Promiscuous (28 page)
Authors: Isobel Irons
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Erotica, #Romantic Erotica
I wanted to, but I didn’t. In fact, I never told anyone about the things Trent said. Not one living soul.
I’d like to say this part of the story has a happy ending, or even an ending. I’d like to say that ‘Trent’ never did more than talk. But a few years after I’d graduated high school and moved on with my life, far away from the small and often narrow-minded town I grudgingly called home, I saw an article in my hometown newspaper about how the real life Trent had been convicted of more than three different counts of forcible rape, and sentenced to ten years in prison.
As most experts on this type of crime will tell you, for every victim that comes forward, there’s usually at least one more victim who chooses to remain silent. Maybe because they’re embarrassed, or ashamed, or—worst of all—afraid of being targeted by people who will find it easier to label them ‘sluts’ and ‘liars,’ instead of facing the truth: that rapists can look like anyone you know, and once they think they can get away with it, they
do not stop
hurting people.
Even if it wasn’t six girls or more, even if it was only two, or three. That’s still way too many. And six years is still
way too long
for a rapist to go unpunished.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked myself over the years, what if I’d just said something? Tash’s circumstances were extreme, she thought she wasn’t worth listening to. But I was a good student. I came from a good family. People
might
have listened.
I can’t tell you how sick it makes me, to think that the authorities and school administrators might have taken my word for it, when so many other girls are labeled as liars and shamed for being sluts. Just because of where they were when it happened, or what they were drinking, or what they were wearing. Just because of who people
thought
they were—they
must
have brought it on themselves, they
must
have deserved it.
This attitude is not okay. This precedent is not okay. The fact that at least one in three girls will likely read this story and say to themselves, ‘This could be me,’ is Not. Fucking. Okay.
So let’s stop pointing fingers, and throwing around labels. Let’s stop trying to rationalize or make excuses for things which are inexcusable. Let’s try to understand that each person’s story is not everyone’s story.
What happened to me was
wrong
. But it was
not
my fault.
My hope is that by telling Tash’s story, and my story, I’ll inspire and encourage others to tell theirs. And hopefully, if enough of us start to come clean about our dirty little secrets, the world will, too.
If you know someone this story might apply to, please
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Contact Isobel Irons
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What Happens Next?
OBSESSIVE
Book Two in the Issues Series by Isobel Irons
Coming in March, 2014
Sometimes, great expectations can be more damaging than NO expectations. Charles Dickens took 542 pages to explain that very lesson. I’m going to take less than half that.
For 18-year-old Grant Blue, the summer after high school graduation is a lot like that movie where the astronauts get cut loose and drift off into space. Any normal teenage guy would be glad for a few weeks of vacation, for all those extra hours spent with his gorgeous—but volatile—girlfriend, even for the chance to participate in a coveted internship that will make him a shoo-in for top of his class when he gets to college in the fall.
But Grant can’t seem to stop counting the reasons why he can’t do what ‘normal’ guys his age are doing. Why he shouldn’t want the things he wants. Why he doesn’t deserve to be called ‘perfect.’ On top of his parents’ expectations, Grant is getting tired of carrying a lifelong secret, one he’s betting that future employers, work colleagues and fellow students won’t understand. Let alone the girl he’s falling for, who thinks he’s too good for her, even though she couldn’t be more wrong.
Because the perfect student, the perfect son, the guy ‘most likely to succeed’…is about to crash and burn.
Click
HERE
to read a sample chapter of OBSESSIVE.
OBSESSIVE
The Issues Series: Book Two
By Isobel Irons
PART I: PERFECT
Tash likes to call me Mr. Perfect.
She thinks it’s funny, watching me blush when she says it. She has no idea I’m blushing because I’m embarrassed, because every time she calls me perfect, I count the letters. P-E-R-F-E-C-T. Seven letters. The number of days in the week. Seven is the first integer reciprocal with infinitely repeating sexagesimal representation. And then, because I’m a guy, I think of sex.
S-E-X. Three letters. Three is a prime number. If I step into an elevator with three people in it, something bad will happen. Like the elevator might malfunction and plummet to the bottom of the shaft. Three: the number of months Tash and I have been ‘together.’ But we still haven’t had sex.
And it’s not because Tash thinks she’s not good enough for me, or because she’s upset about her best friend Margot being shipped off to ‘Reverse Fat Camp’ this summer. It’s not even because she thinks my mom hates her ‘sassy, trailer trash guts.’
No, it’s because of me. It’s 100% my fault. Because every time she calls me Mr. Perfect, it’s a lie. I’m not perfect. I’m a walking malfunction. And more than anything, I’m scared. All the time. I’m scared to let Tash find out just how perfect I’m not, because then something bad will happen.
