by Meli Raine
No. I don’t.
But I’m trying.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” I finally expel, my voice like glass being swept up with a whisk broom, dumped into a garbage can, the delicate vase mourned but soon forgotten.
“No, of course not,” Daddy says, his dulcet tones so programmed. “We know—”
“I didn’t do what Tara and those other bitches are saying. I never asked those guys to do that to me. I never asked for it. I never asked for it. I never asked for it.”
The chant begins and I can’t stop, thrusting my fists against the top of my thighs, the words on autopilot, as if saying them over and over will unravel the past four years and I can reclaim time.
This behavior alarms everyone. Everyone except Drew. I can see why they’re freaked out, Mom giving Daddy a grim look as if to say, I told you so.
I bite the inside of my cheek to make myself stop. I taste blood. I inhale, a ragged sound like all the glass shards are going into my lungs, and then I add:
“None of what you think happened that night is real other than what they did to my body.”
Marshall turns a furious shade of red. The women with him, who have now become The Red Queen and The White Queen in my mind, because of the color of their shoes, put their heads together and whisper, as if we can’t hear them.
Silas goes stone faced. Drew does the opposite, his eyes alight with emotion.
“Lindsay, we’ve done research into this delicate matter,” Daddy says, standing. Ah. Meeting over. Lindsay dismissed.
I march over to him as if possessed by someone I’m not quite sure exists, and grab his wrist. He flinches, shocked by the force of my grip. I want him to feel, damn it. Feel something. Surely, all my emotions are spilling over, like the Hoover Damn after an unprecedented rainstorm, a spillway of monumental proportions.
“Delicate?” I rasp. “You think it’s delicate to sit here and have me listen to you and your strategy team treat my gang rape like it was some college mistake on my part?”
At the words gang rape, I see Mom stand up and march over like a bull rushing a red flag.
“Don’t use those words,” she hisses.
Drew’s body elongates, as if he’s grown a few inches, his muscles rigid and ready. He’s priming himself to physically intervene.
My God. Has it come to this?
“It’s the truth,” I spit out. “I was gang raped.” I try to catch Marshall’s eye, but he won’t look at me. No one will look at me.
Except Drew.
“I wasn’t drunk. Not by choice, at least. I didn’t do any drugs. And those ‘friends’ who lied to all of you, and to the media, are a bunch of backstabbing assholes who lied for some sick reason,” I declare. My chest still feels like a cement truck is parked on it, but the spots in my vision are starting to clear. I’m gaining strength from being free to speak my mind. Speak the truth.
Insist on being heard.
“Tara, Mandy and Jenna are fine, upstanding young women who you placed in a deeply unfair position, Lindsay!” Mom peels my fingers off Daddy’s wrist and digs her fingernails into my palm so hard I feel flesh tear. But I don’t move a muscle, because my skin has separated from my body and hovers above us, miles away.
“No, Mom. The only people who placed me in an unfair position were the three guys who tied me up and raped every hole I have.”
SLAP!
My teeth rattle in my skull, my neck jerking to the side, the painful tear of neck muscles causing a tight, splintering spasm that makes me stagger. I don’t fall, but I come damn close, and soon deep voices shout mine and Mom’s names, over and over.
I look up, my lip split, Drew holding my mother’s elbow, Mom screaming in his face.
Chapter 28
Daddy stands back and watches the room with narrowed eyes.
“You get your fucking hands off me, Andrew Foster. You have no right to touch me like this. I will call security and—”
“I am security, Monica. I’m Lindsay’s security, and you currently represent a physical threat to her,” Drew says, his voice tainted with disgust and a politeness that makes her seethe. Two plainclothes security guys, Daddy’s retinue, flood the room. They assess so quickly I don’t even see it, and Drew gives a sharp nod, letting go of Mom.
Daddy holds his palm up to them. They retreat, like well-trained dogs.
