That’s when the recess teacher sprinted over, grabbed Sean by the hand, and hauled his body up to stand. “I saw you, Sean,” she yelled. “I saw you leap on top of Blythe. I saw you chase her. I saw you attack her. What on earth were you thinking?”
I couldn’t even gulp a breath of air to defend him in the moment. My leggings were torn up at the knee, my face dirty and full of mulch. A bunch of girls, including Suki and Cate, lifted me up. Suki frantically saying over and over in my ear, “Are you okay, B? Are you okay?”
The recess teacher, I can’t even remember her name now, dragged Sean away. His face never left mine until she brought him inside.
Later the principal asked me, “Was this a game you were playing, Blythe? Did you want to be chased by Sean?”
“Yes,” I told her. Yes. Was there any other answer?
6
ALI
You know when you’ve exercised a lot at the gym, or run a few miles or so, or played an intense game of some sport and you’re sore the next day? Everything hurts. Even when you’re not moving, it hurts. Like all your muscles have been crunched between two metal clamps. Well, that’s what I feel like. My vagina, as in my actual vagina, hurts. As if someone tore something out of it. There are muscles, tissue inside there, and it’s shredded.
I slide my T-shirt over my shoulder, where he pressed me down. I can’t even think about it without shaking, without that lightning bolt shivering up through my ribs. Piercing me. There’s a big black mark there. A bruise, a wide bruise that wants to come through. It’ll get more purple. More yellowish. Until it taunts me, reminding me every day what a fraud he turned out to be and how stupid in love I was.
Cute bangs, he had said to me at my locker.
I shake my head. Stupid bangs. I hate these bangs. I yank them. Want to tear them from my skull.
I grab scissors off my desk and cut my hair, shearing my bangs so they look like an awful version of Bettie Page. They’re straggling, and the hairs flick down over my forehead like razor-sharp dental instruments.
I’m nauseous now. My rumbling, sickened belly. That bitter taste in my mouth.
Now I have to destroy my Sean Nessel collage book. It’s just a composition book, the cover, a picture of Sean Nessel from the school newspaper, his hair behind his ears, looking to the left at something in the distance. Hearts and flowers near his eye. Roses and peonies and lilacs and hydrangeas. Purple hearts on his sleeves, hearts and hearts and more hearts, as if they’re growing from his face like some magical creature. Inside the book, more of the same. My obsession with Sean Nessel layered over streaks of a pink and orange sunset, sweeping behind him as he kicks the ball or runs down the field or smiles for the camera, all the colors, bleeding around him, so sweet and infectious. So innocent.
What a joke. A sick, demented joke.
I gag a few times.
I’m so angry. I followed that idiot Sean Nessel up those stairs, into that dark bedroom, and took off my jeans. I’m so angry, so mad at myself. He spoke to me all of one time before the party. Once. With Raj, standing there watching me at my locker. And it somehow was enough to make me believe he wanted what I wanted. Some diluted fantasy. Now, Sean Nessel knows even less about me, except that his dick was buried inside me.
I rip a few of the pages—whatever I can get my hands on—my sweet pasted-on collage of little hearts and cutout flowers, all the tiny petals that I layered with such care, I tear them apart—out of the book. Pages fall to the ground.
My father beats on my door like a jail cell warden. “I hope you’re up. You need to get downstairs. Now.” He clomps away.
The clock says after ten. I bury what’s left of my collage book under my bed. Look at me. I was such a child with my stupid flowers and hearts.
I turn on my phone. A million texts from Sammi. From Raj. A message this morning from my mother. How would that conversation go? Her voice, pressing me from so far away. How are you, honey? Your voice sounds shaky. What’s wrong? I can’t call her back. Not now.
In the bathroom, I stare into the mirror at myself. Deep breath, Ali. Take a deep breath. I brush my teeth. I scrub my face. Who knows how I smell. I want to get into the shower, but I consider what happened last night.
Was I raped?
This might be the strangest question I’ll ever have to ask myself.
If I say yes, then it means Sean Nessel didn’t listen when I said stop. It means I lost my virginity to Sean Nessel this way.
I think of the TV shows that I’ve seen on rape victims. I know the first thing I’d have to do is go to the police, or have someone professionally check me. Anyone who’s watched SVU knows this. But I don’t want any remains of him on me anymore. There’s a crackly feeling between my legs. I’m dirty and I want it off.
So I force myself into the shower. The hot water and beating pellets of the special massage shower head that my dad just installed numb my back and arms. My shoulder. My bruised shoulder. I can’t even turn it into the shower, it burns if I do. How am I going to cover up this shoulder?
I turn into the stream with my face. It beats down on my cheeks. My skin hurts. It burns. And I turn the heat higher. And higher again.
7
BLYTHE
Some friendships are about loyalty. Some friendships are built on secrets. Some friendships are built on mutual infatuation. Donnie and I are all of these.
That’s why the next morning I shower—I get all that party off me, and those awful conversations, my promises, my icky, icky promises—and haul my ass over to Donnie’s house. I look in the mirror, the steam clouding my view. I hate myself today.
Donnie is my other side. My emotional side. The side who falls apart. The side who has nothing to hide. She’s got the together family. The rocket-scientist mother. The minivan. The massive house. The beautiful working parents. The sisters and their Instagram accounts, where they post pictures of each other all day long in bathing suits and stringy leather outfits (her one older sister is a fashion designer) lounging over each other like melting bodies.
Donnie has no one to take care of.
She has no self-loathing.
If only.
I’m the hard side. The calculated side. The side that holds it all in. The controlled one.
Donnie’s house is on a block of palatial mansions. She calls it “fake mansion-ing.” It’s very typical Donnie to underplay everything.
* * *
* * *
I walk up the stairs and Donnie is still in bed. She’s wearing an eye mask, and she’s snoring. Her dark hair circles the pillow.
Donnie’s mother is black—dark-skinned black—and her father is Jewish with an olive tone.