Chapter 3
Chapter 3
Neisy
THEN
I’m in shock. That has to be why my arms and legs refuse to cooperate with my brain’s instructions to get up and get out of there before someone finds me half-naked and bleeding. The thought of having to explain what happened provides the impetus to sit up and try to collect myself. My hands shake violently as I pull up my underwear over thighs streaked with blood.
Ryder Elliott raped me.
Even as those words filter through my mind, I still can’t believe it happened.
The hideous smell of beer on his breath made me gag. I retch into the dry leaves on the ground next to me. I hate the smell of beer, and now I always will.
I get up on shaky legs, shove my feet into the sandals that came off at some point, pull my skirt down and make my way through thick brush to the road where I parked my car. By the time I emerge onto the pavement, my arms are scratched and bleeding.
I’m numb to the pain coming from every part of my body, especially between my legs. Contrary to the rumors about me, I was a virgin.
I’m not anymore, which breaks my heart into a million pieces.
I struggle to breathe as the weight of that new reality settles on my chest. Kane’s smiling face appears in my mind. He was supposed to have been my first. If I think about him now, I’ll lose the composure I need to get myself out of here.
Oh God, where’re my keys?
Somehow my purse is still slung across my body, but my keys aren’t in it. They must’ve fallen out.
I can’t go back there to look for them.
I just can’t.
In case I got locked out, my dad put a hide-a-key under the back bumper of the white Honda Civic he bought for me. I feel around for the magnetized box he put it in and manage to knock it to the ground. I have to get on my knees to retrieve it, thankful for my safety-first dad.
A sob erupts from my chest.
He can’t ever know about this. He’d kill Ryder.
Tears roll down my cheeks as I get into the car, crying out as my tender flesh connects with the seat. As I lean my head on the steering wheel, my body shakes with sobs and tears clog my throat. When Ryder said he needed to talk to me about Louisa, it never occurred to me that I shouldn’t go with him to find a quiet place to talk.
Everyone knows he’s madly in love with Louisa and how good he’s been to her during her illness.
I start the car and pull onto the street. I probably shouldn’t be driving, but I have to get out of here before someone sees me and starts asking questions. I drive slowly, which I once heard my dad say is a red flag to cops looking for drunk drivers. I’d rather think about things my dad says than about what happened in the woods.
I shift in the seat and realize my clothes are wet. Is it blood or… I can’t. I just can’t.
For the first time ever, I’m thankful my dad is away more than he’s home. Getting by my mom won’t be a problem. That wouldn’t be the case with him.
I’m still shaking and nauseated as I make my way across the bridge to Hope and take the exit that leads to the split-level house my parents bought when we moved here last June so my mom could be closer to her aging parents. That seems like a long time ago after a hellish year at Hope High School with kids who hated me on sight.
I worked at my cousin’s restaurant last summer with Houston Rafferty, which is the only reason I was invited to his party in the first place. I shouldn’t have gone. I knew that before I went, but I refuse to hide from the assholes at school.
As I imagine myself accusing Ryder Elliott of rape, a powerful wave of nausea has me pulling off the road and leaning out to vomit. Bile burns my throat as I retch violently. I want it to stop so I can get out of there before I attract attention from the police. That’s the last thing I need.
No one can ever know about this, or my life here will be even more horrific than it already is. With my dad being a high-ranking naval officer, I’m used to being the new kid in school. It’s never been as hard as it is here. The other kids took an immediate, visceral dislike to me on the first day of my junior year, and that was it. My life has been a nightmare ever since.
Houston is one of the only true friends I’ve made here. He tells me all the time to ignore the assholes and keep being awesome. That’s easy for him to say. No one has ever been shitty to him in his entire life. He treats me the same way he does his little sister, Austin, which I appreciate. But since he’s been in college in Boston almost the whole time I’ve lived here, he isn’t much help to me at school.
I want so badly to tell him what happened with Ryder, but I can’t. Houston’s father is the LE chief of police. If I tell Houston, he’ll tell his father, and everyone will know.
No one can ever know, or my living hell will become even more so.
I pull into the driveway at the house. I never refer to it as “home,” because it doesn’t feel like that. It’s just another in a long string of houses that’ve provided shelter for however long we’ve lived in a given place. After I turn off the car, I sit for a long time trying to get myself together before I go inside.
My mom is usually passed out by now, having consumed at least two bottles of wine since the afternoon. Normally her drinking disgusts me. Tonight, I’m thankful for it. I enter through a side door that leads to the garage and then the kitchen. I tiptoe past the living room where she’s asleep on the sofa and head upstairs, going straight to the shower across the hall from my room. As I strip off my clothes, I’m alarmed by how much blood there is, mixed in with other fluid that makes me shudder.
What if I get pregnant?
