Sunshine (9 page)
Chapter 9
Happy Birthday
“The ocean floor begins to disappear, I sense that terrible depth.”-Thrice
When we reach the house, Boo and Trei have a message from their mom that she wants them home. Alex and Adrienne were pretty much making out all night, so it's no surprise when they leave either. I go straight downstairs to my apartment after I say goodbye to them. I wash off my makeup and change into normal clothes.
Who was I trying to be anyway?
Sprawling out on my couch face down, I suck in the smell of musty cushion that’s been sprayed with Febreze and fluffed up to appear like it's not as old. But it’s still the same dumb couch it was before, no matter how nice it looks or smells. I’m trying to keep my brain from over flowing when there’s a knock at my door.
“Can I come in?” Myles’ voice asks from the other side.
“Sure,” I sigh. It’s just easier to let him in than to explain why he can’t. I hear the door open and close behind him, but he’s quiet.
“Yes?” I don’t move an inch.
“Are you alright?”
I sit up and look at him. He’s wearing the same t-shirt and jeans he was wearing earlier. I don’t want him to know anything about Jack, and I don’t want him knowing anything more about me. Just because we’re friends doesn’t mean I have to share a scrap book of my life with him.
“Did you want something?” I ask.
He looks uneasy, but he lets it go for the time being. “Uhm,” he stops to re-think his words. “I just wanted to ask you…”
“What?” I’m getting annoyed.
“If it was okay with you that I stayed here tonight? I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable.”
I try not to look as concerned as I feel. “You don’t make me uncomfortable,” I blurt.
I think he’s expecting me to say no because his head jerks up suddenly to look at me. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah. Everything’s okay though?” I want to make sure that whatever happened to him that day he talked to me at the park isn’t going on again.
His eyes fix to a spot on the floor for a minute before meeting mine. “Everything with
me
is fine.”
“Good.” I ignore his emphasizing of words.
I think he’s just going to leave after he has his answer, but he sits down next to me on the couch. I move over so we’re further apart. Not that he sat that close to begin with. “Are you okay?”
I was hoping he wouldn’t ask again.
He pauses before asking, “Who was that weird guy, anyway?”
“No one and I’m fine.” I get up, making sure my face is blank so I don’t give myself away. Myles asking this only reminds me of why I came down here in the first place, and that’s no good. My hands are tingly; my skin feeling like it’s going to crawl again.
I should be alone.
Alone outside. Not alone in the bathroom.
“Sophie,” Myles starts.
“I’m going for a walk.”
“Do you want me to come with you?” He stands.
“I want to be alone.”
He thinks for a moment. “Well then I’ll leave,” he suggests.
Ugh, I just want to
go.
“No, that’s okay. It’s not you I’m trying to get away from.” It flies out of my mouth before I can catch it. I don’t wait for a reaction; I slip out the back door that’s conveniently attached to my apartment, unnoticed by everyone except Myles.
It happened two years ago.
It was the beginning of my sophomore year. Jack and I had broken up the summer before, and I was more nervous than anything to go back. I was worried—though I would never admit it—that Jack would be bothering me. Throwing paper at me, making fun of me, a million things whizzed around in my head.
But when I got to school, he acted like he didn’t even know me.
And I was happy.
This went on all year. He didn’t say one word to me. Not one. When Jade and Stevie’s senior prom came around, I wasn’t the least bit upset that I didn’t have a boyfriend to go with. Instead, Trei and Boo were my dates.
Trei and I went and got dresses together. I felt like any other teenage girl should feel: Normal.
I wore a beautiful, shiny, dark purple dress. Strapless, it showed off my back. This was before it was marked with the tattooed wings I would choose a few months later, or the scars that would ruin them a few months after that.
Mom was so excited that I was going she bought me a new shade of red lipstick to wear, and I actually liked it. My friends and I drank punch, we laughed. I was the happiest I had been in a long time.
At some point, Trei and I went to the bathroom together to fix our makeup. The DJ was playing one of her favorite Nirvana songs. She ran out of the bathroom, trying to drag me with her. I told her I’d be there in a second.
As I was washing my hands, I smiled to myself. I didn’t need Jack. He was just a guy. No one The Great Sophie Jean wasn’t prepared to get over.
Then the door to the bathroom slammed shut. I looked over with my hands dripping wet, and it was Jack. Coming at me. Fast. “You think you can just do this to me?” His grey eyes bulged.
“Do what?” I wasn’t terrified yet, but I was prepared to be.
He laughed to himself. “You think you can walk around teasing me, don’t you?”
I didn’t understand why he was saying this at first. Then I got it. I wanted to leave, so I tried to change the subject. “Jack, I don’t—”
“Shut up!” he screamed into my face, choking off whatever I was going to say.
