by Zack Smedley
“But I want you to feel like you can, bud. That’s the key. If you’re ever in trouble—and this goes for college, too—I don’t want your first thought to be, ‘My parents are going to kill me.’ No matter what it is, how much money it’ll cost, however late in the night … Anytime you’re in trouble, I want your first thought to always be, ‘I need to talk to my mom and dad.’”
I let that sink in.
“And your dad … right now, he’s just processing all this,” she adds. “When he gets back, let me talk to him.”
“Mom.” I hold both hands in front of me like I’m trying to hand her something. “When has that ever, ever worked?”
TWO
March 10th—Senior Year
Journal:
Look what I did.
That was the mantra that turned around in my head as Austin drove me home from the school, the Lanham bus having just dropped us off. My attempt to confront Lily on the bus had fallen apart, and my stomach churned the whole car ride home.
I squeezed my eyes shut against a thousand images from only ten hours ago.
Squirming.
Saying stop.
Again and again and again.
Light the color of blood.
Can’t breathe.
Breathe.
(Can’t.)
“Here we are, sir,” Austin said. We were in front of my house. He tried to meet my eyes. “Are you good? You seem quiet.”
I slipped the mask back on and grinned. “Yeah, totally. My stomach’s just upset.”
“Probably my driving, sorry. Hey—so much respect for coming out yesterday, man. We’ve got your back. Obviously.”
I nodded.
“You sure you’re good?”
“I’m just tired.” Always the lie.
“I feel that—get some sleep. Enjoy spring break. If you need anything, just say the word.”
I stumbled through my front door. My parents sat blinking at me from the living room, and I remembered the text I’d sent them. My brain knew they were processing my coming out and all, but my body was waiting for them to offer help after what had happened to it.
How do you not see? How can you not TELL? I wanted to yell at them. I felt physically exhausted, like I’d spent all night hauling bags of cement. Worn. Surely I should’ve had some mark on me—blood caked around a wound or scars on my body.
(Nothing.)
Finally Dad said, “Are you in or are you out? Shut the damn door.”
It happened all at once: I choked on my breath, then the contents of my stomach started to come with it. I swallowed hard to force it back down, but a bit of bile leaked its way through my teeth onto our living room floor. Both of my parents were on their feet now, and I was waiting for Dad to curse or yell about me ruining the goddamn carpet, but all he said was, “Buddy!” the same time as Mom saying, “Owen, sweetheart.” Soon my throat was on fire, Mom was behind me with a glass of water, and my father was on his hands and knees with paper towels to wipe up my mess.
Look what I did.
“Let’s get you upstairs, hon,” Mom said. Her hands hovered near my shoulders. “Okay to touch you?”
My head whipped back and forth.
“Alright, no big deal,” she said. There she was, same as always—the mom who’s not fazed by the crisis in front of her. “Steve, have you got—”
“I’ve got this handled,” he said definitively, his voice making me jump. He pointed at the stairs. “You get him all squared away. He looks like death warmed up.”
I hated everything about this. Now they were here and fawning over me exactly as I’d wanted them to do two seconds ago but it was only because I threw up and
LOOK WHAT I DID!
I blinked and I was in my bed in my boxers. Mom was next to me asking, “Do you want me to get anything?” I shook my head again.
“Buddy?” she said next, and it was in that tentative way she used before saying something risky. “I know you’re not up to talking right now, and we can do that later. But before you go to sleep, it’s important to me that I let you know I’m proud of you for sending us that text. And everything you’re worrying about right now … it’s all going to work out.”
Thrashing. The hand over my mouth. Pressure on my chest. Paralysis.
“It really is. And neither of us are upset with you in any way—I’m not; your dad isn’t—and we both love you. So much. Okay?”
Look what I did.
LOOK WHAT—
“Can you nod to let me know you heard me?” I did.
“Okay, bud.” She made a kissing sound instead of actually doing it.
I looked over to my dirty clothes.
It was my last thought before I slipped into a world of darkened, violent nightmares.
Look what I did. Look what I did. Look what I did.
I woke up disgusting: Vomit aftertaste coated my mouth. Sweat soaked my body and matted down my hair, sticking it to my scalp. When I checked my phone, I had one text—it was from Lily:
Soo how’d your parents react?? :)
I wriggled out of my underwear, ripped the sweat-soaked sheets off the bed, and threw everything in the wash.
THREE
I GET LILY’S TEXT THE DAY AFTER COLLEGE SHOPPING with Mom:
Can I come over for a bit to talk?
I cycle through all the blistering responses I want to send. How I refuse to be her doormat. How I should’ve called her out on everything sooner. How what she did was wrong.
But I owe her a goodbye that doesn’t involve us biting each other’s heads off under the bleachers. Plus, there’s one thing that I need to hear straight from her own mouth: an admission of guilt.
Lily finds me in the Studio, just as I finish writing about a boy who lives with flowers and on anniversaries they give each other bouquets of humans. I’ve left the door open so sunlight fills up the space. The air is humid and smells like a summer morning.
