The Leading Edge of Now

by Marci Lyn Curtis

  God.

  How can I keep doing that?

  So when he knocks on Rusty’s front door the next day, I’m there to open it, immediately stepping out and joining him on the porch. Resolved as I am, I still feel a little startled and uneasy as I come to a halt beside him, a thick tangle of anxiety lodged deep in my chest.

  At the sight of me, Owen unloads a sigh of relief that makes him appear forty instead of eighteen. It’s strange how both of our childhoods ended so abruptly. Now we’re big, clunky adults shoved into teenagers’ bodies, not sure how to think or what to say or which way to act. “How’re you holding up?” he says, his Australian accent more prominent than usual.

  I turn toward him. Our gazes collide for a nanosecond before we both glance away. “I’m — I’m here,” I say.

  I feel … guilty. Why do I feel so guilty? For mistakenly blaming Owen for something he didn’t do? For not being there for him after his accident? Yeah, but it’s more than that. I feel guilty for the sexual assault, which is ridiculous. It wasn’t my fault.

  Even so, I feel like I should’ve done something to stop it.

  I lean against the banister. I can feel Owen watching me.

  “I’ve tried to check on you a couple of times,” he says carefully, “but you weren’t home.”

  I don’t want to lie to Owen. Not now. And I shouldn’t have to. He’ll understand. “I’ve been … processing everything,” I say, and he nods.

  Both of us are silent, then Owen opens his mouth to speak, taking a step toward me. I jerk backward. He sighs and kicks the railing with the toe of his shoe. “Sorry,” he mutters. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”

  Here he is, the guy I falsely accused of rape, apologizing to me.

  I’m such an asshole.

  “You don’t need to apologize.” I sigh. “I’m just jumpy, you know?”

  “Yeah. I know,” he says, sitting on the top step of the porch. He doesn’t speak, but like with all of his silences, his words are hiding in his posture, in the expectant slope of his shoulders, in the way his brows tilt as he stares up at me. His body is saying, Please sit down beside me and Please talk to me and I want to be part of your life again and Let me help you.

  I don’t know whether I can do any of those things.

  Owen has been nothing but a gentleman to me. I know that. But every time I look at him, I’m reminded that someone else wasn’t. And how do you explain something like that? I can’t. Not now. Not to Owen. But I can sit and talk to him. It isn’t as though he doesn’t already know the ugly truth. So I carefully lower myself down to the step, putting a good foot of distance between us.

  Owen rests his elbows on his knees and whispers, “I’m concerned about you staying here. At Rusty’s.”

  My gaze fixed on a tangle of sea grapes between Rusty’s and the McAllisters’, I try to keep it together. The porch feels sinister and threatening all of a sudden, a snake in the grass. Turning to Owen, I say, “It wasn’t Rusty.”

  Owen is clearly skeptical, but he doesn’t press. “Have you gone to the police?”

  “I need more time to think this through,” I say, which is stupid, because I’ve already had almost two years. But it doesn’t feel like it’s been that long. It seems recent, scratching around in my chest, bone on flesh, trying to claw its way out.

  It will wreck me.

  I’m not ready for that.

  “But Grace —”

  “Don’t push me on this, Owen. I need time. Telling you was one thing. That was private. But telling the police —” I blink several times and look away until my vision clears. Then I take a couple of breaths and continue. “Telling a bunch of strangers about the most humiliating thing that ever happened to me, watching them gut my life and spread the mess all over town for everyone to see? I can’t do it right now, Owen. I can’t.”

  He mashes his lips together. We don’t speak for a moment. “I need to know exactly what you remember,” he says finally, each word coming out slow, like he’s thinking every syllable before speaking it. “About that night.”

  Well, that gets my attention, if he didn’t have it already. I shake my head side to side, because I’m not having that particular conversation with him right now, not when I’m already feeling panicky and threatened and bare. “No. I don’t — no.”

  “Why?”

  Because I don’t want to relive it. Because it’s too embarrassing. Because talking about it makes it more real.

