Chapter 9 The Clue in the Diary
Back in the nineties, rapes were committed by men wearing masks. If a stranger jumped out from a bush and forced himself on you, the police might show some sympathy. If your rapists were three boys who sat behind you in chemistry, you didn’t go to the cops. If you were drunk when it happened, with only hazy memories of what had been done to you, you kept your mouth shut altogether. It didn’t even occur to you to seek retribution. You were the one responsible.
Darlene Cagle’s mother believed her daughter was to blame. She said as much the night of the party—or to be perfectly accurate, early the following morning. Darlene had walked home barefoot from the lake, hiding behind trees every time a car passed. She hadn’t been able to locate her bra. All she’d wanted was to get in the shower and wash the night off her. After three hours of walking, she’d reached the trailer she shared with her mother, only to find the front door locked for the first time in her life.
She’d banged on the fake wood. Louder and louder, her panic building as though everything she’d left back at the lake was bound to catch up with her. Finally, she heard her mother’s slippers shuffling across the living room floor. The door swung open and her mother stood there wearing her latest boyfriend’s boxer shorts and a Mickey Mouse tank top.
Her mom’s mouth had opened to deliver the lecture she’d been waiting half the night to deliver. Then she stopped as her eyes took the terrible journey from her daughter’s head to her toes. Hair in knots. Mascara running in streaks down her face. Bra missing. Breasts visible through the gaping holes left by three missing shirt buttons. No shoes—only socks.
For a moment, it could have gone either way. Darlene thought about that moment a lot. So much had been decided in that five-second interval. Now that she was older, she knew that her mother had likely been on the opposite side of that threshold at some point in her life. She must have known exactly what Darlene needed to hear in a moment like that. But no one had shown her any kindness, so she chose not to offer any to her daughter. Instead, she dragged Darlene down into the muck she’d been trapped in for sixteen years. That, more than anything else that had happened to Darlene, was the thing that came closest to killing her.
“Do you have any idea what time it is?”
“No.”
She didn’t know how to tell her mother what had happened. She didn’t even know what words to use.
“You’ve been drinking, haven’t you?” her mother had demanded, as if that were all that mattered.
“Yes.” She had been. There was no point in denying it. Darlene could smell it oozing from every one of her pores. No one had forced her to fill her Solo cup with the stuff they called Green Goddamns. No one had poured it down her throat. But then again, no one had told her that even a little would be too much. Or that someone who’d only had three beers in her life had no business consuming a mixture of grain alcohol and green Kool-Aid.
“I thought you were supposed to be better than all this.”
“Mama—” Darlene hadn’t cried all night, but now she started.
“I’m not interested,” her mother said. “You made your bed, now you’ll lie in it.”
It was just the two of them. Darlene’s father lived in ritzy Cashiers, North Carolina, with his real family. He and Darlene’s mom had hooked up in high school. Or at least that’s what he’d called it after the results of the paternity test had come in. He’d been away at college when his daughter was born. It was ridiculous to think a boy with such potential would embrace fatherhood at nineteen, so no one had bothered to ask him. His folks hadn’t wanted much to do with Darlene or her mother, but they’d picked up some of the bills for a while. They’d both died in a car crash when Darlene was in the sixth grade. Their son had never come back to Troy. Not even for their funeral.
Her mother didn’t talk about the years before Darlene was born. It was as if she’d skipped high school altogether and gone straight from eighth grade to working at the Stop Shop. Darlene’s grandfather had been the local postmaster. Her grandmother ran the high school cafeteria. The Cagles weren’t rich like the Lamberts, Wainwrights, or Underwoods. But no one would have called them trash. Darlene had been ignorant of her role in her mother’s fall from grace until she was eight years old and the police dropped her off at her grandparents’ house after her mother’s first arrest for possession.
“You know, she could have done something with her life if it hadn’t been for you,” Darlene’s grandmother informed her.
That came as a surprise to Darlene. It seemed like such a strange thing to say. But the poison oozing from her grandmother’s voice told her there had to be truth in it. She lived with her grandparents for two months while her mother got clean. That was long enough to find the boxes in the basement filled with books, spelling bee trophies, science fair blue ribbons, and straight-A report cards—mementos pointing to a life her mom had never had a chance to lead. Two months was also more than enough time to figure out why her mother never showed any desire to visit her parents.
