After the Moment (17 page)

She told him to take her home. In the kitchen, she made and ate her afternoon snack of grilled cheese, saying she'd better not wait. Normally, he liked when she ate. But right then, watching her chew, he thought he'd jump out of his skin. When she was done, she put her plate in the sink and Leigh followed her upstairs into the room her mother had turned into an office.

"She thinks she's a reporter because sometimes she interviews people" was all Maia had ever said on the topic of Esme Green's job.

Maia sat at her mother's small, ornate desk. She pointed to the chintz sofa by the window, and Leigh sat down, noticing a framed photograph of Esme's ancient cat. It was hanging on the wall next to one of Maia from when she was a baby.

"Remember how I didn't want to show you my arms," Maia said. "Because I thought you would think I was strange."

Leigh nodded, now really alarmed and probably frightened, although that didn't occur to him. Of course he remembered. Did she think there was even one thing about her that he had forgotten? She was the girl he was
not
sleeping with. She was always on his mind.

"Well, this is worse than strange," Maia told him. "This is embarrassing and stupid."

"If you need a lawyer, then this is more serious than any of that," he said.

"It's ... it's—this is, it's hard," she said, and took a breath.

"Will you please just tell me?"

He was about to point out that he was always asking to count the scars on her feet, that there was nothing she couldn't tell him, when she said, "So that night you were in New York, I went out drinking, and things ... it didn't go so well."

Since when did she drink? Where did she go? Who was she with when she was drinking? And then he thought he knew and felt his body turn cold, the way it might after a long swim or run—chilled beyond the reach of warmth.

"Before you called to say you were going to stay and take Astra out, Jonathan Kimber had phoned," Maia said. "He wanted to see if I would go out with them on a 'cheer up Kevin Staines' mission."

Cheer up Kevin Staines?

"And I said no, thanks, no, but then you called from New York and I was still obsessing about your having said you had loved Astra and then seeing her again, and so I called him back and said, yeah, sure."

"I never said I loved Astra," Leigh said, knowing that wasn't the point, knowing he needed to shut up, knowing Maia was trying to explain how she'd wound up doing something that she was calling
embarrassing and stupid.

She'd gone out with Oliver Lexham and his gang—saying Jonathan Kimber's name was the same as saying Oliver's—and been drinking. This was so much worse than burning her skin with cigarettes that Leigh wasn't sure he wanted to know what happened.

"Why did Kevin need you in order to cheer up?" Leigh asked, and then swore that would be his last question.

"His girlfriend had dumped him and they wanted to get him drunk," Maia said. "Diana Jane said she wouldn't be the only girl, so they called me."

Her face had a helpless expression on it, and he almost told her to stop.

"I think maybe I forgot to eat, because I only had, like, half a bottle of wine."

She paused, as if reviewing her facts, or as if considering what to add.

"Maybe I drank the whole thing, but I thought Kevin and I split it," she said. "Diana Jane was going to drive me home, but she and Oliver had a fight and then I..."

Maia had started to cry, as if she wouldn't be able to speak unless she cried because talking was too hard all on its own.

"I don't remember a lot, but I did have sex, I did," she said. "And I was trying to get up the whole time, I think, no, I was, but, but who knows what they thought, and Jesus, you know, I know better."

"Maia," Leigh said, kneeling down at the chair where she sat, as small and fragile as she had ever been. "Maia."

He put his arms around her, rested his chin on her narrow shoulder, and s aid, "I am so sorry. I will kill them. All of them."

"No, no," she said. "No, I did this."

He thought of Oliver or Jonathan or any of them on top of her. He breathed in her hair and felt her body move under his hands. How could they? How could they?

"No," he said. "This was not you."

"'Don't get drunk with guys you don't know or trust,' " she said, pushing away Leigh's embrace. "That's like a law."

She wrapped her arms around herself, hugging her own back, catching her breath. "It's the first thing they teach you, even before you really know what birth control is. 'Don't get drunk' is rule number one and I broke it. No one made me."

