Victim Rights

by Norah McClintock

  “Hey!” the guy on the other side of the net shouted.

  “You’re only going to make trouble for yourself,” Parker said, calm, sounding amused.

  Dooley pulled harder until the chain-link dug into Parker’s cheek. If only he were on the same side as Parker. If only he could—

  Someone grabbed him from behind and ripped him away from the fence. The security guard. Correction, two security guards, one of them towering over Dooley, a big block of a man with a grip that bit deep into Dooley’s arms and held him while the other one, the one Dooley recognized from the clubhouse, said, “You were warned. Now you’re looking at trespass and assault.” He pulled out a cell phone.

  “It’s okay, Tom,” Parker said, smooth, unruffled. “We’re just having a difference of opinion. I don’t think there’s any need to press charges.”

  “Mr. Wiarton already told him he had to leave,” Tom the security guard said. “He—”

  “I’m not pressing charges, Tom,” Parker said, the tone of his voice making it clear who was top dog.

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Albright,” Tom said.

  Sir. Mister.

  Tom turned to Dooley. “I’m making a security report,” he said. He nodded at the guard who was holding Dooley. The guy started to haul him across the lawn to the clubhouse.

  “Hey, Parker,” someone called, one of a couple of new guys coming out of the club house, tennis rackets in hand. “We still on for Saturday?”

  “You bet,” Parker said. He grinned at Dooley. “Come over any time after nine.”

  “Looking forward to it,” the second guy said. “If there’s anyone who knows how to throw a party, it’s you, Park.”

  Dooley just bet.

  The guard jerked him forward. That’s when Dooley spotted her—she was at the edge of the outer fence, half hidden by a trees. Beth. She was standing there so still she was like part of the landscape, and she was looking directly at Parker, who saw her, and nodded, grinning at her. Dooley tried to shake free. He wanted to walk to her. He needed to talk to her.

  “Give us any trouble, and I will call the cops,” Tom hissed in his ear, “I don’t care what that rich-kid son of a bitch says. You hear me?”

  Dooley squirmed. He wanted to wave to her, send her some kind of signal to wait for him.

  “I’m warning you, kid,” Tom said.

  The other guard dragged him in through the back door of the club house, into a cramped room labeled Security, where they sat him down, demanded his id, and wrote up a report on him before escorting him out through the front door and telling him, “If you come back, you’ll be arrested.”

  Whatever.

  Dooley ran along the perimeter of the fence to where he had seen Beth.

  She was gone.

  He checked the nearby streets and the bus stop. There was no sign of her.

  THREE

  Dooley tried Beth’s cell and got voicemail. He tried the landline at her apartment. Voicemail again. He wondered if she had seen him at the tennis club. She must have, unless she’d been unable to tear her eyes away from Parker. He ached to slam his fist into something—a tree, a utility post, a brick wall, anything. What the hell was going on? When she’d left, she’d promised to call him every day. But she hadn’t done that. No, she’d called him exactly twice. Why was that? Was it true what those girls had said? Had she gone after Parker? Had she come onto him like Parker had said? Had she really slept with the guy? Everyone was saying it, so it had to be true, didn’t it? Why else would she have taken off like that at the tennis club instead of waiting to speak to him? Why hadn’t she returned any of his calls? Why hadn’t she called him as often as she had promised?

  Forget it, he told himself. Forget the bitch. What had he expected, after all? That someone like her, someone that smart, that beautiful, that connected—all those private school girls and boys she hung out with, Nevin, whom she’d lied about more than once—had he really thought she’d settle for someone like him? What did it even matter? They were both seventeen. It wasn’t like she’d been planning to stay with him for the rest of her life. It was just a matter of time. So, okay, she’d made her move. She’d gone after a guy—the guy, from the way everyone was talking about him. And she’d fallen flat on her face. It probably served her right. He should be glad.

  But he wasn’t.

