“Take care of yourself, okay?” Mason said. “Take a few ibuprofen and drink lots of water before you go to sleep. It’ll help.”
I almost laughed, thinking how neither of those things would come close to fixing what was wrong with me now. Still, I bobbed my head and then rushed inside, shutting and locking the door behind me, relieved to finally be alone. I glanced at the clock on the microwave and saw it was only ten thirty—my parents wouldn’t be home for at least a couple of hours. I wove my way down the hall and up the stairs, stripping off my dress and panties in the bathroom, turning the water in the shower on to run as hot as it could get. I grabbed a pair of scissors from the vanity drawer and took them to my clothes, cutting and snipping until there was only a handful of red and white fabric-confetti left. I wrapped all of it in toilet paper and shoved it to the bottom of the garbage can, then yanked back the shower curtain and climbed inside the tub, letting the scalding water hit my body for as long as I could stand it, watching my skin turn bright red. I turned the handle so the water would cool to a slightly more tolerable temperature, then grabbed the neon green mesh scrub from the hook on the tile wall and soaked it in foaming body wash, running it back and forth across my body as roughly as I could, trying to scour away every skin cell that Tyler had touched. Trying to erase what he had done.
It was only when I finished scrubbing that more tears finally came, body-racking cries that made me shake so violently I couldn’t continue to stand. I leaned my shoulder against the wall and slid downward, howling as I pulled my legs to my chest and wrapped my arms around them, setting my forehead on my bent knees. I rocked in place, sobbing, letting the hot water wash over me, trying to make it not be true, to find a way to make myself believe it didn’t happen. I tried not to feel the weight of him still on me, tried to expunge the memory of the violent, insistent jabbing of his hips. He’d used enough force to make me bleed. I hadn’t noticed it back in the bathroom at the house, but now, a narrow, red stream flowed from my body down the drain.
I stayed like this for as long as I could, keening and rocking until the water ran cold and I began to shiver, my teeth clacking. I felt numb, I felt empty. I was a shell, an abandoned chrysalis, a tomb lying in wait for the dead.
Once I was out of the tub and wrapped in a thick blue towel, I opened the door to let the steam out of the bathroom, then used my hand to wipe the condensation from the mirror. A stranger stared back at me.
I heard Tyler’s voice in my head: Your hair looks pretty like that, and another wave of nausea rolled through me. I looked down, and my eyes caught the gleam of the silver scissors I’d left on the edge of the counter. Before I knew what I was doing, I grabbed them with one hand and a strip of my hair with the other. I held it away from my head and began to cut, one chunk after another, leaving haggard ends and uneven lengths in a bob that stopped near the bottoms of my ears.
When I finished, I stared at myself in the mirror, hoping that I would feel better, somehow, no longer looking like the girl who had flirted with her best friend when she was engaged to someone else; the girl who had been the one to kiss Tyler first, to let him grind his crotch against her and lead her upstairs to a room.
I knew what was going to happen. I couldn’t deny that. I’d encouraged him, purposely turned him on. I’d let myself get drunk; I’d wanted to lose control. And this was the result: a girl standing in the bathroom, staring in the mirror, a trickle of blood running down the inside of her leg. A girl who had changed her mind when it was already too late, and now, no matter what she did, would never be the same again.
? ? ?
That night, I didn’t sleep so much as surf along the edge of consciousness, startling awake with every distant firework boom, sitting up in my bed and turning on the light to make sure that I was still alone. What if Tyler woke up and decided to drive to my house? What if he came in my room and took what he wanted from me again? It was doubtful, I knew, but the fear cloaking my thoughts was relentless, driving roots deep into my brain, choking out any sense of security I had hoped being home would provide.
I heard my parents get home a little after midnight, but I stayed quiet when my mom opened the door and peeked in my room. I was too afraid to open my mouth. Too terrified of what she might make me do. She might make me say what Tyler did to me out loud. She might make me go to the hospital and call the police. Or worse, she might not believe me. She might blame me, like I did myself, for sending the wrong kind of message and leading him on. I couldn’t fathom doing any of those things. I just wanted to pretend it never happened. I just wanted to escape into the thick, black bliss of sleep.
But sleep wouldn’t come. I lay in bed for hours, curled up as tightly as I could beneath my covers, pillows surrounding me. Through my window, I watched the moon drop lower and lower in the cloudless night sky, and the pale, lavender whisper of dawn begin to lighten it. I was scheduled to be at the gym at seven o’clock, but I knew there was no way I could get up, no possible way I could work, so around four, I grabbed my cell phone and left Harold a message, saying I was sick and wouldn’t be in. I couldn’t face my clients. I couldn’t face anyone. I turned my phone off and dropped it on the floor.
The throbbing between my thighs wouldn’t stop. Every time I rolled over or moved at all, a piercing spiral of pain shot through my pelvis. Somewhere around five a.m., the reality of the fact that Tyler hadn’t used a condom hit me, and while I was on the Pill, that wouldn’t protect me from whatever diseases he might carry. Before last night, I would never have fathomed thinking something so horrible about him. But everything I thought I knew about my friend no longer held true. There was something sinister and violent and dark inside him I’d never experienced before. In one instant, he had become a stranger to me, someone I never wanted to see again.
It’s all my fault, I thought. I called it a date. I wore that dress and no bra. I drank too much, I kissed him. I used his body like he was the pole and I was the stripper out on the patio. I let him take me upstairs to that bed. Maybe he was too drunk to hear me when I told him to stop. Maybe I didn’t say it loudly enough. Maybe I didn’t say it enough times.