The door closes, and Mom moves around the house, closing it up tight like they’re leaving for vacation. Ella thinks about going downstairs to talk to her, but she doesn’t know what to say. It’s almost like she’s the mom sometimes, like Mom secretly wants her to fix things, or at least do everything that needs to be done to keep Dad from exploding. Ella’s life is all about responsibility. For Brooklyn, for Mom, for the babysitting and petsitting jobs she started picking up when she was thirteen because it was easier than asking Dad for money, for her grades and her car and her chores. She’s exhausted most of the time, and then when she tries to sleep, it’s like her brain won’t turn off.
So she goes back to her room and puts the chair that was recently underneath her doorknob back by her desk where it belongs. She fixes her bed where she and Brooklyn mussed it up. She picks up her phone, and— Holy shit.
Her phone blew up.
There are fifty-seven messages, not to mention hundreds of hits on social media. And most of the messages are from numbers she doesn’t even know.
OMG, girl, I’m so sorry.
Forget him. He’s a loser.
Bless, queen!
Ah.
Looks like Beth decided to post the recording from the parking lot. And then everybody decided to share it.
Ella finds it on YouTube, squinting like it’s a horror movie that she has to watch but doesn’t really want to see. Damn, Beth’s phone is good. The video is crystal clear, and it leaves no doubt whatsoever that Hayden was being a total dick. The way he blocks her door, the way he obviously trips her, the bite of his fingers around her arm, and then…
God, he really did hit her hard.
Ella winces, watching it happen. Her fingertips brush her cheek, remembering.
That’s enough.
She clicks off the video and scrolls through her texts, wondering how everyone got her number, wondering how she’s going to figure out who’s interrupting all the pity and sweetness with things like If you talked that way to me, I’d hit you so hard you couldn’t get up and Take it, bitch. Most of it is under the usual anonymous and burner accounts; no one uses their real names for social. The first familiar account she comes across is Lindsey, her science lab partner from last year. I hope you press charges, she says, which is sweet but not helpful. Everything is running together. It’s just too much.
Ella keeps scrolling until she finds Hayden’s name in her texts. His first messages came in before the video hit, back when she was on the phone with 9-1-1. It feels like it happened weeks ago, but it was hours ago.
Baby I’m so sorry.
Please. Let’s just talk.
Let’s go somewhere private and talk.
Why won’t you answer me?
Well fuck you, too.
Baby, please. I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry. Let’s talk it out.
Circles and circles and circles.
Coaxing, begging, commanding, insulting, apologizing, coaxing again.
And the thing about circles is that you get trapped inside them.
His texts changed when the video hit.
Who’d you tell? Who saw that? Was this a setup?
Tell Beth to take it down. Say it’s not what it looks like It was the Violence I would never do that to you I was out of control I’m sorry
My mom is freaking out pls baby do something The police are here
This is on you
Mom told them it’s the Violence
They’re gonna take me away
You did this
Ella jerks back from the phone as if it could bite her.
Those are the same words her dad said to her mom when he had her by the throat.
You did this.
Ella is totally certain she did not make her boyfriend be an asshole who pushed her around and hit her in the school parking lot. She’s very certain her mom didn’t make her dad get drunk and beat her. Why is it that when men act out it’s always someone else’s fault?
She puts her phone down on her bedside table and stares at it. It buzzes, and she picks it back up and disables notifications because at this rate, she’ll never get to sleep, and if she does, she’ll dream of bees. The messages just keep coming.
This is…a lot.
She feels utterly helpless. Can’t help her mom. Doesn’t know how to respond to anyone in her texts. Can’t help Hayden, not that she’s sure she wants to.
Can’t help herself.
As she curls up in bed, her hand creeps under the pillow, making sure that the knife is still there. Her father is gone, but he’s not the only dangerous man in the world. She sleeps lightly, tossing and turning, dreaming of a long, dark tunnel she can’t escape.
When her alarm goes off the next morning, she silences it and holds very still, listening in the dark. The house is utterly silent. By this time, Brooklyn is usually already awake, and she and Mom are downstairs chatting over the crunch of cereal and the clink of spoons. But no one is awake, and Ella doesn’t really want to go to school today and face…everything. Or everybody. So she curls up facing the wall and falls back to sleep almost immediately.
She wakes up again in a patch of sunlight and stretches like it’s a lazy Sunday. Now she hears her mom and Brooklyn, and she checks her phone briefly before remembering that it’s just a bunch of work. There’s a grunt down by her feet, and she finds Olaf looking at her reproachfully, like she’s interrupted the world’s most important nap. He’s so cute for an idiot, snowy white and soft with soulful eyes, and she likes snuggling him as long as he’s not covered in piss.
The dog follows her downstairs, and everything smells like lemon cleaner. Mom’s done her usual wipe job on the kitchen, hiding any evidence at all that something went wrong last night. The blood splotches are long gone, as are the beer bottles in the recycling bin. Only the marks of the aluminum bat remain, pockmarking the bathroom door and denting the wall beside it. That damage isn’t so easily erased. They took the bat away as evidence.
“Morning, honey.” Her mom smiles from one of the barstools at the kitchen counter, and Ella pauses. There’s something different about her mom besides the fact that her face and neck are mottled with bruises and bandages.
She’s…relaxed. Her smile is genuine. Ella realizes that for the last several years, her mom has been tense, like a human fist, her shoulders up around her ears and little lines of tension crumpling around her eyes and mouth. But now she looks like a mom in a commercial, like she always looks on their first day at the beach, before Dad starts growling and Brooklyn starts whining. She looks…well, if not happy, then as close as she’s been in a while.
Ella smiles back, a little tentative. “Hi. How are…I mean…” God, the right words don’t exist. “Are you okay?”
Her mom’s fingertips brush her jaw, where the biggest bruise is. “I’ll be okay.” Her brows scrunch down, the tension back. “How about you? That must’ve been scary.”
Ella’s fingers now hover around her own biggest bruise, and she’s about to answer honestly when she remembers that her mom doesn’t even know what happened to her in the parking lot with Hayden—she lied about that. Her mom is asking something else entirely.
To think: Two huge, earth-shattering, terrifying things happened yesterday, and yet here she is at the breakfast table, pouring a bowl of Cocoa Pebbles. And here the earth is, not shattered, everyone outside their house just going on as usual. Well, except for the new pandemic.
But her mom is asking about last night, and she’s waiting for an answer as Brooklyn happily munches and watches a cartoon on her tablet.
“Yeah, it was scary. Dad’s never…I guess…he hasn’t done that before, right?”