I show him the article. I want him to see how people responded to me, all the supportive comments.
“You wrote this?”
“Thank Sheila the She Woman,” I say. “I went Deep Throat.”
He laughs until he cries. My dad rests his head on my shoulder and leaves it there like that for a minute. “I don’t want to let you go. Ever.”
Everything is going to change.
53
ALI
Your dad calls the police station, and they say they can come to your house in about a half an hour.
Two women. One is named Phyllis. Phyllis looks like a mom. She has that mom haircut, short on the sides, slightly longer in the back. Phyllis is from the county’s Rape Crisis Center. The other is Detective Bolero. She’s from the Special Victims Unit, yes, as in SVU, and you almost bust out laughing because it makes you sound like you’re on television.
These women don’t laugh, and they don’t think your self-deprecating jokes are funny.
Detective Bolero is nice enough, her voice calm and low, and she asks you questions while you sit there with your dad. You become someone else. Someone else who has to tell your story to strangers. About your crush. About drinking at a party with a boy you don’t even know.
You have your notepad with you. They ask you what you’re writing, and you say you’re a journalist. That you want to document this. They tell you it’s good to write things down, but they don’t really mean it, do they?
Now Phyllis talks. That’s when your dad walks out of the room. Phyllis is so sorry this happened to you.
“Can you help me understand what you’re able to remember about your experience?” Phyllis asks.
You don’t feel like you’re able to tell her any of it. You don’t want to tell her any of it, ever.
But you do. That’s why they’re here.
“Tell me what you need, Ali,” she says.
Yet you can’t. You keep thinking about what Sean Nessel said to you on the field a few weeks ago.
So that’s what you tell her. Not about that night. Not about what happened in that room. You tell Phyllis that on the field, in the bleachers, you confronted him.
“What did he say?”
“He said he was sorry for getting carried away.”
“That must have been a really traumatic moment for you.”
You close your eyes. You don’t want to do this. You’re away now. That’s all you want to concentrate on now. Being far away.
Phyllis hands you a tissue. She wants to know if you feel safe in school. If you feel threatened. But surprisingly, you don’t.
That’s when you tell her about that night. And Phyllis tells you she believes you.
Your dad walks the detective and Phyllis to the door and you tremble. It’s a vibration that you only feel from the inside, and you hear a low ringing in your ears. You close your eyes to get it to stop, but it’s still there, humming away across your arms, up at the back of your skull. Your father says something to you, tells you what might happen next, but you don’t hear a word he says. He takes your hand. But you don’t want to hold hands.
You don’t want anyone to speak to you. To touch you.
54
ALI
The next day. I’m scared to go to school, but I’m also scared to stay home. My dad wants to homeschool me. He wants to lock me in a room and keep me safe forever. I practically have to beg him to let me go.
At school, Sammi right next to me, I open my locker door and about ten notes topple out. They float to the ground like valentines. I look around the hallway. I guess they’re notes from Blythe and the Core Four, more slut-shaming left over from before I went to T or C.
But then I open the first one.
Ali,
I was raped by a junior at another school just a few months ago. He told me if I would just relax, I would enjoy it. I’ve been walking around holding it in for so long. I’m not sure if your article is real or not, but either way, it doesn’t matter. It gave me the courage to talk about this. Thank you for that. Thank you, thank you, thank you, and I’m sorry that you had to go through your experience just so I could talk about mine.
—Rachel, a freshman
I look around the hallway, clutching the note in my hand. There are faces everywhere, people I’ve never even noticed before, who now are staring at me for long periods of time. Like they want to talk to me and bare their soul. Or want to hit me in the face.
I pick up all the notes. And I don’t know what to do with them. There are too many to read, Sammi says. It’s too overwhelming and not healthy and I don’t need that right now.
“I have to read them,” I say. “They wrote to me in confidence.”
“Let me do it, then. I’ll read them all. One by one. I promise.”
* * *
It’s later that night and Sammi calls me. She read through them all. But there’s one that she wants to tell me about. It took her by surprise. It’s from Blythe.
“I was going to chuck it in the garbage, you understand that, right?”
“I do.”
“But I thought it was the right thing to tell you. She sounds sincere. Though who knows with her. I still hate her, you know that, right?”
“I know,” I say. And then she reads it to me.
Dear Ali,
I know you might rip this up once you realize it’s me. I might rip it up too if I were you.
There’s no forgiving me for what I’ve done. I made some really bad choices. Choices! How absurd for me to use that
