Fault Line

by Christa Desir

  I know. I need a few more days.

  I replied: I love you.

  Me too.

  I stared at the screen until my eyes watered. Michael finally thumped me on the back and dragged me to the car, whining about needing to get to school early.

  I parked the Jeep two blocks from school and walked slowly to the entrance, stepping on the laces of the shoes I hadn’t bothered to tie. There were people everywhere. Too-loud talking and too much touching. Everyone seemed to be touching each other. I couldn’t stop looking at hands. I couldn’t escape them. I wanted to crawl inside myself and disappear.

  I moved numbly to my classes, ignoring the people around me. By ten o’clock that morning, I was glad Ani didn’t make it in.

  My head ached from staring too long at the fluorescent lights. I stumbled as I reached my locker before English. I leaned over to tie my shoe and heard it.

  “Firecrotch.”

  The voice came from behind me, not meant for my ears, but paralyzing me all the same.

  I moved quickly, eating up the distance between me and the two junior guys who’d been talking.

  “What? What did you say?”

  “Dude, chill.”

  “No. What did you say?” Blood pumped violently through me.

  “We were just talking about some chick at a party.”

  My elbow slammed him into a locker. “What. Did. You. Say?”

  His bugged-out, panicky eyes glanced behind me to his friend. “I was talking about a chick who got off in front of a bunch of guys at a party. She fucked a lighter so everyone’s calling her Firecrotch.”

  My body flooded with anger. I shook my head. This wasn’t happening. How did people know already? My heart beat so loud I barely registered the guys’ voices. The one behind me pulled me back. He grabbed his friend and they mumbled to each other. Finally one of them looked me over and shook his head sadly.

  “She’s yours, huh? Sorry, man. That sucks.”

  I pushed my way out of the building and started walking toward the track. She fucked a lighter. No. No. She couldn’t have. Even if someone gave her roofies. Even if she did a table dance. Even if she did say she was going to get with a bunch of guys. Pressure built in my lungs. My throat was clogged with anger and disgust and a wad of sadness I couldn’t breathe past. Everything blurred.

  “Beez,” a voice called, but I ignored it and walked faster.

  Running footsteps caught up to me and I finally turned. I wanted to beat the hell out of someone. Kate stepped back when she saw my face.

  “You’ve heard what people are saying,” she said.

  I nodded and shoved my hands into my pockets.

  “I didn’t tell anyone.”

  I nodded again.

  “But you know there were a lot of people at that party. . . .”

  I held up my hand. I closed my eyes and forced myself to ask the question I’d been worrying over since I’d dropped Ani off from the hospital. “How many guys? How many do you think there were?”

  Kate shook her head and took a half step back. “I don’t know. She went upstairs with maybe twelve people, girls and guys, but some of them came back down. Some of them could have gone into other rooms. It was a pretty big house.”

  I grabbed Kate’s shoulders and squeezed. “Who else saw her? Who would know what happened?”

  She looked at my hands. “There weren’t that many people from our school there. It was a big party, but I only recognized maybe twenty people.”

  I dropped my hands and stepped away from her. “Well, someone from this school knows what happened because guys I’ve never even talked to before are calling her Firecrotch and saying she fucked a lighter. And Ani sure as hell doesn’t remember anything.” I kicked at the grass and a clump unleashed itself from the ground. I kicked again. “Please,” I pleaded to Kate. “I have to know what happened.”

  “Why? You heard what that counselor said. It’s not going to do Ani any good. She’s not going to get back her memory if she was passed out at the time. She doesn’t want to testify against the guy or guys or whatever. And what if it’s worse than we think? What if they used other things with her?”

  I squeezed my eyes tight against the image of guys searching for different things to put inside of Ani. I wanted to puke.

  Kate put her hand on my shoulder. “Or what if what they’re saying is true? What if Ani asked them to?”

  I flinched and fisted my hands. “No one fucking asks for that. Don’t even start with that shit.”

  Kate pushed her hair back and searched my face.

