10. Then #2
The garage door opens, signaling the pastor’s arrival. Donna frowns. “We should stop talking about this.”
Luke’s head jerks toward her. “Why’s that?”
She blinks in surprise at his tone, then swallows. “Because I think Juliet would prefer this story remain…between us.”
It takes all of us a long second to understand what she hasn’t said: that if we tell the pastor, he’ll work it into a sermon.
He might even wait a few months, but then give just enough detail that no one doubts it was me.
“A young girl, biking home from her job at the diner , ” he will say, and the whole congregation will shift toward me, remembering those weeks when I was bruised.
Most likely, they’ll think I brought it on myself, and I don’t know why I hate them for it when I’m thinking it too. Whether it’s logical or not, it still feels that if I was a better person, it wouldn’t have happened at all.
If I was the kind of girl the Allens think I am, would my father have left? Would my brother have died? Would I need to work at a diner to save money so that I’m not homeless once I finish high school?
If I was that other, better girl, would Justin still have done what he did? Would those guys have tried to grab me?
I can’t escape the feeling I somehow brought it all on myself.
“What state?” Luke asks. “What state were the tags?”
I shake my head. The answer isn’t going to help. “California,” I reply quietly as the door opens.
The pastor looks at me, sitting on the far side of the table. I’m not even sure it’s the scrapes that catch his attention so much as it is the fact that I’m in the wrong place and not being helpful. “What’s this?”
“Juliet took a little spill on her bike,” Donna says quickly.
Luke’s nostrils flare in silent argument.
“You fell?” the pastor asks me. “Were you wearing a helmet?”
I shake my head. Trust the pastor to find a way to make it my fault.
The pastor frowns at Donna, looking at the mess on the counter. “You shouldn’t have to do this all on your own.”
He’s not saying the boys should have helped. He’s saying, “Falling off a bike is no excuse . ”
I brace myself to stand but Luke climbs to his feet instead. “I can help,” he says.
But the look he shoots at the pastor’s back is lethal.
* * *
The damage to my bike is deemed irreparable.
I have enough saved for a new one, but I’m just not ready—there is never a moment when I’m outside now, even when I’m just walking nearby, that I don’t feel that rush of wind at my back, the whisper of warning that something’s coming for me.
So I take the bus and it’s twice as long, and the pastor is slightly cool to me on those nights I haven’t helped Donna, as if it’s a choice I made on purpose.
Luke’s been going out without us since it happened, but when I get home from work a week later, he’s weirdly insistent that I come out.
“There’s a big party on the beach tonight,” he says. “We all need to go. I’ll drive us.”
I frown. There are frequently huge parties on the beach, and Luke’s never cared about going before, so I don’t know why this one matters. And he always drives separately since his evenings end very differently than mine and Danny’s do.
“Sure, whatever,” Danny agrees cheerfully, never questioning why Luke is changing the plan.
I get the feeling he ought to have questioned it.
When we arrive a few hours later, we find hundreds of kids. It’s a party that will definitely get broken up by the cops.
“Are we even going to know anyone here?” I ask.
“Yeah,” Luke replies, distracted. “Some of the guys from the line-up mentioned it.”
We move through the crowd. I assume we’re here for a girl Luke’s meeting, as if he doesn’t have enough girls down at Kirkpatrick, but he’s watching me more than he is the people around us.
We’ve wandered aimlessly for ten minutes before I tug Danny’s hand toward the south end of the party, where music is blasting.
He won’t want to dance, but I do, and I’m sick of just following Luke around so he can fuck someone new.
Danny tugs back. “Come on, Juliet,” he pleads.
That snapping thing inside me unfurls. “Come on…for what ?” I lash out. “So we can wander through this big crowd of strangers for no reason? So Luke can find some girl he’s after? So I can sit around listening to you guys talk about college and surfing all night?”
His jaw falls open. “What the hell, babe?”
I shake off his hand. Why is it asking so much to do one thing I want?
I’ve followed along meekly the whole goddamn summer and the little I’ve asked for—a romantic night out, a relationship that feels more adult than the ones I had when I was twelve—has been denied.
And it’s been denied with so little pushback from me that he’s dumbfounded when it happens.
I turn toward the music. I don’t even want to dance anymore, but if I don’t go, I know I’ll wind up apologizing and I just fucking refuse.
