The victim advocate talked to me for forty-five minutes. She was nice enough, and I understood it was her job and she was trying to help me, to protect me, but the last thing I wanted to do was dredge up a play-by-play of the incident while my mother interrupted me every five seconds with “Don’t forget the part about where he smashed your head” and “Don’t forget the way he behaved when the cops arrived.” I told her everything as I remembered it, but I wasn’t sure if I truly remembered any of it, or if I was just rehashing what I saw on the video.
The worst part wasn’t on the video. It was a five-second mental video, running on repeat. I took a deep breath and described the terror on baby Ella’s rosy, tearstained face.
Mom chimed in to talk about my scars and which ones would probably be permanent. I had no idea the permanence of my scars would be a factor in determining his punishment.
“What about emotionally, Sadie?” Mom had put the phone on speaker and the woman was addressing the whole kitchen. “Any nightmares? Flashbacks?” Her voice was sweet but her questions were jarring.
“No.”
Mom leaned toward the phone.
“Sadie’s been coming down to our room a lot, sleeping on the floor. That never happened before the incident.” Mom was skilled at the art of embarrassment.
“Well, that was fun,” I said after we hung up.
Mom hugged me gently. And I let her.
After my shower, I waited for Val while my parents balanced plates of chicken and lemon rice on their laps in the Adirondack chairs.
Mom stopped eating and stared at me. “Daddy and I would like to talk about things, Sadie.”
That was my least favorite sentence.
“Okay.”
Mom began with “I had said all along we should have gotten you therapy after the incident, but your father and grandmothers pooh-poohed me. You do know there’s no shame in therapy.”
I had asked for this talk. I was the seventeen-year-old migrating down to the nook in my parents’ bedroom with my stuffed harp seal.
“Sadie,” Mom continued, reading the utter misery on my face. “You went through a trauma. And sometimes it takes a while for the mind to process that. There’s only so much running around with your new friends you can do before you crash. I’d like you to see Willie Ng’s therapist in Sag Harbor. The Ngs swear by him.”
Mr. Ng’s son Willie was addicted to Internet porn.
“How about I just don’t sleep in your room anymore?” I smiled and batted my eyelashes.
“How about just one visit, hon?” Dad said with his mouth full.
“Fine. I’ll go to Willie Ng’s friggin’ therapist.”
“Shh,” Mom hissed, looking over at the Ngs’ house.
Val drove up then, just in time to save me.
“Have a good friggin’ time,” Dad said, smiling.
Val’s car was stuffed to the brim with school supplies. I could barely find space for my silver-sandal-clad feet.
“What’s wrong?” she said. “You look upset.”
“Oh, my parents think I need therapy to deal with the incident.”
“Do you? I feel like we never talk about it.”
“I hardly ever think about it during the day. And then sometimes I get a flash of the scene, which was pretty horrific. And then I’ll have some freaky dream and wake up all clammy and frozen in fear, at which point I go down and sleep on my parents’ floor.”
“Aww. Sadie, I’m sorry. Any time you feel like talking about it, I’m here.”
“Thanks, Val. That’s really sweet of you.”
I ran my finger over the monster tail scar. It was still tender and slightly swollen. I understood my parents’ concern, but I had a feeling rehashing the incident to Willie Ng’s therapist would force me to relive something I was better off putting out of my mind. Forever.
The date was at a little seafood restaurant on the bay where people wore plastic bibs to catch lobster butter dribble. Mike had drenched himself in cologne. He wore a crisp button-down shirt with too much exposed patchy chest hair. He kept looking at me, but he didn’t say a word.
“Does he speak English?” I whispered to Val on our way to the bathroom.
“Seriously, Sadie?” Val laughed. “He’s American.”
I hated myself for agreeing to go to dinner with Mute Mike. Val and I talked too much, to make up for Mike’s mutism and Javi’s lackluster personality. Val bragged about how my mom was Persian, which was very cool, and my dad was Woody the ice cream man. I told a story about the time a little kid crawled into the back of the truck and rode around for fifteen minutes gorging himself on ice cream before my dad found him.
I had no idea what sweet, smart, overachieving Val saw in Javi, who was a bump on a log with permanent resting bitch face. And his logmate wasn’t much better.
At least the shrimp scampi was pretty good.
Val and I got a text from Alice just as the waiter was delivering dessert menus.
At the hospital. Izzy might be dead. Please come.
Mute Mike and I sucked on peppermints and stared at each other while Val and Javi fought in the parking lot until Val finally stormed away and we were off to the hospital. We were terrified for Alice and had no idea what to expect when we got there.
I almost didn’t recognize Alice biting her fingernail on a bench next to Gordie in front of the hospital. Her red face was bloated and full of anguish. She twisted her long white braids in her hands and gave us a weak smile.
“What happened, Alice?” I slid next to her and wrapped my arm around her shoulders.
She shrugged. “Izzy’s my best friend.” She could barely get the words out. Her body bent forward.
“We know, sweetie, we know,” I said, rubbing her shoulder.
“It’s okay. Take a breath,” Val said, sitting on the other side of Gordie.
“She OD’d. Who overdoses on a Tuesday afternoon?”
Groups of nurses and people carrying coffee cups and tote bags walked past our bench. A little girl with butter-colored hair and a teal dress bounced through the parking lot carrying a BABY BOY balloon. All the while, Alice’s best friend, her Shay, clung to life in the ICU.
“I just let her go. I let her go away with that hideous dealer.” All the pain and guilt, grief and regret poured out in rapid, quivering breaths.
Jean ran through the parking lot and stopped short in front of us.
“Alice’s friend OD’d,” Gordie said. “She’s in the ICU.”
“Let’s just pray,” Jean said.
We sat on the bench, holding on to Alice and praying for Izzy.
Please, please, please, please, please, I said to myself over and over again. I couldn’t imagine Izzy, the bubbly horse lover from Girl Scouts, dying. I couldn’t even begin to think about the grief that would come of it. I blocked out the thoughts with pleases.
Alice’s mom came outside. She was tall and blond and wearing a strapless black pantsuit, wedge heels, and lots of diamonds. She didn’t look like she belonged to Alice.
“Come, Alice, let’s go up.” She eyed us suspiciously, the way a woman like her might eye a Middle Eastern–looking girl, a bearded black guy, a pigtailed Hispanic girl, and a disheveled white guy fawning all over her distraught daughter.