The S-Word (23 page)

Damn.

I start to worry I’m going to find a big, fat pile of nothing before I even get to the bottom. For a second I think this feeling is defeat. But tiny fingers are creeping up my back and I realize it’s something else entirely. It’s intuition. I’m looking behind the books and under the books and I should be looking in the books.

I am, after all, looking for pages.

I find them slid neatly into his copy of
The Time Traveler’s Wife
. Definitely ironic. Far be it from Drake to read a love story. I’m guessing the book was a gift from Cynthia. You know, a stepmother’s sad little attempt to bond.

But never mind that. I’ve got the pages in my hand. Not photocopied, like the ones from school, but
real
pages. Pages torn out of Lizzie’s diary. I can see where Drake ripped through the perforated edges.

I glance at the first page, my heart going crazy in my chest. A part of me wants to read them right now but I know I can’t. I recognize the date on the top of the page: April nineteenth. Prom night. If I read them now, my heart will break, and I won’t be able to hide my emotions from Drake.

I fold up the pages and slide them into my purse.

Drake knocks on the door just as I’m putting the last of his books on the shelf. I’ve tried to put them back in the right order
but my brain isn’t exactly at its best. All these books look the same and I have to get home—I need to get home—I have to get home right now. But I’m scared. I feel completely cold, like the blood has left my body. When I open the door for Drake the tears are already forming.

“Baby, you’re in for a— What’s wrong?”

“I’m sorry.” I cover my face with my hands. “I’m such an idiot.”

“Angie? What happened?”

I look at him like my heart is breaking. “I brought the wrong bikini!”

“What?”

“I just grabbed it out of my closet. One’s blue and the other one’s black. I can’t believe I did this!”

“Whoa, wait. Did you just put the words
wrong
and
bikini
in the same sentence?”

I smile through my hand. “Stop.”

“Come on, babe. You’ll look amazing. Just get dressed and then we’ll eat.”

“I can’t, Drake, it makes me look fat. And if I eat, it’ll get worse, and—”

“You’re not fat.”

“I didn’t say I was fat.” I scowl at him. “I said it makes me
look
fat.” Pushing past him, I head for the stairs. I’m clutching my purse to my chest like a baby. “It’ll take me, like, two minutes to go get it.”

“No way.” He’s plodding down the stairs after me. “Dinner’s ready. You won’t look fat.”

“Yes, I will.” My hand is on the doorknob and he can barely locate his brain to stop me. I can see those rusty gears trying to turn in his head. They’re saying: She
is
a girl, after all. They do crazy things all the time.

Eye roll.

“I’ll be right back.” I breeze past the door, tossing it back in Drake’s direction.

“Angie, wait.”

It slams in his face.

I wish I could take back the times I spent alone with him. I wish a lot of things. But as I speed down the block to my house, with no intention of returning to Drake’s for a late-night swim, I have no idea how good I’ve got it. Because once I read the entry Drake stole from Lizzie’s diary, I’ll never be able to go back to this moment.

Memory plays tricks on me. The more time passes, the less I’m able to get it right. I see the events leading up to my descent like movie stills hanging on a wall. Here, I’m perched on the edge of the bed. Here, he leans in to tell me something sweet. I’m not buying what he says, not completely. But part of me wants to believe.

I’ve had a best friend for as long as I can remember. I’ve had a father who looks out for my soul. But I’ve never been loved, not really. Never felt the warmth of it. At every turn, there has been doubt.

Maybe that’s why things happened the way they did. Maybe, at least, that’s why I invited him in. Like a vampire. Didn’t I learn my lesson? Boys who come creeping into girls’ bedrooms at night are only after one thing. First the knock, then the tentative entering. I should have known better.

That phrase keeps replaying in my head.

I try to clear some static. This is how it looks inside of me:

I’m sitting on the edge of the bed. He’s in the
chair, opposite me. I remember thinking, he’s giving me space. He probably thinks I’ll break. Everybody treats me this way.

Foolish me.

He talks about the dance, makes a joke about finals. I get the feeling he’s trying to relate to me, the way a detective will invent commonality to get you to trust him. But I don’t take offense at his manipulation. I think he’s trying to make me comfortable. Maybe he wants my approval, since he’s dating my best friend.