“Don’t you ever harm Lindsay again,” Drew instructs my mother, who stretches her head up and holds his gaze like she wishes he would burst into flame.
“You can’t tell me what to do, you weak little no-account worm who—”
“He’s a decorated war hero who saved my helicopter when it was shot down on a diplomatic visit to Lagos, Monica. For God’s sake. Let up on him. Just because he caught you in the wrong doesn’t mean you should take it out on him,” Daddy says, his commanding voice making everyone freeze in place.
Mom’s gaze moves from Drew to Daddy, the anger unwavering. I didn’t know about the helicopter mission, or Drew’s role in it. So many details I don’t know. Pieces of the situation are starting to fit into the framework of a larger puzzle.
My palm presses against my cheek, which feels wet. Gingerly, I investigate and find a small gash under my eye. Mom’s ring must have torn the skin. She looks at me, chin up, defiant in that way she has, where she’s so convinced she’s right that she doesn’t care about the emotional consequences.
“You should be more respectful in your language, Lindsay.”
This is the moment when I would cower. Before. Before, I would do whatever I was told, but I was free to live my life within the confines of whatever Mom and Daddy set out for me.
Mom is about to get a taste of After.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, lowering my voice with a plaintive, apologetic tone.
Her shoulders relax, eyes narrowing like a cat that knows its prey has been cornered.
I keep up the ruse, using a vocal inflection that makes me sound a little too much like Mr. Rogers, from that old kid’s television show. “I’ll be more careful in how I talk about my gang rape from now on. Would you like to approve the medical terminology I can use to describe how the surgeon reconstructed the wall between my vagina and anus? I believe my medical chart uses the words—”
Drew’s eyes are wide as saucers. Mom looks like she’s about to slap me again.
“Enough!” Daddy roars. “Everyone out. I want to speak with Lindsay alone.”
Numb. My entire body goes numb. No cold. No hot. No inbreath. No outbreath. I turn into a senseless, touchless, tasteless, sightless, soundless being who is frozen in place as I realize my mistake.
I am human. I have an opinion. I have a soul and feelings and I cannot handle having my integrity so deeply breached that people who are supposed to love and support me actually believe all these lies.
And have never, not once, even asked me if what’s been said about me is true.
Mom and Daddy and Drew remain after everyone else filters out. Daddy glares at Mom.
“You too, Monica.”
“No,” she says calmly, as if she expected to be evicted. “I’m staying.”
Daddy laces his fingers around my upper arm and gently guides me out of the room, calling back over his shoulder. “Fine. Have fun.”
I wish I could see Mom’s face.
“Are you hurt?” Daddy’s voice holds a lick of compassion in it, just enough that my shell starts to crack. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, I beg myself. Please don’t cry. I can cry in my room in a few minutes. Being Strong Lindsay is more important than feeling.
“My lip is. I’m bleeding a little.” He pulls me into a tiny solarium, right off a small sliding door where Mom can’t see us. My vision spins for a second and I lean into him. Daddy’s a wall of rock, his arm around my shoulders, easing me into a chair.
“Lindsay, that was bad,” he says, exhaling with irritability. “You can’t do that again.”
“Do what? Defend myself?”
/>
“That wasn’t a defense.”
“You never gave me a chance. You all convicted me four years ago and sent me away to serve a prison sentence. I was the one incarcerated instead of the guys who violated me.”
My skin feels an electrical charge that shouldn’t be in this warm, humid room. I close my eyes and lick the blood off my lip.
Drew. He’s right outside. I can feel him.
“Is that what you really think?” Daddy asks. I can tell he expects me to obey him. To say no. To lie.
“Yes.”
His eyelids close and he inhales slowly, holding the breath for four beats, then letting it out.
“Why didn’t anyone ever ask me to tell my story?” I ask before he can say anything.
“Because you were ruined before you ever got the chance.”
Ruined.
Daddy might as well have slapped me. That word hurts more than Mom’s blow.
