It was instantaneous. I couldn’t get to the hallway bathroom in time. I threw up all over the living room rug. And then I collapsed on the floor staring at my mess. I didn’t have time to clean it up. I had to get to my phone. Where was my phone? I looked wildly about, locating it on the couch, and hastily dialed Ryan’s number. Surely this was a mistake. Ryan was no predator. No rapist. Someone got the wrong guy.
His voice mail picked up immediately. I didn’t leave a message. I threw up again instead, then sat thinking about the third girl. I knew someone who was gang-raped like me. Lucy! And I dialed her number.
“Brooke, I don’t know what’s going on,” Lucy said on the other end. She sounded panicked.
“What do you mean you don’t know? Did he rape you?!”
“I don’t know why they showed his picture, Brooke,” Lucy said. “Listen to me. He—”
“What the fuck is going on?!” I screamed into the phone. But I couldn’t stand sitting around waiting for Lucy’s explanation. My heart pumped madly, threatening to explode, and I wanted answers from him before I died.
“He didn’t—”
I hung up abruptly in the middle of Lucy’s sentence and left my vomit to soak in the carpet as I made my way to Ryan’s house. I banged on the door. Kaylen answered, her red-rimmed eyes large and scared.
“Move,” I demanded, pushing past her into the house. I immediately saw Ryan sitting on the couch. His parents were with him. “Glad to see you made bail,” I snapped.
“Brooke, you really can’t be here right now,” Mr. Foster said.
I ignored him. “What the fuck is going on, Ryan? Why did I see your face on the four o’clock news? Why are you being charged with rape?”
I shook violently, taking deep breaths when I remembered to in an attempt to settle my nerves and keep from passing out from panic.
“Brooke, we cannot discuss the case with you. Our attorney advised—”
“What the fuck?! Your attorney?! What’s going on?!”
Ryan looked me square in the face. “I didn’t rape anyone,” he said firmly.
Mrs. Foster spoke up. “Ryan, honey, you’re not supposed to be—”
“Then why are you on the news? What happened? For Christ’s sake, tell me something!” I screamed.
“I was there, Brooke, but I didn’t rape her,” Ryan replied. He pushed his hand through his hair. “Jesus, I was fourteen.”
“Ryan, that’s enough,” Mr. Foster said. “Brooke, please go home.”
“No!”
“Brooke, I’m calling your father to come get you.”
“Did you do anything?” I asked Ryan, advancing on him.
He stared at me, eyes full of anguish. He opened his mouth to reply, then closed it.
“I asked you if you did anything, you fucking son-of-a-bitch.”
“Don’t call my brother that!” Kaylen cried.
I ignored her. “Answer me!” I screamed in Ryan’s face.
He understood my question and reluctantly shook his head.
“Then you’re as bad as the others,” I spat. I turned on my heel and walked out the door. It would be the last time I ever stepped foot in that house.
I returned home and went straight for the wooden knife block beside the kitchen stove. I yanked out the cleaver and headed upstairs to my bedroom.
“What the fuck is happening? What the fuck is happening?” I whispered over and over.
I dropped the knife on my bed and grabbed the winter picture hanging on the wall opposite my headboard: the winter picture I painted with Ryan back in November. It was my turn to keep the painting, and I hung it where I could wake up to it every morning.
I tossed the picture on the floor and picked up the cleaver, considering the colors of our scene and deciding how best to mutilate them. I cried hysterically, tearing and slashing through the canvas until my mother came home, dashed upstairs, and wrestled the knife out of my hands.
***
More girls. They were coming out of the woodwork. I stayed glued to the television, and my parents became worried. I was watching too much news. I was consumed with it, and it wasn’t healthy, they said. I ignored them. I ignored everything. My school work. Gretchen, who visited me on a near daily basis and controlled the TV whenever she could. Eating, sleeping, painting. All of it. I ignored my life in favor of sitting, day after day, watching the stories unfold of victim after victim.
Ryan wasn’t charged in any other case but Lucy’s. I learned about his involvement a few weeks after I graduated. Somehow, I managed to graduate with decent marks, despite studying very little for my final exams. I took them during after-school hours so I didn’t have to see the other students.
Ryan tried multiple times to reach me. He called me incessantly, leaving messages I never returned. He came to my house twice only to be turned away by my dad at my request. I couldn’t face him. The pain was too much to bear. I thought it was even worse than the hurt and humiliation I felt over my assault.
Lucy visited me one Saturday afternoon during the summer because I refused to speak to her over the phone. I wasn’t mad at her; I was just mad in general. I didn’t want any of the situation with Ryan to be true, so if I didn’t speak to her, I didn’t have to know about it.
“It feels weird and amazing, doesn’t it? Those boys being in jail,” Lucy said, sitting across from me in my dad’s armchair.