Darlene took three showers and two baths the day after the lake. When her mother got home from work that evening, Darlene went straight to her bedroom and barricaded the sole means of entry. Her room had one tiny window too small for a human to squeeze through. As long as the dresser was shoved in front of her door, Darlene felt safe. She stopped going to her summer job at the ice cream parlor. She wouldn’t pick up the phone or answer the door.
When her period came, she spent the whole day thanking God, though deep in her heart she was furious at him as well. She had made one mistake and paid a terrible price for it. It didn’t feel like something a loving God would do to a sixteen-year-old girl.
When her mother noticed the pads in the trash, she seemed angry that Darlene hadn’t been properly punished.
“So you got away with it, did you?” she said. “Next time you might not be so lucky.”
Determined to avoid a next time, Darlene hardly left her house for the rest of the summer. Only during the day, while her mom was working, would she emerge from her room. There was no television. The library books on her nightstand—Flowers in the Attic, It, and The Giver—had all been read and were long overdue. There was nothing to do but practice cheerleading jumps in the backyard—never too far away from the trailer to run inside if a car turned into the drive. The jumps were the only thing that cleared her head. So she practiced them for eight hours every day. Over and over again. Nothing else on her mind.
Her mom would return home after dark. By that time, Darlene had already been locked in her bedroom for hours. Sometimes Darlene would hear her mom talking. Sometimes a man would respond. But never once did anyone knock on Darlene’s door. Not even when Darlene woke up screaming in the middle of the night.
School started in August as always. Darlene kept her head down, hoping everyone had forgotten her. Judging by the number of boys who went out of their way to say hello, they hadn’t. Darlene wouldn’t have bothered with varsity cheerleading tryouts if the girls’ coach hadn’t caught her on her way out the door and insisted she return to the gym.
Darlene performed her favorite drill—the same one she’d practiced 315 times over the summer. Afterward, she hadn’t stuck around to hear the results. She’d seen Lula Lambert’s routine. It was good—not as good as hers, but good enough to make the cheerleading captain, Beverly Wainwright, feel comfortable giving the last spot to one of her own. Darlene knew how things worked in Troy. Rich girls stuck together. Poor girls fended for themselves.
She slipped out of the gym and made her way home. When she got there, she went straight to her room. There was no point in practicing anymore. The idea of cheering in front of a crowd squeezed the breath from her lungs. The last thing she wanted was to be conspicuous. There was no way she could perform knowing Randy and the others would be watching.
That afternoon, when she heard the sound of the car in the drive, she ignored it. When the knock on the door came, she pulled the covers over her head. When she heard Beverly’s voice calling her name, she threw the sheets back.
“I know you’re in there! I’m not leaving until you come talk to me.”
Darlene lay there, prepared to test Beverly’s resolve. But Beverly’s resolve appeared to be superhuman. She launched into a routine of show tunes, country songs, and stupid jokes that lasted until Darlene appeared at the front door ten minutes later.
“I was in the shower,” Darlene said by way of explanation.
Beverly gave her a once-over. Darlene was still in the clothes she’d worn to tryouts. “We announced the new varsity squad. Why weren’t you there?”
“Didn’t think I stood much of a chance. We both know how things work around here. There are people who matter in Troy, and I’m not one of them.”
Beverly didn’t even try to deny it. “What if I told you I was planning to change things?”
Darlene snorted. “Then I’d wish you the best of luck.”
“You don’t think I can do it?” Beverly appeared more than willing to accept any challenge. Darlene had known who she was since grade school, but her assumptions about the girl were, one by one, proving to be incorrect.
“I suppose if anyone can, it’s you,” Darlene told her. “Where are you planning to start?”
“I’m going to start by giving the last spot on the squad to the person who deserves it the most.” Beverly seemed to wait for an answer that wasn’t coming. “In case you’re wondering, that would be you.”
The panic surged, leaving Darlene lightheaded and sweating. “Thanks,” she managed. “But I don’t have time for cheerleading this year.”
“I know you were raped at the lake this summer,” Beverly blurted out. “I heard yesterday from a girl at church. I looked all over for you today.”
