All the Rage

You, me, Alek and …


“Kellan,” she says, like she can see inside me. I flinch. His name is hard enough to think, but spoken aloud it’s a weapon. That hard Kel—a knife going in sharp and easy the less resistance it has to meet—lan.

“No,” I say.

“I—”

“No.” I say it louder because she must not have heard it if she’s still talking.

“Alek took me to Godwit for my birthday. We stayed with Kellan,” she says, and I stare at the little beads of condensation slowly dripping down the outside of her glass while her voice—her voice. “We went to a club he likes, Sparrow. He and Alek went to get drinks. There was this girl—she came up to me.” She pauses. “She saw me with Kellan. She told me it wasn’t safe to be alone with him. She wouldn’t say why, but the look on her face…”

Less real, I think. I need this to be less real.

“The look on yours.”

It’s not—my face. I shake my head, my eyes still on the glass. No—no. Fuck her. Fuck her for saying that. You can’t just see something like that on someone’s face.

You can’t.

“You didn’t report it. You can still report it,” she says and I reach under the table, dig my nails into one of the scabs on my knees until the wet tells me it’s open. “I looked it up. You still have time. If you do it—something would have to happen.”

I almost laugh, but my voice has left me. The chance of that happening is as dead as the girl Penny’s talking about and that’s what I really want to say to her. She died, Penny, you know that? You know all the ways you can kill a girl?

God, there are so many.

“I wasn’t even going to tell you. But then I saw you in the hall picking at that mannequin and I—” She looks away. “I can’t make it right. I can’t make it right with you, Romy. I know that. But what happens if another girl—”

“Then get her to report it,” I say.

I have to get out of this booth. I need to get out of this booth and do my job but I can’t move. Penny waits. She waits and I don’t move and I don’t say anything and then she goes into her pocket and tosses a few bills on the table. More than enough to cover the order. She slides out of the booth and I sit there stupidly, staring at the crumpled money.

“What are you doing, Romy?”

I look up and Holly is looking down at me, like I’ve done so much that’s wrong tonight. I open my mouth but nothing comes out and she says, you can’t stay in this booth like I didn’t know that. I stare at my hands, at my nails until they blur red.

“Romy,” Holly says. She sounds different now. “Are you all right?”

I move out of the booth so fast, she has to step back. I push through the door and I run into the parking lot. The thin roar of Penny’s Vespa engine reaches my ear.

I watch her leave.





NOW





a wolf is at the door.

He’s not wearing his uniform. It’s strange, seeing the sheriff not in his uniform but this doesn’t have to be anything official, yet. I’m just here today, parent to parent.

Her mother. Doesn’t know what to do, hasn’t known what to do since she found her daughter in the shower, under the running water, still drunk and crying, babbling the truth to the tiles. That next morning, her mother, in tears, asked about it.

Romy, you said something last night. I need to be sure of what you told me.

A truck bed and a boy.

A text, later, from her best friend: YOU DIDN’T DO ANYTHING STUPID, DID YOU?

Devastation roots her family if denial is not moving them forward. Her father disappeared, couldn’t handle it, and she stayed inside with her mother, trying to figure out what they needed to do and how they needed to do it. She’s any girl and they’re any family, but this boy. He’s special and his family is special.

And now, a wolf at the door.

So let him in.

Paul was at the bar the other night and laid out some pretty serious accusations. You know how word travels around here. He said my son raped your daughter. And then, as they process this one thing, her father (sleeping last night off upstairs) taking it to the world before she knew if that was what she wanted, the sheriff says, of course, no one believes it but that still doesn’t mean he can go around saying it. I want to know why he’s saying it.

God, they are so flustered, so sick, so looking for direction, any direction, they invite him in, they sit him at the kitchen table, they let the conversation start out with coffee, with one sugar or two and do nothing when it moves to the crush she’d been nursing on his son these months and you can’t deny you were attracted to him.

No, she can’t, is what her silence says back to him. She can’t deny that for months she imagined his son’s hands on her body, in that truck, in a bed, anywhere. She pictured it over and over except in her head, she wanted it and her eyes were open.

She hates her heart, that misguided organ in her chest.

Why didn’t it warn her?

You were drunk at my house, Friday night. I’ve talked to my sons and I have talked to Penny. No one else was drinking. You’re underage. I could pursue it, if I wanted. But I won’t.

Because he’s just here today, parent to parent.

Thank you, her mother says, without thinking.

He says, they say you chase after him. That you wore an outfit, hoping that you would catch his attention. Short skirt, skimpy shirt. They? And, reaching into his pocket, unfolding a piece of paper, tell me about what you wrote in this e-mail here: Penny, I want him. I dream about him.

This cuts a thousand times, her e-mail in his hands. There’s only one place he could have gotten it. The betrayal is more than she thinks she can bear; the one girl who believed in her, doesn’t believe her.

You know what they’re saying? They’re saying Paul’s telling people my son raped your daughter to get back at Helen for firing him. Now maybe they fooled around and maybe she was a little too drunk at the time, but rape? You can’t just call it something like that.