The Female of the Species (5 page)

Sometimes I forget for one second and it hurts.

It's a different kind of pain than the constant, the weight that hangs from my heart. It swings from twine embedded so deeply that my aorta has grown around it. Blood pulses past rope in the chambers of my heart, dragging away tiny fibers until my whole body is suffused and pain is all I am and ever can be.

But sometimes it swings just right and there's a moment of suspension when I can't feel it. The rope goes slack and the laws of physics give me one second of relief. I can laugh and smile and feel something else. But those same laws undo me, and when it swings back there's a sharp tug on my heart to remind me that I forgot.

Anna told me I would understand about boys one day.

She said that everything would change and I would look at them differently, assess their bodies and their words, the way their eyes moved when they talked to me. She said I'd not only want to answer them but that I'd learn how, knowing which words to use, how to give meaning to a pause.

Then a man took her.

A man took her before I learned any of these things. He took her and kept her for a while, put things inside of her. Of course the obvious thing, but also some others, like he was curious if they'd fit. Then he got bored. Then he got creative.

Then my sister was gone and I thought:
I understand about boys now.

And she was right. Everything did change. I look at them differently and I assess their bodies and watch their eyes and weigh their words.

But not in the way she meant.

I remember the night Anna left, a casual
see you later
tossed over her shoulder as I sat in the living room with a book. I grunted in response, having told her a million times before not to talk to me when I was reading. She usually kept chattering until I'd raise my eyes and say, “I'm
trying
to read,” to which she'd mock sympathy and say, “Oh, honey, I thought you knew how. This is so sad.”

It was a tired joke, one she used every time but somehow made me smile anyway. She didn't trot it out that night, instead making for the back door like she couldn't get out of the house fast enough, which I totally understood. She and Mom had had it out earlier, a real rip-roarer that had centered over whether or not I should go to a month-long poetry camp. Mom was all for it, seeing an opportunity to get me far away from her under the guise of good parenting.

Anna said I shouldn't go, that sending me out into the world alone was like letting a wolf loose, and her, my keeper, nowhere near. I was mad at her when she left, even though a part of me knew she was right.

Then she was gone, and I unlocked the cage myself.

The first time that I acted on my rage it could have gone very badly, but fate played along with me and I had my way. I've learned things since then, watched videos with instructors who teach you where to punch, what to pull, things that pop. I'm living my life waiting for the man who comes for me like one did for Anna, with hungry eyes behind the wheel and rope in the trunk.

I'm ready.

But I don't know how much longer I can wait.

When I get to school on Friday morning there's a cop car in the lot, which results in a lot of people hitting the brakes so that they're actually going twenty in the school zone and more than a few pretending to clean bags of chips and scratch-off lottery cards out of their passenger seats and casually walking to the Dumpster as if there isn't pot in the gas-station bag they're carrying. I cram a couple of empty beer bottles under my driver's seat with my heel while pretending to check my phone for texts after I park.

Sara meets me in the hall with a simple, “What the fuck?”

“I don't know,” I say. I haven't actually seen the cop anywhere, even though half the student body found a
reason to walk past the fishbowl of the office and glance in to see if anybody was standing there in cuffs. The secretary spots me and waves me in, making my heart go up so far into my throat my eyes probably bulge a bit.

“What's up, Karen?” I ask, trying to ignore Sara miming at me through the window to run for it. The secretary goes to my church so I'm allowed to call her by her first name, which I admit I kind of lean on for a second, like maybe if I'm really nice to her she'll hide me under her desk when the cop comes to quiz me about where I was and what I was doing last night. Answer: at Sara's, pretty sloshed.

“Hey, sweetie pie,” she says. “The copier at the church is broken again so I ran off the bulletins here. Could you get these to your dad?”

My mouth twitches when she holds up her own bag from the gas station, straining against the huge stack of paper inside. “Don't tell anybody,” she stage-whispers at me when I take it. “Technically I'm using school supplies for the church.”

“I doubt that fast-tracks you to hell,” I say before I can reconsider my language.

She laughs a little, her rhinestone-encrusted glasses moving up on her face about an inch as her nose crinkles.

“Hey, Karen,” I say, since we're being conspiratorial. “What's with the cop car?”

