The traffic is thin, the highway clear in a flat straight-away, and the Porsche breaks one hundred with a tap of my foot.
“My mother loved those roses.” We pass a dead deer on the shoulder, its legs elevated in rigor mortis. “Why didn’t I throw them away?”
. . . . .
“The first few times, I knew it was wrong, but he never hurt me physically. He said he was in love with me, and that a girl’s first time should be with an older man, who can teach her the right way to do it. I knew that it was crap, but he was a good actor, you know? He gave me vodka, let me smoke a joint. I knew it was wrong, but it was just so weird and confusing.”
. . . . .
“He said that if I told you what happened, he would say that I seduced him, and that you’d believe him instead of me. And the way he said it, it made sense. Why wouldn’t you believe him, you know? And he had those photos of me … he said he’d show the whole school, my parents, you.”
The last fifteen miles have been nothing but farmland, giant corn stalks lined along a two-lane county blacktop, crows pecking another road-kill deer near the shoulder.
“How many times?” I ask her.
“Nineteen,” she says. “Not counting when he only made me undress.”
“Nineteen,” I whisper, eyes on the road, all those corn stalks closing in.
. . . . .
“I almost told you once,” she says. “We were at Laura’s house, with Sarah, and there was this terrible Lifetime movie on television. Sarah was asleep, and we were on the couch, snuggling together like we always did. In the movie there was a rape scene, an older man and a teenage girl. The man was her swim coach, or maybe her father’s business partner—I forget. It was Lifetime so of course the film was bad, and you kept going on and on about how fake the scene was, how unrealistic and contrived. That was the word you kept using, contrived. And you had a point—it was a crappy film—but the scene itself…it kind of got it right. How the girl felt, how the man kept manipulating her. Sometimes life is contrived, you know? And I almost told you…the words were in my head, but you kept talking about how lame the film was, and I just couldn’t say it; I couldn’t tell you to shut the fuck up, that the scene was real and that it was happening to me, too.”
. . . . .
“I pointed a gun at him once. He laughed and told me to take off my skirt. And I did it. I put down the gun and undressed. Jesus.”
. . . . .
“While it was happening, I went to the doctor once and she asked me if I was sexually active. I didn’t know what to say. I still don’t. I mean, how do you respond to that? My boyfriend and I haven’t done it yet but the Drama Teacher rapes me twice a month? How exactly do you categorize that in a patient file?”
. . . . .
“Are we there yet? How many more miles, Donnie? I have to pee soon.”
. . . . .
“Three times it happened while you were in the room. God, you could sleep through anything. And I was glad, too; I was afraid you’d wake up and see me with him, and I didn’t want that. I never wanted you to find out. That’s one reason why I never said anything. I don’t say that to make you feel guilty, it’s just the truth, although maybe I do want you to feel guilty sometimes, because I still feel guilty sometimes, which is crap, because he’s the one who’s guilty, right? Not us. We were just kids.”
. . . . .
“Sometimes I’d get so mad at you I’d want to …I don’t know, smash your head in with a toaster. Because half the time I was worrying about you—what you’d think if you found out. And I resented the hell out of that. I should have been worrying about me.”
. . . . .
“He gave me invitations; can you believe that? Party invitations like you’d buy at Party City, with a date and time for me to visit his house. He scheduled the rapes. And I went. Sometimes I’d be late, but I was too afraid not to show up. He had those photographs, and each time he’d take another picture of me naked.”
She holds the flask up straight, draining the last drop.
“The invitations had red and blue balloons on the front, with ‘Party Time’ written inside one of the balloons. When Jill was about six, she got invited to a party, one of her kindergarten friends, and when I opened the invitation it was the same one—those red and blue balloons with ‘Party Time’ on the front. I almost died. Seriously, that ‘my heart stopped’ crap that always seems ridiculous when you read it in a book—sometimes it’s true. The same exact invitation. Even if it was a coincidence, no way was Jill going to that party.”
. . . . .
“I’m out of Schnapps. Stop at the next town and find a liquor store, okay? It’s not a question, either. And I still need to pee.”
. . . . .
“Maybe I do want some kind of revenge. To make him sit there and feel that sense of powerlessness. A gun can be useful even
