By the time I reached the police station, I was whipped. I stopped to catch my breath, my legs shaking, filthy. I wanted a shower. I wanted to burn these panties that Chase had touched. I wanted to scrub my skin with bleach.
I started toward the station, then stopped.
If I went in, they’d investigate. They’d call my father, because I was still a minor, and he’d know that I was not only stupid, but not to be trusted. The Moms would lecture me about how utterly naive I was, and then Beatrice would launch into a story of how beautifully she had lost her virginity at age seventeen. Hannah would be disgusted and pitying.
The police would ask Chase if . . . if what? What exactly had Chase done? He hadn’t raped me. I’d gone to his room willingly. Made out with him willingly. Let him unbutton my shirt and stick his fingers in my panties. God! I shuddered in revulsion.
And then, I could imagine Chase saying, she wanted to stop, so we stopped. She kind of panicked and ran down the stairs, and I didn’t see her again.
All of that was true. If I said I had to punch him and kick him in the nuts . . . it would be his word against mine. He could spin it, and I already knew he was good at spinning things. She didn’t feel good. Called someone and left. Everyone in school would know that I’d freaked out because Chase got handsy with me. Would anyone believe me that he’d pinned me down and threatened me? That he’d kept me in his room against my will? Dancing like a whore, Chase had said. Even I thought I’d danced like a stripper. I’d been rather proud of that.
My father would be so disappointed.
My shoulders fell. I wasn’t going to file a report. I couldn’t walk in there like this, filthy, covered in mud, probably still stoned and drunk, without ramifications.
So I kept walking. Hannah was in college, way up in Maine. I could call my mother from the visitors center, where there were pay phones. She wouldn’t tell my father, would she? But shit, she’d be disgusted with me, and smug, and maybe she would tell Dad, because it would be a way for her to hurt him. Why didn’t you check in with Lillie? Are you that dumb, Pedro? Our daughter was nearly raped, and it’s because you trust her too much.
But I couldn’t walk home to Wellfleet. It was miles to go, and I was so, so tired. I didn’t have to tell Mom the truth. I could lie. Or I could call Beth. Beth would keep my secret.
Just as I started to turn at the entrance, I heard a motor, a car slowing down. I bolted toward the building. The car followed me into the parking lot. Shit! It was Chase, I knew it. Oh, God, what would he do to me now?
“Lillie?”
I stopped and turned. It wasn’t a car. It was a battered pickup truck I knew well. I should’ve recognized the sound of that rusty engine. It wasn’t anything like Chase’s purring sports car.
Ben Hallowell pulled to the curb and stopped his truck. Got out and took a long look at me. “You okay?” he asked.
“Um . . . uh . . . yes.” I swallowed the sudden tears that rose in my throat. “But I could use a ride.” My voice cracked.
“Sure. Get in.” He opened the passenger door for me. It creaked horribly, and I jumped. Ben didn’t say anything. For once, it didn’t seem that he had pulga atrás da orelha. He knew me, he wouldn’t hurt me and he’d take me home.
He got back in, waited till I was buckled, then turned the truck back onto Route 6, toward home. “Rough night?”
“Yeah.”
“Did anyone hurt you?” He kept his eyes on the road.
“Um . . . not really. No.”
He was quiet a minute. “Do you need to go to the hospital?”
“No. Just take me home. Thanks, Ben.”
He nodded.
“If you could . . . not mention this to my father,” I said.
He glanced at me. “Maybe you should mention this to him,” he said, turning his eyes back to the road.
“Maybe.” I leaned my head against the window and closed my eyes, the smell of the truck so much like my dad’s—ocean and fish and coffee. It felt safe here, and a few tears leaked out. Soon, I’d be home, and I’d creep in and take a long shower, and this night would be a memory.
That’s the last thing I remembered.
I woke up in the hospital three days later, minus a spleen, with a broken femur, broken collarbone, broken jaw, two broken ribs and a deep gash on my forehead. There’d been an accident, I was told. I was lucky to be alive. My abdomen had been pierced by a chunk of steel from the engine, resulting in the loss of my spleen, six inches of my intestine and the tearing of my uterus. They’d avoided a hysterectomy because of my age but couldn’t rule that out in the future. “But we can talk about that once you’ve healed,” the doctor said with a kind smile.
My father was there, holding my hand, watching my face as the doctor told me the damage. Neither of us cried. It hurt too much, and Dad . . . Dad wasn’t a weeper. But he held my hand a little more firmly, then kissed it, making me feel unworthy.
This was the price of my stupidity at the party, I told myself. For not going into the police station and just calling my dad and owning what every teenager has to own someday—we were stupid, and we put ourselves in danger. I should’ve known better than to accept a ride from Ben Hallowell, who’d always driven too fast, who’d totaled a car in high school. Dad would’ve hugged me and banged on the Freemans’ door and scared the life out of Chase.
Too late now. I lay in the uncomfortable hospital bed, sipping Ensure through a straw, trying not to breathe too deeply because of the pain that pierced and throbbed with unrelenting fire in my leg, my ribs, my jaw, my stomach.
Hannah came home from college to visit. The Moms came. Beth and her parents; Jessica, Jennifer, Justine and Ashley. I couldn’t tell them what had happened at the party, because it hurt too much to talk. Beth told me Chase Freeman had brought my purse to school and given it to her. Everyone already knew Ben Hallowell had been at the wheel, that he’d given me a ride home.
There were flowers from my entire class, Beth’s parents, a few teachers, the choir director, our neighbors down the road on Herring Pond.
Not a scratch on Ben. Not one scratch. My mother told me this with bitter triumph poisoning her voice. “That’s always the way, isn’t it? The driver walks away. Did you even bother to check if he was drunk, Liliana? Even if he was sober, that truck of his is a death trap. Why didn’t you call a cab, for heaven’s sake?”
He hadn’t been drunk. The police did a Breathalyzer and a blood test, and he passed. But yeah, his truck was a piece of shit.
He came to see me a few days after I woke up, holding a mason jar full of daffodils. “I’m so sorry, Lillie,” he said.
I nodded, then winced. The police had already told me the truck’s alignment had been off, the tires were old, and one of them blew out. The truck had flown off the road, through the guardrail and into Blackfish Creek Marsh in Wellfleet. The tide was halfway out, the truck rolled, and when it stopped, my side had been partially underwater. Ben had pulled me out, possibly saving my life, possibly making the abdominal damage worse. A passerby called 911.
All I remembered was the smell of his truck, feeling safe.
Ben sat in the chair next to my bed and said nothing. As my mother had said, he hadn’t broken a single bone. But she had been wrong about no scratch. There was a cut on his palm that had warranted some stitches.
The nurse came in and put some pain meds and antibiotics into my IV. I fell asleep. Ben was gone when I woke up, but the daffodils were in the jar on my windowsill.