But I didn’t. And it doesn’t matter what my excuse was. That my mind was in a meltdown is no excuse. I have no excuse. I could have stopped it-end of story. But to stop it, I felt like I’d have to stop the entire world from spinning. Like things had been out of control for so long that whatever I did hardly mattered anymore.
And I couldn’t stand all the emotions anymore. I wanted the world to stop…to end.
For Hannah, the world did end. But for Jessica, it didn’t. It went on. And then, Hannah hit her with these tapes.
I don’t know how many songs went by with my face buried in those jackets. The beats kept sliding from one song into another. After a while, my throat felt so scratched. So raw and burning. Had I been screaming?
With my knees on the floor, I felt vibrations whenever anyone walked down the hall. And when footsteps fell within the room-several songs after he entered the room-I pressed my back against the closet wall…waiting. Waiting for the closet doors to be torn open. To be yanked out of my hiding place.
And then? What would he do to me then?
Tony’s car pulls over. The front tire scrapes the curb. I don’t know how we got here, but the house is right outside my window now. The same front door where I entered the party. The same front porch where I left. And to the left of the porch, a window. Behind that window, a bedroom and a closet with accordion doors where Hannah, on the night I kissed her, disappeared.
But light from the hallway seeped into the room, into the closet, and his footsteps walked away. It was over.
After all, he couldn’t be late for work, could he?
So what happened next? Well, I ran out of the room and straight down the hall. And that’s where I saw you. Sitting in a room all by yourself. The person this whole tape revolves around…Justin Foley.
My stomach lurches and I fling open the car door.
Sitting on the edge of a bed, with the lights turned off, there you were.
Sitting there, staring at nothing. While I stood in the hallway, frozen, staring at you.
We’d come a long way, Justin. From the first time I watched you slip on Kat’s lawn. To my first kiss at the bottom of the slide. To now.
First, you started a chain of events that ruined my life. Now, you were working on hers.
Outside that very same house, I throw up.
I keep my body hunched over, my head hanging over the gutter.
Eventually, you turned my way. The color in your face…gone. Your expression…blank. And your eyes looked so exhausted.
Or was it pain I saw there?
“Stay there as long as you want,” Tony says.
Don’t worry, I think. I won’t puke in your car.
Justin, baby, I’m not blaming you entirely. We’re in this one together. We both could have stopped it. Either one of us. We could have saved her. And I’m admitting this to you. To all of you. That girl had two chances. And both of us let her down.
The breeze feels good on my face, cooling the sweat on my forehead and neck.
So why is this tape about Justin? What about the other guy? Isn’t what he did worse?
Yes. Absolutely yes. But the tapes need to be passed on. And if I sent them to him, they would stop. Think about it. He raped a girl and would leave town in a second if he knew…well…if he knew that we knew.
Still hunched over, I breathe in as fully as possible. Then I hold it.
And release.
Breathe. Then hold.
Release.
I sit upright in the seat, keeping the door open just in case. “Why you?” I ask. “Why do you have these tapes? What did you do?”
A car drives by and we both watch it turn left two blocks away. It’s another minute before Tony answers.
“Nothing,” he says. “And that’s the truth.” For the first time since approaching me at Rosie’s, Tony addresses me eye to eye. And in his eyes, catching the light from a lamppost half a block away, I see tears. “Finish this tape, Clay, and I’ll explain everything.”
I don’t answer.
“Finish it. You’re almost done,” he says.
So what do you think of him now, Justin? Do you hate him? Your friend that raped her, is he still your friend?
Yes, but why?
It must be denial. It has to be. Sure, he’s always had a temper. Sure, he goes through girls like used underwear. But he’s always been a good friend to you. And the more you hang out with him, the more he seems like the same old guy from before, right? And if he acts like the same guy, then he couldn’t possibly have done anything wrong. Which means that you didn’t do anything wrong, either.
Great! That’s great news, Justin. Because if he didn’t do anything wrong, and you didn’t do anything wrong, then I didn’t do anything wrong. And you have no idea how much I wish I didn’t ruin that girl’s life.
But I did.
At the very least, I helped. And so did you.
No, you’re right, you didn’t rape her. And I didn’t rape her. He did. But you…and I…we let it happen.
It’s our fault.
“Full story,” I say. “What happened?”
I pull the sixth tape from my pocket and swap it with the one inside the Walkman.
CASSETTE 6: SIDE A
Tony takes his keys out of the ignition. Something to hold on to while he talks. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to say this the whole time we’ve been driving. The whole time we’ve been sitting here. Even when you were puking your guts out.”
“You noticed I didn’t puke in your car.”
“I did.” He smiles, looking down at his keys. “Thanks. I appreciate that.”
I close the car door. My stomach is settling.
“She came over to my house,” Tony says. “Hannah. And that was my chance.”
“For what?”
“Clay, the signs were all there,” he says.
“I had my chance, too,” I tell him. I take off the headphones and hang them on my knee. “At the party. She was freaking out when we kissed and I didn’t know why. That was my chance.”
Inside the car, it’s dark. And quiet. With the windows rolled up the outside world seems deep asleep.
“We’re all to blame,” he says. “At least a little.”
“So she came over to your house,” I say.
“With her bike. The one she always rode to school.”
“The blue one,” I say. “Let me guess. You were working on your car.”
He laughs. “Who would’ve thought, right? But she never came over to my house before, so I was a little surprised. You know, we were friendly at school, so I didn’t think too much of it. What was weird, though, was why she came over.”
“Why?”
He looks out the side window, and his chest fills with air. “She came over to give me her bike.”
The words sit there, undisturbed, for an uncomfortably long time.
“She wanted me to have it,” he says. “She was done with it. When I asked for a reason, she just shrugged.