  “What? Just say it,” I barked at her. I wanted everything out on the table. Kate knew more than I did and I had to have as many facts as I could if I was going to help Ani.

  She wavered for a second but then nodded. “You didn’t see her. She was acting like a complete slut. A lot of people heard her say she was going to hook up with all those guys. She didn’t tell just me.”

  She couldn’t have hit me harder. I bent over and grabbed my knees. Ani wasn’t a slut. She was direct. I couldn’t have read her wrong all this time. My hands shook. I had to get out of there. I couldn’t listen to Kate anymore. I turned my back on her and walked toward the bleachers alongside the track. This time she didn’t follow me.

  How drunk would Ani have had to be to say that stuff ? Was hooking up with a bunch of guys her intention when she went with all of them upstairs? I thought about the pamphlet Beth had given me about date rape drugs. I’d looked up more information online about them when I’d gotten up this morning, but there were so many different kinds of drugs out there. Ani seemed to have had some of the effects of the drugs, but she could’ve just had too much to drink. I’d seen Ani drunk before and she didn’t get all slutty, but I knew enough girls who did to think it might be possible.

  My brain was flooded with questions and doubt. How the hell were we going to get past this without either of us knowing anything?

  •••

  I went to see Ani after school. I texted Kevin and told him to make an excuse to Coach for me. He texted back: What the hell is going on? I ignored him.

  “We’re not talking about the rape,” Ani said when she opened the door.

  “Okay,” I said without hesitation. Beth had told me to try and empower her as much as I could; let her steer the conversation, give her choices in everything. “But are you feeling okay?”

  She nodded and pulled me into her room. The shades were drawn and her bed was a rumpled mess of covers. She’d added two or three more blankets on top of her quilt. The clothes she’d worn home from the hospital were in a pile on the floor by her bed.

  “Were you cold?” I asked, pointing to the blanket pile.

  She shook her head. “Building a nest. Want to get in with me?”

  I half smiled for the first time all day. Ani was still here. We were together. We could get through it. I slipped off my shoes and hooded sweatshirt before climbing into her bed with her. I wrapped my arms around her and tucked her head beneath my chin. The scent of her made me dizzy. I inhaled and exhaled three times, drawing full breaths into my lungs, soothing the numbness I’d felt since hearing the guys in the hall. Ani’s body didn’t relax so I started to trace circles on her back. She sat up and straddled my waist. She pulled her shirt over her head and her braless nipples immediately reacted to the cold.

  “What are you doing?” I said, and stopped her hands tugging at my shirt. “What are you doing?”

  “I thought you might fuck me.”

  I shot up and grabbed her shirt from next to me.

  “What?” I tried to pull the shirt over her head, but she ducked away and stood up. Everything went still in the room. We stared at each other. Ani put her hands on her hips, her naked chest rising and falling with her breath.

  “I. Want. You. To. Fuck. Me.”
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  “Are you crazy, Ani? We can’t have sex. You have stitches. And even if we could, don’t you want to take this slowly? Sort of ease into it when you’re more ready.”

  She snatched her shirt from me and held it over her chest. “No,” she said through gritted teeth, “I don’t want to ease into it. I don’t want to fucking ease into it.”

  “Ani.” My eyes started to burn again. “Ani. Please.”

  “Ben,” she said breathlessly, and dropped her shirt to the ground. “I need you to fuck me. I want to close my eyes tonight and think that the last guy who was inside of me cared about me and maybe even loved me a little, instead of thinking the last guy inside of me thought I was so worthless he left a lighter as a parting gift.”

  I recoiled at her words and dragged my hands across my face. “Jesus, Ani, stop saying that. Stop reminding me. Don’t you think I want you to forget all that too? I wish I could touch you and make it go away, put my hands on you so you’d only think about me. But this isn’t the way. You’re not ready for this.”

  She collapsed onto the bed and started crying noiselessly. She curled herself into a tiny ball. I wrapped my arms around her and tried to soothe her, but she wouldn’t relax. She shivered and pulled her knees tighter to her chest.