Better late than never, right?

Indeed.

His dark hair is slicked back, his jacket slung over the back of the chair. He looks like an old-time movie star, the kind that dies at twenty-five. That lifestyle gets under your skin, transforms you. I don’t hear the change in his voice when he’s about to transform for me, but I feel it. The air changes in the room.

I’m not sure what I say next. I remember paying him some sort of compliment. Maybe I say I like his tux. Maybe I tell him he’ll ace his finals. I’m not saying anything deep. I’m just trying to make him comfortable like he is doing for me. My mouth feels dry. I’m nervous.

I have reason to be.

I can see him sitting there on the chair, several
feet away from me, and then he’s crawling on the bed over me. I don’t have time to think, or breathe. His mouth touches mine the instant the comforting words are out of my lips.

I realize, later, that he was waiting for them. I realize he took them as a signal I hadn’t actually sent.

I don’t stop him in that moment. In that moment, I don’t even realize where I am. And for several seconds after, Elizabeth Hart goes spinning through space and time, her soul seeking a separate dimension in which this series of events would make sense.

Drake. Homecoming and soon-to-be Prom King. Reincarnated 1950s superstar kissing the most beautiful girl in school’s forgettable best friend.

Me.

I need to think, to separate from him, to breathe. The need to breathe occurs to me last, but it’s the best reason I can find to move back. There is something about the words “Get off me,” “What are you doing?” or, the most vicious, “I don’t want you,” that seem utterly impossible to speak.

Clearly, there has been a misunderstanding, in which he believes I would ever, for any reason on earth, betray the trust of my best friend. Clearly, I need only to move away and remind him of this, and the miscommunication will be cleared up.

Oh Lizzie of the Past, foolish thing. I do and do not miss that girl. Certainly she looked on the world with brighter, more forgiving eyes, but she was an animal staring down the barrel of a gun. It was only a matter of time before

She

Got

Destroyed.

I duck away from Drake’s suction-cup lips to tell him, “I need to breathe.”

He takes this to mean: I need to take a shaky half breath and then you can go back to sucking my soul out through my mouth.

This is, of course, not what I mean. Neither of us is saying what we’re thinking, but I’m the only one who’ll suffer from it.

When I try to pull away, he holds on to me. He says, “You don’t have to say anything.”

What could I possibly say?

He says, “I know how you feel. How you’ve always felt. I know you’re just afraid to hurt Angie.”

That last part is true. I’ve spent much of my life trying not to “hurt Angie.”

“But I’ve seen you looking at me,” he whispers.

I say, “We’re friends,” or something equally stupid. It doesn’t matter. It’s like he doesn’t hear me.

He says, “I’ve been looking at you too. You’re so
beautiful.” This, from the guy who’s used to staring at perfection.

The universe has definitely turned on its head.

But here, for one time only, the confession:

There is a part of me that likes it. Not the kissing. Not the forcefulness, when I never so much as said “I like you,” which is, I would think, the least possible prerequisite to this kind of coupling. We learned that in, what, kindergarten?

But I like the compliment. No one ever says that stuff to me.

And maybe I needed to hear it. Maybe we all do. In this world of models and popstar princesses, is it altogether shocking that I might respond to being physically appreciated for the first time in my life?

The most sought-after guy in school thinks I’m beautiful. I can’t help it. I smile.

He takes that as a sign too.

Now his hands are tugging at my dress. I keep thinking: I just put it on. Why would I want to take it off?

Stupidity. Nonsense. But this is all my brain can process at the moment. It seems fixated on this simple contradiction, like, if I can figure that out, everything will make sense.

My first real words of protest are “I can’t do this.”

(As “I need to breathe” was apparently open to interpretation.)

And yes. I say “I can’t do this” rather than “I don’t want to do this.” Seems clear-cut to me. But Drake’s response indicates it isn’t clear-cut at all; as if he too is working out an equation in his head, and if he can simply show that I can, in fact, do this (Look! It’s happening! You’re doing it!), I’ll change my mind.

But I don’t change my mind. I don’t change it in the least, even as my brain tries to send messages to my heart that everything is completely fine.