  For the second time since I moved to New Harbor, I remember Dad’s words, from back when he and Rusty fixed that old fishing boat: It’s in a man’s genetic code, mending broken things. I wonder if that’s all I am to Owen, a broken thing, and he’s just predisposed to fix me.

  Or whether he’s just worried that part of me still blames him.

  “Why do you care?” I say, my tone just this side of suspicious. “Are you worried that I still think you did it? Are you just trying to clear your name?”

  As soon as it’s out of my mouth, I regret it. The expression on his face — it’s as though I’ve hauled off and punched him in the stomach. “I care about you, Grace. Don’t you get that? I’ve always cared about you.”

  Maybe he did, way back when. But everything is different now. And anyway, I know very well that he’s dating someone, the way he walks out of his house every Saturday night all dressed up. “Are you this protective over your girlfriend?” I blurt, and then I snap my mouth shut, blushing and embarrassed, not even sure why I’m bringing her up.

  Owen blinks. “What are you talking about? I don’t have a girlfriend.”

  Why is he lying? “Tell me the truth, Owen,” I say.

  Owen shakes his head. “I am. Why are you even asking me this? Where is this coming from?”

  I don’t trust you anymore.

  I don’t say this, though, because it won’t make sense to him. It doesn’t even make sense to me. And I’m not about to admit that I’ve been watching his every freaking move since I came back to New Harbor, either, so I turn toward the flower bed and mutter, “Forget it.”

  “You know what I think?” he says softly. “I think you’re just trying to change the subject so you don’t have to talk about that night.”

  “Well, you’re wrong.”

  “Then tell me what happened.”

  I open my mouth and then let it drift shut.

  He closes his eyes. “Please, Grace.”

  I try some words out in my head, but everything is too humiliating and honest to say out loud. Finally, my voice a rasp, I tell him what I remember. “I was in bed before anyone even arrived that night. I heard people ringing the doorbell and walking in, but I was so exhausted that I wasn’t really paying attention.” I stop, do my best to catch my breath and then start up again. “You arrived just a few minutes after I took Dad’s Ambien. I remember talking to you. I remember —” I break again, the crooks of my knees slick with sweat and my face flaming. Suddenly I can’t look at him. All I want to do is shrink into something small. A dust mote. A fleck. “I remember kissing you, and you weren’t really into it, and then you suddenly were. Things start getting fuzzy from there. Your hand was up my shirt. I started panicking. I couldn’t — I remember telling you we needed to stop, but I don’t remember you replying.” I swallow down the phlegmy stiffness in my throat and glance up at him. His face is pale, and he’s as still as death, eyes pinned on me. “Everything went black then, like I fell into a dark hole, like I —” Owen is bowing his head now, squeezing his eyes closed, like he’s filling in all the blanks, seeing everything as it’s happening, like every word and thought has physical force — knives twisting in his chest. “When I woke up, I didn’t even know where I was.” I slap the tears off my face, suddenly angry. “I went to move and I got this horrible pain. I had bruises on my thighs. I was bleeding.”

  Owen bolts to his feet and pa
ces the length of the lawn. I think maybe he’s going to keep on walking, but he turns and strides back, his green eyes flashing some complex emotion that’s vengeance and rage and protectiveness, all knotted up in one. “Did you find anything out of place that morning, notice any sort of clue?”

  “Just one thing,” I whisper, remembering the excruciating pain when I rolled over in bed that morning. Remembering how my heart sank when my eyes fell upon something achingly familiar on my sheets. “Your wallet.”

  Twenty-Six

  I’ve always included a note with the money. Nothing crazy, just a little something along the lines of Thank you for what you do. Like the smooth, discriminating criminal that I am, I don’t sign it. I just wrap the note around the cash, stuff it into an envelope and send it off to Hillsborough County Women’s Crisis Center. No return address.

  In this case, the money amounts to a whopping two dollars. I was dragged and/or catapulted by a bus — with enough force to throw out my back, mind you — for two freaking dollars. You can hardly buy a Chia Pet on Craigslist for two dollars.

  Still, though, I feel guilty, semi-hysterical, like I’m pushing at my skin from the inside, trying to shove my way out, while I stand in line at People’s Market to buy a stamp.

