Chapter 43
This is a story I have never told before.
Don’t worry, there won’t be any graphic details.
The truth is, I don’t remember much, which is part of why I never went to the police, although there were a lot of reasons I kept it to myself.
All I really remember is what happened before and how it all ended.
So if it sounds confused or if I can’t account for big blocks of time, that’s why.
It doesn’t mean I’m lying.
I was in the second semester of my second year at MIT and loving it.
The first year is pass/fail, so my last semester was the first time I had received any letter grades, and they were good.
Okay, I’m being modest—they were great. I got all A’s.
And I wasn’t taking, like, intro to bullshit.
I was taking challenging computer science classes in which several of my classmates were just barely scraping by.
Like I said, I can’t help but wonder what could have been.
It was my roommate, Selena, who talked me into going to a frat party, although I don’t blame Selena for what happened.
I had been to a few fairly tame parties over the last year and a half, but a large percentage of the guys at MIT were in fraternities, so those parties were supposed to be a lot more interesting.
To be clear, they weren’t interesting to me, just more interesting in an objective sort of way.
I had big plans to do some coding that night and had even purchased a large bottle of Mountain Dew in anticipation.
But then Selena went on this whole rant about how I was never any fun and how I was going to graduate from college a virgin, which would be bad for some reason.
I finally agreed to go to the party just to get her to stop talking and also because my wrists were sort of hurting from coding twelve hours straight the day before.
She lent me a dress from her own closet and spent about fifteen minutes going through my hair with a curling iron.
She also managed to do my makeup for about ten minutes before I told her to stop.
When she had done all that I was allowing her to do, I looked at myself in the full-length mirror in the communal restroom in the hallway and actually thought I looked pretty good. I cleaned up nice.
When I came back into our dorm room, Selena let out a low whistle. “Hey, sexy,” she joked.
“Don’t make me change my mind.”
She frowned at me. “Can you lose the glasses?”
I could not. I was half-blind without them. That was before I discovered the miracle of contact lenses. When I was in college, the idea of sticking my fingers in my eyes was too horrible for words.
We walked over to the Zeta Pi fraternity, which was nearly a thirty-minute hike in the nippy March night.
Actually, it wasn’t too bad for me, because I was wearing a pair of flats, a coat, and a hat.
Selena, on the other hand, was wearing heels and no coat, which meant she complained bitterly during the entire walk.
It’s funny what I remember about that night. I can still hear Selena’s gripes about the cold echoing in my ears. I think my underwire has frozen to my skin, Debbie.
We finally got to the party at about ten o’clock, and it was well underway.
In stark contrast to the frigid night air, the frat house was way, way too hot.
It was also strangely humid, and all the work Selena did to make my hair smooth and shiny was immediately undone.
I shrugged off my coat and stuffed it in a bedroom referred to as “the coat room” without any confidence that I would ever get it back.
There was music playing, and the bass was so loud that it made my head throb.
An hour later, I wanted to leave. Badly.
Selena and I had managed to stay together for the first twenty minutes, but then some guy started chatting her up, and she disappeared.
Nobody was chatting me up. I was just sitting in a corner, sipping from a cup of Coke, wishing I knew the way home.
Too bad neither GPS nor Uber had been invented yet.
That was when he found me.
I’m glad I was wearing my glasses, because I got a good look at his face. He looked like an upperclassman. A junior or a senior. Not that he looked a lot older, but he just had that confidence about him, like he’d been here a while, and he knew what was what.
“You look miserable,” he observed.
I looked up at him. He wasn’t remarkable looking, but he had dark brown hair that curled endearingly at the ends and fell in his eyes. He was cute.
“It’s loud down here,” I admitted. “I’m getting a headache.”
“I know.” He took a swig from the paper cup in his hand. “By the time I graduate, I’ll be lucky if I have any hearing left.”
I smiled.
“I’m Hutch.” He stuck a thumb at his own chest. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you here before.”
“I’m Debbie.”
“Nice to meet you, Debbie.” He grinned at me, and I was sort of proud that this cute upperclassman frat boy was flirting with me. “Looks like you’re almost done with your drink. Can I get you another one of whatever you’re having?”
“It’s just a Coke ” I said.
“Well, no wonder you’re not having a good time,” he said, and at the time, I had to admit it was a good point. “How about if I get you another Coke, but you let me put a little bit of rum in it.” He positioned his thumb and forefinger about half an inch apart. “This much.”
And because he was cute and older and was flirting with me, I said, “Okay.”
He got me a rum and Coke, which was only the second time I had had alcohol during college and only the third time in my whole life.