That possibility has me vomiting again in dry heaves until there’s nothing left in my stomach.
I throw my clothes into the bathtub and step into the shower.
Hot water has never felt so good as I scrub my body from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet, wincing at the pain between my legs when soap meets abused flesh. And then I’m sobbing again. I slide down the wall to sit in the tub as the water continues to rain down on me, washing away some of the horror.
I’m hardly na?ve after living in ten different places in my first seventeen years, but I never thought something like this would happen to me. I’m careful. Street smart. Aware. My dad has made sure of it. I keep going back to Ryder asking if he could talk to me about Louisa. She was in my English class before she had to leave school. I thought she was very sweet, and I had the feeling she liked me, too.
Her kindness stood out to me because everyone else was a jerk.
I had no reason to be afraid of Ryder.
Sure, he’d been flirtatious with me in the past, but all the boys are. That’s why the girls hate me so much, not that I do anything to encourage the boys. My boyfriend, Kane, is currently living in Spain. We met when our families were stationed together in Jacksonville, Florida, for four years, the longest I’ve lived anywhere.
We’ve been a couple since we were in seventh grade, which sounds bonkers, I know. But our bond was deep and immediate, and has stayed that way, even with an ocean between us.
He questioned the wisdom of me going to Houston’s party, which was sure to be attended by the same kids who’ve made me an outcast. He knows Houston is my one good friend here, and I didn’t want to miss his party because of the assholes. I should’ve listened to Kane.
I wrap my arms around my knees and drop my head to rest on my forearm.
Kane…
He was supposed to have been my first, my only. I’ve known for years that he’s the love of my life and vice versa. Yes, we’re young, and we’ve heard all the detractors advise us not to get our hopes up about each other. But when you know, you know.
How will I ever tell him about this?
I’m still in the shower quite a while later when the hot water starts to run out. The cold water is like a slap to the face that gets me up and moving again. I notice a pink tinge in the water where I was sitting and shiver from the cold as well as the trauma.
Even though it’s still warm outside and my dad hates paying for air conditioning, I get dressed in my coziest sweats and a long-sleeved T-shirt before I crawl into bed, pulling the covers up and over my head. If I could, I’d stay here forever.
No one can ever know about this. Even in the midst of the shock, I know that much for certain. Ryder Elliott is the king of Hope High School. I could scream from the rooftops about what he did to me, but no one would believe me. They’ve known him forever. Most of them went to preschool together. Their parents were high school classmates.
I’m an outsider in every possible way.
And they think I’m a slut, which is what they’d say about me if I accused him.
I saw a movie once about a girl who reported a rape and had her own life torn apart by the guy’s friends and family. That would happen here, too. That’s why I didn’t go straight to the police like I should have.
It would be my word against Ryder Elliott’s, even if I’d bothered to preserve the evidence.
They’d tear me apart.
Blaise
THEN
The day after, we’re due at my grandmother’s house for a long-planned family reunion that I’ve been looking forward to for months. I don’t get to see my cousins very often, and most of them will be there.
I can’t get out of bed.
Teagan comes to the door, her expression stormy. “What the hell are you doing? Everyone is waiting for you.”
“I’m sick.”
“So am I, but I’m going.”
“I can’t.”
“What the hell, Blaise? You helped to plan this stupid thing. And now you don’t want to go?”
“I do want to. I’m sick.”
“What’s going on, girls?” Mom frowns when she sees me still in bed. “Get up, Blaise. We’re due at Gran’s in thirty minutes.”
“I’m still sick from last night.”
Mom feels my forehead. “You do feel a little warm.”
“She’s faking ,” Teagan says.
“Hush,” Mom replies. “That’s your thing, not hers.”
Teagan makes a nasty face at me.
“Are you sure you can’t go, honey?” Mom asks. “You’ve been so looking forward to it. The photographer is coming to take a picture of the whole family.”
She’s crushed when she realizes I won’t be in the photo, but I can’t rally, even for her.
“I’m sorry, Mom.”
“It’s okay. You haven’t been sick in ages. I suppose you were due.”
Now I feel doubly guilty for lying to her.
“Tell everyone I said hello, and I’m sorry to miss it.”
“I will.” She leans in to kiss my cheek. “Can I get you anything before I go?”
The thought of eating anything, ever again, makes me sick. “No, thanks.”
“I’ll bring you back some of Gran’s brownies.”
“That sounds good.” I choke back more bile. “Thanks.”
Mom leaves the room.
Teagan hangs back. “You’re full of shit. Why’re you faking?”
“I’m not.”
“You are, and I’m going to find out why.”
She storms out of the room, leaving my stomach in new knots at the thought of her finding out why I’m sitting out the family reunion.
Two hours later, my phone rings.
It’s Sienna. “Hey.”