“This isn’t about truth,” he says, his hoarse voice sending a creepy vibe up my back. “This is about a long, arduous marathon to the White House. Your truth is important to you, of course. It’s why we left you on the Island for so long, because you needed to sort everything out and come back whole. Strong. Ready.”
Bullshit.
I don’t say it, but Daddy looks at me as if I did.
“I am a person,” I say, the words slow in forming, like taffy stretched so far it becomes a thread. “I am here. I have been here all along. I’m not a case, or a scandal, or a folder or a strategy you have to contain or mitigate or—”
“I know that.” His voice is like a breath that, blown too hard, breaks the thread in half, unmooring the tethered line.
“Then act like it.” There is no conviction in my words. As I sit in silence, my nose fills. My hand reaches up to trace the thin scratch from Mom’s slap. I’ve said all I can.
There is no more to say.
If they do not hear me now, I can’t change that. I can change me, but I can’t change them. The clichéd platitude that Stacia used to stuff down our throats in group therapy turns out to be useful. Helpful.
Painfully true.
“Lindsay.”
I close my eyes and pretend he’s not there. Surprisingly, this is not an effective strategy.
“Lindsay.” His voice is firm. I open my eyes. Daddy has bent down at my eye level and his face is inches from mine. He reaches out and touches my chin with his hand, eventually cupping my jaw into his palm.
“We researched everything. Everything. When you’re the head of a major senate committee, you have access to the finest investigators in the world.”
He knows. He knows about Drew being there. Then why did he hire Drew to shadow me?
“We know the names of the men who did those barbaric—well, who did that to you. We know your friends turned on you and lied. We know you didn’t ask for it.” He looks up, over my shoulder, as if he’s worried someone will hear him.
So much truth. So, so much truth.
I sag with relief against the wall. “Then why were those people in the meeting saying all that?”
“Because I can’t find a viable strategy to go public with the truth and clear your name.”
“What?”
“I can’t find a way to make the truth more believable than the lies.”
“What?” My throat feels like it’s been painted with broken glass.
“We kept you hidden away for your own good. Trust me,” he says, eyebrows turned down, eyes deeply troubled. “That first year you were in so much pain, just healing from the physical trauma of what those animals did to you. Year Two was a combination of helping your mind to recover from the psychological pain of it all. By Year Three we realized there was no turning back—in the public’s mind you were nothing more than a slut who got what she was begging for.”
I now know I’m my mother’s daughter.
Because suddenly I slap him. My own father.
Hard.
So, so hard.
The lift of my arm, the curve of my elbow, and the fine scrape of my palm against Daddy’s perfectly-shaven cheek is poetry. I feel like a principal in a ballet company, the cool smoothness of the center of my palm tickled by friction as my bones align to deliver the hit. And it’s a hit. Make no mistake about it.
I just struck a United States Senator across the face.
The future President of the United States.
Not only is he not expecting it, he’s clearly horrified by my blow. Within seconds my arms are pinned behind my back, yanked with force and a familiar joint-popping feeling that takes me back four years ago.
And it’s Drew, this time, who is delivering the restraint.
“Gentian,” Drew barks into his mouth piece as I writhe in his grip, trying to get out of this room, wanting to run and run and run, now thinking the Island was a form of paradise and I was too stupid to realize it. He’s calling for Silas, who appears in seconds, eyes cold and at the ready to do whatever Drew orders.
“Let go of me,” I argue, my efforts pointless. His grip is steel. I feel the harsh pain of my skin tearing, a rug burn quickly forming, as I try to pry my wrists out from his hands.
“No.”
Daddy makes it clear to Drew he should let me go. Obeying, but reluctant, Drew drops my arms.
“I deserved that,” Daddy says.
“Yes, you did,” I grunt, the sound low and mean. “You called me a slut for being the victim of a gang rape.”