Darlene wasn’t sure what to say. The bluntness of the word rape had caught her off guard. There was an honesty to it. It seemed like people in Troy were always trying to pretty things up. People weren’t mentally ill, they were touched. They didn’t die, they went to a better place. They stepped politely around uncomfortable subjects—and the people who inspired them. “I was drinking that night.”
“What difference does that make?” Beverly demanded.
“It makes a lot of difference to a lot of people,” Darlene told her.
Beverly shook her head emphatically. “Not to me,” she said. “Not to God.”
“Well then, it’s too bad neither of you is my mama.”
Darlene hadn’t cried since the night she’d come home from the party. She hadn’t even considered it. But Beverly threw her arms around her and squeezed Darlene until the tears came out, bringing something that almost felt like relief.
“If you want to go to the police, I’ll go with you,” Beverly said when she finally pulled back. Her eyes were wet with tears, too. “I know there’s at least one witness. There could be more. You’d have a strong case.”
“Do you even know who I am?” Darlene gestured to the run-down trailer behind her. “Do you see where I live? Do you know who my mother is? Or how many times she’s been arrested? Do you think for one second they’ll ever believe me?”
Beverly hung her head. “No,” she said. “I suppose not.”
“When bad things happen to girls like me, we’re expected to tuck our tail between our legs and slink away.”
Beverly looked up. “Then don’t.”
“Don’t?”
“Don’t slink away and give them the satisfaction. Be there in front of them. Make them look at you. If not every day, then at least every Friday night.”
The horror of the thought left Darlene weak in the knees.
“Don’t let this fucking town win,” Beverly said, and Darlene marveled at how dainty she made the word fucking sound. “Do not let it stop you from being the person you’re meant to be.”
“What if the boys tell everyone? What if they do it again? What if all the parents find out?”
“It will be okay because you aren’t alone anymore. You have nine sisters now, and whatever happens, we will be right there by your side.”
No one else had ever gone out of their way for Darlene. She didn’t know how much to believe. “Really?”
“Really,” Beverly said, as though there were no other answer. She hugged Darlene again. “But I do need to ask you for one teensy little favor.”
“What?” Darlene asked.
“Well, the guys who attacked you can’t go unpunished. I respect your decision, and I understand why you don’t want to go to the police. But would you allow me to make sure they think twice before raping another girl?”
The ten Troy High School cheerleaders stood side by side at the game that Friday, in front of the entire town. Only three people were missing from the stadium. Randy Sykes, Brian Frizzell, and Jason Johnson. They’d been warned by the captain of the football team himself that their presence that Friday—or any other—would not be tolerated. For the rest of the year, they slunk through the halls and avoided all parties, hiding from the cheerleaders, who made their life hell, and the linemen, who kicked their asses for sport.
Darlene and Matt’s first date had been a double date with Trip and Beverly. Then Beverly got her father to recommend Darlene for a summer job at the courthouse that paid three times what the ice cream shop did. When Darlene needed recommendation letters for colleges, Beverly and her mother called in a dozen favors. With the help of the Wainwrights, Matt and Darlene both won scholarships to Chapel Hill. Darlene went on to medical school, where she studied psychiatry. She and Matt lived in a lovely house in Savannah with their gorgeous twin girls.
The sad irony was, Darlene made it out of Troy, but Beverly never did. Her mother was diagnosed with cervical cancer, and Beverly dropped out of college to nurse her. Three years later, her mother died and Beverly called Darlene to say she was pregnant. After she and Trip married, Beverly took care of baby Lindsay while her husband went to law school. When he graduated, they settled in Troy, where Beverly spent her days organizing bake sales, fundraisers, and luncheons for the town’s charities.
Beverly didn’t change Troy. There was only so much one person could do, even if they were Beverly Underwood. But there was no doubt at all that she had saved Darlene’s life. And though she had never—not once—asked for anything in return, Darlene had been waiting nearly thirty years for an opportunity to pay her back.
Darlene’s twin girls, Eleanor and Julia, were now the age she had been that night at the lake. She’d never told them what had happened. She knew she wasn’t protecting them by hiding the truth, but she just hadn’t been able to find the words. She discovered them on a family trip to Troy.
