Going Under (29 page)

I watched Ashley climb into the cab before
going back inside. I had to pee, the irony being that I had hung
out in the bathroom all evening. I rounded the corner and smacked
into Tim. He laced his fingers with mine in one deft movement and
pulled me down the hallway. I looked like his reluctant date,
digging in my heels. I should have screamed then, but I was too
surprised at the turn of events. I had planned on sneaking out of
the theatre without him ever spotting me.

“What the fuck are you doing?” he demanded,
dropping my hand and backing me into the corner of the hallway.

“I’ll scream to high heaven if you do
anything,” I warned.

“Is there a reason you keep fucking up my
dates? I mean, who are you anyway?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I
said.

Tim snorted. “You think I’m stupid or
something? I saw you send Ashley off in a fucking cab! Did I do
something to you that I can’t remember? You got some vendetta with
me? What the hell did I do to you?”

I wanted to tell him it’s not what he did to
me; it’s what I knew he’d do to Ashley. It’s what I knew he did to
Amelia.

And then the righteous anger bubbled up, and
it spilled over at the wrong time with the wrong words.

“I
know
,” I said so softly I thought
he wouldn’t hear.

Tim reared back as though I slapped his
face. He stumbled into a couple on their way to Theatre 5. He
mumbled an apology while rearranging his stunned face. And then he
leaned into me once more, hands on either side of my head.

“Oh, you know?” he asked. It came out as a
sensual whisper. “What is it you think you know?”

He was taunting me, raking his eyes up and
down my body. Suddenly I wasn’t brave anymore.

“I . . . I know y-you’re trouble,” I
stuttered.

“You’re right,” he cooed. “I am trouble. So
you better watch out.”

“Don’t threaten me,” I said. I was so happy
I got the words out without faltering.

“Oh, I’m not threatening you. I don’t have
to threaten little girls like you because you’ll do what I say,”
Tim said.

I trembled now from outrage and humiliation.
I wasn’t some “little girl”.

“Fuck you,” I spat, and pushed against his
chest with all my might. He could have kept me pinned in the corner
easily, but he moved aside, allowing me the illusion that I’d
pushed him away with my strength.

“Stay away from me, bitch,” I heard Tim say
as I booked it down the hallway.

***

“So, what trouble have you gotten yourself
into lately, Brooke?” Dr. Merryweather asked.

I tensed.

“Hey, take it easy. Everything in here is
confidential. Remember?” she said good-naturedly.

“No trouble,” I lied.

“Brooke. You know the drill. If you don’t
open up to me, then my hands are tied. I can’t help you the way you
need, so you’ve gotta trust me. Remember all this?”

I nodded.

“Okay. So tell me about these
nightmares.”

“Wait. How do you know about my nightmares?”
I asked, shifting uncomfortably in my seat.

“Are you serious? Your dad called. He set up
this appointment. You think he didn’t tell me what was going on?”
she asked. She wrote something down on her pad of paper, and I
thought she was taking notes about me. I imagined they read, “Dip
shit.”

“I’m not a dip shit,” I muttered.

“That’s not what I wrote, Brooke,” Dr.
Merryweather said patiently.

“Whatever.”

She smiled pleasantly and showed me her pad.
She was right. She didn’t write “dip shit.” She wrote my name and
birth date.

“Oh,” I said. I tried for an apologetic
smile. “My bad.”

“So what’s got you all upset that you’re
having nightmares?” Dr. Merryweather continued.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said airily. “I
sneaked around with my best friend’s boyfriend. We had sex behind
her back. Then she killed herself because she got raped. Now she’s
haunting me in my dreams and telling me I deserve to have bad shit
happen to me. Oh yeah. I’ve discovered a group of boys at school
who fuck girls and score themselves on it.”

I leaned back in my chair feeling smug. Take
that, Doc! And here you thought I was just sad about my mommy
moving away.

“Maybe all that combined has something to do
with it,” I concluded for good measure.

Dr. Merryweather drew in her breath. “Well,
it looks like we’ve got some work to do.”

“Evidently.”

“Brooke?”

“Hmm?”

