Blindsided (10 page)

Rendered speechless by her best friend’s lack of concern, Georgia ran to the hedge and threw up. Mischa stormed back into the house, slamming the door behind her. I wanted to go to my sister, but I didn’t want to leave Jesse. Willow shook her head, silently telling me to stay where I was, then followed Georgia. When she reached her side, she gently rubbed Georgia’s back until she felt well enough to stand.

“Where the hell is the bloody ambulance?” I snapped.

Those were probably the worst curse words I’d ever said in my life, but I was scared for Jesse, who hadn’t moved since he keeled over. I reached for his hand which was freezing. I didn’t realise I was cold too until Hunter sat beside me and wrapped his arm around my shoulders.

“It’ll be okay,” he said. “They’ll be here soon, and they’ll make him better.”

Who would be sick enough to carry drugs around? And why did they spike Jesse’s drink? It just didn’t make any sense, and I couldn’t think clearly enough to work it out. I clung to Jesse’s hand, waiting for the sound of sirens.

Chapter
Eleven – Soccer Star In Drunken Brawl

Jesse

My mouth was dry.

I opened my eyes, but the glaring lights made my head pound.

Why are there lights on during the day? It is daytime, right? I always turn the lights off before I go to sleep, so why are they on?

Wait.

Where am I?

I lifted my eyelids again. No pink curtains or pink walls.

I sat, bolt upright, then clutched my head as it throbbed.

“Jesse, thank God.”

Janet’s voice confused me further, and I finally let myself look around. She sat down on the edge of my bed, and rested her hand gently on my back. Then my senses began to wake up, and the unmistakable smell of hospital hit me. The room had white walls, a small window on one side, and one of those trolley things that moves over your bed when you eat. There were two chairs beside the bed, and Hunter was sitting on one of them looking scared to death. I was about to ask what the hell was going on when I felt a twinge in my knee, making me swear out loud.

“Jesse what’s wrong?” Janet asked, and Hunter jumped up.

“I’ll find a nurse,” he said.

“Wait,” I told him. “What’s wrong with my knee?”

Janet and Hunter exchanged worried looks, and for the first time I felt scared. I couldn’t remember hurting myself but my knee was killing me so that must have been why I was in hospital. Except … Janet and Hunter didn’t seem to know about that part.

“Oh,” Hunter said, remembering what I’d clearly forgotten, “you fell down when you were …”

“When I was … what?”

“Jesse, what do you remember about last night?” Janet asked.

It was hard to think straight with my head and my knee causing me so much pain, but I cast my mind back to the night before.

The party. I went to the party with Isabelle, and we danced, and she kissed me. My mind unfogged just a little as I remembered the way she kissed me. Or the way she let me kiss her. We danced some more and then … I woke up in hospital.

“Where’s Isabelle?” I asked.

“I made Andrew take her home a few hours ago,” Janet replied. “She made me promise to call her when you woke up, and I will, but I need to know what you remember.”

I shook my head, trying to get a clear picture but nothing came. “I went to Mischa’s party. I was with Isabelle the whole time. That’s all I know.”

“Someone spiked your drink,” Hunter said. “Izzy said you weren’t feeling well so she tried to take you outside.”

If it weren’t for me being in hospital and the look on Hunter’s face, I’d have sworn he was playing a trick on me. A spiked drink was something that happened to chicks.

“At first, she thought you were drunk,” Hunter went on. “On the way out of the house, you bumped into Leon and slugged him in the face.”

My eyes widened, somehow causing another searing pain through my skull. It wasn’t that I hadn’t thought about punching Leon every time I saw him leering at Isabelle, but I’d never have acted on it. Or so I thought.

“He made some remark about Izzy staying at the party with him,” Hunter explained. “You lost it. But it wasn’t your fault, it was the drugs. Afterwards, you fell down and passed out.”

Wasn’t my fault? I couldn’t afford to do something as stupid as hitting someone, not when I was trying to build a successful soccer career.