  I wanted to ask her so many things. But she wouldn’t know the answers. She was as lost as I was. More lost, really. My fingers worked over the knots in her hair.

  “Will you come to school tomorrow?” I finally asked.

  “I don’t want to,” she said, her voice barely a whisper, “but I think my mom will make me. She’s already pissed about today. She thinks I skipped school because I’m still hungover from Saturday.”

  “Do you think maybe . . . ?” I started, but she got out of the bed before I could finish. She snatched her shirt up and tugged it on.

  “No. No one is going to know about this. No one.” Her eyes flashed and she crossed her arms over her stomach. “I’m not going to be that girl, the one everyone feels sorry for. The one everyone talks about.”

  I reached for her but she stepped back. “Okay,” I said, and released a deep breath. “Whatever you want. Please, just come sit back down.”

  I couldn’t tell her what I really thought. She seemed so fragile, I didn’t think she could take the truth. But by now, the entire school had probably heard all the rumors. “Firecrotch” would move through the school like a twisted game of Telephone. Ani wasn’t going to leave a party with a lighter inside of her and not have anyone know about it. I bit my tongue and reached for her again. She allowed me to take her hand and moved a step toward me. I willed my face to go blank. I didn’t know how to warn her that she already was that girl.

  I slowly drew her back down beside me. She curled into me again and I rubbed my hand along her arm. I pretended not to notice her shaking.

  13

  Ani came back to school on Wednesday. She’d bought herself an extra day somehow with Gayle but couldn’t put things off any longer. I waited for her by the front entrance. Her mom dropped her off two minutes before the first bell rang, so I didn’t have any time to talk to her. It was unusually warm but still she wore a coat over a hooded sweatshirt and jeans, like she was hiking through the woods and worried about ticks.

  I took her hand as we walked into school and she let me. We hadn’t walked more than fifteen feet toward her locker when Ani suddenly stilled. She glanced at people on both sides of the hallway, then slowly turned to face me. Her mouth pursed and she released my hand.

  “They know? Did you say something?” she hissed.

  “No.”

  “But they know?”

  I nodded and tried to read the emotions crossing her face. The only one I recognized for sure was fear. I tried to wrap my arms around her, but she stepped back from me.

  “You could have told me. I would have been more prepared.”

  I opened my mouth to answer but was interrupted by Morgan and her posse of girlfriends.

  “Hey, Firecrotch, do you need to borrow a lighter?” Morgan stood in front of us with her arms crossed and a smirk on her face.

  “You cunt.” I took a step to go after her, but Ani put her hand on my shoulder and shook her head. Morgan lifted her eyebrows and turned away, whispering something I couldn’t hear to her bitchy friends. The other girls giggled.

  “Do you want to get out of here?” I said to Ani in a low voice, the echo of mean-girl laughter ringing in my ears.

  “Where would I go? My mom’s not going to let me skip school.”

  I tried to take her hand again, but she loosened her grip and wrapped her arms around herself. Almost like she was hugging herself, a little kid keeping monsters away. It tore through me. Sliced at my insides until the food I’d forced down from breakfast threatened to hurl out of me.

  “What are they saying, Ben? Tell me what you’ve heard. Everything.”

  I closed my eyes and shook my head.

  “I’m gonna find out anyway. What am I in for? Tell me.”

  I pulled her to the side of the hallway and glanced around to make sure no one could hear us. Every pair of eyes that passed flicked over Ani in derision or pity. I cupped her face in my hands and was glad she didn’t pull away this time.

  “Listen, I love you and I know you’re going to get past this. It doesn’t matter what they’re saying. I’ll go up against all these bitches if you want me to.”

  “Tell me.” Her voice sounded hard.

  I let out a deep breath. “They’re saying you got off with a lighter in front of a bunch of guys.”

  Ani reared back. I pulled her into an embrace, but she stood frozen like a board. I ran my fingers along her shoulders, trying to knead out the tension. Her arms stayed at her sides, her fingers curling into the sleeves of her sweatshirt.

