Precise (13 page)

“Dina, lovely, I think Kates wanted some scotch.”

She rolls her eyes at him. “Scotch? You couldn’t possibly want
scotch
, do you?” She eyes me, quizzing me for the appropriate answer.

“This is fine.”

She beams at Tim and goes on to explain the clean up. After some appropriate laughing and commenting on how good a job they’ve done
—
I assume the house was in a bad way from their “it was a great, great night” comment
—
Dina invites me to explore the house with her.

“Come on, now. You don’t have to feel shy.” She’s in the seat next to me bumping my elbow. “I love showing this house off.”

Tim trains his eye on his drink, sips, and puts it back down without meeting either of our eyes.

“You don’t have to bother.” I point to the oven. “Really.”

“This is my favorite part.”
As if that wasn’t obvious enough
. “You must come.”

She pushes back the chair and faces me. I look up to see her.

I want to say
No!
but somehow her hands on her hips of the skin-tight jeans, her glowing eyes, make these words impossible. This is why Dina is never wrong. Between dog-on-a-leash Tim, and messed-up-me, she seems the only one who has control here.

“That sounds
great
, Dina,” I say.

Along the way, she points out rare ornaments they’ve collected over the years. The curtains have been specially designed by Tim’s mom and supplied by the international franchisee business Tim has shares in. I smile when I enter a new room and nod approvingly when she points out a feature as I suspect it’s what I should do if rare ornaments and one-of-a-kind curtains really did enthrall me.

It isn’t long before she finishes the tour of downstairs and leads me to the next floor.

“You’ll love what we’ve done with the master and en suite,” she proclaims.

“Oh?”

In the background, something beeps. It sounds like an oven, from what I make out.

“Tim is so hopeless. I think he pretends he doesn’t know how to use the oven to get himself off the hook.”

I tell her I don’t mind if we have to go, but a lightbulb idea strikes her at that moment. I guess no whisking me off, then.

“No, don’t be silly. Stay! Look around!” She flies down the stairs past me, turning at the last minute to add, “Take your time.”

I try calling her back but she scampers away faster than I can cry out.

D
éjà vu hits me. Darkness suffocates the light. Party noises replace the soothing calm. Marco clamps my hand, providing some stability.

I slip from the stairs at Tim and Dina’s house to the flashback instantly.

It has begun.

When I turn to go back, he
—
we
—
don’t move. I hadn’t minded this. That’s what I thought. For me, now, it makes all the difference.

He shouldn’t be here. It’s Monday. But . . . it’s not. It’s Saturday night: party time.

I’m at the top of the stairs when my memory catches up.

Marco flicks on a switch. Another dim light flickers closer to us. At this point, the walls can be a baby pink and the carpets burgundy. Or green. I can’t tell. Ahead, in the master bedroom, the light is so scarce that the illumination rising from outside barely lights the windowsill.

As his grip tightens, shock splits apart Saturday-me and Monday-me. One part is relaxed, woozy; the other frightened like a cornered rabbit.

Monday-me switches into panic. Do I want this guy? Am I really beyond the obvious? There’s heaviness in my body and it makes me wobbly as if I were only learning to walk. Drugs. They allow me to comply with him. Clearly, Saturday-me is still fine
—fine!—
with being in a dark, shut-off room with him. Monday-me hates the darkness, always has. Especially with strangers.

Monday-me tries shaking free but it’s too late, like trying to stop peeing midway.

Walking into the room is a blur. The music is pounding loudly downstairs, shaking the house. My legs drape over the side of a bed. Thank God, Saturday-me has the urge to pull.

There is no release.

“Joke’s up.”
Stupid. As if he meant to joke
.
Try again.
“Let go.” I laugh. It’s a feeble attempt to appear cool and collected.

“Come on. We’ll chat about it,” Marco says in an undistinguishable voice, sniggering as if to copycat.

He’s close to my ear. A shiver shoots down my spine, every inch of body hair standing on end. He isn’t giving me a choice. It’s the trapped feeling I loathe most, just like I felt when I could only hold Paul dying in my arms.

“I want to go. I have to.”

“I’ve been studying you tonight and that’s all you’ve been doing: running.”

The walls sway into shadows. The four-post bed blurs. What’s wrong with me? Words make sense in my head, then seem to mash through a sieve when they emerge from my lips.

The drugs he must have slipped me. They’re erasing
me
.

“Please g—go, now! Not joking.”

“We’ll just spend some time together. No running.”