“Did I fall on my knee?”

“Jesse,” Janet said. “We need to call the police about the drugs.”

I shoved the covers down so I could get a look at why it was hurting so much, and Janet gasped. All Hunter and I could do was stare. It was bruised and swollen in a way that no knee should ever be.

Please, please not a torn ACL.
Careers had been ruined by ACL tears and I did
not
want to be part of that list.

“Has anyone looked at this yet?” I asked.

“Dude, I know your knee is a big deal, but-”

Without thinking, I leapt out of the bed. The second I put my weight on it, pain ripped through my knee, then down my leg, making me yelp like a little girl. I couldn’t help it. It didn’t feel like an ordinary strain or dislocation at all. I fell back onto the bed, trying to take some deep breaths but I couldn’t. I couldn’t catch my breath at all.

I’d been drugged, and my knee was busted.

I almost wished I hadn’t woken up.

Janet gently rubbed my back, but it did nothing to soothe me. I was in too much pain.

“I don’t remember anything,” I said.

“Do you want me to call Izzy?” Janet asked.

I nodded, and she gave me a small smile before leaving the room.

“Are you sure you don’t remember anything else about last night?” Hunter asked, plopping down on the edge of the bed.

“I can’t remember shit after dancing with Isabelle! What am I supposed to be remembering?”

“Maybe who might have put a roofie in your drink?”

“How am I supposed to know? I told you, I was with Isabelle the whole time, you know that.”

“Did you see anyone near your drinks?”

I shook my head again. “There were so many people. I’m a fucking idiot, what was I thinking, putting our glasses down without watching them? What if Isabelle had taken my glass by mistake?”

My body went cold just thinking about the idea of it being her waking up in the hospital and not me.

“I think you were the mistake,” Hunter said. “I’ve been thinking about this since last night. There were four glasses on the window ledge, and three of them belonged to girls. Izzy, Georgia and Willow. Who do we know who stalks girls, and was at the party last night?”

Leon. He sure was sly enough to slip a date rape drug into someone’s drink, and to know that it would be damn near impossible to prove that he did it.

“Why would he do that?” I asked. “It was so crowded in there, he was never gonna get a chance to drag someone out through all those people.”

“I’ve seen it happen at a party before. He could have found a way, and if he did-”

“I get it,” I interrupted. The idea of anyone being abused that way made me want to throw up.

Hunter’s theory made sense, but without any proof, all we had was a weak theory.

“So, are the police coming?” I asked.

Hunter nodded. “We had to wait for you to wake up and, er …”

“What?”

He fidgeted from side to side. “One of the nurses took a, er, a urine sample last night. We had to wait for confirmation there were drugs in your system.”

“Oh God,” I groaned.

Then I remembered my knee. Panic began to set in again.

“Hunter, I really need to get my leg checked out.”

“I know,” he said. “Try and stay calm, okay? I’ll go find a nurse, and your parents will-”

“My parents?” I interrupted. “You called them?”

“Of course. Janet called them last night when you were unconscious and we had no idea what was gonna happen to you. They’re trying to get a flight over as soon as they can.”

“There’s no need,” I told him. “There’s nothing they can do, it’s a long way and-”

“They’re your parents. What did you expect them to do?”

I took another deep breath and let it out slowly. Of course they needed to know what had happened, but the last thing I needed was my mom fussing around me. She had a tendency to go overboard whenever there was something wrong with me or Kayla. I needed to deal with everything myself, not be treated like a little kid.

In the time leading up to Isabelle getting to the hospital, I talked to nurses about how I was feeling, told them about my knee and got an X-ray arranged for later in the afternoon, and tried really hard to remember what happened at the party. When the police questioned me, I searched every bit of my brain for something that would help me figure out how my drink had been spiked. It was like someone had reached into my mind and removed nine hours of my memory. There was nothing but darkness between me dancing with Isabelle, and when I woke up. I was lucky my friends were around me, and in a weird way, I was glad it was me who took that glass. The outcome could have been a whole lot different if one of the girls had taken it.

