“I yelled stop, and you put your hand over my mouth and held me down,” I say. There are the words. They come out of my mouth. My mouth.
“You wanted to go upstairs. I didn’t force you to do that.”
“But you put your hand over my mouth?” Again. I’m two separate people. Someone else answering for me. “You were hurting me,” I say. “That’s what I was saying to you. I screamed it. I had a bruise on my shoulder. I bled all over your jacket. I was a virgin!”
Sean Nessel might not remember it at all. Isn’t this the side Blythe was trying to convince me of? Sean Nessel is a nice guy. He made a mistake. He was drunk. We were both drunk. Of course, it’s entirely possible that Sean Nessel is a nice guy. But I’ll never get to know him that way—or ever. Because he pinned me down in a bedroom with blood streaming down my legs, and that’s the only memory I’m ever going to have.
Raj finally reaches us.
“What’s up?” His jaw is clenched.
“She’s got the wrong idea in her head, Rerun.”
“Why don’t you just step back,” Raj says. “You’re standing too close.”
“I’m trying to apologize to her, dude, so we can just get this behind us.”
Sean Nessel will have no problem putting this behind him. He’ll erase it from his mind. He’ll convince himself that I’m some annoying junior who he thought was cute and who cried rape. Girls are idiots. What, do I need a consent form next time I fuck some chick?
I run off toward Raj’s car in the parking lot. If I can just get to the car, everything will be okay.
Raj calls out, but all I hear are echoes—something familiar—my name. I feel like someone different now, and though hardly anything has changed—everything has changed.
* * *
Raj drives us over to Manakow Park, where there’s an old swing set and hardly any kids. They’re revamping all the parks in town one by one. Taking out the old swings and putting in these ugly colorful playgrounds, stupid metal climbing structures. No swings. Too dangerous, the mayor wrote in a letter that went out to all the parents. I only know about this because my father actually went to a town council meeting to complain. “How can you take swings away from kids?” he asked. But they told him that the older kids use them to hop off from a high distance. That three kids broke their ankles. That almost all the existing swings violated safety recommendations. No more swings in public playgrounds, the mayor said, and that was final.
When was the last time you were on a swing? When was the last time you kicked your legs up and down, pumped them across the wind, pulled your body back into a curve so hard that when you came down in a swan-like dive, your belly rose up, sharp? I look over at Raj, and the wind blows back his hair. His cheeks, still red from practice. His lips dry.
“I’m scared.”
“You just stood up to Nessel. I don’t think you have anything to be scared of.”
We crisscross each other with our feet, swinging back and forth, a breeze trailing between us.
38
BLYTHE
It’s after school. Loud knock on the door. Pounding.
My mother is on a new pill. Sleeping all day is the side effect. Better than her taunting me. Better than her wanting to spend time with me.
I run downstairs, swing open the door. It’s Sean. Sean sweaty with his hair pulled back in this new man bun he’s doing. His eyes red, as if he’s been crying.
“She’s going to ruin my life.”
“Sean—you’re getting paranoid.” I push him outside, shut the door.
“No, you don’t understand, B. She and Rerun. Today after practice. I went to talk to her. I apologized to her. You know. For getting so, you know, getting carried away that night.” He’s panting. His face in a panic. “She made me chase her across the bleachers. She’s crazy, B. What the fuck am I going to do?”
I look around my neighborhood. Anyone can see us. Anyone can see the captain of the varsity soccer team falling apart on my front porch.
“Lower your voice.”
“She said I raped her.”
“She said those exact words?”
Every part of me tenses up, a weird tingle all over. Here he is, standing in front of my door, like nothing happened at all. A desperate, broken-down man who I need to take care of.
“She said she was a virgin. She said all this other crap.”
“Interesting. What did you say?”
He raises his voice again. “What do you think I said? I said, ‘That’s not the way it went.’ But then Rerun tells me to get away from her and that I need to take a step back. I tower over that kid, and he’s telling me to take a step back.”
And where does that leave me? I’m the girl who swept in. I’m the girl who tried to be friends with Ali because Sean Nessel told me to. I’m the girl who told Ali to forget about it. To move on. That Sean is a good guy.
I flash to that night before the party. Sean’s face. Salivating about Ali Greenleaf. The way she stares at me in the hall, he kept saying.
Every girl is a conquest. Maybe I was a conquest.
If anyone connects the dots to why I’ve become friends with Ali, then I become the girl who hid the information.
I become the person who tried to get her not to admit it. I tried to erase it from her mind.
If Ali tells this whole story to everyone, she is going to mess with my reputation. I was there, people will say. I knew how it went down.
Blythe Jensen knew all about the rape, and she did nothing. She just tried to protect Sean Nessel. That’s what they’ll say.
I knew what he did to her as she tore down the stairs, her eyes
