Smashed (27 page)

I look at my mother. She looks at the floor.

“Why can’t Alec leave?” I blurt out.

“Katie, you’re not making sense—” Mrs. Bradford starts.

“He raped me.”

She blinks once, stares at me. “Alec Osborne?”

“New Year’s Eve. He did, Mom.” I look at her and start to cry.

Mrs. Bradford pauses and bites her lip. “You know how serious it would be to lie about something like that.”

I can’t speak. I’ve said too much already.
Shit.

Mrs. Bradford looks at my mother. They are trying to read each other silently:
Do you believe her? I don’t know, do you? Maybe she’s just trying to get out of this. She’s desperate, poor thing.

I see the conversation in their eyes.

That’s it. I’m gone.

They don’t try to stop me. Outside the office, I grab my backpack off the floor and run down the hall. In an old wooden
stall in the girls’ bathroom, I open it up. Both water bottles of booze are gone. Taken by my captors.

Lori is a slut
, the wall says. I grab a pen and jab it like a knife into the plywood, scraping the point up and down over the graffiti.

“Fuck you,” I sputter under my breath, as though Mrs. Bradford and my mother and Alec are all there on the wall in front of me.

Fuck you.

It was snowing outside. Over my mother’s shoulder, outside my counselor’s window, rows of cars in the rehab’s parking lot slowly disappeared under fluffy white flakes. I’d been here for nearly two weeks with nothing to look at from my room’s window but that parking lot. The snow improved the view.

“You lost your scholarship,” my mother said. “Coach Hollyhock called yesterday.”

“I know,” I said, my eyes fixed on the scene beyond the glass. I didn’t know. But I’d expected it.

Gail swiveled slightly in her chair; she was my personal counselor. We all had one, all eighteen of us on the adolescent unit. Most of us had her. She was the youngest, or looked it, so they probably thought we’d talk to her, trust her, even. She was tiny, almost delicate, with short, wispy blond hair and a high, soft voice, but she wasn’t scared of us. She was a quiet force in an innocent-looking package. Once I figured that out, I stopped tiptoeing around her. Especially when she
said stupid things. If she was going to dish it out, she’d have to take it.

My mother looked at Gail and Gail at my mother. I thought of Mrs. Bradford back at school, the looks she and my mother had exchanged.

“I want you to know,” my mother continued, “that I’ll do anything I can to get you to school anyway.” She cleared her throat. “I’ll make sure you get to college this fall. And Coach Riley has been in touch with Coach Hollyhock on your behalf. She’s doing what she can. She still believes in you.”

“I don’t want to go, anyway,” I said.

“Coach Hollyhock said you’re welcome to try out as a walk-on. If you can . . . handle it, there’s no reason you won’t make the team.”

“You lost it because of the drinking,” Gail chimed in. “Not because of Alec.”

“Gee, Gail, thanks for the news flash.”

“
Katie
,” my mother said.

I shut up.

Nobody said anything.

“Time’s up,” I said. “Can I leave now?”

Gail nodded.

“I’ll come say good-bye before I leave,” I heard my mother say as I slammed the office door behind me.

*     *     *

“The accident is yours,” Gail said. My mother had left the day before. She only came in once a week, for an hour with Gail and me.

I fixed my eyes on a snow-covered picnic table outside the
window. The sun was out, reflecting off the new snow. Inside, in Gail’s little office, particles of dust floated aimlessly in a stream of light.

“You got drunk. If you weren’t drunk, you wouldn’t have crashed the car. And you agreed to the lie.”

“I know.”

“Good, because I think that’s weighing you down.”

“Not really.” I shifted in my seat, pulling my legs up on the chair, knee to chin, and buried my face in them.

“How’s that?” she asked finally.

“We’re even now.”

“It’s not about being even, Katie.”

I didn’t say anything. My chest felt tight, the way it always did when she tried to force me to see things her way. It’s not counseling; it’s indoctrination. They let you go if you agree with them—or if your insurance runs out. Whichever comes first.

