Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Jules: Age Seventeen
Connecticut
Early Saturday morning, Jules headed out for a run, twenty dollar bill securely in his sock, sweatshirt tied around his waist. It was day three since he’d started running, a day which Harrison had advised, in not so many words, was going to absolutely suck.
Mr. H was not incorrect. Every muscle in his body was complaining and he hadn’t even started running yet.
His plan was to run over to Hobbit’s house—which was a ranch instead of a hole in the ground—see if he was awake and wanted to come with, then run all the way into town.
They’d celebrate surviving day three with the truly spectacular pancakes from Daisy’s Cafe.
It was unlikely Hobbit would pass that up.
Jules had just locked the door and tied his house key to his sneaker-lace, about to use the front steps of their house to stretch out his legs the way Mr. H had shown him. But movement caught his eye and he turned to see Tom McCall’s car pulling up.
“Hey.” Tom’s window was open, and he waved to Jules as he parked and got out.
“Hey,” Jules said, double checking his watch as he headed to meet Tom out in the driveway, because yes, it wasn’t even nine AM, and trips to the beach aside, Tom was not an early riser.
Especially since there’d been a party last night—someone he didn’t know’s parents had gone out of town and a keg had been procured.
Although Jules had let himself get talked into going by Hobbit and Sadie, they hadn’t stayed long. Instead, they’d gone back to Sadie’s and played Clue, which was more fun than watching strangers drink too much and throw up in the bushes.
Jules had been highly aware that it was date night for Belle and Tom, and for Shelly and Sandy, too—although Jules still hadn’t met Sandy yet.
Date night translated to hit the party for a red Solo cup of beer (or two in Tom’s case) to get a low buzz on before driving off, alone, to some dark, deserted road to melt into one another.
Assuming that Sandy, like Tom, had access to a car or truck.
Board-gaming with Sadie and Hobbit had felt a bit like sitting at the kids’ table, and Jules had gone home early from the game-playing, too—missing David enough to stupidly call his dorm room when he got home.
Of course David wasn’t there. His weekend had just started out in SoCal, and Jules was acutely aware that David’s Friday night would probably be more like Belle and Tom’s than Jules’s, which burned.
But now here was Tom, looking none-too-happy as he approached, still wearing the clothes he’d had on last night when he and Belle had popped into the party—same worn out jeans with a belt loop that had disconnected on one end, and a green T-shirt that looked really good on him, yes Jules had noticed, he wasn’t blind, also fuck-you-David.
“You okay?” Jules asked, a little too aware that his running shorts and barely-there tank top was the very outfit he’d worn last year when he’d rollerbladed with David at the Pride Parade, but Tom didn’t seem to notice or care. Which was... good?
Yes. It was good.
“I’m fine,” Tom said, but up closer he was clearly worse for wear, his eyes a little red, like he’d been crying or more likely smoking something that wasn’t grown out in the open fields here in Tobacco-Farm-Landia.
“I could use a little help, but you’re, well.
.. Maybe after you go for your jog, you could come over to the summer house and—”
Jules was already making stop-it noises, already stashing his Walkman on the non-street side of the square lamppost that sat between the driveway and the brick path up to the house.
“Believe me, the run can wait. I’m running, not jogging.
” Okay, why was it so important he clarify that right at this moment?
“What’s going on? Is Belle okay?” His housekey was on his sneaker, so he was good to go and he pulled his sweatshirt on as he briskly led the way down to Tom’s car.
“I’ll drive.” He made it a statement, an already done-deal, and easy-going Tom tossed over his keys.
“Belle’s okay,” Tom said as they both climbed into the giant clunker, “it’s not her—I mean, yeah she’s really mad, like Clem-load-the-shotgun mad, but...” He sighed heavily. “It’s Shelly.”
Oh, no. Had Sandy broken up with her for good? “What happened?” Jules started the car with its rattling cough of a roar. “But wait, I’m not sure where we’re going. The summer house?”
“Yeah,” Tom said. “Head toward County Line Road, it’s up near the entrance to Petty Park. It’s a farm stand—one of Clark’s—but they don’t use it after the pond closes for the season. We kinda borrow it this time of year.”
Borrow.
Great.
From Clark’s Orchards, the wholesome family-run farm where his mom had worked back when she was in high school. Jules must’ve emitted some kind of judgy body language or sound, because Tom added, “Camping rules. We pack out the trash. We always leave it cleaner than we found it.”
Still not entirely legal, but okay. “What happened with Shelly?”
“I still don’t really know, exactly,” Tom said. “Kevin came and got us about an hour ago—I was still at Belle’s, her mom lets me crash in the playroom—and he was really upset. I think...”
Whatever he wasn’t saying was really hard for him to articulate, because when Jules glanced over, he had tears in his eyes, one of which he angrily brushed from his face.
“Jesus, is she dead?” Jules asked.
“No,” Tom said, “God, no, thank God...” But the relief at that news was soured by his next whispered words. “We think she was raped.”
“Oh, shit,” Jules said pulling onto County Line Road and heading north toward the park. “By Sandy?”
“No, well, I don’t know, but I don’t think so,” Tom told him.
“She’s really out of it, I’m not sure she knows exactly what happened, but she did say that they broke up right before the party so she came on her own, looking for us.
She had to walk and by the time she got there, we were gone and you were gone, and.
.. The next thing she remembers is waking up in the woods and.
