Smashed

by Lisa Luedeke

  We had some free time there, and group meetings with other kids with the same problems. Lots of girls had it worse than me: They’d run away or been abused by someone in their own family. Some of them had nowhere to go back to, no friends who called. Even so, I was still so depressed sometimes that I thought the only way out—the only way to stop feeling so bad—was to die or to drink. Sometimes I wanted to drink so bad I could almost taste it: the burn down my throat from a single shot of tequila, a whisper of salt on the tip of my tongue. But who was I kidding? I wasn’t exactly mixing margaritas there at the end. And the counselors told me if I felt like crap now, they’d guarantee I’d feel worse if I got drunk.

  “Did it work last time you tried it?” one would say.

  Sometimes I hated them.

  *

  One day a fourteen-year-old named Bethany came up to me after a group meeting where I’d admitted I wanted to drink or kill myself, and I didn’t care which. We were in a deserted hallway near our wing; fluorescent lights glared on the concrete walls and grungy linoleum.

  “How can you let him do that to you?” she asked. Her face was pale above her narrow shoulders, her eyes big and haunted.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “That guy, Alex,” she said.

  “Alec … ,” I said.

  She nodded. “Don’t hurt yourself. Don’t let him win.”

  If anyone back home had said that to me, I’d have told them where to go. But I knew Bethany’s story: that her stepfather had been molesting her for three years before she finally ran away because her mother didn’t believe her. That she’d lived on the street by doing things I didn’t even want to think about. That she’d been puking when she first got here—dope sick from withdrawal. I’d watched her struggle to get herself out of bed in the morning. She’d been in a psych ward once for slitting her wrists. Her scars were inside and out.

  She was walking down the hall now, but she looked back to where I stood, like a deer caught in headlights.

  “My stepfather—he’s not winning this time.”

  I could see from her eyes that she meant it.

  *

  The counselors tried to get us ready to go back to the “real world.” We had to learn how to deal with “life on life’s terms,” they said, and they spent quite a bit of time helping us figure out exactly what they meant by that.

  What it meant in a nutshell: You can’t avoid shit. Using drugs or alcohol isn’t a fallback position. Hiding out isn’t an option. Stuff happens and you have to deal with it. You run, you lose. Your best thinking got you here. And here is not a place you have to end up again. The choice is yours.

  It was time to grow up.

  There was something I had to do before I could go home, and the longer I lived in that place, with those girls and those counselors, the more I knew it. Gail agreed. I had two letters to write and one secret left to let go of—one lie left to own.

  No matter how scared I was to do it.

  No matter what might happen when I did.

  I took out two envelopes. I addressed one to Matt and one to Cassie.

  Then I began to write.

  spring

  45

  Pale green and crimson buds speckled the tree branches like confetti. In our yard, next to the decrepit barn, an apple tree blossomed. Petals from its fluffy white flowers lay strewn across the grass like an untimely, delicate snow.

  Will stood on the porch, his eyes following me.

  “I won’t be long. I’m just going to see Cassie,” I said.

  “Want me to tell Mom?”

  “I told her,” I said. “She’ll be right back. She just went down to the store to get some milk.” I turned to go.

  “Katie … ?” Will had been my shadow all morning, sticking so close that if I stopped in my tracks he’d practically run into me.

  “I’ll be back in an hour, Will. I promise,” I said gently.

  “Okay,” he said, but his eyes were uncertain.

  I wheeled my bicycle out of the barn, brushed the winter’s dust off the seat with my hand, and climbed on. The air in the tires was low. The rubber spread out slightly on the pavement under my weight, but I didn’t care. I had arrived home just the night before; I needed to see Cassie.

  The sun shone warm on my head, but the air was still cold. The wind blew hard against my face and through my hair as I pedaled toward the lake, goose bumps rising on my arms.

