by Amber Smith
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To You.
To every you who has ever known the feeling of needing new ways to be.
Freshman Year
I DON’T KNOW A LOT of things. I don’t know why I didn’t hear the door click shut. Why I didn’t lock the damn door to begin with. Or why it didn’t register that something was wrong—so mercilessly wrong—when I felt the mattress shift under his weight. Why I didn’t scream when I opened my eyes and saw him crawling between my sheets. Or why I didn’t try to fight him when I still stood a chance.
I don’t know how long I lay there afterward, telling myself: Squeeze your eyelids shut, try, just try to forget. Try to ignore all the things that didn’t feel right, all the things that felt like they would never feel right again. Ignore the taste in your mouth, the sticky dampness of the sheets, the fire radiating through your thighs, the nauseating pain—this bulletlike thing that ripped through you and got lodged in your gut somehow. No, can’t cry. Because there’s nothing to cry about. Because it was just a dream, a bad dream—a nightmare. Not real. Not real. Not real. That’s what I keep thinking: NotRealNotRealNotReal. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Like a mantra. Like a prayer.
I don’t know that these images flashing through my mind—a movie of someone else, somewhere else—will never really go away, will never ever stop playing, will never stop haunting me. I close my eyes again, but it’s all I can see, all I can feel, all I can hear: his skin, his arms, his legs, his hands too strong, his breath on me, muscles stretching, bones cracking, body breaking, me getting weaker, fading. These things—it’s all there is.
I don’t know how many hours pass before I awake to the usual Sunday morning clamor—pots and pans clanging against the stove. Food smells seeping under my door—bacon, pancakes, Mom’s coffee. TV sounds—cold fronts and storm systems moving through the area by midday—Dad’s weather channel. Dishwasher-running sounds. Yippy yappy dog across the street yips and yaps at probably nothing, as always. And then there’s the almost imperceptible rhythm of a basketball bouncing against the dewy blacktop and the squeaky-sneaker shuffling of feet in the driveway. Our stupid, sleepy suburbia, like every other stupid, sleepy suburbia, awakens groggy, indifferent to its own inconsequence, collectively wishing for one more Saturday and dreading chores and church and to-do lists and Monday morning. Life just goes, just happens, continuing as always. Normal. And I can’t shake the knowledge that life will just keep on happening, regardless if I wake up or not. Obscenely normal.
I don’t know, as I force my eyes open, that the lies are already in motion. I try to swallow. But my throat’s raw. Feels like strep, I tell myself. I must be sick, that’s all. Must have a fever. I’m delirious. Not thinking clearly. I touch my lips. They sting. And my tongue tastes blood. But no, it couldn’t have been. Not real. So as I stare at the ceiling, I’m thinking: I must have serious issues if I’m dreaming stuff like that. Horrible stuff like that. About Kevin. Kevin. Because Kevin is my brother’s best friend, practically my brother. My parents love him like everyone does, even me, and Kevin would never—could never. Not possible. But then I try to move my legs to stand. They’re so sore—no, broken feeling. And my jaw aches like a mouthful of cavities.
I close my eyes again. Take a deep breath. Reach down and touch my body. No underwear. I sit up too fast and my bones wail like I’m an old person. I’m scared to look. But there they are: my days-of-the-week underwear in a ball on the floor. They were my Tuesdays, even though it was Saturday, because, well, who would ever know anyway? That’s what I was thinking when I put them on yesterday. And now I know, for sure, it happened. It actually happened. And this pain in the center of my body, the depths of my insides, restarts its torture as if on cue. I throw the covers off. Kneecap-shaped bruises line my arms, my hips, my thighs. And the blood—on the sheets, the comforter, my legs.
But this was supposed to be an ordinary Sunday.
I was supposed to get up, get dressed, and sit down to breakfast with my family. Then after breakfast, I would promptly go to my bedroom and finish any homework I hadn’t finished Friday night, sure to pay special attention to geometry. I would practice that new song we learned in band, call my best friend, Mara, maybe go to her house later, and do dozens of other stupid, meaningless tasks.
