Chapter 22 #2
“You’re right,” Sadie said. “She did. Last year. They broke up over spring break. It was really messy.”
“You mean... the spring break that was right before Caroline’s assault?” Jules asked.
They were all silent at that.
“Shit,” Belle finally said. “That timeline really works, doesn’t it? Rodney breaks up with Rachel, and then this horrible string of rapes start with Caroline.”
“But is there really a scenario,” Tom asked, “in which Rachel somehow tells her rapist ex that we’re coming for him?”
More silence. Jules cleared his throat. “That’s pretty messed up.”
“But if you asked me to pick one person in our school,” Hobbit said quietly, “with a penis, who’s a seething ball of hate, who was seen at every party, and is strong enough to yada yada...”
Rodney Burke.
They were all thinking it.
Or maybe not all of them.
“I don’t know,” Sadie spoke up. “I just don’t... He’s definitely damaged, you know? Rod. His father’s so terrible and his mother’s awful, too and... You know I always thought Rachel was to blame. For the messy breakup. She is kind of a psycho.”
“I know you were tight with him back in third and fourth grade.” Shelly looked at her friend. “But he’s not that boy anymore, Sade.”
“I know,” Sadie said, but she didn’t look as if she really meant it. “I just... Look, I know he’s been really nasty to Hobbit, and I’m mad at him about that but... God, I really hope it’s not him.”
“Welp, he’s our prime suspect,” Belle said. “I think we should go and talk to him. Question him. See what he says. See what he does.” She looked at Jules. “What do you think, Joe Hardy?”
He sighed. “I think we’re out of other options.
Whoever Suspect X is, he knows we’re on to him.
Or at least he knows that I am, but he probably suspects all of us.
Whoever he is, he’s not stupid. And I really don’t think we’ll be able to do the bait thing again, to catch him—not safely anyway.
If he sees any of us lurking, he’s not gonna risk it.
I mean, I guess we could all hide in the bushes at the next party while Belle floats around the keg—”
“No.” It was Belle who interrupted him, which was a surprise. Jules had been so sure it was gonna be Tom. But she was shaking her head. “I wouldn’t feel safe doing that.”
From over on the bed, Tom exhaled the breath he’d clearly been holding. It couldn’t have been easy, being in love with someone so mercurial and impetuous. And yet, being in love with someone who so unquestionably and loyally loved him back...? That had to be incredibly great.
Fuck you, David.
“So...?” Belle was looking at Jules impatiently, waiting for him stop thinking about David again.
“So yeah. Let’s go talk to Rodney,” Jules concluded. “We need to figure out a way to get him alone, though. Idiot-free.”
“Well, that’s easy,” Sadie said almost crossly.
“We just go to his house. Knock on his door. Rod doesn’t let any of his stupid friends come over—not ever.
I’m telling you, his father’s a nightmare.
We’ll knock, he’ll come out—no way will he let us in, then we’ll all walk over to the cul-de-sac that’s right up the street from his house where there’s a tree house—well, really more like a tree-platform—and you can.
.. interrogate him to your hearts’ content. ”
“Well, shit,” Belle said. “What are we waiting for?”
Rodney Burke came to the door looking like someone had kicked the crap out of him.
Maybe... because someone... had...?
His lip was doing that oozing-bleeding thing that lips did when they’d been forcefully split open. He had a scrape on his forehead, over his right eyebrow. And he was holding onto his ribs like whoever had de-crapified him had also kicked him—hard—while he was down.
He looked genuinely surprised to see Sadie—but that turned rapidly into a different, far more hostile emotion as he took in Jules standing beside her on the front landing, with Hobbit, Shelly, Belle, and Tom gazing up at him from the steps below.
Jules could hear the sound of some kind of sports event blasting from the television inside of the house as Sadie spoke up. “Hey, Rod, you got a minute?” she asked as if they were paying a casual social call.
But before he could respond, a gruff voice from inside called, “Who the fuck is it?”
“No one,” Rodney called back, presumably to his father as he opened the screen door and stepped outside.
“It’s pretty cold out,” Sadie said. “You should get your ja—”
“No. Let’s get this over with.” He roughly pushed past Jules, and Hobbit and Shelly both quickly stepped back to grant him passage down the front steps.
