“That doesn’t justify trying to rape me!” I stood up, put my shirt back on, opened his tiny bedroom window, and climbed onto the roof. He followed.
“Beck, I’m sorry. I just think sometimes… back then. You went wild. Like you didn’t care anymore.”
He was right about that. Why should I have cared when the first and only guy I’d given my heart, soul, body, and love to left me in the dust?
“YOU left me! YOU put your homework and running first! YOU let Hillman push you around! Oh, and YOU broke my heart!”
I started walking the length of the roof. The stars were extra sparkly, lighting the path I took toward the chimney. My sense of balance seemed pretty good after four glasses of wine.
“Beck, come back here.”
“No!”
“Please? I’m sorry!” He started toward me, but his balance wasn’t as good as mine and his foot slipped. He grabbed a roof tile and was able to pull himself up.
The mere thought that Christian believed, for a minute, that I’d provoked Hillman made me sick. Every time I wore something suggestive or downed more alcohol than I knew what to do with, it was for Christian. In the end, I only wanted his love and attention. Once I had it, the taste was bittersweet.
I resolved to simply enjoy myself in spite of Christian’s paranoia, and spent most days looking forward to art class. The chemistry between Jesse and me had always been there, so it was nothing new for people to see us work closely on a project or talk to each other. I was careful to cut-short our conversations once class let-out, because Christian usually waited for me, his eagle eye trained to ensure my art buddy wasn’t my buddy outside of class.
“The Gestapo’s here.” Jesse gestured with his chin over his shoulder. I turned around and Christian was almost in the doorway. He frantically paced back and forth.
“Oh geez, stop it, would you?” I poked Jesse in the arm and he pretended to wail without making a sound.
“I’ll never stop. Not until you go out with me again. And then… maybe then… I will stop. But probably not.”
The bell rang and, for the first time ever, Christian came into the classroom. He stood by my desk and gave Jesse the most fire-spitting look I’d ever seen. Jesse picked up on the vibe and exited without saying goodbye.
“Let’s go.” Christian picked up my backpack and escorted me out the door, holding my arm tighter than usual.
“What is going on, Christian? Let go of me!” He didn’t, and we walked at a super-fast pace down campus and to the Partymobile.
“We need to talk,” he said, holding the door open for me, and then slamming it once I got inside. He revved the engine and took-off, lurching past the waiting cars, hopping the curb, and peeling into the street.
“Buy any good books lately, Beck?” He kept his eyes on me and somehow managed to steer the giant SUV without crossing lanes.
“I buy books all the time. What’s this about?”
He snorted and dropped his foot on the gas, pushing the ancient vehicle past everyone else. We must have been going 50.
“Christian, slow down!” I tightened my seatbelt and reached up for the hell handle.
“I need a drink,” he said, pulling a bottle from underneath his seat, yanking the cork with his teeth, and spitting it out into my lap. I took the nasty plug and tossed it on the floor.
After several gulps, Christian turned onto the freeway, where he could go even faster. Though he was madder than hell, he instinctively handed me the bottle and I got what I needed in order to tolerate his craziness.
“You know who I haven’t talked to in a long time?”
“You need to slow down!”
“Remember Audrey?” He had his eyes on me again, and this time we were doing 80. My stomach felt squished against my spine.
“Yes.” I certainly did. The night she spotted me and Jesse at the bookstore burned in my memory. I knew even then that she’d somehow put her discovery to good use.
“Seems she ran into you the other night at the bookstore. Said you were drinking coffee and watching a band.”
I decided to go the honest route, but not too honest.
“Yeah, I was. So?”
“So! You told me you were studying! Instead you were at the bookstore. With your art buddy. What’s his name? That guy with the fucking jacket?!”
It felt like I was going up and down in an express elevator. My body ran hot, cold, and chilled with goose bumps simultaneously.
“Jesse.”
“Ah, that’s it! He’s got a girl’s name. So, Beck, what the fuck is this?”
“I went to the bookstore and Jesse was there. It’s nothing.”
“Wrong! It’s gotta be something if you’re telling me stories so you can go out with him.”
“I wasn’t telling you a story. We saw each other at the bookstore and hung out.” I’d entered lying mode because I hated being caught.
He slowed down to exit the freeway, and sped up again as we approached the hill where the water tower stood. All the times we’d gotten drunk there had been fun. I suspected this wouldn’t be the same.
Christian ripped the wine from my hands and got out, leaving the door open. I hesitated before I got out, sliding down from the tall seat to the sun-warmed ground. He walked up to the water tower, his mouth on the bottle the whole time. On the way back, he heaved the empty container over the fence and came up to my face.
“This is bullshit! I put everything on the line for you, and you piss all over me.” He did a sort of slam dance, fisting the air and stomping his feet, and then came right back around to me again. It was hard not to flinch.
“Christian! Look, Jesse is a friend. I can have friends, can’t I? You kept your friends!”
“That’s different.”
“Why is it so different?”
“Cause he likes you, Beck. Like I haven’t told you before!” Christian shook his head and ran his hands through his hair before looking back at me.