CHAPTER ONE
JUNE
I’ve always hated summer.
The irregular schedule and lack of structure makes me feel adrift, like that movie Tash made me watch last week about astronauts who get detached from their shuttle and float off into space.
Ninety-one minutes of terrified flailing in an airless abyss, and a brand new nightmare to keep me awake through the boredom. At least
Castaway
had that volleyball for comic relief. But then, nobody really watches
Castaway
to
watch
it, do they? I might not be a player like my friend Matt, but even I know what a ‘makeout movie’ is.
Now that I think about it, that might be why Tash wanted to watch the space movie in the first place. And I, total malfunction of a human being that I am, spent the entire movie wondering about space survival, instead of making out with the funniest, hottest and most down-to-earth girl
on earth
.
It’s no wonder I’m sitting in therapy right now, instead of getting a tan at the lake with friends I haven’t seen since graduation two weeks ago, or doing any other normal, summery teenage things.
Because I am abnormal. Dysfunctional, on a basic cellular level. Broken.
“Have you been keeping up with your journal?” Jeanne, my therapist, stares at me patiently over the thick rims of her bright blue glasses. I get the feeling she’s been doing that for a while, just staring at me and waiting for me to say something. As usual, I’ve been getting lost in my headspace, drifting off into gray matter, oblivious to my actual surroundings.
“Yeah,” I nod. “Not as much as I did during school, though.”
She smiles. “That’s right, I completely forgot! Wow, this year has flown by. How does it feel to be a graduate?”
How does it feel?
I clear my throat.
It feels like my space shuttle just blew up, and I’m drifting around, wondering when my oxygen supply is going to run out.
“Good,” I tell her. “It’s uh, it’s good to be done with high school.”
Jeanne cocks her head, eyeing me speculatively. “Just good?”
I squirm in my seat, careful not to touch the bare skin of my forearms to the leather armrests, which countless crazy people have undoubtedly come into contact with in the recent past. Another reason to hate summer: people think it’s weird when you wear long-sleeved shirts, and gloves are unheard of in June, unless you’re working outside. What else does she want me to say? It’s not like this is a new thing, me being taciturn. She’s basically a spy for my dad, to make sure I’m taking my meds, because of our deal. Because weekly therapy and meds are ‘necessary evils,’ in his words. We both know it. So why does she insist on pretending she cares about what I’m thinking?
If my dad gets his way, I’m staring down the barrel of ten more years of school, followed by residency, then 80 hours or more a week of surgeries, scrubbing in and cutting people open. I nod again.
“Really good.”
Short answers are the key to getting through the next 37 minutes unscathed. Short answers are safe, even if they tend to piss off people who like to read a lot of emotions into your response. They call it sharing, but it’s more like
over
sharing. Like opening up a vein and just letting the thoughts pour out until everyone is uncomfortable. Verbal diarrhea—it’s a perfectly disgusting phrase to describe how awkward a situation can become when people share too much, too easily.
“Are you enjoying summer break so far?”
Thirty-five minutes left now. “Sure. What little is left of it.”
I smile, to soften the truth I never meant to say out loud. Tash must be rubbing off on me. Jeanne looks confused for a split-second, but then she consults her notes and remembers, smiling when she’s back in control of the conversation.
“That’s right, your dad said you’d been accepted to the summer anatomy program at Duke. You must be so excited.”
I keep my face blank, but a muscle twitches in my jaw, as my anxiety level jumps from a four to a five. Jeanne is a spy, so I’ll tell her what she—and by extension, my dad—wants to hear.
“Yeah, super excited. It’s a really great opportunity.”
Jeanne’s expression says she wants more. “Are you nervous at all?”
“Nervous?” I blink, and silently start counting. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven….
An unbidden slide show of disturbing images flashes through my head. Dead bodies. Cold skin. Metal slicing through flesh. My palms are starting to sweat, and I want to put my hands in my pockets, for safe keeping. But I’m sitting down, so instead I rest them on my knees. I’m always hyper-aware of where my hands are. It’s one of my ‘tendencies,’ as Dad likes to call them. So much nicer sounding than ‘obsessions,’ or ‘compulsions.’ Or, as Jeanne calls them, ‘rituals.’ Like I’m addicted to sacrificing wildlife for pagan mating rites, or something. Not just washing my hands or counting.
“Just excited.”
When I was a kid, we went on this father-son hunting trip, my dad and me. When we were building a fire by the lake, this fisherman cut his hand open with a knife. My dad had an emergency kit with him, so he sutured the guy’s hand, right there by the lake. He made me hold the flashlight for him, so he could see what he was doing. I can still remember watching the skin pull away from the fisherman’s hand, tugged from the flesh with every stitch—flesh I could clearly see, exposed. F-L-E-S-H. Five letters.