Silently, they all followed him down the stone path, to the end of the driveway, and out into the street.
Where he stopped. And squared his shoulders as he turned to nearly spit at Sadie through tightly gritted teeth. “I can’t believe you think it’s me!”
Jules stepped forward, ready to throw himself between Rodney and Sadie because it sure as hell looked as if the XXL kid was going to blast her with more than his words and voice, but he bumped into Hobbit—and Tom and Belle and Shelly, all of whom were ready to do the same.
And he realized with a jolt of shock that made him put out his arm to keep Hobbit-the-pit-bull from charging forward, that Rodney not only had tears in his eyes, but that he’d also started to cry.
“That’s what you think of me, huh?” Rodney asked Sadie. “That I’m a rapist?"
Sadie was shaking her head. “I don’t. Rod, no, I—”
“But your friends do,” he said, wiping his face, wincing as he encountered his bruises, trying desperately to get back to his cocksure, whatever-dude attitude.
Meanwhile Jules’s world was full-on tilting because...
“How do you know?” Jules asked, even as Belle narrowed her eyes and demanded, “Who told you about the rapes?”
“I did the freaking math. I heard what happened to Caroline, and I know there’s been other girls and.
.. Hobbit, Hobbit, don’t leave me Hobbit,” Rodney mocked Jules, so yeah, apparently the tearful recrimination part was over and he was back to his status quo as a raging asshole.
“You’d never say shit like that unless you were in serious trouble.
Like, when do you ask for help? Unless maybe you were, oh, I don’t know, slipped the same kind of fucking mickey that some asshole fuckhead gave my little sister?
Jesus, she disappeared from the party, and I found her, in the woods and.
..” He looked back at Sadie as his face crumpled like a little boy’s as tears filled his eyes again. “You seriously thought it was me?”
Sadie was aghast. “Oh God, Meggie...? She’s just a freshman,” she told them.
“Shit,” Jules breathed. “When?”
“I don’t know, a few weeks ago,” Rodney said, wiping almost viciously at his eyes, as if he welcomed the pain.
“At that stupid party at Greg Bateman’s.
I thought it was funny—that she snuck out to go to a kegger—she’s always been so perfect, straight As, daddy’s little angel.
I should’ve taken her home, but I didn’t want to, and then I looked up, and she was just.. . gone.”
“That was the weekend before me,” Shelly said and Rodney turned to look at her.
“Ah, shit,” he said. “Although of course. That’s why you’re trying to find this fucker. Well, join the club, because I am, too. I’m gonna find him and I’m gonna fucking kill him.”
“Who beat you up, Rod?” Belle asked, her voice cold.
“My latest victim,” he said mocking, swinging swiftly back to his inner asshole, to glare at her in defiance. “That’s what you’re thinking, right? You still think it’s me? That I’d rape my own sister?” He looked at Sadie. “Nice friends you’ve got—and you always bitch about mine.”
“If I was the rapist, and I got caught, I’d pretend to be hunting the rapist, too,” Belle argued.
“It’s a fair question,” Jules said, although he would’ve worded it more gently.
You’re looking pretty battered there. Can we get you some ice?
Who, uh, did this to you? Because although, unlike Belle, he believed Rodney was being honest—the boy’s emotion was just so raw—it would be remiss of them not to dig deeper, just in case Belle was right.
“You were at every party where the girls were assaulted, plus you’re on a shortlist of people who had access to my soda on Friday night. ”
Of course, now Rod was glaring at Jules, too. “Yeah, well, fuck you. I didn’t spike your fucking soda.”
“You sat there for a pretty long time,” Tom pointed out.
“Yeah, because I was hoping Sadie would show up, all right?” Rod said.
“She’s always hanging out with Kevin and.
..” He looked directly at her, spoke directly to her.
“You won’t talk to me at school, but I wanted to warn you.
I didn’t want it to happen to you. So I sat down next to your stupid little friend. ”
“Who you bully relentlessly,” Sadie pointed out.
“Because I fucking hate him!”
“Why?” Sadie said, frustrating ringing in her voice. “What has Kevin ever done to you?”
“He gets to hang out with you, every fucking day, and you won’t even look at me!”
“What?!” Sadie exploded. “You’re the one who told me you couldn’t be friends with a girl!”