“If you knew how much I loved you. If you really cared, Beck, you’d get out of that class.”
“I can’t just move classes mid-semester. There is nothing going on.” My lies were sounding the same on the outside, but growing thicker on the inside. I could feel their mixture coagulating and taking hold of my emotions.
He turned toward me and put his finger in my face. “If you want me around, you’ll do whatever it takes!”
I shrank back and crossed my arms over my chest. He looked like he wanted to say something else, but instead went over to the fence and took a piss. He left his fly down.
“Do you understand? Everyone knows about Olivia now. And there’s court dates and lawyers and shit because I wasn’t going to just let Hillman have his way with you.”
“Would you have let him if you didn’t love me?” When he’d told me earlier that Hillman had used the threat before, he said it was different this time because he loved me.
I struggled to keep my mind from wandering to the place where it considered that Hillman had succeeded in raping before.
Instead of responding, Christian’s nostrils flared as his eyebrows twisted into a demonic knit. The red on his cheeks spread over his face, and he looked about ready to explode.
“Get in the fucking car!” There was a moment when I felt torn between heeding my instincts and running down the hill, or getting into the Partymobile to keep the peace. I always chose peace first, and dutifully entered the vehicle. The seatbelt was already on and pulled tight around my hips before Christian managed to get in.
“I don’t like you like this, Christian. Take me home!” I felt like slugging something myself, and the dashboard was looking like a good place to do it. It would have also been great if there was something more for me to drink — then I could give it back as good as I was getting it.
It appeared that I was going to get what I wanted as Christian screeched toward my house. The all-downhill ride took us around corners that neither Christian nor his SUV could handle very well.
I kept checking my seatbelt while also noticing the lack of airbags in front of us.
Again, Christian couldn’t keep his eyes on the road. What had been the face of rage was now borderline sobbing. He kept only one hand on the wheel while I pumped imaginary pedals on the barren floorboard below me.
“This is it, Beck. It’s now or never. Either you make the decision or it’ll be decided for you.” He took his lone hand off the wheel right as we faced the blind corner three blocks from my house. A small guardrail lined the edge of the canyon, with several eucalyptus trees standing behind it to block the misstep of vehicles that came into its path. Except ours.
I remember the seatbelt cutting into my stomach and chest, and the snap of my neck flopping forward and back, and then around several times until the Partymobile landed on its roof. The seatbelt held my ragged body, suspended not only upside down but in disbelief. For a moment I saw Christian, but he wasn’t suspended like me. I’d heard things about what happens to the body when it isn’t buckled-in during a car accident. Now I could see it with my own eyes.
People who lived near the canyon came first to check on us. At least this is what I was told, because after I saw Christian’s shredded body in the broken window I passed out.
They said that the emergency people got me out and strapped me to a board. A team of doctors and nurses struggled to put me back together again. I drifted in and out of consciousness, picking up bits and pieces of what they said.
“Concussion.”
“Broken clavicle.”
“Smart girl was wearing her seatbelt.”
“Drinking heavily.”
I awoke in a hospital bed, my shoulder splinted with a wrap that went around my back and into a sling. My head pounded with a headache far worse than anything drinking ever brought on. I felt like I was going to throw up.
“Rebecca. Rebecca?” I looked to my side and saw my mom sitting next to me. She leaned over my bed. My dad was standing beside her. He wiped tears from his eyes when he saw that I recognized him.
“She’s awake! Get the nurse.” My mom sent my dad down the hall. There was another person standing behind my mom. Her pretty hair gave it away.
“Beck, it’s Jenna. I’m here.” Jenna reached over and lightly touched my arm. Her angelic smile was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, and I realized how much I missed her.
The nurse came and checked the machines I was hooked to and said she was getting the doctor. My dad explained.
“You’ve been in and out of consciousness for three days, Rebecca.”
“I. Was?” I tried to pull myself up but the stabbing little knives in my shoulder and the fact that the room swayed like we were on a boat kept me in place.
“You were in a car accident, on that curve up the road from home.”
I remembered seeing the curve right before we went into it, knowing that the Partymobile wouldn’t make it at that speed.
“Going fast. Really. He’d been drinking.” The bottle, the water tower, the rage that poured from his heart for something that I hoped he wouldn’t figure out.
“Yes. But you’re going to be okay. You broke your collarbone and have a concussion. The seatbelt saved you.”
The doctor came in and performed similar vitals as the nurse did, checked my eyes, and asked me my name, the date, and who the president was. Even that exhausted me, and instead of conking out again, I threw up all over myself.
My parents and Jenna stayed with me. It looked like afternoon, but it could have been morning. The sun never seemed to move from behind the crack in the curtains that darkened my room.
Nobody mentioned Christian until I brought him up.
Chapter 26
The most painful thing about a car accident isn’t the physical damage. It’s the emotional destruction. Skin heals. Bone mends. But the mind is fucked forever.
A week lapsed from the time I entered the hospital until I got out. The pain pump I was hooked to made it so I didn’t care what day or time it was. I only wanted to feel better and the pump delivered that promise only a few times each hour.