Oh, please not now
. I’m sliding away. More and more so, the darkness engulfs everything else until I have nothing left.

How much of this is my fault? Whatever I’ve drunk, whatever he’s spiked it with, is only half the problem. My mind has its own way of dealing with the prospect of an actual trauma. I bet my mind blocking decreases my perception further.

Scream.
But who will hear you
? This has gone too far to be a joke.

Scream
!

Then everything spins too fast.

A blur of color passes but it isn’t the alcohol or the drugs affecting me. Wind presses out of my lungs and I splutter on the air. I writhe, shaking like a dog trying to rip a head off its prey, but it effects no movement.

When I pant, splutter, it comes back into my own mouth. Gagged. Complete darkness. A textured cloth strangles my eyesight. He’s taken my voice, taken my sight.

I moan because I need to do something and it’s all I can do.

Two hard, pole-like weights press against my thighs, which I assume are his shins. His hands smother my wrists, and my twiggy arms are no match for his fight. His weight is so heavy I sink down into the bedsprings.

My breaths fire up, quick and rapid.

What
,
why
, I try to blurt. Try to save me. But no one hears. I feel a few tugs and a
riiip
.

I understand.

“Stop squirming, bitch!” Marco hisses.

That halts everything. My pants wet, a little. The adrenaline is so thick it makes me cough. It reminds me what my place is, what I ought to do if I want to survive this. Help won’t arrive
—
who will hear me above this music? Surely, Marco has locked the door, but it doesn’t matter because if I could check I’d run as far away as I could.

“Don’t pretend you don’t want it. I
know
you want it.”

There’s an unzipping sound. As I hear it, his body sweat, alcohol and a touch of perfume fill my lungs with each breath.

Then he spits. I didn’t understand why at the time. The sound of something squishing. I’ve been biting onto my tongue too tight but the grip locks anyway in an involuntary way. The rush of my blood fills me with horror.

“Don’t scream or make sounds. You’ll ruin the moment.”

He slips his hands to the top of my undies. He inches the material down my legs in the same manner as an army crawl. I thrash and wallop him in the cheek with my knee in a moment of freedom.

He punches me in the gut so hard I think my blood vessels will implode in my chest. The weight of him and his punch paralyzes my strength, as if that’s all my body can give.

“Scream
or
move and that punch will feel like a feather compared to what I’ll do.”

If I comply, will he be kinder to me?

I’m hovering somewhere other than in my body. No ability to make coherent thoughts.

“Let’s begin.”

I can’t remember any more from this point forward. Somewhere inside, I think I know why my brain and body won’t let me remember such horrific memories.

The shame, the drugs climaxing . . . And from this moment I won’t live with the knowledge of what happened. This is the last time I’ll remember the thrashing; Marco’s cold, hissing voice; being gagged and blindfolded; his hips thrusting; and the pain throbbing between my legs.

• • •

M
y eyes snap open. Rubbing my hands together, I feel clamminess.

I stand to readjust myself. Although I don’t remember collapsing on their master bed, at some point, I must have.

I pat down my hair, unsure whether I’m making it look better or frizzier. The repetitive motion is calming anyway.

Head downstairs, I decide. Chat and act real keen about the design upstairs (what is the fucking design anyway, Dina?). From below, spices and rich scents of slow-cooked meat waft through the air. Usually, I would be flying down, but I’m not ready to eat.

Though, if I stay here, they’ll only come and find me unaware.

“Kates,” Tim calls, startling me as I step into the kitchen. “You’re just in time. Sorry about butting in before. Dina had to come down ‘cause I was this close,” he squishes his fingers a millimeter apart, “to losing lunch to the heavens above.” He turns to Dina who’s serving our juicy roast, making my stomach twist. “I swear. I’m hopeless.”

“You must be starving!” Dina says. “I’ll finish lunch for us. Go with Tim and sit outside to wait.” She turns to Tim. “No more trouble from you, Mister.”

She pushes me away when I try to help and insists I relax, be the guest. Delighted at being let off the hook, Tim leads me outside to a glass and stainless steel setting.

“So, how’s your daughter . . . Ellen, if I remember correctly?”

“Almost, it’s Ella. She’s good.”

“At primary, isn’t she?”

“Yeah, taken out of my hair for a few hours a day.”

“God, I’m still struggling with the idea of being a father. Dina and the boys reckon I’m still about ten in my head, that’s why I find it hard, because my kids could be smarter than me in no time.”

Somehow, I remember having this conversation with him already. “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. It’s hard to explain but you’ll grow as a parent as they grow.”