Leigh sat back on his heels and looked at her. No one had made her get drunk, but that didn't mean no one had made her have sex. He would kill all of them, he didn't care how.

"I did not have to go drinking with those idiots," she said. "It was so stupid."

"Except that the first rule
we're
taught is don't get a girl drunk and don't touch a drunk girl," Leigh said. "I knew that for years before I even had sex."

Was it possible that in the seventh and eighth grades she hadn't been forced to sit through the same 'no means no' lectures that he had?

"I know you all learn that," Maia said. "But we have our rule for a reason. It's in case you guys break yours."

"Yes, but..."

But nothing. All that mattered now was how to help her with what had happened. It was clear who was to blame. If she didn't see that, he wasn't sure he knew how to convince her.

"Tell me," he said.

What happened to Maia on the night when everyone broke their respective rules was fairly simple and straightforward. She'd had too much to drink, hadn't lined up a safe ride home, and had been with some boys who'd either been too drunk to think or quite sober enough to see a chance.

A chance to cash in on her being unable to fight or to remember very much after the fact.

"I thought I explained about the contract," she said, "but I might have just been thinking about it."

Right. Because a piece of paper she'd signed in a psychiatrist's office would have made Oliver Lexham do the right thing.

"I mostly remember realizing that even if I 'couldn't' have sex, it sure seemed like I was going to anyway."

He would not ask. He would not ask. He would not ask.

"Was it Oliver?"

"I don't know, but I remember his voice," she said. "And on the film, he's only talking to Kevin. But maybe they both had sex with me. I don't know."

"The film?" Leigh asked her, finally finding words. Finally having a question that felt legitimate. "They filmed it?"

"Yeah—geniuses, huh? I was worried I had lost my mind, dreamed the whole thing, or agreed to everything, but it's on film that I wanted to go home. At least I said that."

Little tears were coming out of her eyes again, but he remained frozen, still at her feet, holding on to either side of her chair.

"You can tell I was drunk, and they didn't have to tie me up or anything," she said, "but the fact that they filmed it shows they planned it. A lawyer can tell me if the film will help to press charges or whatever."

Something sour came up in Leigh's mouth and he swallowed hard over its burning liquid.

"They showed you the film?"

"No, they have no idea I know about it."

A hot, salty thickness slid across his tongue as part of the chair Maia was sitting on came off in Leigh's hand. He'd been chewing on the inside of his mouth and bit through it at the same instant that his hand pulled a rail out of the antique chair's back.

"No, no, no," Maia said, handing him some tissues.

"Listen to me," she said, as he spit blood out of his mouth.

He looked at his hand and guessed he had about seven tiny splinters.

"I need you calm," she said. "I've got to see a lawyer. With that film and proof that they took it, that I was drunk might not matter. The fact that I've had sex before won't be such a big deal. With that film, I can nail them."

Leigh thought of how the word
nail
was used and how it, along with
bang,
had always made him laugh, as it perfectly captured a desperation he had about sex. One that had yet to vanish.

He saw Maia looking at him with flat and deadly serious eyes.

"This is my chance," she said.

She didn't know whose camera they had used, but she guessed it was Oliver's, as it was, she thought, his house they'd wound up in when they left Jonathan Kimber's. The point was that Franklin had found the video on Kevin's computer and dumped it onto his own laptop. Unsure of what to do, he went to Millie, who said, "Don't tell Leigh. Tell Maia."

"The film's pretty awful," Maia told Leigh, no longer crying, but her face fragmented, as if recovering from a punch.

He barely heard her, as his mouth surged up again and his ears pounded, and Leigh, knowing he had no time to get to the bathroom, threw up into a small painted garbage can that he almost didn't reach in time.

The only thing more humiliating than throwing up in front of his girlfriend, Leigh quickly realized, was having had his body make a horrible event in her life all about him.

For a few minutes, until Leigh could get himself and Esme Green's garbage can into the bathroom, the small study was full of his
I'm sorry, God, I'm so sorry,
Maia's
It's okay, you'll be okay,
and the smell of vomit.