Even if, deep down, I hid the memory of something terrible, it would still be there. Taunting me. Playing with my head. Creaming the inside of my soul as it struggled to reach out of my mind and grab me by the face, pulling me in to take a look at it. To make itself real. It felt like a suffocating mask on my face as I sat in a wheelchair in the hospital lobby, waiting for my dad to come around with the car.
Like a curtain that separates the room, I could still see my old life behind the veil. Now I was on the other side of that curtain, and no matter how much I pulled at it, I couldn’t make it open wide enough for me to step back through. I was eager, almost frantic, to pick up the pieces from behind that curtain — any little thing that I could grasp and hold onto for the sake of what had been mine.
Going home was more than what it was. I was going into a new life. Where I had struggled with self-confidence and hid it behind drinking, I now had nothing to hide behind except bandages. The only confidence I needed was knowing that I could make it to the toilet before I lost it in the middle of the floor. School was a distant memory, and I was allowed to do home study at my own pace. This was good, because my thoughts were on something else besides learning and homework.
I tried to bring Christian close to me in the days after I came home. Although my pace was slow, I initiated the greatest treasure hunt I’d ever embarked on. Every drawer, box, pocket, and even the trashcan, became a goldmine of remembrance. Into my temporary receptacle, a giant plastic bag, went the lipstick I wore on our first date, as well as the cork from the jug of wine he’d brought that night. A torn condom wrapper joined the mix, as did the pair of underpants I’d worn the night we’d first been together. Larger items, like the sheet that had served as my toga and the tube top I wore underneath it, were folded as neatly as I could manage and placed in a paper grocery bag. I worked in hour blocks of time on my collection, and when I should have been satisfied, I did another sweep.
I later took the toga sheet out of its paper case and laid it over my pillows so I could sleep on it. Inhaling the now pungent scent of sweat, dust, and the slight bite of wine was like heaven.
Jenna was going to take me to Christian’s service. There was no way I could drive myself with a mind full of Jello and a body that shook if I even tensed one muscle. My parents were reluctant to let me go.
My dad sat on the edge of my bed while I tried to put blush on my cheeks at the mirror. “It’s too much for you to handle.”
I dropped the blush brush. “Look at what I’ve already handled, Dad!” My dad fetched it and placed it back in my hand. I would be damned if I looked as pale as I felt.
Where my dad made a small attempt to keep me safe at home, my mother went bonkers.
She paced my bedroom floor, her hands waving about. “You’ve already been through enough! You can’t go! It’ll hurt you more than you know.”
But it would hurt more if I didn’t say goodbye. If I wasn’t there for Christian one more time.
Jenna, who was now driving, arrived an hour before the funeral started. Her dark dress looked harsh against her light-colored hair. The usual paleness of her skin seemed extra white on this day.
“You’re still going, right?” She helped me tie my hair back.
“I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t.” I looked in the mirror at the dark figure sitting before it. The blush had done little to hide my pallor, and I considered wearing sunglasses to hide the dark crescents under my eyes.
My parents watched me walk behind Jenna out the door. Their silence was an answer to my defiant determination to attend Christian’s funeral. No lack of words on their part would stop me from meeting the dire need I held inside to be there.
We pulled up to the church and couldn’t find a place to park. Over 100 cars lined the street, clogged the parking lot, and snaked through the neighborhood behind the building. Jenna discovered a possible l
ocation between two Mercedes, and performed a flawless parallel parking maneuver into the tight spot.
She shut off the engine and observed the sea of vehicles, as well as the many suits and dresses that marched toward the church. “It looks like the whole school is here.”
I sucked in my breath and exhaled softly. Yes, they were all here. More than enough of the student body to create an uncomfortable feeling in my gut. I hadn’t thought much about who’d be here, except for Christian’s closest friends, sans Hillman, his family, and me.
Jenna reached into her purse and pulled out a pack of tissues, pressing them into my good hand. “Just in case.”
I tripped at the door and stumbled into the church. Vast expanses of wall carried the sound of many voices to the painted ceiling and across the space to the cross at the end. The whispers were undisguised.
“There’s Beck.”
“It’s her.”
“She looks terrible.”
“Poor thing.”
I didn’t want their sympathy, nor their attention. But I had both as I walked toward the pews on the arm of Jenna. Her face was stoic, her stance protective as she found a spot for us along the aisle in the middle of the church. I didn’t look at the faces now looking at me.
“Everyone is here,” she whispered in my ear. She did one more glance around the pews and inhaled sharply.
“Jesse’s here.” She motioned with her eyes to the wall along the right side of the church. I carefully moved my head toward that direction and spotted him. He was wearing black like the rest of us, and when I almost believed he was oblivious to my presence, he gave me his acknowledgement with an a-okay hand gesture.
I decided to look at the program that had been handed to me, and was taken aback that Christian’s face graced the cover. It seemed wrong.
It’s me. It really is, Beck.
But I can’t believe it, Christian.
I don’t expect you to right now. When the time is right, we’ll talk again.
What do you mean?
His voice went silent in my head, but his statement imprinted on my mind. We would talk again.
Swell Page 17
