“Don’t you dare blame Amber for what you did!” he said. His words dripped with disgust. “Don’t you fucking dare!”
I stumbled backward, down the steps, holding on to the railing so I wouldn’t fall. Amber had told her parents that I raped her, and they believed her. She could go to the police. I could be arrested, prosecuted, and put in jail. I gave Tom an imploring look. “Please, you don’t understand. It was a mistake. She wanted it, too. She kissed me. She let me take her up to the bedroom . . .”
“She told you to stop!” Tom roared, and before I knew it was coming, he flew toward me, down the steps, his right arm pulled back. I thought about ducking, about turning around and running to my car. But then it was too late. His fist made hard and fast contact with my cheekbone, sending a shock wave of pain through the side of my face. The next thing I knew, I fell backward, hit the ground, and the world around me went black.
Amber
I stayed in bed for days after the party. I didn’t go to work, I didn’t eat. I didn’t leave my room except to shower, thinking that if I sloughed off enough skin, I might be able to erase the damage my best friend had done.
I’m sick, I told myself. I feel like I have a fever. That’s what it was. A sickness. Nothing else. My immune system attempting to incinerate the images flashing through my mind. If I just hid beneath the covers long enough, I might wake up in a day, a week, or a month, fully cured. I might be able to believe the night never happened.
I kept my eyes closed as much as possible, constantly trying to force myself to sleep. I took more Benadryl, relishing the black, dreamless oblivion the tiny pink pills brought about. But when I awoke, when I kicked my legs, rising to the surface of that fuzzy, self-induced sea of escape, all that waited for me was the weight of Tyler pressing down on my bones. All I felt was his strong hands, gripping, his knees forcing my thighs to open, the pain shooting through my pelvis like a flesh-tearing bullet, one that was now lodged inside my gut.
Why hadn’t I screamed? Why didn’t I hit and claw and scratch at him until he was forced to stop? Instead, I froze, I gave up and gave in, and let it happen. If I had fought the way I should have, if I had actually said NO, if I had shrieked it in his ear over and over again, he might have heard me. He might have stopped. The Tyler I knew would have stopped. I started to wonder if I had imagined saying anything to him at all. I’d been so drunk, maybe I only thought I’d asked him to wait? Maybe the only protestations I’d made were inside my head.
My parents hovered around me the same way they had when I was a teenager, trying to get me to talk, trying to force bits of food into my mouth. “I made you baked chicken and brown rice,” my mother said a few days after Liz and Tyler had showed up. It was close to noon, and my dad was at work. “No butter, just a little salt and pepper, a drizzle of olive oil. The way you made it for us.”
“I’m not hungry,” I said. This was true. I knew my stomach was empty, that I needed the sustenance, but I couldn’t fathom putting anything other than water in my body. I felt certain if I did, I’d throw it right back up.
“Honey, please,” my mom said. I could hear the desperation in her voice.
“Maybe later,” I replied, which was the same answer I used to give her whenever she tried to get me to eat in high school. I lay in my bed in a ball, my knees brought up as close as possible to my chest. If I closed my eyes tight enough, maybe the memories couldn’t find me. If I made myself small enough, maybe I could just disappear.
“Your dad and I are worried,” she said, as she set the plate she carried onto my nightstand. “You need to talk to someone.”
“No.”
“We understand you don’t want to—”
“I’m not doing it, Mom,” I said, cutting her off. “So you can stop right now.” I didn’t tell her I was too afraid to talk to the police. I couldn’t stand the idea of being told that I was wrong, that my worst fears would only be confirmed—that this was my fault as much as his, and I was just a drunk, stupid girl who decided too late that she’d made a mistake.
My mom sat down on the edge of my bed, placing a gentle hand on my hip. “You can’t pretend this didn’t happen, Amber. Pushing it down is just going to make it worse. Tyler needs to be held accountable.”
“What about me?” I straightened my legs and rolled over onto my back, looking at my mother’s angst-ridden face. She looked as tired as I felt, and her eyes were swollen, too. “Aren’t I accountable, too?” She opened her mouth, like she was about to rebut what I’d said, but I held up my hand to stop her. “No, Mom. I’m serious. I totally led him on. I gave him every sign that I wanted to sleep with him. It’s not just his fault.”
“I know you think that’s true, honey, but you’re wrong. Even if you said yes at first, what matters . . . what makes what he did to you so wrong . . . is that you also told him to stop.”
I considered her words; the guilt I might feel about leading Tyler to believe that I wanted to have sex with him—hell, even believing, temporarily, in my drunken state, that I wanted it, too—didn’t make what he did to me any less heinous. It didn’t make it any less of a betrayal. I racked my brain, trying to remember the moment that the word “no” left my mouth, and couldn’t come up with it.
When I didn’t say anything, my mother tried another approach. “What about a counselor?” she asked. “Someone who knows how to help with issues like this? I can make some calls—”
“Mom! Stop it, please. I’ll be fine. I just need to rest.” I shifted so I was on my side again, facing away from her. I knew she was only trying to help, but there was nothing she could do. Nothing anyone could say to take away the lightning bolt of pain in my chest every time I took a breath.
“You can’t stay in bed forever,” she said, quietly.
“Watch me,” I said, and a moment later, she stood up and left the room.
? ? ?
But hiding in my room fixed nothing. As the hours and days passed, I grew antsy, unable to sleep as much as I wanted, and the antihistamines I took began to jack me up instead of knock me out. I finally forced myself to go back to work ten days after the party. Most of my bruises had faded by then, and my body didn’t ache as much as it had the first week. Still, I dressed in full-length black leggings and a long-sleeved, moisture-wicking shirt, not wanting to risk my boss or any of my clients seeing the ghostly yellow smudges of Tyler’s fingers on my skin.