“Ha! I know, you told me that at my party.”

Bingo! “Habit I have,” I say.

He nods in a “Me too” kind of way, and I relax against the seat after seeing my lie go undetected. I actually haven’t remembered any damning proof. Not yet.

“I’ve got a question from your party.”

“Shoot.”

“I don’t understand what happened earlier. Before Dina came downstairs, you looked like you were hesitating to say something.”

“Oh, that.”

“Is there a problem?”

“You’re exaggerating something that never happened. I’m serious. I think I was going to say you seemed like you could’ve been on something a little stronger than alcohol.” “When
exactly
was this?” Now I remember me stumbling, Marco catching up to me in the darkness to walk alongside, and Cooper with a hand on my waist. This latter recollection changes my theory. Parts formed in dribs and drabs, and other odd bits. Before the park, some parts are clear. After the bedroom scene, nothing exists. Even if everything before is cloudy, yes, staggered, yes, at least there is something there.

I push my memory as far back during the night as I can. That way, I can trace a timeframe of when the drugs kicked in.

“I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. It was after you came back from the park,” Tim says.

“The park? The one just a few blocks away?”

He nods.

“I don’t remember being anywhere near there.”

“Oh, shit. Look . . . ” Tim starts. He peers around suspiciously, eyeing off Dina in the kitchen through the window, then continues. “I know Marco and Cooper came back happy. Like,
real
happy, if you get where I’m going. You have to know I never went. I couldn’t leave my own party.”

I keep my gaze trained on him.

“I didn’t know you from a bar of soap. I thought . . . I assumed that’s what you were like. Just hesitant at first. You can’t blame me for thinking you enjoyed a good time. Once you got that first sip into you, the bottles kept flowing. I thought you wanted more and I know Marco used to like that stuff.”

By the end of his ramble, I have to lock onto his lips to make sure I keep up.

This changes everything, again. Brent tried drugs, like everyone else, at seventeen. Liam did, too. But they both haven’t gone near that stuff in years. The thought of Brent’s “friends” forcing him makes me want to wring someone’s neck.

“You mean you
knew
that I could have been slipped something and you assumed that was all right?” I spit out the words like a bad taste. I never thought something so shocking, like what I’ve just heard, could happen to me. No, this is something I should sigh about whilst reading the morning paper. I could have forgotten that the next day.

“Hey, just relax. Like I said, I thought you joined in with the boys. Maybe you had a Red Bull or something. I don’t know. Boss lady kept a tight leash on me once she discovered my support team left.”

“What was it?”

“What was what?”

“Whatever else you believe we took on top of the alcohol at your party.”

“Marco does weed. Coop does coke sometimes. When you came back, you all seemed pretty out of it. Like I said, you could have been buzzing from an energy drink.” He animates his actions as if he weren’t making noises and I need the mime to understand how much he wants me to believe his act.

His voice escalates. “I’ve seen those news stories; you mix alcohol and Red Bull and it’s like being on drugs.” His brows arch and his eyes pop. “Heart beats at, like, 180.”

“Did you supply energy drinks at your party?”

“No.”

“Did your mates bring any, then?”

“They hate—” He stops to start afresh but I’ve already finished his “they hate them” sentence in my head.

Tim scratches his temple. “Don’t preach my word for gold about the drug thing and get me in trouble.”

“That’s the last thing I’m worried about!” How could he possibly think that his confidentiality is my top priority?

“I do understand your position, I do, but these are my friends we’re talking about. If you go and say I said one of them drugged you, and it turns out they didn’t—and let’s just be rational here and say they haven’t—then I kiss goodbye to all of them.”

“But I didn’t
take marijuana or coke. I’ve never done that stuff in any state.” And boy do I know about some crazy states.

“You don’t know what you did.”

His breathing keeps up an above average rate.

“So you know me then, do you? I’m the type to get blind drunk and mix in some illegal drugs to oh,
let’s say
, up the ante. And while I’m at it, neck down a handful of prescription pills.” My voice sounds foreign. I don’t recognize the sneer lashing from my tongue. The voice snatches my thoughts from my mind and tells it how I think, only it isn’t
me
talking anymore. This is Molten Man.

“Whoa!” he exclaims, hands up in surrender. “I’m just saying what I think.”

“Do you know their numbers then?”

No, he won’t give me their phone numbers, but I can have his if I need to “talk or whatever”. No, I wasn’t with anyone else during his party other than his friends and Dina’s girlfriends.

Yes, he’s sure none of his friends would harm me.