.. her shirt was ripped and her jeans were gone. ”
“Oh, shit,” Jules said again.
“Well, she found them, but...”
“Tom, we really should take her to the hospital, or call the police, or—”
“She doesn’t want to,” Tom said grimly, “and I don’t blame her.
The local police are... They don’t...” He shook his head.
“Kevin’s father is the police chief and he’s such an asshole.
He actually arrested Kev for public intoxication even though he’d only had maybe a half a beer.
Everyone else got off with a warning, but he made his own kid spend the night in jail. ”
Hobbit’s police-chief father arrested him...? Although it was only then that Jules made the connection. “Kevin Clark, like Clark?” Like Clark Orchards?
“Yeah. His family’s lived here forever. His uncle’s the town chairman, his father’s the head of the police and they’re both total dicks. It’s this next left.”
Jules signaled and slowed to make the turn that would take them toward Petty Park—and Shelly. Who’d been raped but didn’t want to go to the police. “She needs to at least tell her mother.” Maybe. Not everyone had a mother like his.
“She doesn’t want to do that, either,” Tom said. “I was kinda hoping you could talk her into that.”
“I’m not sure why she would listen to me,” Jules said.
“I don’t know,” Tom said. “Emotions are running really high, and I thought if you came in as, like, the cool voice of reason...? It might help. Farm stand’s up here, on the right. Pull around the back.”
And there, indeed, was a structure that was half silvered, weather-worn wood, half tightly tied-down, faded-green tent canvas, alongside a small, empty, gravel parking area. The stand was about the size of a double garage—which neatly hid Tom’s car from the street as Jules pulled behind it.
Belle had no doubt heard their tires on the gravel, and she’d come out to meet them.
“She’s finally stopped throwing up.” But then she corrected herself.
“Well, nothing much is coming up so she’s really just been retching, but her stomach seems to have settled down.
” She met Jules’s gaze somberly as he got out of Tom’s car. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
“Is she still coming up blank?” Tom asked, giving her a hug, which she accepted gratefully, but swiftly pulled away from as she nodded, back to the dire business at hand.
“She says she doesn’t remember anything,” Belle told them. “I mean, she remembers getting to the party—she gave herself blisters because of her new shoes, and she remembers looking for us. She remembers having a beer, but after that... Nothing.”
“That can happen when you drink too much,” Tom pointed out. “You black out.”
“But she says she doesn’t remember drinking more than that one beer,” Belle said.
“Do you believe her?” Jules quietly went point-blank to ask the question that Belle seemed to be dancing around with her she says.
Belle was silent, her impetuousness tightly reined in as she obviously chose her words carefully. “She’s horrified and mortified and feeling a lot of shame.”
“God,” Jules said. “She shouldn’t be.”
“I know,” Belle agreed. “But imagine waking up like that, half naked, with leaves and bugs in your hair and... blood and bruises on your thighs.”
Tom was aghast. “Oh, shit.”
“Fuuuuck,” Jules breathed. “We need to make sure she hasn’t been injured.” He caught himself. “I mean, physically, worse than the obvious. Like, is she still bleeding, you know, um, between her, uh, legs?”
“It’s called vaginally,” Belle said sharply. “Is she bleeding vaginally. Vagina’s a real, scientific, medical word that all the boys and girls can use.”
“Yeah, it’s just kinda outside my personal wheelhouse,” Jules said. “So okay, let me try that again: Is she bleeding vaginally?”
“I don’t know,” Belle admitted. “I’m not sure she knows. I don’t think she wants to look.”
“We really should take her to the hospital,” Jules said. “There’s a thing called a rape kit that they can use to—”
“Prove what? What happens then?” Belle crossed her arms as she interrupted him.
“When it’s confirmed that yes, she had sex with some boy or God, maybe even boys, plural, and everyone, including—especially!
—the police goes Ooh but she was drinking and Ooh look what she was wearing and then eventually landing on Boys will be boys.
And nothing happens except now Shel’s forevermore that girl. And not in the good Marlo Thomas way.”
In the silence that followed, Jules glanced at Tom who met his eyes and spoke aloud what they both were thinking. “But that’s not right.”
“No shit,” Belle said. “Remember Caroline Russo?” she asked Tom, before telling Jules, “She was a senior last year. She didn’t graduate with her class because something like this happened to her.
She said she was raped at some stupid party but she couldn’t prove it and she ended up dropping out or, I don’t know, transferring, maybe?
After she tried to kill herself. No thank you.
If it was me, I would conveniently not remember anything either, and just pray to God that my rapist wore a condom and I don’t get pregnant or some shitty STD. ”
Jules felt sick. How could that be okay? To just pretend a crime hadn’t been committed?
“How can we help her?” Tom asked. “What can we do, you know, besides find who did this and fucking kill him?”
How had Tom described Belle on the ride over? Clem-load-the-shotgun mad. It was clear he’d reached that same level of helpless, white-hot anger.
But they weren’t helpless. Not entirely. “But why don’t we?” Jules asked Tom and Belle both. “Find whoever did this? Maybe not so much with the kill-him part, but... Someone knows something. Let’s freaking find him.”
Belle didn’t hesitate. “Hell, yeah,” she said. “Let’s get our Nancy Drew on.”
“But first,” Jules said, “let me go in and see Shelly, because maybe, even if she doesn’t want to talk to her mom, she’ll talk to mine.”