But that’s not what’s going to happen today, I know, as I sit in my bed, staring at my stained skin in disbelief, my hand shaking as I press it against my mouth.
Two knocks on my bedroom door. I jump.
“Edy, you up?” My mother’s voice shouts. I open my mouth, but it feels like someone poured hydrochloric acid down my throat and I might never be able to speak again. Knock, knock, knock: “Eden, breakfast!” I quickly pull my nightgown down as far as it will go, but there’s blood smeared on that, too.
“Mom?” I finally call back, my voice scratchy and horrible.
She cracks the door open. As she peers in her eyes immediately go to the blood. “Oh God,” she gasps, as she slips inside and quickly shuts the door behind her.
“Mom, I—” But how am I supposed say the words, the worst words, the ones I know have to be spoken?
“Oh, Edy.” She sighs, turning her head at me with a sad smile. “It’s okay.”
“Wh—” I start to say. How can it be okay, in what world is this okay?
“This happens sometimes when you’re not expecting it.” She flits around my room, tidying up, barely looking at me while she explains about periods and calendars and counting the days. “It happens to everyone. That’s why I told you, you need to keep track. That way you won’t have to deal with these . . . surprises. You can be . . . prepared.”
This is what she thinks this is.
Now, I’ve seen enough TV movies to know you’re supposed to tell. You’re just supposed to fucking tell. “But—”
“Why don’t you hop in the shower, sweetie?” she interrupts. “I’ll take care of this . . . uh . . . ,” she begins, gesturing with her arm in a wide circle over my bed, searching for the word, “this mess.”
This mess. Oh God, it’s now or never. Now or never. It’s now. “Mom—” I try again.
“Don’t be embarrassed,” she says with a laugh. “It’s fine, really, I promise.” She stands over me, looking taller than she ever has before, handing me my robe, oblivious of my Tuesday underwear crumpled at her feet.
“Mom, Kevin—” I start, but his name in my mouth makes me want to throw up.
“Don’t worry, Edy. He’s out back with your brother. They’re playing basketball. And your father’s glued to the TV, as usual. Nobody’ll see you. Go ahead. Put this on.”
Looking up at her, I feel so small. And Kevin’s voice moves like a tornado through my mind, whispering—his breath on my face—No one will ever believe you. You know that. No one. Not ever.
Then my mom shakes the robe at me, offering me a lie I didn’t even need to think up. She starts getting that look in her eye—that impatient, it’s-the-holidays-and-I-don’t-have-time-for-this look. Clearly, it was time for me to get going so she could deal with this mess. And clearly, nobody was going to hear me. Nobody was going to see me—he knew that. He had been around long enough to know how things work here.
I try to stand without looking like everything is broken. I kick the Tuesdays under the bed so she won’t find them and wonder. I take my robe. Take the lie.
And as I look back at my mother, watching her collect the soiled sheets in her arms—the evidence—I know somehow if it’s not now, it has to be never. Because he was right, no one would ever believe me. Of course they wouldn’t. Not ever.
In the bathroom, I carefully peel off my nightgown, holding it at arm’s length as I ball it up and stuff it in the garbage can under the sink. I adjust my glasses and examine myself more closely. There are a few faint marks on my throat in the shape of his fingers. But they’re minor, really, in comparison to the ones on my body. No bruises on my face. Only the two-inch scar above my left eye from my bike accident two summers ago. My hair is slightly more disastrous than usual, but essentially I look the same—I can pass.
By the time I get out of the shower—still dirty, after scrubbing my body raw, thinking I could maybe wash the bruises off—there he is. Sitting at my kitchen table in my dining room with my brother, my father, my mother, sipping my orange juice from my glass—his mouth on a glass I would have to use someday. On a fork that would soon be undifferentiated from all the other forks. His fingerprints not only all over every inch of me, but all over everything: this house, my life, the world—infected with him.