I plunge into the crowd of people dancing and close my eyes, trying to pretend we didn’t just argue, trying to pretend Danny’s not out there making excuses to Luke as if I’ve done something wrong.
It’s bad Juliet taking over, asserting herself in ways I’ll regret and apologize for later, but it works for a minute or two. I forget. And then the song ends and it’s Luke I see first, standing just outside the circle. His gaze paralyzes me.
He’s probably pissed, but he doesn’t look pissed. His eyes are feverish and feral. Possessive.
It’s not the way he looks at those other girls. It’s more .
“Juliet,” says Danny, moving in from my right, and Luke’s face goes blank again. “Can we go now?”
His voice is gentle, as if I’m a wayward child who escaped at the mall, one he loves though she tries his patience.
How do I get angry with him for that? How do I not get angry with him for that?
My shoulders sag in defeat. I let him take my hand and pull me away, back to continue this mysterious mission Luke’s on.
We walk and walk, until we’re well past the party. Luke stares down stragglers on the beach, and even Danny is frustrated. “Bro, who are we looking for, anyway?” he asks.
Luke frowns, glancing briefly at me then away. “Never mind. Let’s just go.”
It feels like we’re a mile from the Jeep at this point. We start to walk back through the crowd, and then I come to a stumbling halt.
I recognize the eyes first. Their coldness. The details I actually remembered—the tattooed knuckles, the pierced eyebrow…those come a second later. I freeze, and Danny hasn’t even noticed but Luke has. His gaze jerks from me to the guy.
“Is that him?” Luke asks, close to my ear. His hand rests at the small of my back. “The guy who grabbed you?”
I have no reason to be terrified. Outside of the car, he’s just a guy of normal height and normal weight. Bigger than me, but no match for Luke or Danny. I’m frozen anyway. I make a noise of assent, nodding…and Luke takes off after him at a sprint.
The guy’s eyes widen and he starts running, but he’s no match for a college athlete. Luke tackles him, and they’ve barely landed before Luke’s fist is driving into his face. It’s as if something has unleashed inside him, something terrifying, something he’s barely held onto.
That’s why we’re here, at this huge party. To find this guy. And Luke’s been looking for him since it happened .
My mouth opens but no sound emerges. Danny, beside me, seems frozen too. It’s only when the guy’s friends dive at Luke that we both wake up. Danny runs forward, grabbing one of them and holding him back while I dive to the ground, snatching a beer bottle, the only weapon I can find.
By the time I reach them, though, Luke’s shaken off the guy Danny isn’t holding and is hitting him—his fist plunging into the guy’s stomach, then his face, then his stomach again.
I’m almost glad I hear sirens in the distance because Luke’s going to kill someone if it continues. And he’s already done plenty of damage, so I need to get him out of here, fast, before the cops arrive.
Danny shouts at Luke to stop, and Luke simply turns and swings, hitting the guy Danny’s holding dead in the face with a blow that makes his knees give way.
“Jesus Christ, Luke, stop!” Danny yells.
Luke turns to the bloody kid on the ground, the one who grabbed me. “If you even breathe in her vicinity again, I’ll fucking kill you and I won’t think twice. I’ll beat you until you can’t fight back, then I’ll hold you under water until you’ve taken your last breath. That’s a promise.”
The drone of the police walkie-talkies parts the crowd, but Luke remains where he is, rigid and unmoving—lip and knuckles bleeding—as if he doesn’t care about getting arrested.
“Run,” I hiss. “Go! You threw the first punch. That makes it assault.”
His face is carved in stone.
“If you do something, you own it,” he says without inflection or fear. He throws Danny the keys to the Jeep. “Go ahead. Get her out of here.”
Danny looks between us, torn. He doesn’t want to get in trouble, but he also knows Luke might need our help. When his gaze turns back to me, I shake my head.
If Luke won’t run, I’m not running either. I won’t abandon him.
“I have no idea what the hell I’m going to tell my dad,” Danny says bitterly as the cops push through at last.
“Tell him I took care of something you should have been a little more concerned about,” Luke snaps.
There’s no time for Danny to respond, though I’m not sure what he could have said. It never felt like Danny wasn’t upset enough on my behalf. I’m questioning it now, though.
Luke and two of the kids he hit are taken in the back of a squad car.
“That was fucked up,” says Danny as we follow them.
