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“Catch her, Becky!” Queen Bitch had called out to Rebecca Stanton, who’d stood limply on a tree trunk, watching with horror.
“She’s so fast, though!” Rebecca had whined.
“Just do it!”
Disoriented, Rebecca had pounced on me. She’d grabbed my foot and tugged it sideways sharply. The cracking sound it had made bounced with an echo over the treetops. A shriek had pierced the air. The pain had been so sharp, I couldn’t breathe.
I sometimes wondered why I was so afraid of men when girls were the ones to physically abuse me. I once touched that subject with a therapist, though, and she said something that resonated with me. After the abuse, it was women who picked me up and saved me. It was Dylan. It was Mom. It was the therapist herself. They were my safe haven.
“Everybody freaked out.” I blinked furiously, my eyes matching the drum of my heart. “Queen Bitch said they should mercy-kill me, because my legs were my best asset, and now that I couldn’t open them to seniors or run, I was truly useless.”
“We could get away with it. No one will be looking for her for hours.”
“Queen Bitch decided burying me alive was the ultimate solution to her problems. At first, everyone was so shocked they just went along with it. The power of herd mentality, I guess. They flung dirt on my face and body as I cried and screeched and begged her to rethink it. They knew I wouldn’t snitch on them. Knew I would never go against the powerful teammate who led this thing against me. Clout in small schools is everything.” My entire body rocked back and forth as I came face-to-face with the memory. “They were screaming and arguing by the time I couldn’t breathe. I had so much mud on me. I could barely hear them, their voices muffled. I don’t know who convinced them to stop or how, but they did. Queen Bitch wanted to kill me for real, but…the others were too scared, I guess. Two girls dug me out of the shallow grave and yanked me up. They ran away before I could ask for water, for help.” I tried to swallow the bitter lump in my throat. Failed. “I had to crawl my way back to town with a broken ankle.”
I let the vodka bottle slip from between my fingers. The liquid sloshed on the sand. The silence around us was a big, loud wall. I wanted to scream to penetrate it.
“The worst part”—I heard my voice floating between us, and I knew that my lips were moving but wasn’t sure what was going to come out of my mouth—“is that when I finally reached the edge of the woods, where the forest kissed the residential street, the thought crossed my mind to make a U-turn and die. I didn’t want to face my life post this incident. Post the attack. Post Franco.”
I had already made up my mind not to tell my parents what happened. It would have crushed them. I’d just had to keep on lying. Spinning the untruths like cotton candy over a stick. Fluffy, sugary, and inviting.
Franco hadn’t lied. He had put my pictures on some small porn sites. Probably to appease Queen Bitch and show her that I had meant nothing to him. I’d go on these sites years after the fact to punish myself for trusting. For believing a guy like Franco could love a girl like me. I felt violated. Ripped to shreds and robbed of my consent.
“And Franco?” There was a slight tremor in Row’s voice. A wave of queasiness washed through me.
“He visited me at the hospital, but only to tell me he was now dating Queen Bitch and not to interfere. He said he’d ruin my life if I said one word about what had happened. That he’d kill me with his own hands if I took away everything he built, because he’d have nothing to lose. I was fourteen and scared shitless. Crushed from the rejection, injury, and betrayal. Bottling up everything, feeding my parents lies so they wouldn’t be worried—lies like I had an accident, I fell, I was actually close with my teammates.
“It turned out not only were Franco and I nothing but that he actively hated me for ‘putting everyone in a bad spot.’” I air-quoted Franco. “He ended up dropping out of college a year or so later. In and out of jail for selling drugs. You know, I thought it’d make me feel better, how bad his life turned out to be. It didn’t, though. His misery didn’t erase mine. His failure didn’t diminish the fact that he took away from me the ability to trust a man. He made me see every strange man on the street as the enemy, as the villain.”
“He’s dead now,” Row said, his voice devoid of emotion. I wasn’t surprised or moved in any way. Didn’t feel anger, joy, or relief. “A mutual friend told me a few months ago. Overdose. Shame.”
“Shame?” I raised an eyebrow.
“I’d have loved to kill him myself.”
“That’s a nice sentiment, but I would never want you to screw your life over for someone so meaningless. Queen Bitch is still around.” I stared at my feet, flinging them in the air to keep me warm. “All the other girls are here too, as far as I know.”
“I need a name.” There was something in his tone this time that indicated he would shatter the earth to dust if I ignored him. “I need to know who did this to you.”
“Allison.” My eyes met his across the swings. “Queen Bitch is Allison Murray.”
Even though I’d kept my mouth shut about that day, my dislike for her had been public knowledge. Dylan had even made a voodoo doll of her for my entertainment for one of my birthdays. We’d never used pins on it, but I’d once given it a nasty haircut.
The silence engulfed us like thick smoke, trickling into our lungs, suffocating us. I couldn’t look at him, but from the corner of my eye, I saw the shift. Row was normally pure power. Greater than life and self-assured. Now, he fished his cigarette pack from his front pocket and flipped it open with his thumb, pulling a cigarette using his teeth and lighting it up. His hand tremored in the dark. “Fuck.”
He smoked half the cigarette in complete silence, staring into nothing and trying to calm himself down. Finally, he flicked the cigarette out to the sand.
“Dot, I—”
But I interrupted him, quickly wiping my tears away. “Whatever. You know what they say. What doesn’t kill you makes you acutely emotionally damaged to the point of having dysfunctional relationships with everyone around you. Thing is, no matter how much time passes, I will always be that girl who was running away from her problems, from her bullies. I will always live with the consequences of not telling on a bunch of people who wanted to kill me. They should’ve been punished.”
“They should’ve,” he agreed, bracing his elbows on his knees, drawing closer. “But that girl who ran away? She grew up to be a strong fucking woman with zero outside help. You shouldn’t be so hard on her. She did her best.”
I wished it were that simple.
I couldn’t bear how raw and self-conscious I felt, so I changed the subject quickly. “Tell me how you got to romancing my nemesis. Spare no detail. Unless she’s a better kisser than me. I really don’t want to know that.”
He snapped his mouth shut, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. “She was a mistake.”