  In front of me are two firefighters, both in uniform and both reminding me of Dad so much that for a single, helpless moment, I actually consider hugging them. Dad was a volunteer firefighter since before I can remember. I have at least a dozen sacred memories of climbing, wide-eyed and awed, into Engine 13 for a parade or an event. It made such an impression on me that by the time I turned six, I declared to Dad that I wanted to follow in his footsteps. Dad laughed like this was the funniest thing ever. He apologized about it later, telling me that he thought I was kidding, seeing as how I was afraid of basically everything, fire and natural catastrophes included. But his reaction still stung a little, mostly because I knew he was right. I’m not the type to run toward danger. I’m the type to sprint away from it.

  First thing I notice when I step out of the store is Andy, singing a Kenny Chesney song. Or else, a Luke Bryan song. I don’t have much of an ear for country music, so I’m not exactly sure. All I know is that Andy is sitting on a bench that faces the ocean, a guitar in his lap, crooning. I stop right beside him. “Hey,” I say, checking my watch. Sarah is due to show up for her visit in T-minus sixty minutes, and I need to get back to Rusty’s to tidy up the place. “I didn’t know you played the guitar.”

  “Cochran!” Andy flattens a palm over the strings to stop the sound. For a split second, he gives me that same guilty look he had in the library the other day, when I saw him with all those books. And then he smiles. “I don’t actually play the guitar. That’s the only song I know. Learned it from YouTube.” He waggles his eyebrows. “To woo the ladies.”

  Woo the ladies?

  Honestly.

  “Andy,” I say, “George Washington called. He wants his words back.”

  Andy holds up his finger. “It’s quite possible that I missed my intended birth year by a century or two.” Propping the guitar against the bench, he glances at the yellow plastic bag in my hand. “Shopping at The Store?”

  “Yup.” Officially, New Harbor’s only supermarket is called People’s Market, but everyone in town, cleverly, calls it The Store. Because that’s what you get in a small town — things are kept simple. And anyway, People’s Market is more of a store than a market. It carries everything from sweatpants to booze to homemade fudge. In my case, I needed shampoo, ant traps for the kitchen and a postage stamp. I lower my voice and say, “So. Both of us know that the only person you’d try to impress with the guitar is Janna. Where is she?”

  “Green bikini,” he says, pointing toward the beach with a tip of his head. And there, about twenty yards away, is Janna, hair exploding all over her beach towel, eyes closed and mouth slightly parted.

  “I see it’s working for you.”

  He shrugs good-naturedly. Putting both arms over his head and stretching, he says, “It’s a five-step process, as per my book. Wooing is the first step. So that’s what I’m doing. Wooing.”

  “Oh my God, please stop saying wooing.”

  “Sorry,” he says. He does not appear sorry.

  I snort and stare at the shoreline, where Sawyer is standing waist-deep in the water, throwing a football back and forth with a guy from his track team. His overly muscled body and overly perfect hair make him look like he’s starring in a commercial for something — a suntan lotion or a hair product or a protein bar. Whatever it is, I’m not buying it.

  My eyes trail back to Janna. Things have been better between us, for sure. We’ve exchanged several easy, friendly waves as we’ve come and gone from our respective houses, but that’s about it. I’m not quite sure where to go from here. In the past, Janna’s always been the one who’s assumed the lead in our friendship. Now, though, I have the distinct impression that she’s passing me the reins, but I’m too strung out to know what to do with them.

  I’m so lost in thought that I don’t notice Logan walking in our direction until he’s standing right beside me, wearing mirrored sunglasses and a blue T-shirt with sleeves just short enough to show off the bottom edge of his skull-and-crossbones tattoo. In his hand is an energy drink. I hear it sloshing around as he bumps me with his elbow. “Damn, girl,” he says. “It really is you. I thought I was hallucinating when I saw you at Island Pizza the other day.”

  “Yup, it’s me,” I say, my eyes lingering on his tattoo. Every time I see it, I kick myself a little for not having had the guts to get one when I had the chance. “How’ve you been?”