“I don’t know what he was thinking. We could lose our scholarships over something like this.
You understand that, right? If I’d gotten involved, I could have lost my scholarship.
He still might. And you don’t solve violence with violence. ”
He slides his fingers through mine as he waits for my answer.
“Yeah,” I reply without conviction. “I get it.”
But the old Juliet, bad Juliet, is smiling wide, feeling like the world is being set right again.
* * *
When we get to the station, Luke has already been led away to be photographed and fingerprinted. I wonder if he needs a lawyer, and I already know he’s screwed if that’s the case. None of us have that kind of money.
Danny is taken to give a statement, and a few minutes later a cop appears, looking at me as if I’m the guilty one, as if I’m the one who started this.
“You’re up,” he says.
I follow him to his desk, where I tell him about the guy who pulled me off my bike, embellishing the story just a bit in case it doesn’t sound bad enough on its own. I don’t know why I feel compelled to lie. Maybe it’s just that, so many times, the truth wasn’t enough. Even now it isn’t.
“Why didn’t you file a report when it happened?” he asks.
“What good would that have done?” I retort.
If I’d filed a report, they’d have found a way to blame me.
Some condescending bullshit about not biking along the coastal road, about being more careful, how I should have worn a helmet.
So I didn’t file, and they’re using that to make me look guilty too.
“Well, for starters, it would make me more inclined to believe the story you’re telling me now.”
So…file a report simply to provide a defense in case shit goes down later—does he realize what fucked-up logic that is?
“I didn’t file because I figured you’d turn it around and make it sound like it was my fault, kind of like you are right now.”
“Look, I’m not saying you’re at fault, but your boyfriend charged at a guy who’s half his size, with no provocation—”
“Luke’s not my boyfriend. Danny—the one who just gave a statement—is.”
He raises a brow. “So your boyfriend did nothing and his friend started the fight?”
It sounds bad. It looks bad. If the incident with the bike was as awful as I’ve made it sound…you’d think my boyfriend would be out for blood. And he wasn’t.
“Danny’s dad’s a pastor. He’s…not like that.”
“Fine,” he says, as if he doesn’t believe me again. “Well, then, Luke charged at this guy with no provocation and apparently threatened to hold him under water until he stopped breathing, so you suddenly crying rape is—”
“I never did ‘cry rape’,” I say between my teeth.
Crying rape . No one accuses someone of ‘crying assault’ or ‘crying robbery’.
Nope, just rape. Just shit that happens to defenseless teen girls and not as much to men with a little power.
“Like I said, he pulled me off my bike and tore my shirt, and if you don’t believe me, Mrs. Allen can tell you herself about how she had to pull gravel and glass out of my face with tweezers.
” I point to the remaining scrapes down my left side and to the faint bruising on my cheekbone.
He sighs. “So do you want to press charges against this kid? The one who grabbed you?”
“I won’t if he won’t,” I reply.
He doesn’t like this answer. He taps his pen against the desk repeatedly, staring me down.
“You know, your boyfriend…Danny? He’s in the clear.
Every witness stated he wasn’t involved, and the other kid, Luke…
he sounds like a pretty violent guy. He already has a record and it’s not the first time he’s done this.
He’s no one who deserves to be protected. ”
Yes, he is.
I shrug. “I just want this over with.”
Danny is eager to leave but I refuse, so we sit in the lobby until Luke is released. He walks down the hall, slowing in surprise when he realizes we waited. He’s like me—fully expecting to be abandoned, every fucking time. “Thanks,” he says.
“Of course,” Danny replies. “You’re family.”
But it was me Luke looked at when he said it.
* * *
Only a week later, the guys are leaving for football camp. As long as the summer felt at times, the end has come too fast.
We walk them to the car, and Danny presses his lips to my forehead. “I’ll call you when I get to school,” he says.
Luke shakes the pastor’s hand and hugs Donna before he turns to me.
I study his face: the dark eyes, the full lips, the unshaved jaw. It takes a second to realize what I’m doing.
I’m trying to find a way to hold onto him because I don’t know if he’ll ever be back, and he’s looking at me in exactly the same way. I suspect he’s done it before—I was just too busy assuming his reasons were nefarious to see it clearly.
“See ya, Juliet,” he says quietly.
“Bye, Luke,” I whisper, and it’s only then, of the whole morning, that I burst into tears.