“Perhaps you’ve considered that it’s not
your friend who’s haunting you? Rather, it’s you who’s haunting
you?”

Score one for the doctor.

“Of course I have,” I said. I felt defensive
and stupid. Of course I thought that it was probably me, my psyche,
telling me I was a bad person and deserved horrible things to
happen to me. Wasn’t it simply my brain conjuring my own guilt in
the form of an angry ghost? What? This doctor thought I was a
moron? A dip shit?

“Lemme see that paper again,” I said.

Dr. Merryweather smiled and showed me her
writing. Still my name. And birth date.

“Let’s talk about the betrayal,” the doctor
said.

“I’d rather not,” I replied.

“Brooke, talking it out helps.”

“What is there to say? I was a horrible
friend.”

“So how do you make amends?” Dr.
Merryweather asked.

“Really? I thought you were supposed to tell
me,” I said, feeling my irritation grow. I crossed my arms over my
chest.

“That’s a defensive move, Brooke,” Dr.
Merryweather said. “You’re better than that.”

I dropped my arms and huffed.

“Now, I can’t tell you how to make amends.
You have to discover your own peace. But I can tell you that it’s
no angry ghost haunting your dreams. You’re punishing yourself for
the past. Unable to move on. Is there something you think you have
to do in order to move on?”

Yes. I needed to do something. I had a
purpose once, but I thought now I couldn’t do it.

“Brooke? You’ve got to open up to me. Do
these boys have anything to do with your deceased friend?”

I swallowed. “Huh?”

“Well, you mentioned them in the same
breath. You told me about your cheating, your friend’s rape, and
these boys. Are they connected?”

“Um . . .”

Dr. Merryweather thought for a moment. “Did
one of those boys rape her?”

My eyes went wide. Was she a psychologist or
an investigator, or were they one in the same?

“I see,” the doctor whispered. She wrote
something else down on her pad.

“What are you writing?” I asked quickly.

She ignored me. “Brooke, it’s clear you
think you owe your friend. What is it you plan to do?”

What I plan to do? I have no plan. I have
nothing.

“Brooke?”

“I’m not planning anything. It’s just that I
go to school with this jackass every day, and it’s hard to move on
from my friend’s death when I have to see his face.”

“I can understand that,” Dr. Merryweather
said.

“No one knows he’s a rapist. Well, no one
who counts, anyway,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“The police. People who could put him away.
No one knows because girls aren’t saying anything,” I said.

“There are more victims?” she asked. “How do
you know?”

I sighed. “I’ve been digging around.”

“Is it dangerous what you’re doing?”

I shook my head. “Just illegal.”

“Well, I’m not your moral compass, but
anything illegal may not be the healthiest thing for you right now.
How can it possibly help you move on from your grief?” the doctor
asked.

I considered her for a half moment. I knew I
could trust her. She took an oath or something like that. She
couldn’t repeat anything I said unless I threatened to kill
somebody. I think, anyway. I don’t know all the details of the
doctor-patient confidentiality thing. But I knew I could trust her.
Mom and Dad had no clue about the things I confessed to Dr.
Merryweather years ago when I started therapy because of my
claustrophobia. I knew this to be true because they looked at me
every day like I was the sweetest, most innocent child in the
world.

I drew in my breath and let it out slowly.
Deliberately slowly. Dr. Merryweather knew what that meant. She
resituated herself in her large club chair to get comfortable.

“Okay, so, it was like the best of times and
the worst of times,” I began.

“Would have been better if you didn’t
include the word ‘like’,” Dr. Merryweather said.

I sighed. “I slept with Beth’s boyfriend
behind her back.”

“I fail to see the ‘best of times’ in
that.”

“Well, the sex was incredible, but the
cheating and lying were unforgiveable,” I replied.

I laid out the entire story for Dr.
Merryweather, right up to my discovery of the Fantasy Slut League
and the boys I suspected were rapists. I even confessed to the
doctor my old plan to self-sacrifice but didn’t receive the shocked
reaction I expected. I did, however, receive a slew of questions
about my emotional state and my struggle with guilt and
forgiveness.