“Life isn’t about getting even,” Gail said. “If you make it that way . . . well, it’s a painful way to go.”

“I don’t make it that way. It’s the way it is. They fly into our buildings; we bomb their villages—right?”

You owe me
, he’d said. Those were his exact words. She didn’t get it. No one did; they all thought it was my fault. My fault he raped me. That’s why they sent me away, right? To get rid of the evidence. Let Alec the big man roam the halls, free to do whatever he pleased.

The walls of Gail’s office were closing in on me; I couldn’t get enough oxygen to breathe.

“It wasn’t my fault,” I said, and jumped up, slamming the door of her office behind me before she could say one more word about my life.

*     *     *

Gail was in my room now. She had knocked quietly about half an hour later. She didn’t ask if she could come in, just strolled through the door when I didn’t answer.

“You can’t always run when things get tough, Katie.”

Wanna bet?
I thought.
Watch me.

“It’s one of the things we’re trying to teach you here. Running doesn’t work.”

Really?
I thought. Running might have helped the night Alec grabbed me. But I was too stupid to do it in time. At least in the right direction. The bathroom. What had I been thinking?

“I didn’t ask to come here. I was forced. Just like I’m forced to talk to you every day. Any idea what it’s like to be
forced
, Gail?”

She didn’t say anything.

“I didn’t think so,” I spit out under my breath.
“Bitch.”
And then I started to cry, the tears coming fast and hard, the kind of crying where you can hardly breathe and you don’t care anymore who sees you or what they think because you’re way past that—past everything that makes sense.

It shut Gail up. She must have felt bad, because she came over and sat next to me on the bed, and put her hand on my back and kind of rubbed it a little. She was brave, I’ll give her that. I’d rather kill someone than have them sit that close to me—never
mind touch me. But when she put her hand on me, I just cried harder. I wanted my mother.

“I’m sorry, Kate,” she said softly. “I’m really sorry that he hurt you.
Nobody
deserves that.”

I do
, I thought.

That’s how crazy I was.

*     *     *

After I had been there for two more weeks and had played by their rules, I was allowed visits from non-family members. Gail told me that the counselor at school had reported the rape—she had to, whether she believed me or not. It was the law. The thought of Alec knowing I’d told people terrified me. I was sure he’d come after me now in revenge. They’d never let him in this place; still, I was nervous all the time, shaking, jumpy.

I didn’t want to see anyone. Matt understood. He sent me a bunch of yellow roses with a note in his crooked handwriting:

Dear Katie,

I just wanted you to be okay. That’s still all I want.

Love,

Matt

I sent him back a postcard with a picture of the ugly, flat building I lived in now with
I’m not mad at you. Love, Katie
scrawled on the back.

*     *     *

I didn’t want Cassie to come either, but she insisted and finally I gave in. That’s Cassie: never gives up. And now she was here, sitting across from me, studying my face.

In a way, I was a stranger to her now, an enigma, a puzzle to solve, where before there had just been the friend she thought she knew everything about.

“School’s different without you.”

She looked bleak—pale, washed out behind her freckles, her spark just not there. She perched on the edge of an avocado-green armchair and looked around the bare room. “It’s been hard not talking to you. It was hard even before you came here—since Christmas.”

I got up off the bed and walked toward the window, pulled the cord, watched the burnt-orange curtains sway and close, sealing the room from daylight. The sun reflecting off the snow was unbearable. Every day I wished for gray clouds, a storm to mirror how I felt.

“Simon broke up with me,” she said.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. He just e-mailed me and broke up. He didn’t even call.” Her eyes were shining.

I knew I should feel something, but I didn’t. I was blank, empty.

“I’m sorry,” I said, but it wasn’t convincing.

She took a tissue out of the box near my bed and blew her nose. “I should have known sooner,” she said.

“You said you had a great time with him.”

“Not about that. About you. What you were doing. I should have known sooner.”

“Nobody knew.”

She wiped the back of her hand across her face. “They did. I was the last one. People had been saying for a while that you were high in school or whatever, and I’d get so mad and say you were just sick. . . . Matt knew, of course, but I wouldn’t even listen to him.”