At the time, I assumed everything that happened after that was because I had zero alcohol tolerance, but later, when I really thought about it, I was pretty sure that one drink could not have done that to me.
Hutch dropped something in my drink. Maybe not a roofie, but he put something in there to make sure I wouldn’t be able to fight him off.
We sat and talked on the couch for a bit.
He asked me what dorm I was in, and I told him Baker.
He asked me what I was majoring in, and I told him course 6 (computer science).
He was majoring in course 14 (economics).
He asked me another question that I couldn’t hear because the music was so loud, and that was when he suggested going upstairs, because it would be quieter up there.
I told him yes, and I was grateful because it was too loud downstairs, and all I’d been wanting since I got here was some peace and quiet.
That’s when the memories start to get a little fuzzy.
I remember walking up the stairs to his room.
I sort of remember his room. There were two twin beds…
no, wait, it was a bunk bed. There was a desk.
It must have had a desktop computer on it, because we all had desktops back then.
I think I told him I was tired, and he suggested that I lie down on his bed.
The next thing I remember was feeling like somebody was trying to shake me awake. But when I cracked my eyes open, I realized that wasn’t what was happening at all. Hutch was on top of me, his cute hair falling in his eyes. He had pulled up my dress and pulled down my underwear, and he was…
My first thought was that I was confused. Was I so drunk that I had told him this was okay? That didn’t seem possible. It definitely wasn’t okay. I was still a virgin, and what he was doing… It hurt.
I opened my mouth, and my throat felt painfully dry. Somehow, I managed to crack out, “No. Stop.”
I expected him to roll off me, full of apologies. But he didn’t do that. He just kept thrusting, oblivious to my plea.
“Stop,” I said, louder this time. I tried to push him away, but—I clearly remember this part—my arms felt like I was moving through molasses. “Please stop!”
This time, he replied with a twinge of annoyance, “Don’t worry. This will be over in a minute.”
It was actually two minutes. I know because I counted every second.
And suddenly, it was over. He rolled off me and zipped up his pants like nothing had happened. And then…he left.
I was really out of it. I lay there in that bottom bunk for anywhere from ten minutes to an hour, trying to figure out if it had really happened or just been a nightmare. The only thing that convinced me it was real was the soreness I felt and the blood on my underwear when I got home.
My head was swimming, but I managed to pull myself out of bed.
I stumbled through the crowd downstairs without talking to anyone.
I didn’t bother to find Selena or even my coat.
I walked out the front door, and even though it was freezing outside, I barely felt it.
To this day, I have no idea how I made it home.
But I must have, because I woke up the next day in my own bed in my dorm room.
I tried to tell myself that it wasn’t a big deal.
In my head, I didn’t even use the R word.
I went to a party, had a little too much to drink, and had sex with a guy I barely knew.
It was a one-night stand. Selena had had them, and it wasn’t a big deal.
It would only become a big deal if I let it be a big deal.
I had always been a strong person. Smart, capable. I had gotten into MIT after all—the only person in my graduating class in high school. I was the next Bill Gates. This wasn’t a big deal. I would get past it.
Except I didn’t get past it. I had nightmares every night, and I would wake up covered in sweat.
I was sleeping in two-hour chunks and walking around with permanent bags under my eyes.
Everywhere I went on campus, I kept thinking I saw Hutch.
It was never him though. It was always some other boy with a similar haircut, but it didn’t matter.
My grades started slipping. Then they started plummeting.
After getting straight A’s the first semester, I failed every single class my second semester. I didn’t even show up for two of the final exams.
A counselor at the school talked to me about my decline. She tried to ask what happened to me, but I refused to tell her. I just said that I was feeling unmotivated, and I needed a break from school. I went home for the summer, hoping some time away would heal me.
I never went back.
I almost told Cooper what happened to me a thousand times.
He was the first guy I dated after I left college.
He was so sweet and patient with me, although he had no idea why I was so anxious when it came to sex.
Even without telling him anything, he was understanding.
In the end, I was scared to tell him the truth because I thought he would respect me less.
And then after we were married, I was scared to tell him because I thought he’d be mad at me for not telling him sooner.
And now, after twenty years of marriage, it’s far too late.
Besides, he’s got secrets too. Plenty of them.
The idea that Zane might be trying to do to my daughter what Hutch did to me fills me with a rage so burning hot, I feel like I could tear that punk kid limb from limb.
But of course, I can’t do that. I don’t want to go to jail.
And physically, I’m not sure I could do it.
I’m not some sort of superhero (supervillain?) capable of ripping a person apart with my bare hands.
Anyway, what I will do to him will be much, much worse.