Her mother died a year after Darlene graduated from college, but Matt’s mother still lived in the house where he and his brother grew up. Darlene and her brood visited several times a year. Ordinarily, these were peaceful trips. Darlene adored her mother-in-law, Margaret, who’d been the nurse at the elementary school for four decades. But this year, sweet eighty-year-old Margaret Honeywell, who was still in possession of almost all of her marbles, could hardly sit still, she was so consumed with rage. One of the very worst children she’d ever had the misfortune to know was plundering the local libraries and making off with important books.
It took Darlene a moment to realize that the “child” to whom Margaret was referring was, in fact, forty-three-year-old Lula Dean. It took a bit longer to explain to Margaret why she was laughing.
“I’m not kidding around. She is awful,” Margaret told them. “I hate to say such things about a child, I really do. But I worked with a lot of tough kids. Thieves and liars and bullies and malingerers. I tried my best to love every one of them. But I couldn’t find it in my heart to love Lula Dean. That child is Satan’s seed.”
Darlene didn’t know much about Lula—only that Beverly Underwood had never cared for her, either. The year they cheered together, Beverly wouldn’t let Lula anywhere near her. Darlene couldn’t recall Beverly ever mentioning what had inspired such hatred, and Darlene had never bothered to ask. As far as Lula’s personality was concerned, it seemed like there were plenty of loathsome qualities to choose from.
Margaret Honeywell’s greatest disdain had been reserved for Lula’s library. “That fool went and bought a bunch of crap at a used bookstore, shoved it into a cabinet, and is passing herself off as a great philanthropist. You know what I saw in there? The Southern Belle’s Guide to Etiquette. Can you believe it? My generation had to fight like hell to get rid of gloves, hats, and pantyhose, and now Lula Dean wants to bring it all back? I am not giving up pants. I don’t care what that horrible woman says!”
Following the rant, Margaret’s two granddaughters immediately set out across town to see what all the fuss was about. When they returned, they brought a book with them.
“Mom,” Julia said. “We went to that Lula lady’s little library. The Southern belle book was gone, so Eleanor picked this one.”
She held up a copy of a book, The Clue in the Diary. On the cover, titian-haired Nancy Drew ran from a burning building while a man hid in the bushes.
“Yes, I’m sure Lula thinks all fifteen-year-old girls should stick to reading books written a hundred years ago,” Darlene said. “Though I don’t remember ever seeing her touch a book back in the day.”
“I don’t think she touched this one, either.” Julia handed her mother The Clue in the Diary. “When we opened it up, there was another book inside. We think it’s one of the books on the banned book list Grandma showed us.”
“We know it was banned,” Eleanor corrected her sister. “We found a clip online where Lula Dean called it pornographic.”
“Really?” Darlene took off the dust jacket. The title of the book was emblazoned on the front. Speak. She recognized the title. Troy wasn’t the first town to have banned the young-adult book about a girl who’d been raped. “Do you mind if I look through this?” she asked her daughters. “I’ll give it back to you as soon as I’m done.”
“You don’t need to,” Julia said. “We’ve already read it.”
When Darlene finished, she was glad they had. She’d never censored her conversations with her girls, but she hadn’t been able to prepare them for the reality of rape. The worst thing you could do as a parent, she thought, was to shield young women from the ugliness of the world—then blame them when they did not see it coming. Darlene knew the time had come. She needed to tell her girls everything.
The next day, Darlene sat down and wrote her own story. She left nothing out but the names of individuals. But she included all the details people in Troy would need to identify those responsible for hurting her. No villains were spared, not even her mother. No detail was too minor. Everything Darlene remembered went down on the page. And when she was done, Darlene posted the story on her Facebook account. Then she walked to the kitchen, poured herself a giant glass of red wine, and guzzled it. Then she poured herself another.
By the time she got back to the computer, the post had blown up. Her phone, which she’d left on the desk, was ringing. She wasn’t surprised. Two years earlier, Randy Sykes had been elected Troy’s mayor. Jason Johnson owned a successful software company in Memphis, and Brian Frizzell was dead of an opioid overdose.
Darlene ignored the first three calls. Then Beverly’s number appeared on the screen.
“You did it,” she said when Darlene answered. “I’m so proud of you.”
“I was worried it might be too late to make any difference.”
“It’s never too late,” Beverly said.
“For you, either,” Darlene reminded her.