Her eyes followed me as I crossed the room and sat back down on my bed. They were dark blue today. Arctic blue.

“Stanfield got suspended this week,” Cassie said. “But so did
Alec
.”

“For what?”

“Fighting. Stan jumped him. Alec said something at lunch and Stan beat him up.”

“I wonder what he said.”

“Stan’s always had a crush on you.” Cassie studied my face. “He feels like shit, you know, Stan does.”

“It wasn’t his fault.”

Neither one of us spoke.

“Why didn’t you just tell me, Kay?” she said finally.

I shook my head and looked back at where the window had been, at the terrible orange curtains. “Too embarrassed. I mean, shit like this—it would never happen to you.”

She looked surprised. “It could have. It still could. It could happen to
anyone
.”

“No,” I said. “You wouldn’t have given Alec the time of day. You’re too
smart
for that.”

“Being smart won’t stop some lunatic from jumping out of the bushes at me someday.”

“Yeah, but that lunatic? At least you’d know that you didn’t invite him into your
life.
That you didn’t make out with the guy, or let him into your house, or let him convince you for even five minutes that he was normal and maybe even
nice
. You’re not that stupid, Cassie. You never have been.”

Cassie’s pale face glowed in the light of the small lamp beside her chair. The rest of the room lay dark. “I’m thirsty,” she said.

“There’s a soda machine in the hall.”

*     *     *

“I lost my scholarship, you know, because of the drinking,” I said when she came back with a Coke for her and a ginger ale for me. I set mine down on my bedside table, unopened.

“They can’t blame you, can they? After what happened.”

I let out a short, hollow laugh. “Sure they can. I can.”

“Even after Alec—he’s such a
pig
.” Her eyes darted around the room.

“Not everybody who is . . .
raped
 . . . not everybody, you know, drinks a fifth of vodka or whatever it was every day.”

“A lot of people would.”

“You wouldn’t have.” I let out another short, humorless laugh. Gail liked to point out that I laughed when things weren’t funny, like it was a cover or something. But did it count as a laugh if there was no humor, no glee, not a shred of happiness behind it? They should be called something else, these sounds I made.

“You don’t know that. I might have.”

I shook my head. “No, not you. You would have told your mother, brought the asshole up on charges. That’s what you would’ve done.” It was almost an accusation.

Cassie flinched.

“No, wait—you also wouldn’t have showered, so that the charges would
stick
. Your mom probably has a rape kit at home, in her little black
bag
.”

Cassie looked tiny at that moment, curled up in the plastic armchair with her knees tucked under her chin. Her eyes were rimmed red, but I didn’t care. I was on a roll.

“Frankly, Cassie, you’d never get yourself into this situation, so I don’t know what the fuck I’m even talking about.”

Cassie looked stunned. But there was fire back in her eyes.

“You know what else I wouldn’t have done, since you think you know me so well? I wouldn’t have lied to you,” she said. “You don’t lie to your
best friend
.”

You don’t know the half of it
, I thought.

She wiped the sleeve of her fleece across her cheeks. She looked like hell—but fierce now, too. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to you,” she said finally.

“There’s nothing to say. It’s over. I fucked up and it’s over.”

Gail was getting on my nerves. I didn’t hate her anymore—actually, I kind of liked her—but she was pushy sometimes. She wanted me to talk about things I didn’t want to talk about. I’d been here more than a month now, and since I’d been sober all that time, she said it was time to get at what she called “the underlying causes.”

“Causes of what?”

“Why you drank.”

“It tasted good?”

Gail smiled. “You’re funny, but it’s not getting you out of this.”

I flipped a slipper off my toe and into the air. They made us get dressed every morning, but appropriate footwear was optional. I liked padding around in these old things, mainly because Will had sent them for me from home.

“Why do you think you drank?”

“Alec.”

“At the end, maybe, partly. Before that.”

“You tell me.” She was like a teacher trying to get me to guess the right answer, the one she already had in her head.