Her mother padded downstairs no less than ten minutes after she got home, but Catherine shooed her back upstairs with a muttered, “Christmas presents. Give me ten.” It took a little longer than that, but she finished the jars and called up the stairs that it was fine to come into the kitchen.
“Well, isn’t that a relief,” her mother said wryly, walking right to the coffee. “Your father will be down in a minute. Did you want breakfast—?”
But Catherine was already halfway up the stairs, and a moment later she was back in bed, her door shut. She shut her eyes too. It was amazing, she thought distantly, how quickly she could go back to that night. Like it was always there and always would be, just waiting for her to step back into it.
After the encounter in the dorm bathroom, Cordelia’s hands wet from Catherine’s soaking dress, the RA had stared at Catherine and refused to look away. Catherine had stared blankly back, taking in Cordelia’s tall, wide form. It made her think of Buffy. In that show, the character of Cordelia had been gorgeous and mean.
“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” Cordelia asked her.
Actually, now that she thought about it, there had been an episode about a snake demon thing that was supposed to be a metaphor for assault. There had even been a date-rape drug in it. Not that she had been drugged. At least, she probably hadn’t been. She remembered throwing back drinks, her chin up, throat exposed as though for a vampire. Pathetically vulnerable. A girl gone before the opening credits.
“Did something happen to you?” Cordelia’s large hands came off the dress. Catherine, following the pointing fingers, put her own hand to the bruise at her throat.
“It’s nothing.”
But Cordelia called campus police all the same.
They had looked at Catherine dubiously when they’d arrived, as though she’d brought a dog into the deli section of a grocery store. Disbelief and pity and a vague impatience. Two of them: one man with a mustache and snapping gum, and a woman with her hair tied back so hard Catherine could see the taut skin of her scalp. She seemed like the kind of woman who never drank, or wore dresses, or went to parties. The four of them sat in the large study room down the hall from the bathroom, Catherine now dressed in sweats like Cordelia, her hair running a damp line down her back. She found herself staring at the window over their heads, the darkness pressed like a palm against the glass.
“If you make this claim, we have to follow through. Take you to the hospital. File a report. You okay with that?”
Her answer came without thought. An instinct like breath. A girl facing a wide yawning pit of unknown blackness and they were asking her if she wanted to dive into it and drown.
“No. I mean, yes. I’m okay. Fine. Nothing…I don’t have a claim.”
“You sure?”
She’d never been so sure. She’d nodded her head like a bobble doll, wanting to sleep more than she ever had in her life, adrenaline rushing from her like poison from a wound, crashing so hard that if she didn’t lie down she’d fall right off the chair. The two officers had stood up. She did too, trying not to sway. She said something else, maybe a thank-you, maybe an apology, she wasn’t sure. Cordelia had been out in the hall, waiting. She told Catherine to take care of herself or she’d have to write something. A report.
But I don’t have a claim.
* * *
—
Catherine finally went downstairs just before noon, unable to stand the silence of her room any longer. Her parents were in the kitchen, sitting at the table where she’d wrapped their presents earlier and talking in low voices. When her mother saw her, she jumped up from her chair, hurrying to the coffeepot, asking Catherine if she wanted any. Catherine nodded and watched her pour the dark, steaming liquid into a mug left for her on the counter. A picture of a to-go coffee waving a wand and wearing round black glasses. ESPRESSO PATRONUM. She’d gotten the mug last summer when they went to Harry Potter World in California.
She took the mug from her mom with a smile. “Thanks.” She grabbed the hazelnut creamer from the fridge. “Dum da da dum da da dum.”
Her mom stared at her.
“Harry Potter.” Catherine set down the creamer, her cheeks hot. “Remember?”
“Oh, yes.” Her mother nodded too fast, and Catherine felt a pang of fear at the look in her eyes. Don’t say anything, she silently begged. Please don’t. And don’t ask me how I am or if I want to talk about it.
It was her fault, of course, that her mother knew anything at all. Everything that night had been her fault.
After the campus police and Cordelia had left, she’d gone back to her room. Amber had been twisted asleep under the covers, and Catherine watched her breathe, counting every exhale, until she reached one hundred.
When she was sure the hallway was empty of RAs and officers, she closed the door to her room behind her. She slid down it. Cold and shivery and faintly feverish. Her body disjointed, pieces that didn’t fit together anymore. The fear less now, a wave of despair in its place, coming toward her. She needed something to hold on to. It was like a premonition, the sight of her being swept away and under and gone.
“Mom?” She’d pressed the phone to her ear, tears burning in her eyes, down her face so fast they fell past the bruise on her neck. “Mom?”
Telling her. Stupidly, telling her, with breathy sobs and words that broke in the middle, sentences that trailed off only to start again in a different place. She never said the word, though, just that she had passed out and woken up somewhere different. Nothing more than that could make it past her teeth. But panic did, and tears. Too loud. She was worried someone would open a door, ask her what was wrong.
Her mom wanted to come get her right away. And somehow her mother’s anxiety had soothed Catherine’s own. She spent nearly a half hour convincing her mother she’d be safe making the drive herself—a precursor to the phone call the next day about the after-finals campus cleanup. Talking calmly until her mother was calm. Until Catherine, too, felt somewhat better, as she edited her words to I drank too much, passed out, it was stupid and I panicked. Sorry to worry you.
I don’t think anything even happened.
Forget it.
But her mother hadn’t forgotten it.
She knew that now, that she could not undo the damage she had caused in calling her mother that night. It was in every line of her mother’s face. She could almost hear the words her mother wanted to say, and felt she was keeping them at bay by sheer force of will.
“You know,” her mother said, and Catherine’s heart dropped into her stomach. “Maybe we could go back. To the Potter…Place.”