I listened politely to the psychobabble
wondering what 18-year-old girl with half a conscience
wouldn’t
be guilt-ridden and have a hard time forgiving
herself. I didn’t want my own fucking forgiveness anyway. I wanted
Beth’s, and she was no longer here to give it to me.

The session concluded with a hug. I never
thought that was professional, even when I started therapy at
eleven years old, but I had come to view Dr. Merryweather as more
of a wise, if a bit self-important, old grandmother than a
psychologist. If nothing else, I got to dump my problems on someone
for a whole hour without being interrupted or made to feel guilty
over it.

I scheduled another session for the
following week.

***

Ryan and I were officially dating by
Christmas, but not before I came clean about going on a date with
Cal and attending his party.

“I swear I don’t like him!” I had cried.

“I knew about the party, Brooke,” Ryan said.
“Even a reject like me hears about the parties.” He eyed me
curiously. “I’m not mad, but why did you go?”

“My friends were insistent, and I didn’t
want them going alone. Drunk girls are easy targets,” I said. It
wasn’t exactly true. Melanie and Taylor weren’t my friends, but I
went to the party regardless to protect them. And that part was
true.

Ryan nodded. “And the date?”

“He wouldn’t leave me alone about it. And I
know what you said about him being bad news. I just thought I could
go and show him how lame I was and then he’d stop harassing me
about a date,” I said.

“You’re far from lame, Brooke,” Ryan
replied.

I shrugged. “Well, I was pretty lame on the
date.”

Ryan thought for a moment. “You could have
just told me. I could have beaten the shit out of him for you.”

I smirked. “I didn’t want you getting blood
on your hands.”

“Oh, I’d love to get blood on my hands,”
Ryan said. He sounded dead serious.

I shivered involuntarily. “Why does he hate
you, Ryan?” I asked softly.

Ryan rubbed his jaw. “Because I don’t want
to be like him.”

We were quiet for a time before I spoke.
“Are you upset with me about the date?”

Ryan shook his head. “No, Brooke. But I do
wish you would have listened to me in the restaurant. I wasn’t
kidding when I said that Cal was a bad guy.”

I nodded. I wanted so much to know why Ryan
thought Cal was bad. A tiny part of me suspected that he had some
knowledge of Cal’s devious sexual behavior, but I was unwilling or
too scared to ask him. I don’t know why, but I didn’t want Ryan
involved in my investigation. I liked him on the outside, and I
liked escaping to the outside every time we were together.

“I should have asked you a long time ago to
be my girlfriend. Officially speaking. Will you?” he said.

Were we just talking about Cal? Because I
couldn’t remember. All I knew in this moment was that Ryan wanted
me as his official girlfriend, and it felt like a huge box of
fireworks had been set off all at once inside my heart and mind. An
ecstatic explosion.

I nodded enthusiastically and crushed my
lips to his.

I’m sure people at school knew we were
together even though we kept our relationship low key. We talked
with one another when we got the chance between classes and sat
together at lunch. We were never physical, though. He preferred to
keep that behind closed doors, and I was never one for open
displays of affection anyway. I think Cal understood that Ryan and
I were together, and he stopped bothering me with his “That guy is
bad news” rhetoric.

Perhaps making our relationship official
right before a major holiday like Christmas wasn’t the wisest idea
considering neither one of us felt comfortable giving each other
presents. We didn’t want to deal with the pressure of it and
thought time spent together was the most appropriate gift we could
give. He took me to dinner one evening and then to the North
Carolina Museum of Art to see a Picasso exhibit. He listened
intently while I jabbered about lighting and colors and meanings
that were even over my head. It was a perfect night, made all the
more perfect by what he asked me on the way back to our
neighborhood.

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, Brooke,”
Ryan began.

“Mmhmm.”

“And I sort of had this planned out in the
hopes that you’d say ‘yes’.”

My heartbeat sped up. “Okay.”

“My sister is at a friend’s house for the
night, and my parents went out of town for the weekend on their
annual Christmas trip for two,” he said.

“Where did they go?” I was curious.

“They went to some bed and breakfast in the
mountains,” Ryan replied.

I smirked. “And they trust you at home
alone?”