It goes a little like this:

Everything’s fine. No big deal. A kiss is just a kiss. And these may be the only kisses you’ll ever get. Yes, by some celestial oversight, or rip in the space-time continuum, an actual human being has deigned to kiss you. That, in and of itself, should not be cause for panicking.

Never mind that my heart is panicking, regardless of the pretty lies my brain tries to tell. No butterfly fluttering in this chest of mine. My heart is all-out slamming against me. And heat, unbearable heat. The heat of fear, the heat of shame. I’m scared, and though I haven’t even done anything wrong, I’m already sorry.

Relax, says my naïve brain. He’ll stop if you
properly articulate yourself (“I can’t do this” joining “I need to breathe” on the list of Improperly Articulated Feelings). He’ll remember the rules any moment now, remember he belongs to someone else. Remember his decency.

He’s just confused/overexcited/testing me. Probably some game boys play.

“I need to stop,” I say.

I’m the one who needs to? asks my brain. As if my hands are barreling across his skin like territory I can’t wait to claim. As if I’ve been doing anything but moving backward and pulling his hands away.

I suppose he takes my words to mean I need to stop doing that—resisting—because he doesn’t stop anything. Not one thing.

Now his hands are visiting places I’ve never invited anyone, hidden places, places I keep secret for a reason.

Saving them for someone who loves me.

(And since no one ever will, you’ll be untouched forever, taunts brain. And heart replies, Safe.)

At this point the conversation inside of me has taken precedence over anything going on outside. Maybe it’s for the best. Drake is using his hand to dive into me. His face is close to mine, whispering how it feels to touch me. How it makes him feel.

That’s what it should be about, right? How it makes him feel?

I start to choose my phrases at random. “Stop,” I say. “I can’t do this. You need to slow down. Seriously.” I add the “seriously” when he rips my dress. He rips my dress, so that the moment this is over, I can’t pretend it never happened. There is evidence for everyone to see.

Even you.

Oh God. What will you think of me? But I can’t even focus on what this will do to other people because I’m too busy telling myself this can’t be happening to me. It can’t. It can’t be. Everyone hears stories of these things. We all think of what we will do.

I would kick. I would scream. Bite, tear out hair, anything.

But I don’t do any of those things because those things would prove something unspeakable is happening. Drake is my friend. He’s my friend. He would never do anything to hurt me. I must not have made it clear to him—

My brain doesn’t get to finish this time. My heart is fast at its heels and it is screaming:

You’ve said stop, you’ve said it a dozen times now. He knows what that means. Of course he knows what
it means. He’s not listening. He’s not stopping. Look at him, he’s—

Then, static.

The outside world goes quiet. I can hear no breathing. No voice speaking. My heart and my brain are at war and it completely takes over me. I don’t have to think about the fact that my dress isn’t the only thing he’s ripping. I don’t have to feel it, or anything. I’m having a conversation with myself, that’s all.

I close my eyes so I’m the only one in the room I can see.

Time passes strangely. At least, that’s how I feel after. But it doesn’t matter because this war inside me stretches out into eternity. It is never-ending. My brain and my heart, mortal enemies. Neither will listen to the other ever again.

In the hours that follow, my heart speaks with a quieter voice.

All the while, my brain asks me things: If you wanted him to leave, why didn’t you fight? Why didn’t you scream?

All that time in that room while he was misunderstanding (must have been misunderstanding), I spoke softly: convincing, then pleading. I never once raised my voice.

Why?

Then finally, after hours and hours of hearing
this question on repeat in my brain, my heart replies:

Because he wasn’t a wild animal come to swallow me. Because he wasn’t a loathed enemy. He was a friend. A friend of my best friend. A friend of all of our families. Because it’s so much easier to believe I made a mistake than it is to admit someone raped me.

Why didn’t I raise my voice?

He could hear me perfectly.

T
HE KNOCK ON
my window comes at ten after one. My dad’s sleeping soundly in the next room. Sure, I could have driven the five blocks from Drake’s to my mom’s place, but I needed the sound barrier created by Dad’s snoring to hide my sobs. I don’t know how I knew Lizzie’s entry would pull all the anguish out of me, I just knew.