Documentary (49 page)

“
What did you want to ask me?” Dylan asked after a sip of water.

“
It involves what I’m about to tell you.” Her shoulders dropped as she sighed. “Kai and Jeremy don’t draw a lot of attention overseas. Evernight never got big outside the U.S. And their songs haven’t really broken Top 200 in a lot of other countries. When we first got to Thailand, the local paparazzi were a little interested in Wes and Abel because of surfing, but that’s not a huge sport people follow in general, so the attention died down pretty quickly. I think one American guy snapped a picture of Kai, Wes, Abel and Jeremy surfing on the beach some of the days we were out there, and it ended up on a few U.S. blogs. Some American travelers recognized them and took some pics, but nothing ridiculous. The trip was normal and our last night was really fun. We were all looking forward to all the great things happening in the year.” Erica pressed out a quick smile. “And we had just done so much good work in the Philippines, we’d had an amazing trip in Thailand, and we wanted to celebrate.

“We were on Soi Bangla. It’s the center of Patong Beach nightlife in Phuket, and it gets crazy crowded, so it’s easy to blend in.
Tourist-heavy and paparazzi-free. Everyone’s just having a good time. It’s just bars and discos and a never-ending flood of people. We were in a huge nightclub. I had been drinking moderately. Modeling made me really calorie conscious even after I quit working. Alcohol is empty calories so I drink sparingly. I was ready to head back to our hotel, and it was right in the area. A really short walk. I figured Jamie would end up in Abel’s room anyway, and I wanted to take advantage of having the room to myself the last night because our flight was kind of early…early for
us.

“
Someone wanted to do one last toast with the whole group present—in hindsight it was probably Jeremy. We were with a lot of people, and the guys had girls with them, too. Huge group. Jeremy got all the drinks, and he said, ‘don’t worry, I got you juice’ before he handed me mine. It’s not like…I didn’t expect…”

“Erica,” Dylan said, leaning over and gently touching her wrist. “You don’t have to justify it to me. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who doesn’t just accept a drink from a friend. Especially one you’ve known a long time. We all do it. We trust the people we consider friends. It’s part of the relationship.
The problem is someone you trust taking advantage of you and drugging you.”

Erica nodded. “Soi Bangla is crazy, not
in a scary way, just exciting. I’ve been there countless times. I’ve never felt unsafe there at all. Like any other place, you just try to be smart and careful. Anyway, I think the group was eventually going to split up into smaller groups and hit different bars and clubs after the toast. Jeremy claimed he was going to meet up with a girl, which is really disturbing in hindsight as well, if he was referring to me.

“We usually ended up separating at some point
almost every night, but not before letting people know where we’re going to be. You know, everyone wants to do different things, and it makes no sense for everyone to be stuck with each other the whole time. Kai offered to walk me, even though I knew he really wanted to stay, but I don’t want to live in a world where I feel I need an escort everywhere because I’m a woman and it’s dark out. I want to be safe, but I don’t want a chaperone everywhere.”

Erica gulped down before continuing. “You know how you remember things that make sense after the fact? Well, Jeremy kept goading Kai into staying, and encouraged the others to stay, too, like he really needed to be sure no one who knew us would be anywhere near me.
And I went along with begging Kai to stay because I wanted him to have a good night.” Erica’s infuriation flashed on her face as she shook her head. “We did the toast, we drank, everyone hugged me and I left. Maybe ten minutes later, I felt weird…like unusually happy. I was saying hello to people, and walking really slowly, giggling, and then skipping on my way to the hotel. Like just really, really happy. I felt like I was watching myself do all of this, too, in a very out-of-body way. I thought maybe I had gotten drunker than I had anticipated.

“
Then I started to feel dizzy, still euphoric but dizzy. It happened so fast. I vaguely remember someone calling my name and coming up to me, Jeremy maybe, if I had to guess based on everything I know, but I can’t say for sure, and that’s the last thing I remember with clarity. It’s all bits and pieces that don’t really make sense. A few days ago, I smelled something that reminded me of that night and a few more memories came back, but not enough.”