“Drug assembly,” she says. “You know . . .” She holds her fingers up to her mouth, and totally surprises me by using the right indication for pot instead of a cigarette. “We'll be on a one-hour-delay schedule; everyone will go to the auditorium first thing. The principal will make an announcement soon, but you've got a hot tip so you can get a good seat.”

I tell Sara what's up as we head to our lockers, the promised announcement drawing groans from the kids in the hall.

“Why can't you have connections that can get us a hot tip for good seats to a Reds game?” Sara asks.

“I'll see if they have a Lutheran night or something coming up,” I tell her, and she elbows me.

“What's in the bag?”

I lean in a little closer to her than necessary when I answer. Carrying around church bulletins at school is not going to break me out of the preacher's-kid label anytime soon. Sara's trying not to laugh at me when Branley's very bronzed, perfectly smooth shoulder knocks into mine hard enough to send the bag flying out of my hands, a hundred copies of the Lord's Prayer and next week's hymn numbers spreading out in a fan down the hall.

“Sorry,” Branley says. She's on her knees restacking bulletins before she even looks up to see who she
obliterated with her bony knob. Her eyes meet mine as I start scraping piles of paper into the bag, not caring that a bunch are getting bent.

“Oh,” she says, her hands freezing. “Sorry,” she mutters again, before her similarly tanned friend Lila pulls her to her feet and they head off toward the auditorium. Sara helps me with what's left and we're the last kids in the hall. Someone is tapping the microphone in the auditorium, the
knock-knock
sound filling our ears as we turn the corner to the double doors. Branley and Lila are standing in the doorway, heads craning as they look around the darkened room for the rest of the in-crowd.

“What's going on?” I didn't hear Alex come up behind me, so I jump when she asks, drawing the attention of the teachers lining the back wall.

“C'mon, girls, let's go,” Miss Hendricks says, shepherding me, Sara, Alex, Branley, and Lila up to the front row—the only place there are five seats left.

“Good seats,
sweet
,” Sara hisses in my ear.

“Shut up,” I say, settling in with Sara on one side of me and Alex on the other. At least I didn't end up next to Branley, both of us trying not to share an armrest or keep our legs from touching the entire time.

The principal takes the podium and tells us about how a member of the local police is here to give an important presentation, and reminds us that we're
representing our school. He trots out a few more stock phrases that none of us even hears anymore. We politely clap as the officer comes out, a few girls paying more attention once we get a good look at him.

He's got the clean-cut thing going on, a good jawline, and the kind of body that makes me wonder if they actually rented him from somewhere. But he's wearing a gun and walks like he's taking each step really seriously, so I'm pretty sure he's a legit cop. He takes the microphone off the podium and walks to the middle of the stage so we can see his whole body. No dumbass, this one.

“Hey, I'm Marilee Nolan's brother,” he says, instead of introducing himself as Officer Nolan, which is smart since we were all going to surreptitiously text one another until we figured out why he looked familiar anyway. Over in the right wing Marilee buries her face in her hands, which I totally get because I feel the same way every graduation when my dad blesses the senior class.

“I graduated from here eight years ago,” he says. “Back then the rough kids smoked pot and the National Honor Society kids drank. Now the NHS kids are smoking pot and the rough kids are on heroin.”

There are a couple of giggles. Sara leans over to whisper in my ear, “And the preacher's kid drinks,” to which I say “Damn straight” and give her a fist bump.

“Here's the thing, guys,” Nolan goes on. “I'm
supposed to come in here and talk to you about drugs, but I'm guessing most of you already know plenty.”

It's really quiet in the auditorium. Nolan doesn't have notes; the big screen is pulled down and there's a laptop on the podium, but he's not showing us pictures of meth teeth or heroin sores like we expected. He's just talking to us. And we're listening.

“I know a lot of you drink,” he says, and Marilee's head goes a little farther down into her hands. My cheeks are burning for her because this is way worse than Dad saying a prayer over a bunch of teenagers. “I know because I did it and I know because I find all the Natty Light cans out on 27.”

There are more than a few concerned glances shared at that point. Drinking out on County Road 27 was definitely something we thought flew under the radar.

“So you're drinking, no big deal,” Nolan says. “Except maybe it is, not because you're under twenty-one and it's illegal, but because of what happens next.”

