s an awkward pause while we wait for him to suggest he come back another time, and he doesn’t.
“That’s okay. Come on in,” I say.
Simone jumps off James and struts over to rub against Eli. She is a fickle one, my cat. Eli wanders over to the coffee table and leans over to peer at the screen.
“What’s that?” he asks with a startled glance at the Hawk Club web search.
James closes the program out. “Nothing.”
Eli straightens back up. “Didn’t look like nothing.” His beer bottles clink in the carrier while he sits down on the opposite couch.
“It’s a project we’re doing,” I say.
“For work?” he asks, dubious.
“Kind of,” I answer, then exchange a look with James.
“What, is it top secret or something?” Eli asks. He uncaps a beer bottle, then pulls one out to offer James, who shakes his head.
“I’ll tell you,” I say, “only if you promise not to get mad.”
“Right.” Simone leaps up onto his lap, and he takes a long sip of beer. “Because you always listen to what I think.”
“We’re planning something,” I say.
“Okay…I’ll play. What are you planning?”
“Revenge,” I answer.
“Revenge,” he says, then stares at me. Simone taps at the beer bottle with her paw, and he pulls it away. “Revenge for what, may I ask?”
I fold my arms across my chest. “Revenge for raping me.”
A heavy, uncomfortable silence follows my statement. “What do you mean?” A tremor ripples in his voice.
“I mean that I’m taking revenge on everyone who raped me. And James is helping.”
Eli keeps staring at me. He doesn’t blink. “You’re not serious.”
“As the plague,” I answer.
“Wow.” Eli stands up from the couch as Simone leaps off him. “Wow,” he repeats and starts walking back and forth, shaking his head. “Can I just say that this seems like an extremely bad idea?”
“Why is that?” James asks. His tone is level, not belligerent, but not exactly friendly either.
“Well, let’s see.” Eli keeps pacing, not even looking at him. “Pissing off a bunch of rapists. Ripping open a nearly healed wound. I mean, really. What could possibly go wrong?”
“Maybe this will help to heal the wound,” I say.
“And maybe it won’t.” Eli stops and turns to me, purposefully ignoring James. “You don’t even know these people. You could be poking a bear here.”
“Yeah, well, some bears deserve to be poked.”
He shakes his head. “There are always consequences with these things,” Eli says. “Unintended consequences.”
“You’re right,” I say. “I will be giving them consequences. That they surely did not intend.”
Eli sits down again, putting his hands in a prayer position under his chin. “This is not a good idea. You don’t want to go back there, Dahl. Remember what it was like? What you were like?”
I don’t answer him, and he sits on the couch, staring at the floor for a little while, before he nods, probably realizing there’s no point in continuing that argument. He inhales sharply and stands up from the couch. Simone turns her head to watch him leave. When he gets to the door, he puts his hand on the knob and turns back to me. “Promise me you’ll think about this, okay?”
I nod. It’s not a lie. I’ll be thinking about it a lot.
“Because I don’t want to see you get hurt,” he says, his jaw clenching. “And maybe you don’t care about that, Dahlia. But I do.”
Chapter Nineteen
James
I look around my empty apartment.
Maybe I should get a cat. I never really liked cats, but I wasn't ever close to one before tonight. And Simone was nice and soft. When she purred, the sensation was surprisingly calming. Perfect sine waves of vibration.
Ramona always loved cats. I think she would have liked Dahlia too.
But here we go, back to Ramona. Circular thinking, Jamal calls it, where I’m constantly going back to what I could have done, what I should have done. Like an if-then statement that loops around endlessly.
So I won’t think of Ramona.
I’ll think of Dahlia and how close we were in the kitchen. How I leaned into her, her warm skin, her soapy clean smell, and her smile that is like sunshine. How our knees touched each other.
My cell phone vibrates on the table and I see on the screen that it's my mom. I haven’t called her back in two weeks, which makes me feel guilty, so I answer.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Hi, James. You okay?”
“Yeah, sure, Mom. I’m okay.”
She speaks English with a heavy accent and imperfect grammar. But I only speak a tiny bit of Japanese, so I shouldn’t talk. She says the problem with English is “the rules don’t make sense.” My mom is a math professor at a little college in Maine, my father a physics professor—they’re both big on rules. Which is probably why it hurt so much, when Ramona broke them.