Caelin raises his head and narrows his eyes at me as I cautiously approach the dining room. He can see it. I knew he would see it right away. If anyone was going to notice—if I could count on anyone—it would be my big brother. “Okay, you’re being really weird and intense right now,” he announces. He could tell because he always knew me even better than I knew myself.
So I stand there and wait for him to do something about this. For him to set his fork down, stand up and pull me aside, take me out to the backyard by the arm, and demand to know what’s wrong with me, demand to know what happened. Then I’d tell him what Kevin did to me and he’d give me one of his big brother-isms, like, Don’t worry, Edy, I’ll take care of it. The way he did whenever anyone was picking on me. And then he’d run back inside the house and stab Kevin to death with his own butter knife.
But that’s not what happens.
What happens is he just sits there. Watching me. Then slowly his mouth contorts into one of his smirks—our inside-joke grin—waiting for me to reciprocate, to give him a sign, or just start laughing like maybe I’m trying to secretly make fun of our parents. He’s waiting to get it. But he doesn’t get it. So he just shrugs, looks back down at his plate, and lops off a big slice of pancake. The bullet lodges itself a little deeper in my stomach as I stand there, frozen in the hallway.
“Seriously, what are you staring at?” he mumbles with his mouth full of pancake, in that familiar brotherly, you’re-the-stupidest-person-on-the-face-of-the-earth tone he had perfected over the years.
Meanwhile, Kevin barely even glances up. No threatening looks. No gestures of warning, nothing. As if nothing had even happened. The same cool disregard he always used with me. Like I’m still just Caelin’s dorky little sister with bad hair and freckles, freshman band-geek nobody, tagging along behind them, clarinet case in tow. But I’m not her anymore. I don’t even want to be her anymore. That girl who was so naive and stupid—the kind of girl who could let something like this happen to her.
“Come on, Minnie,” Dad says to me, using my pet name. Minnie as in Mouse, because I was so quiet. He gestured at the food on the table. “Sit down. Everything’s getting cold.”
As I stand in front of them—their Mousegirl—crooked glasses sliding down the bridge of my nose, stripped before eight scrutinizing eyes waiting for me to play my part, I finally realize what it’s all been about. The previous fourteen years had merely been dress rehearsal, preparation for knowing how to properly shut up now. And Kevin had told me, with his lips almost touching mine he whispered the words: You’re gonna keep your mouth shut. Last night it was an order, a command, but today it’s just the truth.
I push my glasses up. And with a sickness in my stomach—something like stage fright—I move slowly, cautiously. Try to act like every part of my body, inside and out, isn’t throbbing and pulsing. I sit down in the seat next to Kevin like I had at countless family meals. Because we considered him part of our family, Mom was always saying it, over and over. He was always welcome. Always.
IT’S TOTALLY SILENT IN the house after breakfast. Caelin left with Kevin to go play basketball with some of their old teammates from high school. Dad needed some kind of special wrench from the hardware store to install the new showerhead he got Mom for Christmas. And Mom was in her room, busy addressing New Year’s cards.
I sit in the living room, staring out the window.
A row of multicolored Christmas lights lining the garage flicker spastically in the gray morning light. The clouds pile one on top of the other endlessly, the sky closing in on us. Next door, a mostly deflated giant Santa rocks back and forth in the center of our neighbors’ white lawn with a slow, sick, zombielike shuffle. It feels like that scene in The Wizard of Oz when everything changes from black and white to color. Except it’s more like the other way around. Like I always thought things were in color, but they were really black and white. I can see that now.
“You feeling all right, Edy?” Mom suddenly appears in the room carrying a stack of envelopes in her hands.
I shrug in response, but I don’t think she even notices.
I watch a car roll through the stop sign at the corner, the driver barely glancing up to see if anyone’s there. I think about how they say when most people get into car accidents, it’s less than one mile from their home. Maybe that’s because everything’s so familiar, you stop paying attention. You don’t notice the one thing that’s different or wrong or off or dangerous. And I think about how maybe that’s what just happened to me.
