Chubby Chaser (20 page)

Sara’s alarm sounded at six thirty on Monday morning. It didn’t matter, though, because she had been up since three. She had never been the type of person who could easily drift off to sleep, but it had never taken her hours to do so, either, which was what had happened last night, and when she had finally fallen asleep, she’d had the most horrible nightmare: She dreamed that a masked man, wearing a blue-and-white letterman jacket, sneaked into her house by climbing through her bedroom window. He tied her limbs to the bedposts and awoke her by forcing himself inside her. When she tried to scream for help, he stuffed a football inside her mouth. Fearing death and gasping for air, Sara felt adrenaline course through her veins and give her the strength to break free from her restraints. She coughed up the football and then struggled with her attacker, pulling his mask off during the battle, revealing him to be none other than Jason. They bided in their duel.

“Don’t touch me, Jason!” Sara screamed. “Somebody, help me! Please! Somebody!” She thrashed around to free herself from Jason, but he held her tight.

“Sara! Sara! Sara, calm down! You’re at home, you’re safe!”

“Dad?” she croaked, as she opened her eyes and got her bearings: the light in her room was on, and her father was holding her. She reflexively pulled herself out of his grasp; she still felt uncomfortable with people touching her.

“Yeah, it’s Dad. What were you dreaming about? You were screaming bloody murder. Pretty soon the cops will be here trying to arrest me for child abuse.”

Well
,
it wouldn
’
t be the first time they were here
, Sara thought. “It’s nothing, Dad. Just your run-of-the-mill nightmare. I’m fine.”

“It didn’t sound like a run-of-the-mill nightmare. Who’s Jason? You kept begging him to stop and telling him not to touch you.”

“It was the
Friday the Thirteenth
guy. There was a marathon on last week. Must still be stuck in my brain.”

Her father laughed. “You and those horror movies. You’ve been obsessed with them since you were a little girl. I remember when you used to curl up in your mother’s lap, and you two would watch them together.”

“Yeah, those were the good old days,” Sara said under her breath.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Well, I know those are your favorite movies, but I think it might be a good idea to lay off them, at least for a little while if they’re giving you nightmares.”

“I agree.”

“Good night, kiddo.” He tried to kiss her on the cheek, but Sara pulled away. “You’re right. You’re too old to still be getting kisses from your dad.” He got up and walked toward the bedroom door. “Try to dream of something more soothing and relaxing. I have work in the morning, and you have school.” He turned off the light and closed the door.

Sara didn’t try to go back to sleep. She didn’t feel tired; she felt restive. Today would be her first day back at school since Jason had attacked her, and she hated to admit it, but she was afraid.

She trailed down to the kitchen to finish the last bag of Doritos, but anxiety and apprehension remained deep inside her well after she ate the last chip. For the first time, chips had failed to make her feel better. She hurt inside—figuratively and literally—and she didn’t know what else to do to alleviate the pain. She wanted to scream and cry, but her father was upstairs sleeping; furthermore, crying made her feel weak and helpless, as though someone had gotten the best of her, and she didn’t want to give Jason that power. It was bad enough she had cried in the hospital, in a room full of strangers. She prepared a generous helping of Fruit Loops, using half the box, and emptied her bowl in minutes, and though she felt full, she put a box of White Castle cheeseburgers in the microwave and quickly consumed those as well.

Sara’s stomach, filled to its brim, swelled and ached, so she went back upstairs to her bedroom. She turned the fan on, despite it being the middle of fall; aimed it at her belly; and lay down in bed to ease her suffering. She hated when she allowed herself to eat this much. Every time she did it, she’d swear she’d never do it again, but she always did, powerless to stop herself even when she was aware she was eating too much and would regret it afterward.

A couple of hours later, relief came in the form of a bowel movement. As she finished in the bathroom, she heard the Sleigh Bells’ “Rill Rill” coming from her bedroom. It was her alarm clock, apprising her that it was time to get ready for school. And time to get ready to face Jason.

Sara went into her bedroom, turned the alarm on her phone off, and then went back into the bathroom. She took another long hot shower, scouring her body raw to remove the stains tarnishing her and making her feel like a stranger in her own body. This shower was more painful to endure because of the broken skin she had caused during the previous day’s shower, but she endured it just the same. She felt dirty and disgusting, and she was willing to do anything to feel clean again. She was willing to do anything to feel like herself again. After her shower, she headed back into her bedroom to get dressed.

You can handle this
.
You
’
re strong
,
confident
,
and brave
.
You can handle this
.
You
’
re strong
,
confident
,
and brave
.
Sara said this mantra to herself on the way to school. And it worked, too: Sara felt strong, confident, and brave. Until she saw Jason’s blue Mustang in the student parking lot.