Once he had pulled himself together and cleaned everything up, Leigh asked her what he could do. Get the film? Take it to the police? Drive her to the hospital? What?

"Franklin told me I could have the film," Maia said. "I'll need to show it to a lawyer."

"Do you need money?" he asked, having forgotten that she'd said she would.

He'd pretty much forgotten whatever he once knew.

"I can pay for a lawyer," he said.

Finally, something he could do for her. Leigh had no idea where he would get the money—his thoughts raced from selling a kidney to asking Pete. But he would do it. He would, at this point, do anything for a chance to help.

"I can help you find a lawyer," Leigh added, vaguely aware that there were types of lawyers. Some of them drew up wills, and that kind would be of no use to Maia.

She had a lawyer in mind, a woman with offices in Baltimore and Virginia. And normally, for something this important, Maia would ask Josh for the money.

"But if he doesn't have to know," she said, "I'd rather he didn't."

"He'll have to know," Leigh said, adding, in case she had failed to think of this, "Everyone will know."

Even if her name was never mentioned (and he thought they never published the name of rape victims), everyone Maia knew would know. A friend of Lillian's from college had been raped in a stairwell and was beat up so badly that she still walked with a limp. Leigh had been eleven or so, both sure and unsure of what had happened, and he didn't trust what he remembered about it.

"That's the thing," Maia said. "She might not take the case, or I might not want to do it. But with the film, I think I should at least find out."

"She's a lawyer. Of course she'll take the case," he said.

"It's not that simple," Maia told him. "Even when you don't know the person, it's a mess."

"Make the appointment," he said, "and I'll get the money."

Maia asked him not to look at the film even if Franklin offered to show it.

"Bad enough Oliver was in the room watching while it was filmed," she said. "I can barely live with your knowing what happened, let alone seeing it."

Fine, okay. The last thing Leigh wanted was to
see
what he wished hadn't happened.

"Also," Maia said when she walked him out to his car, "I need to know now if you're going to break up with me."

Oh, God, was she dumping him? Was that what this was all leading to?

"Of course not," he said. "Maia, I still—no. No, why?"

"I don't know, it's just, you know, guys can be weird about sex."

"So can you all," he said, thinking of Astra's theories about sex and her serious future. Not to mention Maia's contract not to have any, after having had, by her own account, too much. "And I am not 'guys.' I'm only one."

Maia reached for his hand and kissed the palm.

"Thank you," she said.

~~~

Even if he'd wanted to see the video, to check out Maia's account of what happened, one look at Franklin's eyes, stricken and shiny with anger, told Leigh everything he needed to know. A drunk Kevin had had sex with a drunk Maia while a not-so-drunk Oliver looked on and talked to him.

"She said she wanted to go," Franklin told Leigh. "But she also kissed him, so I can see he was maybe confused."

"Maybe," Leigh said, torn between wanting and not wanting to know the details.

"But still, it's obvious she's out of it," Franklin said. "I felt so rude watching, but I couldn't believe he'd do that. Does she think I was rude?"

They were sitting on Clayton's front porch with Bubbles looking up at them, wondering why they wouldn't play catch with her. Leigh was picking at the splinters in his hand with a pair of tweezers Millie had found and sterilized by holding over a lit match.

"No, she doesn't think that," Leigh said.

Franklin had archived his brother's hard drive and swore to Leigh that it held the time and date of when the video went into it.

"All Maia needs is a copy," Franklin said. "Once my parents see it, they won't stop me from saying where I found it."

Leigh wanted to believe he would never be in Kevin's situation, but everyone involved had been unbelievably stupid and he knew no one was immune from stupidity. And so, to be fair, he said, "He's still your brother. No one will blame you if you say nothing. All she needs is the video."

"You know, last year it was Oliver's idea to put me in my locker," Franklin said. "He wanted to see if I was small enough to fit in it."

"The guy's a jerk," Leigh said.

"It was Kevin who locked it," Franklin said. "He thinks I don't know."

"Are you sure?" Leigh asked, thinking that if it was true, then for Kevin having sex with Maia was another version of picking on someone weaker at the urging of another—more popular—guy.