  Jesus. Girls! They could really fuck you up. She’d slept with some gonna-be-a-zillionaire. She was refusing to talk to Dooley or even, it seemed, to acknowledge his existence. And what was he doing, pathetic mope? He was aching for her. He was ready to sell his life, his soul, anything he could lay hands on, for a chance to talk to her, to see her, to touch her.

  Then it hit him like a kick in the balls—he was just like Lorraine. Every time some loser asshole in Lorraine’s life ripped her off or cheated on her or just plain dumped her, what did she do? She cried and begged and pleaded, her face all sloppy with makeup and mucus—please, baby, I can’t live without you. And when that didn’t work, she numbed herself with drugs or booze or both, just like he was wishing he could do now. Well, no fucking way. He wasn’t like Lorraine, not at all. He wasn’t a pathetic loser. He was smarter than that. But that didn’t mean the tug wasn’t there. It didn’t mean he wouldn’t weaken.

  Fuck.

  He started to jog, his feet pounding the pavement. He cranked up the speed, ran until he was winded, and then ran through that, going and going until he thought he would drop. Until he prayed he would drop. Until the sweat poured off him and his feet hurt. Until he swung into view of his uncle’s house.

  No one was home.

  He let himself in, stripped off, and took a shower. It was easier that way. The water streaming down his face let him pretend that the tears weren’t there.

  He woke to his uncle’s voice saying, “Ryan, Jesus, I’ve been phoning you. How long have you been up here?”

  He squinted at his uncle’s worried face and then at his clock-radio. He’d been asleep for nearly two hours.

  “Sorry.” He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He felt groggy, as if he’d been drugged.

  “You hungry?” his uncle said, gruff but clearly relieved to have found him. “It’s dried out, but it’s probably still edible.”

  It was chicken baked in peanut sauce, with a side of rice and another of steamed broccoli. He ate it because his uncle had gone to the trouble of making it and keeping it warm for him, not because he was hungry. His uncle studied him from across the table.

  “What’s going on, Ryan?”

  “Nothing.” Dooley stood up. “I’ll handle the dishes.”

  His uncle kept his eyes on Dooley for a few moments longer. Finally he sighed and got up, leaving Dooley to it.

  Dooley rinsed the plates and glasses and stacked them in the dishwasher. Then he went into the dining room and settled down to his homework, or tried to. The causes of World War II didn’t exactly grab him, but he waded through the assigned chapter. Math was even less compelling. If he’d been on his own, he would have abandoned it after a couple of questions, but he was conscious of his uncle behind him in the living room, buried in the newspaper. He was conscious, too, of Lorraine. Maybe too conscious after all those therapy sessions he’d been put through. You can’t blame your mother for the rest of your life, Dooley. At a certain point, it’s all up to you—they’re your decisions, your choices, and you have to live with the consequences. That plus the big lesson, the one he should have learned through experience alone but instead had had to have hammered into his head over and over and over: you can drink, smoke, or ingest as many brain-numbing, mood-altering substances as you want and, yeah, all your troubles will go away—for a little while. But they’ll come back. They always come back. You can drink, smoke, and ingest some more, keep those ghosts at bay, but sooner or later something always goes wrong. Always. And when it does and when they get you for it, they take all that shit away from you and then you have no choice. You have to live through it again, and w
orse, and there’s nothing you can do about it until they turn you loose again. So, really, what’s the smarter choice: learn to deal with it straight up, play the hand you’ve been dealt, or act exactly like the person you’ve been blaming for everything all your life, act like Lorraine, which is to say, hide like a coward by drinking, smoking, ingesting, and, in the process, turning yourself into an all-round pitiable, miserable, and completely useless human being?