Sara stopped dead in her tracks when she saw Jason’s car. The cold, paralyzing sensation of fear unfurled in her belly and permeated her entire body, and before she knew it, she had run all the way back to the safe confines of her car. She tried to lock the doors, but her shaky hands wouldn’t cooperate. She couldn’t catch her breath, her heart beating against her chest like a raging river against a dam. She wasn’t strong, confident, or brave; she was a coward. When the police arrested Jason, a trial would soon follow. How would she be able to face him in court and testify against him when she couldn’t even face him at school?

Officer Barrett had told her she needed to talk to a detective about her case, but Sara hadn’t done it yet. Doing so might make her feel better and might make it easier for her to see Jason, although talking to the police hadn’t made her feel any better last time. In fact, it had made her feel worse. What if she went, and it was more of the same? She chortled at the irony of her situation: the police’s job was to protect her from her attacker and to make her feel safe, but she was as afraid of them as she was of Jason.

For a moment, she thought about dropping the rape charges, dropping out of school, and absconding to somewhere far away, where she knew no one and no one knew her, and starting over. She could get a job, get an apartment, take the GED, and then apply to Wesleyan. She knew the plan was ridiculous as soon as she had finished thinking it: she had no money saved to move with; she had no experience or training to get anything other than a part-time retail job, which wouldn’t pay enough for her to get an apartment, at least not her own apartment, which in her mind was the only option; and she had no doubt her father would report her missing. There was also no guarantee that fleeing would fix what Jason had broken. The only thing that she was positive would repair her was Jason going to prison, and for that she needed the police.

Sara turned her car on and drove to the police station. She walked through the revolving doors of the brick building, finding an unadorned lobby and a large desk on the other side. She traipsed up to the large desk that housed two clerks, her entire body feeling like a cell phone on vibrate.

“Hi, my . . . my name is Sara Krason and I’m . . . I’m here to speak to a detective about my . . . my case,” she faltered.

“What’s your case number, miss?” the clerk asked.

“I . . . I don’t know.” Officer Barrett had given her a card with the case number on it, but she had left it at the hospital.

“What’s your phone number?”

“It’s 215-555-3039.”

The clerk clicked on her computer’s keyboard. “Ah. Detective Cassidy has been assigned to your case. If you want to have a seat in our waiting area, I’ll call him down for you.” The clerk picked up her phone.

Sara took a seat in the waiting room and then decided standing would be better after seeing how dirty everything was. Several minutes later, a scruffy but handsome man in a crumpled suit was coming toward her. She had presumed she’d have a female detective, considering the crime done to her, and she wanted to ask for one, but she had allowed one man to make her recoil and retreat; she would not allow another.

“Ms. Krason?”

Sara, doing her best to come off as confident and in control, forced herself to look him straight in the eyes and nod, a huge feat for her regardless of her attack. She tended to avoid eye contact, especially if the person was attractive, because she feared what she always found staring back at her whenever she did make contact: either pity, condescension, malice, or revulsion, or some combination of the four. Sara hadn’t looked at the detective long enough to gauge whether he had any of those feelings in his eyes, but he probably did.

“Hi, I’m Detective Nate Cassidy. I’m the lead detective on your rape case. Come with me, please.”

He led Sara to a drab small room, featuring a table with a dossier on it and a couple of chairs. He pulled a chair out for Sara to sit on and took the other for himself. “So how are you today, Ms. Krason?” He was clearly trying to make small talk as he looked over the dossier. He set a digital voice recorder on the desk.

Sara cleared her throat and focused on making her voice sound strong and assertive. “I’m fine and yourself?”

“Good, thanks for asking. Okay, I know you already told Officer Barrett what happened yesterday, and I feel like a huge prick for asking you this, but would you mind repeating it for me?” He pressed record on the recorder.

“Jason came over to my house yesterday around one in the afternoon.”

“Did you invite him over?”

“No.”

“Had he been over to your house previously?”

“Yes.”

“How many times?”

“I don’t know. Twice a week since sometime in September. I was tutoring him in calculus.”

“So he was invited all those other times?”

“Yes. Like I said, I was tutoring him in calculus.”

“Gotcha. Please continue.”

“He came over yesterday afternoon to apologize.”

“Apologize for what?”

“He and his friends made some kind of bet about me. I think—”

“How did you find out about this bet?”

“Jason invited me to a party on Saturday—”

“So you went to a party with your attacker the day before he attacked you?”

“It was actually night time, but yes, that is correct,” Sara said, her voice slightly acerbic. She didn’t know why the detective kept grilling her, but it was nettling the hell out of her.

“Did you two have sexual relations at the party or at any other time prior to yesterday?”