  A guy in a basketball shirt moved closer to us. “Hey, Firecrotch, when’s your next show scheduled?”

  Ani started to shake and I pushed her to the side to get my hands on the guy. I slammed him against a locker and started to pummel him. My fists kept finding places to attack. His blood covered my hands and shirt but I didn’t care. He might have hit me back, but I didn’t feel anything except relief at finally releasing my anger. Pound. Harder. Pound.

  I heard Ani’s voice scream at me to stop, but it was a faraway plea, nothing like the immediacy of hearing cartilage crunch beneath my knuckles. I couldn’t stop, it felt too good. From the corner of my eye, I saw Ani slump to the floor, hugging her legs tightly and burying her face in her knees. My hands hurt, but I kept swinging until someone pulled me off the guy. He was moaning and I tried to kick him one more time, but I was too far away. I gathered saliva in my mouth and spit on him.

  A driver’s ed teacher escorted me to the main office, where I sat motionless as the guidance counselor talked at me. I said nothing, just stared at my bloody hands opening and closing, wishing for another fight.

  They gave me a three-day suspension for fighting on school grounds. When my mom picked me up, she didn’t say a word to me. She had a brief conversation with the guidance counselor and pointed me to the door.

  “What happened, Ben?” she demanded the minute I got in the car.

  “My Jeep’s in the lot. I can drive home.”

  “No. Your father can get it tonight. What happened?”

  “Nothing,” I said, buckling myself in and mentally preparing for her lecture. I glanced at the windows on the first floor of the school and was suddenly struck by what I’d done. Shit. Ani was on her own. Alone in a den of vipers. Shit. Shit. Shit.

  “No way, mister. You got a three-day suspension for fighting and I want to know why. So let’s hear it.” Mom’s hair had fallen loose from her bun and she looked exhausted. She was working too hard, staying up too late studying for grad school. She didn’t need this.

  “I don’t have anything to say. I
t was a mistake.” It had been. I wasn’t exactly sorry for it, but I hated the thought of Ani watching me lose my shit. I hated that my mom had to come get me.

  “You’re absolutely right it was a mistake, but this isn’t like you. You’ve never been in trouble for fighting. Did that kid do something to provoke you?”

  “Mom,” I said, and turned to her, “remember how you’re always saying that we need to respect one another?” She nodded. “I need you to do that now. I’d like you to let this go. It was a mistake. It won’t happen again. But I don’t want to talk about it. Please.” I would not make this her problem. I couldn’t. And I didn’t have any more words to give her that wouldn’t break my promise to Ani.

  Her lips pursed in a tight line as she searched my face. Her hand grazed over a cut I’d gotten above my eye. Finally she released a breath and put the key in the ignition.

  “You’re grounded for six weeks. I’ll assume this was some sort of lapse with you, and we’ll leave it alone as long as this is the last time that I’m called from work to pick you up. Clear?”

  I nodded and stared at the windows of school. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to shake off the image of Ani screaming at me and hiding her face in her knees while she watched me beat some kid to a pulp on the hallway floor.

  I got home and completely lost my shit the minute I saw the picture on my desk of Ani and me at my swim meet, the pink bumblebee poster clutched in her hand. I tore my room apart. I pulled the swirly, colorful star painting Ani had made me from the wall and ripped papers from my bulletin board. I kicked my laundry basket so many times my toe hurt. I kept hearing the guy asking Ani about her next show. The echo of bitchy girl laughter was like a soundtrack playing over and over again in my head. I finally collapsed on my bed, shaking so hard I could barely pull my shoes off.

  I’d left Ani at the mercy of school gossip for three days. She wasn’t going to have me to protect her. What the hell had I been thinking? I had to make it right. I searched beneath shredded homework and too many swim T-shirts for my cell phone. I found it, hoping for a message from Ani, but it was blank. I flipped it open and tried to call, but she didn’t answer. I hit my head against my bedpost and tried again. Nothing. I called Kate.