I tried to remain calm. I walked around him to get to the door, but Jack grabbed my wrist from behind and pulled me so hard that I fell to the floor. He was dragging me into one of the stalls. I remember screaming, but I couldn’t hear it over the sound of my own pulse pounding in my head.
It didn’t take long for me to realize that no one heard me and that no one was coming.
He shoved me against the wall inside the bathroom stall, knocking my head against the cold cement. He was yelling all kinds of things at me, but I couldn’t hear that either. I kicked him, scratched him, tried screaming again.
I managed to knee him in the crotch once, before he smacked my head against the cement again.
After that, everything seems to come in bursts. Short blurs of what actually happened.
Flashes.
My legs and arms started to feel numb. It was harder to push him away and to stand up. That seemed fine to him. He wanted me on the ground.
Then it fades away.
And flashes back.
My arms wouldn’t move, but I tried to kick. That worked for a minute, before my knees were clamped down by his huge hands.
I can still feel it.
I can feel the rough tulle underneath the layers of smooth satin of my dress being hoisted over my hips. I can feel the cold air from the air conditioner on my chest. I can feel my cheeks and my ears, wet from crying, tears pooling underneath my neck and head.
He mumbled once in a while.
“Shut up. You made me do this. You should have let me do it before.”
Things like that.
No matter how badly my arms and legs would not work, I couldn’t think of anything but trying to get away. I started screaming again. I screamed things that they teach you to yell in school. Help, and fire, and rape. No one heard me.
This time when I fade away and flash back, all I feel is pain.
Everything felt so strange, like a dream. Only you don’t feel like you’re being torn in half when you dream. I didn’t go to a different place. There was no voice inside my head giving me some kind of wisdom or comfort. I was scared, and I felt everything.
I tried to tell him to stop, knowing full well that he would not. I tried to tell him it hurt, when I knew he simply did not care.
When he was done, he leaned into my face, and I forced myself to close my eyes and swallow the bile rising in my stomach. “If I had known this was your first time, I would have made it special,” he said in an even tone so cold I began to shake.
Then he stood over me, zipping up his pants. I couldn’t move. He went over to the sink, rolled up the sleeves of his red dress shirt, and washed his arms. They were covered in blood, though if it was his or mine, I didn’t know.
“No one will believe you,” he said into the mirror.
Then he was gone.
I must have blacked out again because I woke up and heard a slow song coming from the gym. The end of the dance. It couldn’t have been long; Trei would have come looking for me.
The longest few minutes of my life had gone unnoticed.
I slowly got up, my head spinning. The top half of my dress was completely off, so I pulled it up, I smoothed out the rest and went over to the mirror. My hair disheveled, my lipstick all over my face, cuts and bruises all over my arms and legs. Blood.
Turning on the faucet, I began washing my face. A light blue, square wrapper sat on the sink, crumpled and mocking me. It all came to me at once, like a jolt from an electrical socket.
Jack had just raped me in the girl’s bathroom at Lucky High School.
I cleaned myself up the best that I could. Turned off the water. I considered going back to the dance, resuming the happiness I had felt before. But my logical side caught up to me and I knew it wasn’t going to work. I thought about going back to tell Boo and Trei, but I couldn’t do that. I didn’t want them to see me like that. I didn’t want
anyone
to see me like that.
I couldn’t go home. Mom was probably waiting for me, and I didn’t want to have to explain to her why I looked like such a wreck.
Somewhere in my head the thought of telling the police came up. That’s what anyone else would do in this situation. But I couldn’t exactly go to them. Jack’s dad knew a lot of cops in town. And Jack wasn’t stupid. He protected himself. There was virtually no evidence that could point to him. And then everyone would know. All for nothing.
I left the bathroom, I left the school. I walked to my car casually, and I drove. I had no idea where I was going, but I drove anyway. I didn’t know where to go, I didn’t know what to do.
Stevie and Jade’s house is where I found myself in the end. I didn’t tell them; I was so incoherent that all they got was “Jack” and “something bad” happening. They wanted to take me to the hospital, call the police, Mom. I don’t know how I convinced them to, but after hours of arguing they promised to keep it a secret.
Jade and Stevie explained to Boo and Trei that I had gotten sick and that’s why I left the dance without telling them. I didn’t talk to anyone for days, too busy with trying to shower away what had happened. All of my time from that moment on was concentrated on not thinking about it.
Yet here I sit. Nothing but a picnic table behind the 7-eleven, distant sounds of kids walking the streets, the memory, and me. And I’m thinking about it; replaying every tiny detail I remember in my mind. I stare off into space, into the forest of trees beyond the neon glow of the store sign.
