Under the Light

Chapter 25





Jenny


HE FROZE FOR A SECOND, turned away, and held a hand over his mouth as if he wished he could shove all those words back in. Finally Billy looked directly at me, his face white.

“I could have stopped them.” He stared at me darkly, but I wouldn’t run even though I knew he wanted me out of there. “But I didn’t.” Billy turned back to the lawyers. “We were on the bus going to the mall in Evans. There was this girl who was alone and Grady thought she was hot. I didn’t like the way he was talking about her, but he’s pretty much a jackass about girls. Anyway, he asks me to pretend I lost my dog and to get her to help look for it, and when I ask why he says so we can meet her, like an icebreaker. It seemed stupid, but no stupider than other stuff we’d done.

“So we get off two stops too soon so we can follow her. I came up to her and asked if she’s seen a little dog. Grady and Roth pretend they don’t know me and we all start looking for this made-up Chihuahua named Taquito. Then Grady and her went down an alley because he said he thought he heard barking and Roth asks me to keep watch at the opening of the alley and I said hell no. And he said then I should just leave, if I was such a wuss. That pissed me off, so I walked away, but a few blocks later I realized that they might actually . . .” Billy sighed. “That they might force her into something, so I came back, but they weren’t where I left them. I walked around. Checked in all the stores and food places for about half a mile. When I couldn’t find them I thought maybe they’d gotten scared and given up or got caught or something.

“And the next day when I asked them, at first Grady said nothing happened. They acted like I ditched them. But it was the way they said it. They used the same words as each other, like they got together and decided what to tell me. I knew they did it. And that night I thought how I should’ve seen what was coming. I thought of all these things I could’ve done. I could have run around the bus screaming, ‘Fire!’ I could have got in her face and yelled, ‘There’s no dog!’ I could have just picked a fight with Grady. He has lousy impulse control. I could have got him going and let him whale on me so the girl could have run away. I would’ve been okay. I have a hard head.” He looked my way again. “Why didn’t I do that?” Billy words came at me, dangerous as bullets. “Give me a piece of paper: I bet I could think of a hundred things I could’ve done to stop them. It would’ve been so easy for me to save her from all that, just by warning her. I’m not gonna make that mistake again.” He was winded. He shifted as if having to stay in his chair was torture.

“Son.” This was the first time ADA Farmington asked a question. “You’re convinced that you could have stopped Mr. Grady and Mr. Roth from raping Miss Dodd. But if you hadn’t been with them on the day of the rape, do you think your friends would have raped her anyway?”

“Yeah,” said Billy.

“Mr. Blake has no way of knowing that,” Ms. Ivers pointed out.

“I was asking him for an opinion, since you insist he knows these young men so well.” Mr. Farmington nodded at Billy. “Why do you think they would’ve gone ahead without you?”

“Because Grady is the idea man. Roth and I follow along for some stupid reason. Grady needs a helper sometimes, but it all comes from him. He likes wingmen, but if he hadn’t had Roth with him, he would’ve figured out how to do it by himself.” Billy leaned forward as if no one had been listening until now. “But the thing is, I was there and I could’ve done something. It was like when my dad beat my mom into a coma.”

Ms. Ivers came to attention, not like before. More like she sensed danger. Mitch dropped his head into his hands.

“I could have stopped him,” Billy said, as if they didn’t believe him. “Maybe I wasn’t very big. When I was twelve I was kinda skinny. See, my mistake was that I came at him with my fists and he just”—Billy imitated a crash sound effect—“threw me through a window.” He paused, staring at nothing. Finally he leaned back in his seat. “But what I should’ve done was grab a pan or a bat or something and smack him right in the head. He had a pretty hard head too, so, you know, I don’t think it would’ve brought him down, but at least he would’ve come for me and laid off of her.”

“Then he would’ve beaten you nearly to death,” Mr. Sawyer said, “wouldn’t he?”

Billy shrugged. “Sure.”

“And tell us, why would that have been a better outcome?”

Billy shook his head as if it was a silly question. “Come on. Would the world be better off with her or me in it? Not exactly rocket science.”

I didn’t look away or make a sound, but something changed. The air was as heavy as a river of mud, but I kept my eyes on his face and forced myself to keep breathing. I didn’t know what to do or what I would say to him. All I knew was that I loved him. Even with whatever sadness he carried and even if the boy I half remembered from a dream turned out to be real and walked into the room, I knew I would choose Billy.

The lawyers were conferring with Mr. Farmington. Billy sat looking away from me. But Mitch was frowning at me now. I felt like a spy and quietly slipped into the hall to wait. When they finally came out, Mitch had a hand on Billy’s shoulder.

“How did you find me?” Billy asked. He’d never used such an angry tone with me. I was startled into silence. Mitch pulled his brother down the hall.

“Not in front of the lawyers,” he told us.

I followed them into the parking lot, where Mitch got into his car and lit a cigarette and Billy stood near the trunk.

