Chapter 3 #2
“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.