I remember the dance. I remember tonight, how rough his costume sleeve felt against my arm. The sensation of my skin wanting to crawl away from me gets more intense.
I sit on my hands in silence for a long time, trying to compose myself.
Trying to forget about Jack.
Trying to forget that my mother had not called me on my birthday.
Trying to forget that Adam is nowhere to be found.
And there’s also another thought in my head, bouncing around every once in a while. It’s always there when my birthday rolls around each year. I know it’s completely meaningless at this point, but every year I have this fantasy of getting a card in the mail from my
real
father. I am so. Unbelievably. Stupid.
The silence isn’t working. I start humming to myself. I close my eyes. I zone out for a while, trying to think of nothing but the sound of my voice. I have almost no concept of time, who I am, or where I am. That feeling of absolutely nothing.
I love that.
My trance is broken suddenly by the sound of a twig snapping from behind me. I whip around, half expecting to see an axe murderer with a mask made out of his victims standing there. But it’s Myles.
He looks almost startled when I do this. Like I had interrupted
his
mental breakdown. I look at him, his pale skin almost glowing under the light of the moon. His eyes shining so bright, they look like they belong to a cat.
I’m angry with him because he interrupted my calming down time and I’m confused as to how he figured out where I’d gone. It’s not like I drove here and he saw my car, and it’s not like I come to this place all the time to think.
I’m not sure which of these two emotions registers on my face. I gather from his expression that the pissed off side wins.
“Sorry,” he finally says.
My expression doesn’t change. I follow him with my eyes. He moves toward me but stops, noticing the look on my face, I guess. My anger and annoyance is now turning more toward the confusion I’m having. How did he know where I was? Again.
“What do you want?” I say through my teeth.
“I…”
I turn back around, pretending he’s not even there. My calm mood is completely ruined, my skin is back to the same horrible feeling as before. I have to start all over again now. I sit on my hands and close my eyes.
“What are you doing?” Myles asks quietly.
“Leave, Myles,” I say evenly.
“No.”
I spin around, my anger flaring again. “I came here to be alone.”
“I don’t want you sitting alone behind a convenience store on Halloween,” he says calmly.
“I don’t care what you want.”
He sits down on the bench across from me to prove his point.
I think about getting up and walking somewhere else, but he’ll just follow me there too. I turn my body so my back is facing him. Now the soft glow from the 7-eleven is in my face.
Shutting my eyes, I concentrate on pretending that Myles isn’t there. I’m better at that than I thought I would be. I resume my humming. I rock back and forth for I don’t even know how long. Eventually, I decide I’m about as calm as I can get so I stand up.
Myles looks at me without saying a word and stands, jingling his keys in his hand.
When we get back to Stevie and Jade’s, I go down to my room, skipping out on dinner and movies Jade and Stevie had planned with the excuse of being tired. There are a few presents on my bed; one wrapped in wrinkled pink cupcake paper (Leena), and a few in tinfoil (Boo and Trei). I open my present from Leena. It’s a little
Finding Nemo
action figure. I got her a pack of all of them at the Disney Store a while ago. She broke it up to give me the little pink blobby one. I open the ones from Boo and Trei. Makeup and candy. I smile weakly.
Then I don’t know what to do to keep myself busy.
I take a shower and crawl into bed where the memory starts again.
Blackness.
Breath on my neck, hot and wet.
My heart pumping too fast. Bumping against my ribcage too hard.
“You should have let me do it before.”
Breathe in. Out. In. Out.
Bump. Bump. Bump.
“No one will believe you.”
I’m on the floor in a cold sweat. My pulse is still pounding in my head the way it had in my dream. I glance at the clock. 1:30 am. I haven’t been asleep long.
Smoothing my still damp hair, I flick on the light. My hands are trembling too much, and I can’t breathe.
I could tell someone about this. Before it gets out of hand.
No. They wouldn’t understand. Or worse. They’d try to understand and instead end up feeling sorry for me.
And I’m all alone.
My skin feels like it’s trying to crawl away, my palms are all sweaty, my face is hot. I feel like my room is too big for me. I crawl into the bathroom attached to my room, shut and lock the door, and sit against the wall.
The white linoleum seems to be coming up at me. Maybe it’s the pattern of the tiles making me dizzy. I crawl into the bathtub. I sit for a while, trying to calm down. I hug my knees with my head in between them.
I grab for the cheap, baby pink, plastic razor that’s sitting in the soap dish. I tell myself that if I just hold it, everything will stop. I don’t have to do anything else. But my body knows what it wants, the monster is hungry. My teeth chew the end until the shiny metal is free. My fingers carefully grasp it.
When I see the cold rectangle, I feel calmer. My breathing slows down, and I drift slowly out of consciousness.