Erica’s hands tightened into fists.
“I woke up on the beach with a headache. A really bad headache. My clothes were wet. It was almost dawn. I remembered even less than I just told you, and I had a complete breakdown right there by myself. I didn’t even know where in Patong Beach I was. I went to a nearby hotel and asked them to call the police. The people at the hotel helped me look up on the U.S. Embassy’s website what to do if you’re the victim of a crime in another country. After the police got there, and I talked to them and showed them where I had woken up, I went to the hospital. Too much time had passed for whatever I was drugged with, presumably, to be in my system. I had another breakdown there when they performed the physical exam. I had the memory loss, I was in pain, and I could
feel
that something had happened, but having to do the exam really made things sink in. When they were ‘collecting’ from me. When I was a…
crime scene
.” Dylan realized Erica hadn’t shed a tear as she relayed the story. She was tensing, rage flickered in her eyes, but she was controlled.

“Do you know he called me later that day? I mean everyone was calling me when they couldn’t find me, but he called me, acting all concerned. I didn’t know he was responsible then, but it’s just one of those t
hings I think about.” Erica’s eyes narrowed as she reflected. “I told Kai on the phone I wanted to stay awhile and that it was a last minute thing. I even told my fiancé the same thing when he called. I don’t know why I didn’t tell him right then. I just shut down. I only told my sister, Naomi, the truth and she came, and we stayed through the initial investigation.”

“So, how did you figure out it was Jeremy?” Dylan asked, trying to keep her emotions to herself.
She felt like bawling.

Erica
disappeared into the room and returned with her cell phone, displaying a picture to Dylan. “See the bracelet I’m wearing? It might be hard to on that picture, but I never take it off. I noticed it was gone after the attack, but not my engagement ring or my wallet or phone. So the police figured it wasn’t missing due to a robbery. Weeks later, they told me they had found it at the scene as part of their evidence collection. I guess they wanted me to identify things that might be mine and associated with the crime. The bracelet was broken—like it had been ripped off. They had also collected a huge diamond stud. Guess who has both ears pierced and
loves
flashy, ‘I’m rich’ earrings?”

“I noticed them when we were in Orlando
, the first time I met him,” Dylan confirmed excitedly.

Erica nodded with a smile.
“
Kai noticed that Jeremy had a Band-Aid on his ear lobe the day they flew out, and when he asked him about it, he was very dismissive about how it had happened. He made up some excuse, and from what Kai heard later, he told multiple stories when people asked in the days after. My guess is, my bracelet somehow got caught on it during the struggle, between the stud and the lobe, and pulled it down then out, hard. Or maybe I pulled it out on my own when I was trying to fight him off, I don’t know. Either way, it somehow got pulled out violently.

“When I got back to L.A. after I finally left Phuket, I moved out of the apartment I shared with my fiancé, and I’m not proud of what I did, but I just needed to get away. I was freaking out when I thought about myself flinching when
Bryson touched me. I miss him though. I see how you looked when I was talking about Kai, and I feel the same way about Bryson. But I’m so scared I’ll react…” A tear coasted down her cheek.

“My guess is, Erica, he’ll understand when or if you tell him. You’re still wearing the ring, so you must think he will, too,” Dylan said.

Erica nodded slowly and stared off. “I didn’t want to be around people. I didn’t want my friends to pity me or blame themselves. I’ve always had to take care of myself, too, and I didn’t want to seem weak or helpless. And I just didn’t want to deal with it. I didn’t want to deal with what I was
now,
a rape survivor.
I felt daily humiliation, to point of vomiting, thinking about how someone had done that to me, and I had been able to do nothing about it. It felt like I had no control over my life and it felt like it was over in some ways, and I just wanted a new one. I left my fiancé and my friends without a word, I quit my job and I moved in with my grandparents in rural Pennsylvania for a while. I told a few people I was fine when they called, and I eventually stopped returning calls. I’m sure my friends want nothing to do with me now. There’s just been so much time. I’m sure they’ve moved on.”