“How is work?” she asks.
“Okay,” I answer. My mom knows I don’t talk much, but she doesn’t take it personally. Dad doesn’t talk much either.
“No problems?”
“No,” I say. She knows about the bad review when I first got hired and the few meetings with Grayson. “Things are good now.”
“How is…Jamal?” I can tell by her voice that the question makes her uncomfortable, but she asks it anyway.
“Fine.”
“You coming for Christmas? Your father wants you to.”
I pause a second. “Um…okay.” I doubt Dad actually wants me to, but I can’t think of an excuse not to. After all, they live only four hours away. And I will hopefully have my car back by then. Otherwise, they would have to face the holiday alone. The first Christmas without Rob. And Ramona.
“Good,” she says with relief. “Your father is so happy then.”
“Okay,” I say, though I’m not so sure about that. “I gotta go. I’ll call soon, okay?”
“Okay,” she answers, and we hang up.
I sit down on the couch, listening to the clock ticking, and think of sitting next to her. So close that our knees bumped. Another one to stow away in the good things file.
Jamal suggested I write them down in a journal so when I’m feeling sad, I can look through the pages and remember all the good things in my life. Part of the remolding my brain thing. I once kept a journal in high school for English class. I wrote a poem in there for this girl Sarah Gibbons and gave it to her. She said it was creepy though, and I never wrote anyone a poem again. But if I wrote a poem to Dahlia, it would go like this:
I like you.
I like everything about you.
I like your black eyebrows. I like the notch in your clavicle. I like the way your voice is soft and brave at the same time. You smile a lot but when no one is looking, you always seemed sad, and now I understand why. They say I can’t read faces but sometimes I can.
And I could read your face all day.
Chapter Twenty
Five Years Ago
It isn’t so easy to kill yourself.
I don’t have a gun. I don’t take any medication, except Motrin once in a while, and any Google search will tell you that won’t do it. I could try hanging, but I’d probably fuck it up and end up as a vegetable. I could go the carbon monoxide route, but I don’t own a ca
r or a garage. I don’t have the nerve to jump in front of a car (and again, run the risk of ending up paraplegic, but not quite dead). And I hate the sight of blood too much to cut my wrists.
It isn’t easy to kill yourself. But then again, it isn’t easy to live either.
I spend three days holed up in my room with Daisy and Quinn bringing me food from the dining hall, whispering in the hallway outside.
Should we call someone?
I don’t know. Would she be mad at us?
Maybe we should just give her some time. She’s been through a lot.
I lie in my bed all day. Sleep is bliss when it comes. Usually it doesn’t. My body hurts. My face hurts. My head hurts. I hold my pee until my bladder is bursting because even with the antibiotics, it hurts too much to go. I think of them touching me under the heat of the lamp, the doctor debating whether he should stitch me or not. But I don’t want to think about that.
Thinking is dangerous. Closing my eyes is dangerous. I could fall into a panicky swirl of darkness and grabbing and distorted laughter and pain. But I don’t even know what’s real right now. I don’t remember anything. My memories feel like a pastiche of rape scenes from movies or news shows. And that is the utterly worst part of the whole thing: I don’t remember. Only brief flashes. Birds chirping. Men in a line. I don’t know what’s real and what isn’t, and I can’t even trust my brain.
On the fourth day, there is a knock on the door.
I don’t answer. I don’t open it.
But the door opens anyway, and in walks my mom and my younger sister, Shoshana.
My mom’s face tells me everything. “Oh, Dahlia.” She hones right in on me, hugging me with blankets and all, while Shoshana stands awkwardly at the foot of the bed.
I start crying. I haven’t cried since the rape. I haven’t had any tears left.
“It’s okay,” she coos. She is rubbing my back. Nothing has ever felt so good. The bed rocks as Shoshana sits down at my feet. “You want to come home?” my mom asks.
I shake my head. “I have to go to classes.”
“Take the semester off, honey. You can do that. I can talk to them.”
I shake my head again. I am still crying. “I can’t.”