“You know what I think?” she asks in that tone she’s been using on me ever since Caelin left for school over the summer. “I think you’re mad at your brother because he hasn’t spent enough time with you while he’s been home.” She doesn’t wait for me to tell her she’s wrong before she keeps talking. To tell her that it’s really her who’s mad that he hasn’t been home enough. “I know you want it to be just the two of you. Like it used to be. But he’s getting older—you’re both getting older—he’s in college now, Edy.”
“I know that—” I start to say, but she interrupts.
“It’s okay that he wants to see his friends while he’s home, you know.”
The truth is, none of us knows how to act around one another without Caelin here. It’s like we’ve become strangers all of a sudden. Caelin was the glue. He gave us purpose—a reason, a way to be together. Because what are we supposed to do with each other if we’re not cheering him on at his basketball games anymore? What are our kitchen table conversations supposed to sound like without him regaling us with his daily activities? I’m certainly no substitute; everyone knows that. What the hell do I have going on that could ever compare to the nonstop larger-than-life excitement that is Caelin McCrorey? At first I thought we were adjusting. But this is just how we are. Dad’s lost without another guy around. Mom doesn’t know what to do with herself without Caelin taking up all her time and attention. And me, I just need my best friend back. It’s simple, yet so complicated.
“It wouldn’t hurt you to branch out a bit either,” she continues, shuffling the stack of envelopes in her hands. “Make a couple of new friends. It’s officially the new year.” She smiles. I don’t. “Edy, you know I think Mara’s great—she’s been a great friend to you—but a person is allowed more than one friend in life is all I’m saying.”
I stand and walk past her into the kitchen. I pour myself a glass of water, just so I have something, anything, to focus on other than my mom, the pointlessness of this conversation, and the endless train wreck of thoughts crashing through my mind.
She stands next to me at the kitchen counter. I can feel her staring at the side of my face. It makes me want to crawl out of my skin. She reaches out to tuck my bangs behind my ear, like she always does. But I back away. Not on purpose.
Or maybe it is. I’m not sure. I know I’ve hurt her feelings. I open my mouth to tell her I’m sorry, but what comes out instead is: “It’s too hot here. I’m going outside.”
“Oh-kay,” she says slowly, confused.
My feet quickly move away from her. I grab my coat off the hook near the back door, slide my boots on, and walk out to the backyard. I brush the snow off one of the wooden swing-set seats. I feel the bruises on my body swell against the cold wood and metal chains. I just want to sit still for a second, breathe, and try to figure out how things could have ever gotten to this point. Figure out what I’m supposed to do now.
I close my eyes tight, weave my fingers together—and though I know I don’t do it nearly as much as I probably should—I pray, pray harder than I’ve ever prayed in my life. To somehow undo this. To just wake up, and have it be this morning again, except this time nothing would have happened last night.
I remember sitting down at the table with him. We played Monopoly. It was nothing, though. Nothing seemed wrong. He was actually being nice to me. Acting like . . . he liked me. Acting like I was more than just Caelin’s little sister. Like I was a real person. A girl, not just a kid. I went to bed happy. I went to bed thinking of him. But the next thing I remember is waking up to him climbing on top of me, putting his hand over my mouth, whispering shutupshutupshutup. And everything happening so fast. If it could all be a dream, just a dream that I could wake up from, then I would still be safe in my bed. That would make so much more sense. And nothing will be wrong. Nothing will be different. I’ll just be in my bed and nothing bad will ever have to happen there.
“Wake up,” I think I whisper out loud. God, just wake up. Wake up, Edy!
“Eden!” a voice calls.
My eyes snap open. My heart sinks into the pit of my stomach as I look around. Because I’m not in my bed. I’m in the backyard sitting on the swing, my bare fingers numb, curled tightly around the metal chains.