“Why did you have to show up and hear that?” he asked me. “You think I want you to know that stuff?” For a moment I thought he might cry, but he was still angry. “Now if you see me somewhere around town you’ll think of that.” He gestured back toward the building.

“Why is someone finding out about the sad things that happened to you such a bad thing?” I asked.

“I don’t want to mix up your clean life with my shitty life.” He said it as if I was an idiot for not already knowing that. “I’d be the reason you were unhappy.”

His reasoning confused me. “I’m sorry about what happened to your mom and dad—”

“I don’t want pity,” he interrupted.

Whatever I said, it was the wrong thing. “I don’t care if you’re in trouble with the police—you’re a good person.”

He leaned against the car, shook his head. “You’re saying that because you feel sorry for me—you feel guilty.”

“Don’t tell me how I feel.” My own anger surprised me, but I was right. “I’m sick of people telling me what I think and what I believe.”

He folded his arms the way my mother had when she didn’t want to talk about ghosts. “Am I the bad boy you can shock your parents with?”

“That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard,” I told him.

Billy covered his face with his hands like he was trying to figure out how to get through to me. When he looked at me again he asked, “Why would you like me?”

I took a breath and spoke carefully so he wouldn’t think I was throwing words around. “Because you defended me in front of your friends even though you got beat up for it,” I told him. “And you noticed me when I was sad and you wanted to know what I was thinking when I prayed with my eyes open.”

He sighed. “I can’t make time go back there. It’s too late. I grew up.”

“I like the way you turned out. I love you,” I said. “I choose you.”

He came at me, but I wouldn’t flinch. He didn’t push me or hit me. For a moment I thought he would kiss me, but instead he said, “I don’t choose you.”

Mitch started the car when Billy slammed the door. I moved out of the way as they backed up and drove off.

I wanted to fly out of my body, like I used to practice in the shower. But my soul was a stone stuck in my chest, cold and heavy.

I don’t know how long I stood in the parking lot. Another car honked at me, so I walked to the corner and took out the phone. My brain couldn’t decide which direction to walk to get to the library.

My mother answered with “What’s the matter?”

“I’m at Main and Fifth,” I told her.

“What?” she asked. “Why?”

All I could think to say was “I’m tired.”

My mother had to honk even after she pulled up in front of me. “Are you sick?” she asked. “Why are you all the way over here?”

I got in the car feeling stiff. “I’m sad,” I told her, hoping if I said it out loud I might be able to cry and feel human again, but I was dry on the inside.

“About San Diego?” she asked, and her words made no sense. “It’s just for a while until I figure out how to deal with your father legally,” said my mother. “I want you to tell me everything he says and does—anything that could help us.”

I stared out the window, and her words buzzed and hit the glass like flies. All my mind would do was one simple equation—if Billy didn’t want me and the boy I thought I’d met and forgotten was something I made up in a dream, then true love wasn’t real.

My mother was talking, the car was rolling, I was still breathing. But I was one of those people who’s pulled out of the snow and only feels the pain when they’re heated back up. If I didn’t want a broken heart, I just needed to stay numb. People caught in blizzards felt happy while they froze to death. Drowning people, too, say they feel peaceful when they give in.

I held my breath for a few seconds, to see if there was any pleasure in it. When I started to see flecks of mirror in my vision, I let out the breath in a sigh.

“Are you listening to me?” my mother asked.

“You and Daddy were right,” I said.

“What?” My mother may not have liked being teamed with him in that sentence, but she didn’t argue the point.

“I’ll do whatever you say,” I told her. “What should I do?”

My mother seemed so sure of the answer. “Pack, go with him, and don’t rock the boat.”

That was the opposite of going overboard, I thought. Not rocking the boat. Not making waves.





My mother had already set out things for me to take to San Diego, piles on the foot of my bed and on my desktop. Two large empty suitcases waited. I heard her in the office on the phone. I stared at the stacks of clothes, the white Bible I’d had since I was eight wrapped in a slip to keep it safe, toiletries in zippered plastic bags. Even desk supplies in a gallon bag. She’d left the bedding and the picture of the praying hands on the wall, but everything else was stacked up and waiting.

I took the larger of the two suitcases out into the hall, empty. I went and got a big black trash bag from the kitchen and shook it open. Back in my room I started with the clothes. I didn’t need much. I put two pairs of pants and two shirts, a white sweater, and two plain Sunday school dresses into the bottom of the other suitcase. One nightgown, underwear, and the bag of toiletries.

The rest went into the trash bag. Scarves knitted by my aunt, a snow hat I’d worn in fifth grade, my flannel pajamas with kittens on them, my jewelry box with its worthless treasure, my ballet box, toe shoes and all. My childhood was swallowed whole. Even the contents of my bottom dresser drawer, where a false bottom had kept my pictures and Polaroid camera safe. The black-and-white photographs blurred as they fell away. And all my colors bled together as I tossed the rest of my old life out—red sweater, yellow dress, blue skirt—into the black bag.