Dylan shook her head and squeezed Erica’s hand. “Not if they’re true friends, and you
have
true friends. They’ve been worried about you.”

Erica’s eyes
really filled with tears for the first time as she nodded. “Kai tracked me down when he should’ve been doing album promo...that hurt him a lot. His album should be killing it on the charts right now. He dropped everything for me. He’s in a lot of trouble with his label because of this. I basically told him the truth because it had been building up so much inside of me. He felt awful. He was so angry that he hadn’t walked me that night. And I didn’t blame him, and I still don’t. I want to be able to walk places by myself and drink if I want. I
should
be able to. And I should be able to trust my friends.

“Kai was the only one outside of my sister who knew. And when the Phuket police contacted me about the bracelet and the earring to find out if they belonged to m
e, along with some other things, I told Kai and he immediately flipped out when he remembered about Jeremy on the airplane. He asked me to send the picture of the earring to him and he told me what he had seen. Jeremy has both ears pierced, he had a bandaged ear with no stud, and no real answer about what happened. Too much for a coincidence. I spent another few weeks trying to come to terms with the possibility that my friend raped me. The whole thing just seemed so brazen and so calculated.” Dylan thought back to what Kai had told her about what he recalled Jeremy saying to him in the alley. She was conflicted about sharing that with Erica but decided against it. It was up to Kai to tell her.

“You always know, yes, it’s possible for the stranger in the bushes to attack you, but you know that it’s more likely it’ll be someone you know, someone you trust. Still, you tell yourself, I would
know
if my friend was like that. I’d be able to tell. And Jeremy was always nice to me, and he was my good friend for years. There was no clear thing I can pinpoint and say it was a red flag. He could be disagreeable when he didn’t get his way, but there isn’t anything that stands out particularly in my mind that said, ‘hey, that guy is probably going to rape me at some point.’ Maybe there was something…” Her voice trailed off. “…Something I missed.”

“Erica,” Dylan said
with a compassionate tone, “I don’t purport to know anything about this situation, but it sounds like you’re blaming yourself. You didn’t do anything. He will always be in the wrong, always.”

“Deep down, I know that, but it’s hard to stay away from the ‘I wish’ and ‘what if’s.’ As the weeks went by, I really needed
something
, you know? Enter our plan for Kai to secretly record him talking about that night and making up another lie about his ear which, by the way, I apparently managed to rip the earring almost clean through because he had to get ear lobe surgery. There might be DNA on the earring, which would put him at the scene definitely. And I know they took some scrapings from my fingernails, so maybe they’ll match. Maybe eventually, if there’s enough cumulative evidence they can file for extradition from the U.S. to Thailand, or something, but I’m not banking on it.

“According to Kai, he got very antagonistic, defensive and paranoid in the alley. Kai won’t tell me what he said, but I’m guessing it was enough to make him angry enough to hurt him the way he did. I was stupid to ask Kai to do that, knowing how he feels about me. My sister thinks I should just go public because rape allegations have a way of sticking around for a long time, but I want him to face charges,
even if it’s a remote possibility, no matter how much the backlash scares me—and it really, really does—and he can’t do that here. Maybe speaking up would pressure the Thai investigators to speed things up, but I can’t say for sure. I worked in public relations, and I don’t want this to play out in the press more than it probably will when things come out. And you can find a way to deflect almost anything with the right story. Jeremy knows me well, so I’m sure he’ll have a story.” Erica took hold of one of Dylan’s hands. “But you know what? Fuck his story. He’s going to have enough outlets to share it through anyway. And I’m sure he’s going to come after me with everything he has.”

Suddenly, she smiled brighter and more hopefully than she had since Dylan first walked into the hotel suite. “I’ve been watching your videos since the first one, and I’ve been so touched by the way you’ve captured Kai.
That’s
the person everyone who knows him personally gets to see. And you know what I saw too? I saw you chronicling yourself falling in love with him. You’ve told a beautiful story about my best friend. And it would mean the world to me if you’d help me tell mine.”