Going Under (24 page)

I awoke on an unfamiliar couch. It smelled
of rich leather, and in my peripheral vision, I saw the flickering
of candlelight, warm and comforting. Wherever I was, I liked
it.

Someone walked up to me and removed a cloth
from my head. I squinted and recognized the face, but I couldn’t
yet put a name to him.

“You scared the shit out of me,” he
said.

“Huh?”

“You fainted, Wright.”

Wright. Someone calls me that. Who calls me
by my last name? It was on the tip of my tongue.

“I did?”

He sighed deeply, and then I felt the couch
sink next to my stomach. He must have sat down.

“Does that ever happen to you?” he
asked.

“Sometimes,” I replied.

Terry! That’s who it was!

“Terry, why did I faint?” I asked.

There was a brief pause.

“Well, I think because I discovered
something you didn’t want me to,” he said. He looked down at me and
furrowed his eyebrows. “You said something you didn’t mean to.”

And then I remembered. My slip-up. How could
I be so careless?

“Brooke, please tell me I misheard. Please
tell me I’m crazy or something. Anything, because I’m freakin’ out
over here,” Terry said.

I breathed deeply and thought about creating
an elaborate lie. And then I remembered I was lousy at lying.

“I thought it was the only way,” I said.
“He’s done it to other girls, Terry. I know he has. I know one of
them. I mean, she wouldn’t come right out and say it, but the signs
are all over her. He’ll keep doing it. I know he will, and no one
will stop him. None of these girls will come forward. They’re all
scared or unsure or something. She’s scared of him, Terry. This
girl I know.”

“Are you hearing yourself?” Terry asked.

“I’m not crazy,” I snapped.

“I didn’t mean to imply that. But Brooke,
what more can you do but expose these guys? You can’t make the
girls come forward. You can’t make them press charges.”

“Exactly!” I said. “I can’t make
them
press charges. But I can. Or at least I thought I could.”

“Jesus Christ, Brooke. Are you hearing what
you’re saying? You’ll let this guy screw you to what? Get justice
for a bunch of girls you don’t even know?”

“I do know them!” I shot back. “They’re
Beth! All of them!”

Terry said nothing. He placed his hand on my
forearm, and I didn’t pull away.

“I blew my chances anyway, so you don’t need
to worry.”

I sat up slowly, the pounding in my head
increasing then subsiding once I sat still, fully upright.

“What are you talking about?” Terry
asked.

“I’ve been trying to get Cal to like me. I
figured I could get him to want me and then use me. But I messed
everything up. I’m sure he won’t ever talk to me again. Whatever.
At least I can try to keep these girls safe during the next
game.”

“How did you mess things up?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I
replied.

“Why are you doing all of this?” Terry
asked.

I huffed. “I told you. For my friend,
Beth.”

Terry stared at me, and I shifted
uncomfortably.

“You think you’re responsible,” he said.

“I don’t think it. I know it. She told me
about her rape. I should have done something. I should have made
her tell her parents. I should have been a better friend. I should
have gone to that party with her.”

I cried unabashedly. I didn’t care that I
looked unattractive, or scared, or tired; I cried until there was
nothing left, until I was dried up. Terry sat beside me and put his
arm around my shoulder. He held me like a big brother, saying
nothing, just letting me cry out my anger and guilt until I settled
down and the hitching in my chest eased.

“I’ll help you get them, Brooke,” Terry
said. “But you have to promise me you’ll kill this crazy idea about
setting yourself up as a rape victim.”

“I told you I had,” I argued.

“No, you never said that. You said you think
you messed up the chance,” Terry countered. “You have to promise
me, Brooke. We’ll get him and all the others, but you have to
promise me you’ll stay safe.”

I nodded.

“Say it.”

“Come on, Terry.”

“Say it, Wright.”

I sniffed and wiped my face. “I
promise.”

Terry met my dad for the first time that
night. He drove me home, introduced himself as the head chef, and
told my dad he was escorting me to my car when I fainted. Dad was
sick with worry, and he crushed me a little too hard against his
chest, but I was glad to be home and in his arms. I realized in
that moment that, despite all the bad I was learning about Cal and
Parker and their friends, there were still good men in the world.
Terry and my dad were two of them.