“Knock-knock,” she says. She’s in white shorts and a blue tank top with sunflowers all over it—totally dressed for the weather. Seeing her splashes my insides with ice water. I thumb my bracelet.
“Coffee—how’d I know you’d do that?” Lily asks, grimacing at me as I hand her one of the two mugs on my desk.
As we sit down on opposite ends of the Studio couch—everything silent except for the cicadas in the yard—I realize I have no idea how to begin. I try to let myself calmly drift through the moment. Because I’m indifferent to this, right? This isn’t going to be one of those bullshit scenarios where she says sorry for everything, and I fall on my knees like, ‘That’s okay, let’s forgive and forget, see how cute we are!’
“What’s that?” I ask her. I’ve just noticed a shopping bag at her feet.
“Oh.” Lily blushes. “This is your stuff. That you left at my house.” Right.
“There’s also a gift I was going to give you for graduation, but don’t feel like you have to keep it,” she says. “I just didn’t have anything else to do with it.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
For a few long minutes, there we sit—sipping our drinks, scoffing at the awkwardness of not speaking. We stare out at the lawn, then to each other, then at the lawn again.
“It’s good to see you,” Lily blurts out. “I realized when I was walking over, I think this is the longest we’ve gone without seeing each other. It was, what … eighteen days?”
“Yeah … wow. Nope, wait,” I say, pointing at her. “There was the trip you took to Boston a few summers ago. That was three weeks.”
“Ooh, you’re right. Damn, dude.”
As much as I hate to admit it, there’s an intense ache at seeing her curled up on the couch in here again. Like if I could just wipe my mind of what happened, we could return to being our happy little selves and invite the others over for a movie night. But this is where we are. Here.
“Okay,” Lily says, grabbing at invisible rope. “Can we just … rip the scab off?”
I tuck my knees
up on the couch so I can face her. “Sure.” She mimes tearing off a piece of skin.
“I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about our argument,” she continues. “I said some … really not-okay stuff to you.” “Yeah. You did.”
She shakes her head. “O, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, for everything I said, all of it. I’ll spend the rest of my life saying that if that’s what you want.”
Nice try. “I wouldn’t bother.”
I wait for the return jab, but it never comes. Instead she nods along with me.
“That’s fair,” she says. “I’ve been thinking—first of all, are you okay talking about this?”
I fold my arms behind my head. “Am I okay with, like, talking about the Lanham trip? Sure. But to be honest, this whole thing has sort of screwed me up, and I’m not interested in you putting it under a microscope to try and explain why it shouldn’t have screwed me up. That would be shitty.”
“Wait. Is that what you think I’m here for?” She balks at me. “I’m not. Promise.”
“I don’t want to get back together.”
“I’m not here for that either.”
“Alright.”
“But I wasn’t okay with just … leaving things, you know? I want closure; I know you want it too, and that was important to me because, I mean … I love you.” She winces. “I hope that’s okay to say. You have no idea how much this has been weighing on me.”
I nod, wincing back. Everything about this hurts.
She drains her cup, turning away from me. Then, “Your desk has the corner chipped off it.”
“Yeah. It’s a problem.”
“Okay. Just making sure you knew.”
God damn do I miss her—the old Lily. If only she were still in there.
She’s not, idiot.
Shut up, I’ve got this.
“Question for you,” says Lily, now talking to her fingernails. She bites one of them.
“You shouldn’t do that.” “Ask a question?” “Bite your nails.”
“Oh.” She stops for a second, then starts chewing on a different one. “Question. Other than the Lanham trip, do you think things were … going well? For us.”
I snap at my bracelet again, mulling it over. “Mostly. But you never took no for an answer.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about.”
“That’s what I’m talking about. Not just the trip—before. No matter what it was, things always had to be your way.” I point to the patch of wall above my desk. “Remember the wreath?”
A few Christmases ago, I bought my first holiday decoration for the Studio—this artificial wreath made out of green garland. It looked awesome. Lily said it looked tacky, and I said whatever.
Then we were doing homework in here a few days later, and I went inside to get us a snack. When I came back out, I found that Lily had taken the shiny wreath down and put up a newer, more expensive one she’d bought herself.
She wrinkles her nose at me.
“You were mad about that?” she asks. “The new one looked better! Everyone agreed with me.”
“I didn’t.” I shake my head. “You’ve never taken no for an answer—that’s the problem. And you didn’t that night at Lanham.”
“Just to be clear, this isn’t me contradicting you, but I didn’t hear you that night.”
“Wait.” That throws me off. “You didn’t?”
“No! That’s why I was so upset when you called it rape.” Her voice buckles. “I wasn’t trying to make light of it; of course that’s valid. Now, I don’t know how many rapes are committed by a partner—”
“I do: It’s one in three.”
“But my point is that, I think for it to be—that—it would mean the person intentionally did it. And I want to be really clear, what happened was still not okay, at all—”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“No, it wasn’t,” she echoes me, nodding. “But it’s like murder: If it’s not intentional, it’s not murder anymore … it’s manslaughter, right? It’s just … the connotations of the word, that bothered me. That’s all.”