  He closed his eyes and tried to ignore the pressure that was building inside his skull. The thing was, he hadn’t seen it coming. He’d thought everything was okay between him and Beth. He’d thought they were good together. He’d thought she was as happy with him as he was with her. Now, in retrospect, he felt like a complete idiot. She hadn’t told him there were going to be boys on the trip until he’d said he would see her off at the bus. She hadn’t called like she said she would. She’d actively pursued that guy Parker. She’d lied about Nevin. And—he was changing his view on the subject again—she had never introduced him to any of her friends. How many other clues had he missed? It was as clear as gin, as transparent as vodka. She had moved on.

  She was through with him.

  She wanted something better.

  Breathe. Slow it down. Concentrate.

  He stared at his math homework for another twenty minutes and then gathered his books.

  “I’m going to bed,” he said.

  Dooley’s cell phone rang at seven in the morning.

  “It’s me,” the voice on the other end said. He almost dropped his phone. “Meet me in half an hour. At the coffee place across from your school.”

  “Beth—”

  But she was gone.

  He dressed, grabbed his backpack, left a note, and hurried out the door.

  He was five minutes early, but she was already there, sitting in the back, her eyes on the door. As Dooley approached her, he was shocked by how haggard she looked. Her usually glossy hair was limp and dull. There were dark circles under her eyes. Her skin was pale. She usually looked sharp in clean, smart, fashionable clothes, but today she was wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt that hid the natural curves of her body. Jesus, all that misery for a guy who didn’t give a crap about her?

  He pulled out a chair and sat down, but he didn’t say anything. She’d gone after another guy. She’d slept with him. She’d been ducking him for days. She had some explaining to do.

  She had watched him as he approached, but she stared down at the table top now. His stomach churned. It was worse than he’d thought. She couldn’t even look him in the eye.

  “Dooley.” Her voice was so soft that he had to lean forward to catch what she was saying. “I have to tell you something.” She raised her eyes, and he saw that she was afraid. Of what? Of what she had to tell him? Of how he would react?

  He waited. How was she going to play it? Was she going to confess? Was she going to lay the blame on Parker? Was she going to dump him? Or was she going to settle for second-best now that Parker had made his intentions clear?

  She hesitated. Her hands were wrapped around a coffee cup.

  “Nevin was on the trip,” she said.

  Dooley knew that already. But this wasn’t about Nevin. This was about Parker.

  “We were assigned to the same work team. He kept coming on to me. It was driving me crazy. I mean, I told him I wasn’t interested, but you know Nevin.”

  Sure. He also knew that Beth’s mother liked Nevin. He knew that Beth and Nevin were on the debating teams of their respective schools and that they liked to practice debating together. He knew that the two of them used to hang out sometimes last fall. And he knew that Beth had lied a couple of times about seeing him, which had almost torpedoed their relationship. But then Beth had apologized. She’d told him, “It’s not what you think.” She’d promised him: no more Nevin. And then she hadn’t told him until the last minute that the trip she was going on included Nevin’s home form.

  Her eyes were anxious on him.

  “As soon as I saw it was going to be a problem, I did something about it.” He could see she wanted him to believe her, so he nodded. She seemed relieved. Then her eyes clouded again. “You remember I told you about a guy named Parker?”

  “The one with the dot-com daddy,” he said, and, yeah, he’d put a spin on it, letting her know exactly what he thought about guys like that.

  “Well—” She bit her lip. “What I did is, I asked Parker if I could switch to his team.”

  Right. And that was supposed to make him feel better?

  “He saw what was happening. He asked another girl if she would move to Nevin’s team in my place. He took care of it for me.”

  Uh-huh.

  “I did it so Nevin wouldn’t drive me crazy. And it worked.

  Whenever Nevin came around, Parker dealt with it. He found something for me to do away from where Nevin was working. Or he worked with me, you know, so Nevin couldn’t do anything.”

  Good old Parker. If Dooley hadn’t already met the guy, if he hadn’t already sized him up, he might have been grateful.