***

“This is daunting,” Ryan said, staring at
the blank canvas, holding my brush.

“No,” I replied. “This is the fun part. When
it all starts.”

We were standing on my back patio Sunday
afternoon. I thought it would be fun to paint a picture together.
Ryan was unsure when I explained my plans over the phone, but he
agreed to try. I stood mixing the colors on my palette while he
stared, obviously frightened, at the awaiting canvas.

“Now don’t be nervous,” I said. “There’s no
right or wrong to it. That’s what makes it art.”

“Hmm.” Ryan sounded dubious.

“I’m serious. Create whatever you want.”

“Yeah. I’m more concrete than that,” Ryan
said. “We’ve got to have some sort of idea in mind.”

“Okay. How about a winter scene?” I
suggested.

It was surprisingly mild outside for
mid-November. But the striking fall leaves had long since vanished
from the trees. Everything outside looked like winter, even if it
didn’t feel that way. Bare trees. Muted sky. Gray.

“You gotta narrow it down, Brooke,” Ryan
said.

“All right,” I said, and came up behind him.
I stood on my tiptoes and spoke into his neck. “Snow.”

I handed him the palette, showed him how to
hold it, then placed my right hand over his to help him guide the
brush.

“A sloping hill,” I suggested, and steered
the brush to the paint, swirling the tip in a light green and
bringing it to the canvas.

“I thought it was snowing,” Ryan said,
giving up control of the brush as I grazed it over the canvas
fibers.

“Soon,” I said. “Now feel what’s happening
with the paint. Notice how it glides effortlessly over the canvas?
How the brush doesn’t pull or tug?”

Ryan nodded.

“That’s because this is primed canvas. If it
weren’t, you’d see the paint soak deep into the fibers immediately
on contact. But this canvas forces the paint to hover on the top,
waiting for you to let it dry, rework it, whatever you want.”

I dipped the brush once more and continued
the curve of my line, creating the rolling hill that would be the
backdrop of our snowy scene.

“You wanna try by yourself?” I asked,
releasing his hand and backing away.

“I don’t know, Brooke,” Ryan said. He
shifted on his feet.

I grabbed another paintbrush and stood
beside him.

“You can’t mess it up,” I said.

“I’m sure I can,” Ryan countered, and I
giggled.

“No you can’t,” I said, and showed him by
dipping my brush in gray paint and swirling it all over the top
half of the canvas.

“Wait! Shouldn’t that be blue?” Ryan asked.
“You know, for the sky?”

“Sure,” I replied, and waited for him.

He cleaned his brush and dipped it in blue,
hesitating before bringing it to my gray swirl.

“Don’t be afraid,” I encouraged.

He took a deep breath and ran the blue on
top of my gray, mixing the colors to slate, and I thought our snowy
scene had just taken on a blustery effect.

“A winter storm,” I said, and continued with
my gray, dotting and gliding, twirling and smashing until the sky
was filled with the promise of snowflakes. Ryan mingled his blues,
discovering by accident the effects of flicking his brush to create
a 3-D impression with the paint.

“That’s so cool,” he said, staring at his
work.

We painted all afternoon, creating the
winter sky, stopping only to kiss once. Neither one of us was
interested in making out. We wanted to create a different kind of
art together, one Ryan could hang in his bedroom.

“And why do you get it?” I asked.

“I figured we’d share it,” he suggested.
“I’ll take it for a few months, and then you can. We’ll switch
off.”

I liked that idea. It meant that Ryan
planned to keep me around for awhile, and suddenly I thought of
many more paint projects we could undertake together to make me a
permanent fixture in his life.

***

Parker was stupid. Why would he keep a
record of all the league’s previous games? Certainly not to remind
himself of all his past wins. He didn’t have many, after all. Cal
did, though. I assumed most of his wins came by force. I already
knew he was bad news, and I thought Tim was as well. My brief
encounter with Tara in the hallway a few weeks back suggested his
violent behavior, but I had to be sure.