“Okay, well. Three things with that,” I say with a scowl. “First of all, manslaughter is the name for third-degree murder, so yeah, that would still count.”
“Alright, didn’t know that—”
“Second of all, even if they were different, manslaughter’s not a whole lot better—”
“Yeah, this analogy worked better in my head—”
“—third of all, no matter what it’s called, you still fucking killed the guy!”
She doesn’t respond.
“This is getting stupid,” I say to the floor, putting my head in my hands. “It doesn’t matter what you call it. It happened. I’m not comfortable sweeping it under the rug.”
Lily gives me an upturned palm, like, that’s fair. “It’s intentions versus actions. It goes without—I hope it goes without saying that I didn’t mean to upset you that night.”
“No. I mean, yes. I guess.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Lily says. “Whether I meant to or not, that’s what happened.”
I don’t like how tepid the word “upset” is, but I nod.
“And that’s our problem. Right? Because I can tell you a million times that I didn’t mean to. But there’s no way for me to prove it.”
Don’t let her derail this.
“That day under the bleachers,” I say. “As soon as you found out I was the one who got assaulted on the trip. You didn’t ask me who did it.”
She blinks. “Huh?”
“You didn’t ask me who did it.” I force myself to stare her down. “You already knew it was you. How could you know that, if you didn’t think you’d done anything wrong?”
Lily shakes her head, rubbing her eyes. “Because you spent the whole trip with me. Oh my God, wait—did someone else do something to you?” She looks horrified.
“No.” I rub my eyes too, then regroup. “Okay. Fine. How about after the trip? We never had sex after that. I made sure we never got the chance.”
“So?”
“You never brought that up either. You never asked me why it stopped; it should’ve been a clue, but you didn’t say a word. It’s like you already knew why.”
“Wh—or, I could tell that you didn’t want to, and I was respecting that! I didn’t want to pressure you by bringing it up.”
Silence.
Her airtight explanations have me all turned around. Ten minutes ago, I was prepared to nail her to the wall with an avalanche of evidence. But the thing is: Could I actually be wrong here? The more I talk about this, the more I realize how many of my conclusions were based off assumptions. I was never taught any of this shit. Maybe it’s like she’s saying, where it wasn’t rape—wow, that is a strong word—but instead some wild miscommunication, a tempest in a teapot. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been wrong about how the world works.
And that’s just it: She’s the one who showed me how the world works. Here she is, offering reasonable explanations for everything … and here I am, trying to school the person who wrote my rulebook.
“This is random, but before I forget, what’s your plan for senior week?” Lily says. “Are you still going to go?”
Shit—I forgot about that. Our group was going to spend a week hanging out at a beach house owned by Austin’s grandparents.
“I’m fine with you going,” she says. “But don’t feel like you have to.”
I don’t say anything.
“I think that’s the worst part of the breakup for me,” she continues. “That our group won’t be the same, and these are supposed to be the best days. I don’t know.” She shrugs. “If there was one strong argument for staying together, that’d be it.”
I study her for a long time.
“Is that what you’re suggesting?” I ask.
She pauses. “I don’t want to pretend I don’t want to do that. Right? Like, being honest … would I love if I could just reach over and
hug you, and catch you up on everything from these past few weeks, and we’d go back to normal? Obviously. Do I think this misunderstanding—which you have every right to be upset about—is worth how much it’s going to suck spending the summer alone? No. But I’ll do whatever you want to do. I want to be really clear I’m not trying to like … force you.”
The feeling of her saying she misses me—that someone misses me—spreads warmth through my whole body. Because I associate everything with her. I associate snow days with her … curled up on this couch drinking hot chocolate and talking to my first friend in life. I associate summer nights with her—the rush of the end-of-year celebrations. I think of Christmas, and I think of her. She was the first person I ever gave a gift to, other than my parents. And the first person to ever give me one.
And most of all—above all else—at the end of the day, I want her to be right. I want this to be trivial enough to just forget about. I want Lily to still be that kind, golden-hearted girl I remember, the one who introduced me to the group and helped me come out and bought me shoes with her own money.
I want this erased.
Damn it. I’m trying to hold onto my resolve, that determination from when she walked in here. But I’ve forgotten what that angry voice in my head sounds like.
I ask her, “How would this work?”
She smiles her old smile. “Well. What I think we should do is just … wipe the whole slate clean. Which, I think is a good idea for two reasons.” As always, she’s got a plan. “The first is mostly for you. These next few weeks are going to be … well, hopefully amazing. I mean … our last day of high school is coming up, man.”
“I still can’t believe it.”
“And I know you like things to go according to plan, so I don’t want to screw this up for you. I don’t want us to go to stuff where we’re supposed to be having fun, and instead we’re still going back and forth on this. So that’s the first reason for my … I guess, call it, Relationship Reset.”
“What’s the second reason?”
“Honestly?” She looks right at me. “I miss you. That’s all. I so, so miss you.”
I feel my frown loosen.
“You and I both …” She hesitates. “We both said and did shitty stuff. And I was thinking about how we could spend hours going back over everything, and it was just like … fuck that.
