15
I was only just fourteen the first time it happened.
Maryanne had her friends over—the popular kids; she’d been trying to get in with them since day one, but she was a straight-A goodie-goodie and that wasn’t the thing back then, not in South Carolina anyway.
I knew she liked Beckett Lane; it was as plain as the nose on her face—and, sure, my sister is a master manipulator, but with Beckett Lane she was clear as glass.
She was seventeen when she finally got in with that crowd. Dad got her a Range Rover for her birthday and let her take the house up in Sullivan’s Island for the whole Fourth of July weekend with all her friends, no parental supervision. My mom said it was a recipe for sin, but Maryanne talked her around. After that, these seventeen-year-olds were around our house like a bad smell.
All of them were nice enough. Beckett was particularly nice.
There’s a prickle you get. You feel it on the back of your neck and your forearms, when you’re in danger.
He walked past my room that night and stood in the doorway. I felt the prickle. He stood there too long, watched me all too focused or something, I don’t know.
“What are you working on over there?” He nodded at me, walking into my room uninvited.
“I have a paper on the Constitution due tomorrow.”
“Oh.” He nodded again. “Yeah, I remember that. I still have mine—if you want it, I can send it to you?” He gave me a warm smile.
I flashed him a quick one in return. “N-no thanks.”
He shrugged. “Up to you.” He didn’t leave. “I like your T-shirt.” His hand grazed my white T-shirt, but it was close to a place I didn’t want him touching me.
“Thanks.” I jumped up and walked out of my room quickly, down the hall and toward the door to Oliver’s bedroom. I could see that the lights were on and so was his music, so I walked faster, but even then, I had a feeling Beckett was following me.
I burst into Oliver’s room because I knew I’d be safe in there.
But he wasn’t in there.
His window was open. Curtain flapping in that South Carolina breeze. José González blaring loud.
In that moment, I was sure of two things. One, Oliver had snuck off again with the new guy in his class from New York, and two, I was about to have sex for the first time, and it wasn’t going to be my choice.
I didn’t fight him so much. I wasn’t sure there was much use?
My parents were out. They were at a gala, staying up in Charlotte for the night. Tennyson was with his girlfriend in his room, and they for certain were not coming up for air for hours. No use in me screaming either, because Oliver’s music was loud, but Tennyson’s music was louder.
Oliver might have stayed out for the whole night with that guy, I didn’t know… That was the beginning of Oliver’s sporadic phase that he is arguably still in to this day.
My only hope was Maryanne, but Kayleigh Stevens was downstairs, whom she’d been trying to win the approval of for months, so I didn’t feel bright about my chances there either.
I did tell him no, and I asked him to stop, and I do wonder sometimes in retrospect if I had cried or screamed if he would have? I didn’t, though. I just lie there with my wrists pinned and my eyes wide open.
And then, about halfway through, my sister walked in. Maryanne froze like a deer in headlights. Beckett looked back at her, a hint of a frown on his face at the interruption. He didn’t climb off me. He just stared at her.
Her eyes fell from his to mine and it was all in slow motion.
I stared at her, not blinking, waiting for her to panic or scream or run for me and tear him off, but all she did was this slow blink, and then her eyelids fluttered a few times and then she backed away. She just closed the door.
Maryanne was his girlfriend by the time we got home from school the next day. She was over the moon and didn’t look me in the eye for a week. And then, after that, I guess he took it as permission or something? It happened again and again. I don’t know how many times. I don’t know if it was the no-fighting thing that made him think it was okay, or the fact that Maryanne walked in and said nothing, did nothing—I wondered if both those things combined sent him a mixed message.
I was confused about it for…geez, I don’t know—six years or something. Was it even assault? It happened so many times… So many times before my dad walked in on it, which was the last time and about a year after the first.
He never threatened me. I never had a bruise. He never made me bleed. He never even hurt me, not like that—so what was it? Was it my fault? Did I let it happen? I’d just lie there—I never fought him off.
Did I kiss him back? I think about that sometimes. Sometimes I wonder if I started to, toward the end? I think for a while I tried to change the narrative in my mind that we were a thing and he loved me. And do you know what? He actually was so good to me, all the time, in front of everyone. At school, everyone thought he was the best guy, and sometimes I thought he was too, and that fucked me up because I could never tell what that meant. Not then, anyway.
It was guilt or grooming or something fucked up, I can see that now—but then, I wasn’t so sure. I wasn’t even sure it was assault back then. I stopped telling him no after the third or fourth time—I’d just lie there, frozen and still.
Then we began to study cognitive function in university and the minute my professor mentioned “tonic immobility,” I knew it…knew it in my bones.
Beckett Lane raped me for a year, and my sister knew it too and did fuck-all to help me.