  Cassie was expecting me. She was in her yard, digging up flower beds with her father; she looked up and waved. Not one of her usual enthusiastic waves, but a somber, one-hand-up-by-the-shoulder-then-straight-back-down waves, the kind you give a passing car in Westland when you don’t know who’s in it. She laid down her spade and walked slowly toward me.

  Her father smiled and said hello, then looked back at his garden. I climbed off my bike and leaned it against their fence and Cassie and I walked away from her house, farther down the quiet road toward the deserted public beach.

  We’d never had a real fight before, and my heart was racing. Cassie stared at the road ahead of us, avoiding my eyes, my face. Neither of us said a word. The five minutes it took to walk to the beach felt like eternity.

  “I’m sorry, Cassie.” My voice cracked and I cleared my throat. We were sitting side by side now, legs dangling off the dock.

  She just nodded, flicked a toe in the water, and studied the little ripple she’d set off.

  “I don’t know why I did it. I know that’s what you want to know—why I did everything I did—but I can’t explain it.”

  She still didn’t say anything, just played with her toes in the water, then finally shook her head. “That’s not it,” she said, so quiet I could barely hear her.

  “What is it?”

  Cassie stared straight ahead. Her lips trembled.

  “Tell me, Cass—”

  She held one palm up to stop me from talking. Whatever she had to say to me, I could take it. I knew that now. I could see how hard it was for her, too.

  “Do you know how scared I was when I came home last summer and you’d been in that car accident?”

  I shook my head slowly.

  “Very.” She still wasn’t looking at me. “Very scared. All I could think was what if you’d died… . I couldn’t handle that.” She flicked the water again with her toe.

  “But then I thought, well, why dwell on it? It’s over. You know? She didn’t die… .”

  “I’m sorry, Cass—”

  “You remember last May—it was maybe a whole year ago—after that party at Cheryl’s camp? You were so drunk you could hardly walk, and I had to drape your arm over me just so I could get you into the house that night. You didn’t make it to the bathroom, you know—you peed your pants. I never told anyone you did that, not even you. I didn’t know if you would remember in the morning. I was hoping you wouldn’t.” She took her feet out of the water, pulled her damp legs up to her chest, and hugged them in, chin on her knees. “I brought you back to my house that night. I was scared to leave you alone. My mom turned you on your side in case you threw up again so you wouldn’t choke on it… .

  “My mom thought you had a drinking problem back then. She said that people who get in trouble when they drink or do drugs have a problem.” She laughed once, without humor. “I told my mom, It’s just what kids do. Totally defended you.

  “Do you do it? my mom asked me. I had to say no. I mean, I never had. She knew that.” She shook her head. “But I didn’t want you to be in trouble, so …”

  “What?”

  “So I convinced myself that you weren’t—that you weren’t in trouble.” She stared out at the water. Tears ran over her freckles like tiny rivers, and she let them. They sparkled in the sun and dropped off her chin. “I’m so sorry about that. For letting you down.”

  I was stunned. “Cassie.”

  “I feel like such a loser.”

  “Cassie, you are the opposite of a loser.”

  “I
know you were mad at me in rehab. You weren’t really hiding it, you know?”

  I dug in my pockets for a tissue, found a crumpled one, and handed it to her.

  “I came to apologize to you for that, Cassie. And believe me, you don’t have to explain to me how you can deny something that’s right in front of your face—how you can pretend something isn’t happening when it is.”

  Cassie smiled weakly. “I guess you know a little bit about that.”

  “Are you kidding? I’m an expert,” I said. I pulled my feet out of the icy water and rubbed the cold flesh with my hands. “Listen to me, Cassie. Nothing, nothing you could have done would have changed me. It wasn’t your fault.”

  She tilted her head toward me and studied my eyes; she could see that I meant it. “That’s what my mom said,” she said softly.

  “She’s right.”

  “So why were you mad at me?” she asked.

  “I wasn’t mad at you. I was mad at myself. I was just mad at myself.”

  *

  We were quiet on the walk back to her house. It was a relief that her parents’ cars were gone, that I wouldn’t have to talk to them.

