Please.
I know I can be faster than this, I know I can be faster than this. I can outrun the boy in the truck bed. I can outrun the boy in the truck bed and all the boys who made themselves in his likeness just because they could, just because no one said they couldn’t …
Godwit … there was this girl … she told me it wasn’t safe to be alone with him. She wouldn’t say why, but the look on her face …
You can still report it.
And then the sick give of my body, the sound of it when I hit the ground. I push my palms to gravel, try to struggle to my feet, but I can’t, so I sit in the road with my hands against my knees, pressing my fingernails into new wounds and when I pull them away, they’re red.
They are so red.
AFTER
“my question is, how does an entire community turn a blind eye—”
It’s cold out now. The air like metal in your mouth.
“—to a party where teens are unsupervised and known to drink in excess? This isn’t a party nobody knew about. It’s a tradition. We’re so eager to point fingers at this boy—and I wish people would stop calling him a young man, because he is a boy—but how much of the blame truly falls on him? It’s sort of inevitable, isn’t it? What happened?”
I stand on the porch, staring at the street, trying to block out the voices on the radio in the kitchen, even though I was the one who turned it on.
“I don’t think second-degree murder is an inevitability of a high school party—”
“Sorry to break in, but did he rape her? Have they—”
“His legal team has vehemently denied that he raped her and the authorities have also confirmed no evidence has come to light suggesting that he did—”
Because he wasn’t there to do that to her. He wouldn’t have done that to Penny.
Just me.
“—well, now that we have that as fact, I hope people stop asking that question, but to go back to what you were saying—Laura, would you argue that teenagers and alcohol usually lead to very, very poor decision making?”
“That’s not what you were saying, Jean.”
I stare at my phone. Yesterday, Leon sent me a text message. GOT THE HAT YOU LEFT AT SWAN’S FOR AVA. IT WAS SWEET. THANKS FROM ALL OF US.
This morning my fingers trembled a text back, YOU’RE WELCOME, and I’ve been staring at his reply ever since.
IT’S ALWAYS GOOD TO HEAR FROM YOU.
I close my eyes. I can’t stand if he knows but I also miss him and it depends on the day, which one of these feelings is stronger than the other.
YOU TOO.
I turn my phone off and then I see her.
Tina. Coming up my side of the street. She reaches the house and hesitates when she sees my silhouette through the mesh. I raise my chin and she starts over the walkway. I open the door, stopping her at the steps because she’s not coming in. She looks up at me, holding herself like she always does even though she doesn’t look the same anymore. She’s hollowed out a little, like maybe she’s not sleeping as well as she needs or eating as much as she should. But that’s me too. These days.
“Thanks for seeing me,” she says.
She wouldn’t stop calling. The first time her number lit up my phone, I didn’t know who it was and when I answered, and heard her voice, heard her asking me to meet her, I hung up. She left messages, texted me. Every time I thought she’d finally given up, she’d start all over again. Yesterday, I finally told her to come and then to leave me alone. Now she’s here, waiting for me to speak.
“I’m not going to stand out here forever, Tina.” I say because I’ll make this as easy for her as she would for me. “You’re lucky I’m standing out here at all.”
“Look—” She pauses. “Whatever you think of me, I didn’t cover for Brock—for him.”
“It wasn’t for Penny.”
“Yes, it was,” she says shakily. “It was. He told me he took you to that road. That he knew Penny wasn’t there and they’d just be wasting time if they searched it. He said he couldn’t tell them what he’d done or he’d lose his place on the football team. I didn’t want anyone to waste any time. I just wanted them to find her. I—miss her.”
“You covered for him even though he wrote rape me on my stomach.”
“I didn’t know he did that to you before you said it in the locker room.”
“But you knew Alek took the pictures of me. You were there for that, weren’t you?” I ask and she doesn’t even have the good grace to look ashamed, just keeps her eyes on me, like she’s waiting for some kind of give. And it happens because I’m weak. “He said I let—” I stop. “Forget it. I don’t need to know.”
“I can tell you,” she says and when I don’t say anything—she does. “You said you were hot. Alek told you to take off your shirt and you said you wanted to go home and he said if you gave him your phone, he’d call your mom…”
I stare down the empty street. I was right. I didn’t need to know.
“Brock brought GHB to the party,” she says, like she’s saying something new. “I think maybe he gave you some and that’s how you got so messed up…”
“Oh. I thought that was just the best impersonation of my father you’d ever seen.” I look back in time to see her wince. There’s nothing satisfying about it. “Alek was going to send those pictures to the school. Penny stopped him. But you watched.”
“Yeah,” she says and she does, finally, look away at this. I stare at my nails, bare. She doesn’t move. I don’t know why, when this is so finished.
“I know Turner cut you out of this. My dad says I’m not allowed to talk about it.”
“Then stop talking about it,” I say. “And go home.”
“No,” she says. Then I’ll stop talking about it. I turn away from her and she says, “Romy, wait.”