I didn’t mention Leon to the cops. I asked Hunter not to mention him either. Just because he was high on my list of suspects, there wasn’t enough evidence to make me send the police after him. Maybe that was too generous of me, but I’d seen first-hand the damage done to people who were falsely accused of something. I needed to be sure, though how I was going to do that, I had no idea.

By the time Isabelle arrived, I was really stressed out, but seeing her walk through the door made everything seem a little less terrible. Janet and Hunter left us to have some privacy, and Isabelle perched on the edge of the bed. She looked exhausted, like she’d been crying all night, and I reached for her hand.

“Hey, beautiful,” I said, softly.

A tear slipped down her cheek, and I hated that I’d made her cry. Again. Her brown eyes sparkled with moisture and she was trembling.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Kind of. I’ll know for sure later. How about you?”

She shook her head. I couldn’t stand to see so much sadness in her eyes. I wanted to hold her close, to kiss all the unhappiness away and pretend that the night before never happened. I released her hand from mine and drew her in to me.

“This is all my fault,” she said. “I never should have made you go to that party. Neither of us wanted to go, and now you’re in hospital with a messed up knee. All because of me.”

“No. Not because of you. You didn’t do this.”

“But you didn’t even want to go to Mischa’s, we should have-”

“Isabelle,” I interrupted, stroking her hair, “stop. The only person to blame is the scumbag who spiked my drink.”

Isabelle stilled in my arms. I could still feel her tears seeping through my shirt, but her sniffles stopped and she tensed up.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

She answered too quickly.

“Isabelle. Do you know something?”

Slowly, she raised her head. “I don’t think I should tell you.”

“Tell me what?” I asked. “What do you know?”

Her tears began to fall faster and she shuffled away from me, rising to her feet. I’d only known her for a couple weeks but she’d never been anything but open and honest the whole time. With everything that had happened, I needed her on my side, not keeping secrets.

“Isabelle, come on. Spill it.”

“I need you to promise not to tell anyone,” she said.

“I can’t promise that.”

She nodded in understanding, but refused to look at me as she began. “Georgia stayed at the party for a while with Willow after Hunter and I came to the hospital with you. Georgia was really upset by what happened, and while she was out in the garden trying to calm down, Leon found her.”

“What did he do to her?”

“Nothing. But ... she told me he was … he was laughing. At you. He was angry at you for hitting him, but he thought it was really funny that you were the one who was drugged. He told Georgia that … he told her the drugs were meant for her.”

Isabelle burst into a fresh wave of tears but adrenaline began pumping through me. If I knew where to find that son of a bitch, I’d have dragged myself out of bed, injured or not, and made him pay for what he tried to do.

“He admitted it?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Because he knows she won’t go to the police.”

I’ve never understood chicks, but this was a whole new level of confusing. How could she not want to call the cops on his ass? Not just for herself, but for Isabelle. He deserved to suffer for everything he’d ever done to them, and for what he did to me.

“That’s not a problem,” I said. “If she won’t, I will.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It’s not? Leon told your sister that he planned to rape her, and you want to keep that quiet?”

Isabelle’s face paled and she shuddered, rubbing her arms. “Don’t say that.”

“I’m sorry. That’s what it comes down to. Why are we discussing this? Let’s get the police back in here.”

I started to get out of bed, but Isabelle said, “No! Just … wait. There’s something you don’t know. Georgia asked me not to tell you, but I can’t … I don’t want to lie to you, Jesse. You need to understand why we can’t go to the police.”

The distress on her face made me stop and sit down again.

“Come here,” I said, reaching for her.

Hesitantly, she walked towards the bed but didn’t sit too close. My stomach twisted into a knot while I waited.

“Leon told Georgia that she can’t go to the police because, if she does, he’ll tell everyone her secret.”

“Which is?”

“I can’t tell you that part.”

I shook my head. “You can’t give me half the story and expect that to be enough.”