“Are you at the reunion?”
“I’m sick.”
“For real?”
“Yes.”
She feels like a stranger to me after the way she acted last night. Her first impulse was to cover for Ryder, not assist Neisy. I hate her for that as much as I hate myself for being so weak that I caved to her intense peer pressure.
“Last night was fucked up.”
That’s one way of putting it.
She clears her throat. “I, uh… You didn’t tell anyone did you?”
“No.”
“Oh,” she says on a long exhale. “Good. That’s good.”
“It’s not good. None of this is good. Ryder raped her, Sienna.”
“Don’t say that! Someone might hear you.”
“No one is here.”
“Don’t even say it out loud.”
“This is wrong. You know it as well as I do.”
“How is it wrong to protect someone we grew up with from someone we don’t even know?”
“He did this to her , not the other way around.”
“She must’ve done something to make him want to.”
“Sienna…” Did I ever know her at all? “Rape is never the fault of the victim. Tell me you know that.”
“How do we know they haven’t been getting busy before now? Maybe that’s how she likes it. A little rough.”
I’m even more nauseated now than I was before. “I have to go.”
“You can’t say anything. You promised me you wouldn’t.”
I want to tell her to fuck off and to hell with whatever promise she thinks I made.
“Blaise… Tell me you understand that you can’t say anything. No one would believe it.”
“They would if we both said something.”
“I never will. Not now or ever.”
“How can you act like you didn’t witness a crime?”
Her harsh laughter hits like a knife to my chest. “A crime ? What the hell are you talking about? Two horny teenagers got busy in the woods, and you want to call it a crime ?”
“That’s what this was, and you know it.”
“I’ll deny I was there. If you say anything, I’ll deny it.”
“How can you care so little for what happened to her?”
“She’s nothing to me.”
I’m disgusted by her. While I’ve always known she could be a bit shallow, this is taking it to a whole new level. “She’s a human being.”
“We grew up with him. He’s one of us. She isn’t. It’s not even worth debating. Besides, if she’s smart, she’ll keep her mouth shut about it. People already hate her. If she tries to go after Ryder, that won’t go well for her.”
“Unless a witness backed up her story.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
I have nothing to say to that.
“Tell me you won’t say anything, Blaise. You’ll ruin everything if you do! Don’t you care about me at all? What will Cam say if my best friend accuses his brother of a crime?”
“His brother committed a crime!”
“It’d be her word against his, and no one will believe her. Everyone knows he’s madly in love with Louisa.”
“If that’s true, why did he attack Neisy?”
“Who knows what she said to drive him over the edge? He’s been so stressed out over Louisa. Maybe Neisy’s been coming on to him for weeks for all we know. She might’ve had it coming.”
I gasp, disgusted by my so-called best friend. “How can you say that? No one deserves to be raped, Sienna.”
“You’ve seen how she acts around the boys. She’s always teasing them and flirting with them.”
“She could strut naked in front of them, and she still wouldn’t deserve to be raped.”
“I’m done talking about this. Keep your mouth shut or else.”
“Or else what?”
“Or else there’ll be trouble when everyone hates you for taking her side over Ryder’s.”
The phone goes dead.
I can’t believe she hung up on me or the things she said.
Intense nausea has me running for the bathroom in the hallway, where I’m seized again by dry heaves. There’s nothing left in my stomach but bile that burns my throat and mouth. I thought I felt as awful as it was possible to feel after my grandfather died last year. As bad as that was, it was nothing compared to this.
I hate that Sienna is right. If I say anything or come to Neisy’s defense, my life won’t be worth living in this town. Everyone will hate me, even the parents who’ve always thought of me as a good kid. No one will want to hear that Ryder attacked and sexually assaulted Neisy. And even if I came forward to back her story, no one would believe us.
Ryder is the son everyone wishes they had. When I worked at McChord’s grocery last summer, I heard people say that. He’ll graduate at the top of our class next June. He’s the star of multiple teams and in line for an appointment to the Naval Academy. What must it be like, one of the ladies who worked with me in the deli asked, to have a son so successful at such a young age? She’d joked that her son had barely made it out of tenth grade.
Every part of me trembles as I ponder the implications of doing the right thing.
Everyone would hate me, even my own brother.
I drop my head to my knees as sobs rip from my chest.
If you’d asked me before yesterday if I was the kind of person who’d always do the right thing, I would’ve said absolutely.
Now I know there’s no such thing as absolutes.
I hate myself as much as I hate Ryder and Sienna. I hate knowing that kids I grew up with and considered friends are capable of such things.
More than anything, I hate knowing I’ll have to live with what I saw forever. I hate that a young woman is suffering after being the victim of a hideous crime, and there’s not a damned thing I can do about it without ruining my own life.