  Logan grins. “Great. You know — busy with track. Coach McAllister has been calling extra practices, getting us primed for a tournament in August. Not sure what the athletic department was thinking when they gave the green light to two-a-days in the middle of the summer.” He pauses for a minute, assessing me. Not in a creepy way, but like he’s checking to see whether I’ve grown any taller over the past couple of years. “What about you? It’s been forever, right? I don’t think I’ve talked to you since that Gators’ game at your uncle’s place.”

  Something dark skitters across the back of my neck. Something like panic. I have to fight to keep my voice even as I say, “You were there that night?”

  Logan chugs the rest of his drink and then knocks his chest with his fist, stifling a burp. “Yup. Just for an hour or so. I was supposed to hang with Sawyer, but when I got to his house, his parents told me he’d walked over to your uncle’s house to watch the game.”

  I wrap my arms around myself and glance at Andy, who’s thumbing around on his phone. “Oh,” I say finally. “I don’t remember because I —”

  “Was loaded on Ambien,” Logan supplies, chuckling. “Oh, I know.”

  My pulse hisses in my ears. “So I talked to you that night?”

  “Yeah,” he says, grinning.

  “When?”

  “I don’t know,” he says, “like, eleven, maybe? I’d left my phone over at Sawyer’s, so I was outside on my way to —”

  “I was outside?” I almost yell.

  “I know, right? I didn’t even see you walk out of your room. You must’ve gone out the back door, or something? You were standing on the lawn, trying to stay upright, talking to one of Rusty’s friends — college guy? Dark hair? Crazy-tall?” Logan waits for me to comment, or to insert the guy’s name. When I don’t, he says, “He told me he was going to walk you back to your room.”

  Twenty-Seven

  I go to the police station.

  It’s only a five-minute walk from the beach, right between the courthouse and the senior center.

  A loud buzz signals my entrance. The place is refrigerator bright. A bald middle-aged man in a dark uniform sits behind a glass wall, tapping a pen on a pad of papers, staring at me. The place smells like someone’s greasy
lunch. And also, bleach — as though the crime scene weren’t back at Rusty’s, as though it were right here, where the most degrading part of my life will become news and gossip. Where I will sit under these fluorescent lights with this nauseating smell all around me, and talk about evidence and suspects.

  The officer is still staring at me with interest. I close my eyes so I won’t have to look at him. But then all I see is Logan’s expression as he spoke, as he pulled on some invisible string, unwinding the truth.

  “Miss? May I help you?”

  I flinch and my eyes fly open. The officer is standing up now, leaning toward the glass, wary, waiting for me to reply.

  I hover there for several heartbeats, trying to answer, but my lips are sewn shut with a thin, toxic thread of humiliation and embarrassment.

  I can’t do this.

  “No, sir,” I blurt. “I thought this was the courthouse. Sorry.”

  And I spin around and leave.

  They say you never know what you’ll do when you have to face something terrifying. We’d all like to believe that we’d be brave, stand up tall and march in and speak up for ourselves, that we know what’s right, what’s just, and we’d stand by it, knowing that the catastrophe that awaits can’t be worse than the catastrophe that’s already occurred. But the fact is, you just never know what you’ll do when your nightmare arrives. What’s right and just — well, sometimes that’s the last thing on your mind. And all you want to do is survive.

  Twenty-Eight

  When I get back to Rusty’s, I find the kitchen swallowed up in smoke. Eleanor is sitting at the table, wholly unconcerned, eating a rather large plate of charred pizza rolls. A smoke alarm dangles from the ceiling, half-disassembled, a knot of wires holding the casing like a dislodged eyeball.

  I look pointedly at it and say, “You need to put that back together. My caseworker will be here in exactly twenty-three minutes.”

  After I do my best to disperse the smoke, and after I help reassemble the smoke detector, and after I grumble for the requisite amount of time, I look around the house and realize it’s clean. I don’t mean this figuratively. I mean that the house, with all its dusty corners and cat hair and clutter and germs, is actually, truly clean. Like, floors swept, dishes washed, counters wiped, laundry put away. And I wasn’t the one to do it. It’s sort of shocking, to tell you the truth.