  We stood on the McPhersons’ lawn, newly green. Cassie bit her lip. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Anything.”

  “What’s going to happen to Alec, Kay? I can’t stand it, seeing him at school every day.”

  “Nothing.” I looked at my feet.

  “That’s not right.”

  “I know, but there’s nothing I can do.”

  Cassie dug her foot into the soft earth of a flower bed. “My mom says the state has to investigate because you’re a minor.”

  “I talked to them.” My eyes scanned Cassie’s familiar yard, then focused on the lake. The deep blue water shimmered in the sun. “There’s no proof, no physical evidence. It’s his word against mine. With my drinking and everything … going to court would be like suicide. Even Gail agreed.”

  “Gail?”

  “My counselor. And my mom talked to Ron Bailey about it. Mom says he’s livid, but he agreed. They’re right.”

  “I’m sorry, Kay. Sometimes I just want to kill Alec.”

  “I want to kill him all the time.”

  *

  Inside her empty house, we made sandwiches and opened a bag of chips. Cassie grew quiet, moving around the kitchen without saying a word, her eyes on the tile, on the food, anywhere but on me. We sat down with our plates in front of a large window overlooking the lake, but she didn’t eat a thing; something was on her mind.

  “It hurt,” she said suddenly. She looked at me then; her eyes flashed. “After Christmas, when you’d hardly talk to me, when you avoided me in school, and then didn’t want to see me in rehab …” Her hand gripped the arm of her chair, her knuckles white. “When I told you about Simon and you didn’t even care, the way you talked to me the day I visited you.” Her voice was trembling, the words tumbling out. “When you finally wrote me and told me you were driving Alec’s car and I realized how much I didn’t know. It hurt, Kay. It hurt a lot.

  “I thought I had no right to be mad—after what happened to you and everything, after Alec … I mean, nothing’s worse than that, right? But …”

  “I don’t blame you for being mad, Cassie.”

  “I just want to be honest,” she went on. “When we were making lunch I just got so angry inside. Something exploded in me. I mean, I didn’t even know it was there, but all I could think was, How could she lie to me? How could she just blow me off after all these years? How could she not care, not tell me things that were so important ? She’s my best friend. Why did she treat me like that? It all just kept spinning around in my head. I tried to stop it but I couldn’t… .

  “But then I thought: If I don’t tell you what I’m thinking right now, it would be like doing the same thing that I was mad at you for doing. Because how I feel … This is important.” She looked at me and took a deep breath. “Do you know what I’m talking about?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I think I do.”

  “Good,” she said, and her face relaxed, her eyes shining. “Because you’re my best friend.” We were both crying now. “And I’m not letting go of that.”

  46

  “Ready?” Matt asked.

  We picked up the canoe, flipped it right side up, and lowered it into the water next to the dock. My hands trembled as I strapped on my life jacket and stepped carefully into the boat. I was glad to be in the bow facing the lake rather than facing Matt. Maybe it was because, even though he knew me better than anyone did, he was still a guy. Or because he’d warned me away from Alec way back last summer. Or simply because he knew what had happened to me, knew what Alec had done, something so personal and so terrible that having anyone know—and everyone did—was almost as horrible as the rape itself.

  Alec had spread it around, what he called my “bullshit allegations.” Said I was just trying to cover up that I was a lush, a drunk, a slut. He made the whole thing public, as if proving he had nothing to hide. Now it was as if everyone could see through me, to the most private part of myself. It was like a second invasion.

  I didn’t have to go to school, and I chose not to. We’d arranged all that before I came home. Starting on Monday, Cassie and Matt would bring my work home; when I was done, they’d take it back. Gail agreed it wasn’t avoidance; it was self-preservation. Why slap a bull’s-eye on my back and walk into the woods?