“What, no!” Sara said, appalled. “I have never had sex before yesterday. I’ve never had sex before, period. What happened yesterday wasn’t sex. It was . . . it was rape!” Her voice turned into a hoarse whisper on the word
rape
.

“It’s okay, I’m on your side.”

“You don’t sound like you’re on my side.”

“I’m just trying to get all the facts, Sara. Please continue. You found out about the bet at the party, how?”

“I overheard Jason and his friends talking about the bet they had made about me.”

“Do you remember what they said?”

“Um, one of them said something like, ‘It’s not our fault you can’t win the bet,’ to Jason. I don’t remember which one.”

“So they never mentioned you by name?”

“No.”

“Then how do you know they were talking about you?”

“Because I . . . because I know! I always know when people are making fun of me. Why are you interrogating me? I’m not the bad guy, here. Jason Pruitt is the bad guy.”

“Like I said, I’m just trying to get all the facts. What happened after you found out about the bet?”

“I told Jason off and then I went home.”

“And this all occurred on Saturday evening, correct?”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“And when he came over on Sunday afternoon, it was to apologize about the bet?”

“Yes.”

“And then what happened?”

“I refused to accept his apology, because it was obviously phony, and tried to slam the door in his face, and that’s when he attacked me.”

“What did he do exactly?”

Sara looked away from Detective Cassidy and fiddled with her hands; a tickle irritated her throat. She had barely been able to tell a room full of women what Jason had done to her with her eyes closed, and now she had to tell a man?

“If you would rather talk to a woman, I—”

“No, I can . . . I can tell you,” Sara said, trying to muster some courage. Jason’s lawyer and the judge presiding over the trial might both be male, so she might as well acclimate to talking to men about her rape now, before things got really ugly. “He . . . he pushed me to the floor. I . . . I tried to run, but he pulled me back down to the floor by my hair. I tried to fight him off, but he punched me in . . . in the face. He pinned me down and . . .” Her throat closed up, and tears formed in her eyes (
I think there
’
s a box of tissues in here somewhere
, Detective Cassidy said, getting up to look for them), but she choked her tears back and cleared her throat. “ . . . and he raped me. I don’t need the tissues.”

“Good. That was great. That was really good. Thank you, Sara.” Cassidy sat back down and stopped the recorder. “I’ll give this to my superiors, and we can take it from there. In the meantime, we can see about getting you a temporary protection-from-abuse order, which is basically a restraining order, but because of your age, we’d need your father to sign off on that. Officer Barrett mentioned in her notes that you didn’t want him involved in your case. Is that correct?”

A restraining order did sound appealing to Sara; the unappealing sound of telling her father was louder, though. “Yes, that’s correct.”

“Okay, well, there’s not a lot we can do, then. Unless he’s made contact. Has he? Has he bothered you at all since the incident?”

Sara shook her head no.

“Okay, well, we’ll contact you as soon as we know something.”

“Have you spoken to Jason yet?”

“Not yet, but we will. Don’t worry, Sara, we’re taking this very seriously.” He offered his hand to shake.

Sara took it.

“Come on, I’ll walk you out.”

Speaking to the detective wasn’t as bad as Sara had thought it would be, and while she had come close to breaking down on several occasions, she was proud of herself for holding it together and not crying. Feeling optimistic, she decided to go to school and give facing Jason another try. She pushed the power button on her car’s dashboard to find out the time: it was 9:57. She had missed her first two periods and would miss most of her third, but she could make it in time for her afternoon classes.

It took Sara thirty-five minutes to make it back to school. Once again she did fine until she saw Jason’s car. Seeing it still had the power to immobilize her, clog her thoughts, and make her pulse race. She turned around and headed back to her car. She would go to school tomorrow. By then the police would’ve talked to Jason, maybe even arrested him. She was a straight-A student with perfect attendance and an unblemished record: taking a mental-health day would do her no harm.

Sara stopped by the Del Taco Loco drive-through and picked up three steak fajitas, three steak burritos, and three hard-shell steak tacos, and then drove home. Her father was at work, so she wouldn’t have to worry about him asking why she was home early from school. She vegetated in the living room, watching sitcom reruns and eating. Having nothing to do for a change was nice. She hadn’t been this free of responsibilities since she had been a child.

The doorbell rang at three thirty. One of the students she tutored had shown up. She had forgotten that was on the schedule today. She didn’t want to deal with people right now, so she decided not to. She stayed on the couch and let the doorbell ring. She’d deal with her students tomorrow.

The house phone rang at four. Sara let it go to voicemail.

“Hello,” the automated voice said. “Your child, Sara Krason, has an unexcused absence for Monday, November second. Please come down to the school to get the absence excused, or send your student to school with a note to excuse the absence. Thank you, have a good day.”

Sara deleted the message.