Because Drew is right behind me, his body inches from mine, I feel the shockwave of pure rage that ignites him.
“Sir? You what?” Drew snaps.
“I didn’t technically call Lindsay a slut,” Daddy says evenly. How he stays so calm, so flat and matter-of-fact in every situation is a wonder to me. “I was explaining the public perception of her.”
“And I reacted on impulse.”
“I don’t blame you,” Drew says from the corner of his mouth, like a ventriloquist throwing his voice.
Daddy points to me, but it’s not an angry gesture. It is, however, a warning. “Any other security detail on me would have had you on the ground, a knee between your shoulder blades, and cuffs around your wrists.”
“A position I know all too well, only I’m used to it naked,” I retort.
Daddy blanches.
“Jesus, Lindsay,” Drew mutters.
“Fuck off,” I say to no one, to everyone, to the world. With my newfound freedom, I sprint down the hallway, bursting through the double French doors into the sunshine, aware of only one thought:
I’ve blown it.
Chapter 29
Drew doesn’t follow me, but Silas does, hovering at a discreet distance to give me the illusion of privacy. My palm thrums with the expelled energy from slapping Daddy, and my own cheek burns where Mom hit me.
We’re a freaking Brady Bunch, aren’t we? One big, happy family.
There’s a moment when I’m walking around one of the fountains near the shore when it hits me: nothing can be worse. Not a single thing. I came home timid and worried about making sure everyone thought I was a little people pleaser, a go-along-get-along gal who wouldn’t rock the boat.
Instead, day two and I find out I’ve been slut-shamed for a violent sex act I never asked for. The victim has been media-massaged into being the aggressor.
I deserved what happened.
And Daddy and Mom have to make the presidential campaign work in spite of Lindsay the Slut.
I almost feel bad for them.
Almost.
I start to shiver. It’s eighty degrees outside and the air is still. There is no reason to shiver. The feeling comes from the inside out.
Slut.
For four years I wondered why the guys who raped me were never brought to justice. For four years I thought that I needed an extra-long time to heal from the horrible injustice of being their victim. For four years I thought my friends didn’t write or call because they were being blocked by staff at the
Island, or for some reason that would make sense when I got home and was able to piece it all together.
I never imagined it would be like this.
Daddy knows. Daddy knows who did this, and yet didn’t pursue charges against them. Daddy knows Drew was there, watched the footage where my own boyfriend did nothing to save me—and hasn’t said a word. In fact, he hired the man who betrayed me to protect me now.
Daddy knows everything.
And I have to act like all the lies are true, in order to help him achieve his larger goal.
The vomit rises up like a cannon being shot off, the explosion gross and gritty. I lean against a tree trunk for support and puke my guts out until all I have left are dry heaves. A rustle behind me indicates Silas’s presence, and as I sit down, dizzy and burning from the effort of vomiting, he offers me a much-appreciated bottled water.
“Thank you.”
“I wish it could be more.”
I half bark, half laugh at t hat answer. “Silas, when did a stranger like you become the nicest person in my life?”
He sits down next to me, yanking up on the black wool of his trousers before crossing his legs like a kid in kindergarten. “Drew’s nice to you.”
“Drew is an asshole.”
He nods. “Sometimes. When he has to be.”
That stops me from saying anything more.
“He cares about you.”
I give him a sour look. “He has a funny way of showing it.” I start to say more, but stop.
“I know you two had a past. I don’t know more than that, Ms. Bosworth, but I’ve worked for Drew for almost a year now. I did three years in Afghanistan. I’ve seen some bad people. Drew isn’t one of them.”
I look up and squint, closing one eye to focus on him. The sun blinds me from over one of his shoulders.
“What if I am?”
“What if you are—what?”
“One of those bad people.”
I figure he’ll smile, but he doesn’t. He just shakes his head. “You’re not,” he says.
“How do you know?”
He shrugs. “Three years in Afghanistan taught me when to trust my gut.”