I cleared Hunter. Melissa seemed fine, and
for a week, I tracked another girl at school who had supposedly
given it up to Hunter two years ago. She appeared happy. She was
heavily involved in sports at school and had a group of close
friends she hung out with. She smiled a lot, and I just knew in my
heart she was okay. I crossed Hunter off the list.

Parker was an asshole to me, but I had a
hard time finding out if he was a monster like Cal. There was only
one girl he’d slept with in all four years’ worth of records,
according to the scores. And she no longer attended Charity Run. I
did a Google search for Jessica Canterly, but came up empty-handed.
I realized Parker would probably be my hardest target.

Mike was a non-issue at the moment. He
started the league a year ago and never scored above a blow job. I
tracked a few of the girls who bestowed that lovely gift on him and
decided they were fine. None of them seemed depressed or broken. A
few were complete bitches, however, and it was hard for me to feel
sorry for them for their ignorance. Aaron was new, and Game 1 of
this year was his first. I had no idea if he was simply in it for
innocent fun—if there was even such a thing—or if he had other
motivations. All I could do was wait to find out.

I was doing more research using Beth’s old
yearbooks when I came across the picture. I gasped. It was the girl
from the bathroom—the one sobbing uncontrollably. She was the one I
was sure nodded when I asked her if something bad had happened to
her. She had been a player in Game 4 of last year. The game right
before the current one. She was on Tim’s team and was classified as
a virgin, scoring the ultimate points for having sex with him.

I wasn’t really searching for her, but by
divine providence, we ran into each other again. And again in a
bathroom, though this one wasn’t on the senior hall. I slipped into
a bathroom on the junior hall before leaving school Tuesday, and
there she was, hovering over the sink, reapplying her lip gloss.
She froze when she saw me.

“Oh, hey,” I said.

“Hi,” she replied, unsure.

“How’s it going?”

“Fine, I guess.” She turned on the water to
wash her hands.

I assumed she’d try to escape as quickly as
possible, but she hung around. It almost seemed as though she was
silently inviting me to ask her questions. I took a shot.

“It’s just that after that day a few months
ago . . .”

She wiped her hands and threw away her paper
towel.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

I nodded and smiled.

“I was just having a bad day,” she said.

“I totally understand that. It’s bad enough
being in high school, right? Then on top of that you’ve gotta worry
about fitting in, getting good grades.” I paused for the briefest
second before adding, “Boys.”

She tensed. I saw it.

“Boys,” she snickered.

“For real,” I said, trying to encourage her.
“Why are they so lame?”

“Don’t ask me. I don’t understand them at
all,” she replied. She swung her book bag over her shoulder.
“They’re awful.”

“The worst is when they’re mean,” I said. “I
slammed my head on my desk at the beginning of the year—the first
day of school, actually—and they laughed at me. Like we’re back in
second grade. What the hell?”

She shrugged. “Well, at least when they were
mean in elementary school, it usually meant they liked you.”

“True.”

“Now it just means they’re assholes.”

I laughed. She laughed, too.

“I’m Brooke, by the way,” I said.

“Oh, I know,” she replied. “I’m Amelia.”

“Wait, how do you know my name?”

“You’re the girl who fainted in the
hallway.”

Super. People knew me as the fainter.

“And you kind of have a reputation for not
being very friendly,” Amelia admitted.

“What?”

“Well, I just heard that you don’t have any
friends here. Girlfriends, that is. That you don’t really like
girls.”

I was pissed. I worked my ass off every day
to appear friendly to the bitches who strolled the senior hallway
like they owned the place. They were the ones who gave me major
attitude. What the fuck?

“I shouldn’t have said that,” Amelia said.
Apparently my anger was written all over my face.

“No, it’s fine. It’s true I like to keep to
myself,” I said. I was getting unfocused. I wanted the conversation
back on Amelia and why she thought boys were assholes.

“Maybe they’re just jealous,” Amelia
offered. “Maybe they think you’re going to steal their men since
you’re really pretty.” She smiled shyly.

I laughed. “Hardly. But thanks for the
compliment. I have no intentions of dating any of the losers at
this school, though I have to admit that this Tim guy in my class
is kind of cute.”