I lock my arm in Sammi’s the way we used to when we first came to high school in the ninth grade.
We walk past the gym. The basketball players and their squeaking sneakers over the court. Past the gym door until we can’t even hear them. Just an echo of their voices. And as we walk farther away, through the big doors leading out to the parking lot, Sammi unlocks her arm from mine and throws her arm over my shoulder. It’s a gray day, but that doesn’t really matter because some days are just like that.
RESOURCES
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted:
National Sexual Assault Hotline
800-656-HOPE (4673)
Trained staff members are available 24/7.
Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN)
www.rainn.org
National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC)
www.nsvrc.org
#MeToo Movement’s Healing Resource Library
metoomvmt.org/healing-resources-library
Find resources and organizations near you.
#GirlsToo
girlsinc.org/girls-too
Girls Inc. provides safe spaces for girls to speak out about their experiences.
If you or someone you know has substance abuse issues: SAMHSA’s National Helpline
1-800-662-HELP (4357)
www.samhsa.gov/find-help/national-helpline
This is a free, confidential, 24/7, 365-day-a-year treatment referral and information service (in English and Spanish) for individuals and families facing mental and/or substance use disorders.
Shatterproof
www.shatterproof.org
Shatterproof is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to reversing the addiction crisis in America.
If you or someone you know is struggling with depression or anxiety: National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)
nami.org
NAMI provides advocacy, education, support, and public awareness so that all individuals and families affected by mental illness can build better lives.
Crisis Text Line
www.crisistextline.org
Text from anywhere in the United States, Canada, or the United Kingdom to connect with a trained crisis counselor. Every texter is connected with a crisis counselor, a real-life human being trained to bring texters from a hot moment to a cool calm through active listening and collaborative problem solving.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I was on my way to attend Rebecca Traister’s event at the New York Public Library for her book Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger when I found out that Razorbill was interested in publishing my book.
Only five days earlier, Christine Blasey Ford testified about being sexually assaulted at a high school party by a young, popular, very smart, and very drunk Brett Kavanaugh. The hearing was still fresh in my mind and had affected me as it had many women across the country. I was outraged.
I watched Justice Kavanaugh and his spitting anger and defense and was shaken by the similarities to the rapist in my book, the “beatific” Sean Nessel. The characteristics fit a certain type: privileged, arrogant, sexist bullies and predators.
But it was the moment Dr. Blasey said that Justice Kavanaugh had covered her mouth, held her down, and tried to pull her clothes off in a bedroom upstairs at a party that I realized Sean Nessel was eerily similar to Brett Kavanaugh. I could see Sean Nessel on a similar path forty years from now, angry and confrontational, in denial, actively lying about his past, and on his way to becoming a Supreme Court justice.
When asked what Dr. Blasey remembered most about the assault, she said this: “Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter, the uproarious laughter between the two. They’re having fun at my expense.”
It’s important to know that not every sexual assault survivor remembers all the details. Traumatic memories can be fragmented and fuzzy, with survivors vividly remembering certain images, but not, for instance, the time of day.
I had started writing Something Happened to Ali Greenleaf about twenty years ago. It began as a short story about a girl who was raped by the most popular boy in school. After the incident, she took a shower and held her feelings in, telling no one. I had never really understood why I wrote it. This isn’t me, I’d tell writers in workshops who’d read it. I’d assure them, Oh, no. Not me.
It took me years to realize that this story was an outlet for my own experiences that were too difficult to talk about or too painful to understand.
I lost my virginity to a boy in my college dorm room who refused to let me go until I told him, “Fine, just get it over with.” I’ve never forgotten how I told him the blood he saw was just my period and how I escaped to the bathroom, trying to wipe it all off. I’ve never forgotten how that boy, the same year, raped my friend while she was incapacitated on psychedelic mushrooms.
I’ll never forget walking into a room at a high school party where an intoxicated friend was sprawled out in a dark bedroom, unconscious, as seven boys stood around her, groping her body. How one of those boys shamed me for being a “party pooper” when I stepped in and dragged her out of there. How a tailor taking in my prom dress went in for a feel on my breast. How, when I was sick with the flu at nineteen years old, a male doctor told me that I needed to take my bra off because it was the only way he could really listen to my heartbeat.
Here are the statistics: Younger people are at a higher risk of sexual assault. Females ages sixteen to nineteen are four times more likely than the general population to be victims of rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault.*
I was a high school senior in 1989 when the Glen Ridge, New Jersey, rape case hit the news, living just a few towns away. (For the record, I now live in Glen Ridge.) A young woman with an intellectual disability was gang-raped in a basement by a group of high school athletes. The victim was called a slut. Many educators and students sided with the athletes. A female friend of one of the perpetrators even tried to convince the victim not to testify. That detail always stuck