  Matt was my oldest friend, and I thought that would somehow make it easier to see him, but it didn’t. With people around town, I could shut down, stay aloof, pretend I didn’t care. But that didn’t fly with Matt and Cassie. If we were going to be friends, I’d have to show up and tell the truth. Otherwise it was a joke; there was nothing between us. Cassie and Gail had helped me see that.

  Matt slung the strap of one of his cameras over his shoulder and climbed into the canoe.

  “No pictures of me today, okay?” I didn’t look back at him.

  “Okay.” In the past he would sneak pictures of me, and tease me when I got mad, but I could tell from his voice that today he meant it.

  The water was a wide, smooth mirror. Puffy clouds and a fine blue sky stretched out over our heads. We paddled past Cassie’s house. In her yard, forsythia had blossomed: tiny, delicate, gold.

  “I can’t believe how warm it is,” Matt said.

  I pulled my paddle through the water, sending ripples through reflections of trees and sky. The lake was so still, so quiet in May. There were no motorboats buzzing in the distance, no kids’ voices echoing from the beach, just the sound of our wooden paddles bumping against the canoe, the gentle splatter of water across the lake’s calm surface.

  Our island, small and familiar, drew closer with every stroke. The grove of towering pine trees that grew there creaked and swayed when it was windy, but today they stood powerful and still. We stepped into the cold, shallow water and tied the boat firmly to a tree.

  I slipped off my rubber sandals and walked barefoot on the warm, rust-colored pine needles that covered the earth like a soft carpet. The branches on the old trees were sparse and the pines well spaced out; there was plenty of sunshine between them. I took off my sweatshirt and made a pillow, then lay down on my back, eyes closed, face to the sun. Matt left his camera in the canoe and sat down beside me.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Don’t cry,” he said gently.

  “I can’t help it,” I whispered, and covered my eyes with one arm. “I’m sorry, Matt.”

  “Why are you sorry?” he said.

  “Just—for everything. For being such an idiot.”

  Matt reached over and took my hand.

  “Thanks for the letter you sent,” he said quietly.

  I squeezed his hand, my eyes on the sky over our heads. For what seemed like forever, we lay there in silence, side by side in the sunshine.

  *

  Matt walked around the water’s
edge taking pictures, then lay on the ground and focused the lens up into the tops of the trees. Click, click, click. The sound was so familiar it was comforting. I had missed this: the lake, my home, my friend.

  He put his camera down and looked over at me. “Are you going to graduation?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, and sat up, pushing my hands into the warm pine needles.

  It had been on my mind every single day. It was only three weeks away now, and never in my life had I imagined that I wouldn’t be there, marching across the stage with the friends I’d known since kindergarten and the few who had moved here since. It seemed impossible to do it—and impossible not to.

  “I don’t know, Matt. I’d like to say that I could walk in there and sit on the bleachers with him and not care, but I don’t know if I can do it.”

  I picked up a pinecone and chucked it at the water.

  I wanted more than anything to be tough. Every day I fantasized about walking into the school gymnasium in my cap and gown with my head up. I wanted to look Alec in the eye and not blink. But who was I kidding? Seeing him right now would feel like losing everything all over again.

  “The way they line us up by height, I’d probably end up paired with Alec for the procession.” I was only half joking, but both of us knew it wasn’t funny.

  “They’d never do that.”

  “Why wouldn’t they? He’s walking around school, isn’t he? Nobody believes me.”

  “That’s not true. A lot of people do.”

  “And most of them don’t.”

  Matt looked at me, his brown eyes soft but his lips pursed tight. He was angry at them, too. Whoever they were. Whoever believed Alec over me, or called me a slut or a lush or worse. The worst part was, they were half-right. I didn’t lie about the rape, but the drinking part—that was me. No one had poured it down my throat.

  “I wish I didn’t care.” I took a deep breath.

  “Are you okay?”

  I shook my head no. Feeling like this had become familiar. I just had to breathe slowly, wait until it passed. I fixed my eyes on the large twisted root of a pine tree. One, two, one, two. Finally, the nausea subsided.