“Back in fourth grade!” Rodney shouted back. “I was a fucking idiot!”
“You’re obviously still a fucking idiot if you think it’s okay to take it out on Kevin!” Sadie shouted back.
“Yeah,” Rodney said, far more quietly now. “I know. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t say it to me, say it to him,” Sadie demanded.
Rodney aimed at Hobbit. “Sorry.”
Jules was looking at Hobbit, who looked up to meet and then hold his gaze. Jules could hear an echo of Rodney’s voice from that time in the boy’s locker room. Ke-vin! Oh, Kehhh-vin! Rodney had done this shit several times a week for how many years? And now he said Sorry, in that surly tone?
Fuck that shit must’ve been written all over Jules’s face, because Hobbit smiled, just a little, at Jules before he turned back to Rodney.
“No, thank you,” he said crisply. “I do not accept your apology at this time. Please try again later. Right now can we get back to the fact that at the party you sat down at the picnic table, exactly where Jules had been sitting?”
Rodney laughed in disgust. “Of course you don’t believe me.”
“His Dr. Pepper was right there, on the table, inches away from you.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t touch it!” Rodney countered, back to hot and loud again. “Even if I was a fucking rapist, why the fuck would I drug him?”
“Who the fuck knows why a rapist does anything?” Jules used Rod’s language back to him because the more riled up Rod got, the more Jules believed him.
The kid was just not that good of an actor.
His outrage was painfully sincere—as was, holy shit, his gargantuanly screwed up yet deeply felt tenderness for Sadie—but Jules wanted to see more of it.
So he intentionally prodded the wounded bear.
“If I had to guess, it would be because you want to warn us off, or scare us, or, I don’t know, tell us fuck you, you can’t stop me.
If you were the rapist,” he added. “Also, if you were the rapist? FYI your message failed because—” he let his voice get icy cold “—we are fucking coming for you.”
Rodney bristled because oopsie, Jules may have taken it a tad too far.
But Sadie had thankfully finally recovered from the deeply buried I love you subtext of Rod’s angry words, because she stepped up and stepped in and gave Rod her best no-nonsense face.
“Just tell them who gave you the black eye. You look awful and I know who did it, but I’m the only one here who’s met the asshole.
And Jules’s dad, in particular, was... well, he had a really good one, so I know he probably can’t even imagine—”
Rod scoffed at Jules. “Aren’t you the lucky little.
..?” He didn’t finish his sentence no doubt because of the don’t you dare look Sadie was now giving him.
Instead, he gestured sweepingly toward his battered face, like a backwards Vanna White.
“Meet my father. Or at least his handiwork. I stupidly convinced Meg to tell my mother what happened because she’s still bleeding. Down there.”
Shit. All these weeks later? Jules glanced at Belle who knew enough to stay silent instead of attempting to school Rodney on the proper vocabulary for female anatomy.
“So Mom went right downstairs and told the asshole,” Rod continued, “because of course she did, so him and me, we got into it when he said Meg doesn’t get to go to the doctor because she shouldn’t have gone to the party—that the consequence of her action is her own damn fault.”
“It’s not,” Belle said fiercely.
“No shit,” Rod shot back. “But Dad disagrees. So now I have to figure out a way to get her to, I don’t know, the hospital? I don’t even know where to go. And I have to do it without my parents finding out.”
“Planned Parenthood has a clinic in Hartford,” Jules said quietly. “We’ll help you. And hey, why don’t we all go over to my house to figure out the best way to get that to happen? Get you somewhere warm, get some ice for your mouth…”
Rod turned back to look sharply at him, and for several heartbeats, Jules wasn’t sure if the larger boy was going to hit him or start, again, to cry. “You believe me.”
“Yeah,” Jules said.
“Meg must be so scared,” Shelly spoke up. She’d been standing there, just listening, her arms wrapped around herself. Hobbit was the only one of them who’d noticed and his arm was tightly around her shoulders as he held her close. “Is it... okay with you if I talk to her?”
“She’s grounded,” Rod said as the emotion and relief that came with being believed made him again have to fight another influx of tears. “For, like, forever. She’s in her room and... My father’s not going to let you in.”
“Fuck your father,” Sadie said, grabbing Shelly’s hand and pulling her back toward the Burke’s house. “We’re going in Meg’s window.”