I expect the slides to start up then. Pictures of ruined kidneys or maybe a car crash where someone went through a windshield. But the screen stays blank and Nolan's eyes land on the front row instead.

“What happens next is you're more likely to be a victim of sexual assault,” he says, and I feel Alex tense beside me. “Girls, one in three of you.” He points right
at me, Alex, Sara, Branley, and Lila. “There are five right here, so let's be generous and say it's just one. Which one of you will it be?”

From the left a boy yells, “Please say it's Branley,” followed by a chorus of laughter.

“Let me guess, she's the hot one, right?” Nolan says, smiling along with them. “Guess what—one of you is the one who's going to do it.”

That shuts it down, fast.

“It's a small town,” he goes on. “Ninety percent of rapes are acquaintance rapes—that means you know your attacker, girls. And guys, that means you know the girl you damaged physically, emotionally, and mentally. One in six of you boys is going to be sexually assaulted too, by the way.”

And that really kills the room.

“Boys are also more likely to OD than girls,” Nolan says, his eyes off us and narrowing in on Jack Fisher and his friends. “You're also twice as likely to die in a car crash, a full quarter of which was your own damn fault because you were drinking at the time.”

The principal clears his throat at the use of the word
damn
, which I think is kind of ridiculous considering it's the least alarming thing we've heard since Nolan opened his mouth.

“And here's the thing,” he says. “We can't do anything
about that unless you report it. We can't stop your friends from driving drunk and killing themselves or someone else unless we know they're behind that wheel ahead of time. Girls, we can't prosecute that guy who spiked your drink unless you tell us it happened.

“And you don't want to, I get it. It's a small town. The person behind the wheel is your buddy. The person who touched you is your best friend's cousin, is your parent's coworker, is someone everybody trusts so no one is going to believe you. But I'll believe you.”

The room is so quiet I swear you can hear people weighing their options.

“The truth will always out,” Nolan says, his gaze heavy on the crowd. “And I and the rest of the department will see justice served.”

“What about Comstock?” a boy yells out. “You guys never found out who did him in.”

There's a spatter of laughter and some murmured agreements, but Nolan rolls with it, absorbing the slam. “I know, right? Only two murders ever committed in this town and we haven't solved either of them.”

Sara leans in to me. “I thought Comstock was arrested for . . .” She trails off, nodding toward Alex instead of finishing her sentence.

I shake my head. “He was arrested but never charged, not enough evidence. They had to release him, and that's
when—” I draw my finger across my throat, although there was more to it than that. A lot more.

“Yep,” Nolan goes on. “Pretty funny, right? The cops can't put a guy away so someone else takes care of it, serves justice on their own terms.”

“Hell yes” comes a call from the audience.

“Kinda cool.” Nolan nods. “Until you actually think about it. I'm assuming I don't have to tell you what happened to Comstock.”

He doesn't; it's the stuff of slumber-party talk. The kind of party where nobody sleeps well.

“Think about it for a second,” he says. “There's someone out there who can do
that
. They're loose. They're among us. And they'll do it again. Hilarious, right?”

Yeah, nobody's laughing. We're all pillars of cement in our chairs. Except Alex, who I notice is lounged back, looking at Nolan the same way dogs do when they take each other's measure. I guess hearing someone say they don't heartily agree with what happened to Comstock might be kind of hard to take.

The screen behind Nolan suddenly lights up, the only thing on it an email address and phone number.

“That's my info,” Nolan says. “I knew if I said come up and get business cards half of the people who wanted to wouldn't, and half of those who did would toss them five minutes later. So get out your phones and take a
pic. Everybody. Right now.”

We do. All of us. There's a wave of movement across the auditorium and a bunch of camera clicks in stereo. I'm willing to bet some of the girls are going to use Nolan's number for reasons other than reporting underage drinking and sex crimes, but it's cool that we've got this moment, everyone with their phones in the air.

Except Alex. I look over at her and she shrugs.

“I don't have a phone,” she says.

“I'll email it to you,” I tell her, and she shrugs again.

I think about reaching over and taking her hand, or rubbing her shoulder. Something to show my solidarity with her over the fact that right now everyone in this room is thinking about her dead sister.

But I don't, because much like a strange dog, I'm not sure if she'll bite me when I do.