  “He seemed like a good guy,” she said. “He worked hard right from the start, not like some of the guys who had to be told to quit clowning around, that this was someone’s actual house we were building and it had to be done right.” Dooley could see how Beth would respect that. She took everything so seriously. “He was always the first to volunteer to help clean up after we ate. No one ever had to ask him.”

  Dooley couldn’t even begin to reconcile the Parker Beth was describing with the one he had met at the tennis club.

  “I told him all about you,” she said. “I told him we were going out.”

  He stared stone-faced at her.

  “He had a party at his country place on Friday night after we finished up for the week.” She drew in a deep, shuddery breath. “The party was mostly down on the patio in front of the guest houses. That’s where we were going to be sleeping that night. Girls in one of the guesthouses, boys in another. Parker’s mother was supposed to be there, but she went out after the party got started.”

  Uh-huh.

  “Everyone was having a good time. Everyone was dancing with everyone else, but mostly it wasn’t serious.”

  Mostly.

  “Mostly it was just fun, you know?”

  She looked at him as if it really mattered to her what he was thinking. He looked back at her, his face giving nothing away.

  “Except for Nevin. He started in again. Only this time he was drinking, so he was really obnoxious.”

  “And good old Parker bailed you out again, right?” Dooley said.

  She looked startled.

  “Yes. Because Nevin was—he kept trying to grab me and dance with me, really close.” Her cheeks turned pink. Dooley could imagine Nevin, tanked, grabbing her and grinding up against her. “Parker asked me if I wanted to take a walk.”

  Because, Dooley bet, Parker was a guy who recognized an opportunity when he saw it.

  “We just talked. I told him how good I felt about what we had done. He said he did, too. Then he said maybe I should think about volunteering over the summer in a developing country. He told me that he’d done that last summer—he was in Africa for a month, digging wells. He said it was great; he learned so much.”

  Parker was sounding more and more like that guy in the Batman comics—the one with two faces. There was sweet, considerate Parker, giving the girls what they wanted. Then there was regular, asshole Parker, the one Dooley had met at the tennis club.

  “He said he had pictures if I wanted to see them. They were up in his room.”

  “Jesus, Beth.” Talk about the oldest trick in the book.

  Her face flushed red. She looked down into her coffee for a moment. When she started to talk again, her voice was shaky.

  “So I went into the house with him and we went up to his room and ...” She raised a hand to her face and he saw that she was wiping away a tear. “I told him no, Dooley. I told him over and
over. But we were all alone in the house and he was so strong.” Tears slipped down her face. “I told him no. I told him to stop. But he wouldn’t. He—he—” She pulled a handful of napkins from the dispenser on the table and pressed them to her face. It was a few moments before she could talk again. “I told him I was going to report him, and he said, ‘Be my guest.’ He said no one would believe me. He’d been a model citizen all week. Everyone saw that we’d been friendly. Everyone saw us talking at the party. Everyone saw us leave the party together. Besides, he said, it wasn’t like it was the first time I’d ever done it.”

  She kept crying and dabbing at her eyes, and Dooley didn’t know what to think. She’d said it herself: she’d been with Parker all week. They’d worked together. They’d been together at the party. She’d willingly gone inside with him. Annicka had seen them. They’d been holding hands.

  “I’ve been trying to get hold of you for days,” he said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You said before you left that you’d call me every day. You didn’t.”

  “It was so hectic. We were so busy.”

  “But not too busy to make eyes at Parker, huh?” It slipped out without warning, but he wasn’t sorry he’d said it.

  She looked up at him, stung.

  “I wasn’t making eyes at him. We were on the same work team, that’s all.”

  “Because you asked to be on his team.”

  “He was helping me out.”

  “Sweet guy,” Dooley said. “What were you doing at the tennis club yesterday, Beth?”

  Her cheeks turned scarlet.

  “I didn’t mean to go there. I had to think and I just ended up there.”

  “Think? About what?”

  “I had to make up my mind about something.”

  “About what? What were you going to do? Beg him to take you back?”