Page 30 of Serpentine Valentine
“Where have you been the last decade, Flo?” Haley asked, backing me up the way she always had and always would. “Consent is everything.”
But Flora did what she always did, which was to dig in her heels even though she probably knew she was in the wrong. “If you’re drunk and making out with a guy, you have to accept that he’s going to think you want to fuck him.”
“But you don’t owe him that,” I rebutted, thinking of Lex, thinking of whoever the girl was that Jerrod had attacked.
“If you’re going to be a tease…” She shrugged.
“I mean, it’s a good explanation. Maybe the girl just regretted sleeping with him afterward,” Cornelia suggested.
My stomach cramped so hard, I hissed. “This is why girls don’t come forward when they’re assaulted. Listen to the way we’re talking about the victim, and we’rewomen.”
“Oh, get off your high horse, Luna. You’re always so fucking righteous.” Courtney rolled her eyes. “We don’t even know who the victimwas. It’s not like she went to the police or anything. Some random, weirdo vigilante strung Jerrod up in the boatshed and assaulted him! Why don’t you have some sympathy for him, huh? The rowing team is going to beshitwithout him while he recovers.”
“He hurt me.”
The words were soft, but they landed with a bang that vibrated through the entire girls’ locker room. Everyone stopped midmovement, and the side chatter ceased.
At first, no one knew who had spoken, but then Taya lifted her head, blond hair parting like curtains to reveal a tearstained face.
“He hurt me last year at the party after they won sectionals,” she continued in this dead voice like a recording over the speakers. “I was there with Andrew, but I drank too much and told him I was going home. He called me a cab and waited with me until it arrived. But on my way down the path, I got sick. I threw up in the bushes, and when I was done, the cab had left. Jerrod was outside. He offered to drive me.”
A tremulous pause, only the sound of her laboring breath echoing against the lockers. Fat, crystalline tears beaded in the trough of her lower lids and slid down her cheeks, fast and then faster, and she started to speak again.
“H-He was friends with mutual friends. I didn’t think about it. I just said yes. He had a water bottle in the car, and he gave it to me and said it would help with the hangover. I guess I fell asleep in the car…when I woke up, I was in the back seat, and he was on top of me.”
I slid closer on the bench, not touching her because it didn’t feelright, but just letting her know I was there. I was there, and I believed her. Behind me, Haley moved from her open locker to stand behind us.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Kenzie asked, her mouth hanging open in shock.
It felt so much more real to the girls, I realized, now that one of our own had spoken out. It was so much harder to disassociate from someone you spent six days a week with, sweating beside, cheering with over wins and consoling over losses. We all liked Taya. She was a solid defender, quiet, but also there if one of the team needed her. It was almost appalling how simple the difference was. The team knew Taya. They didn’t know Lex or the victim who’d come out first about Jerrod. If agony had a familiar face, it was easier to sympathize.
It killed something in me to know we hadn’t been there for Taya when she needed us. The knowledge that Lex had been essentially alone with her truth for so long was like salt in the wound.
I gave in to my selfish temptation and placed a hand in the center of Taya’s back.
Relief coursed through me when she leaned back into it.
“I did,” Taya whispered, swiping at her runny nose with the sleeve of her training jacket. “I went to the school counselor the next day. But Jerrod’s teammates vouched for him, said he was with them the whole time.” She shrugged. “He didn’t…I mean, he wasn’t inside me, but he humped me and then came on my face. That’s when I woke up.”
“That’s still sexual assault,” Haley said softly, placing her own hand on Taya’s shoulder.
“Yeah?” she asked, desperation in her tone, eyes so filled with tears they seemed magnified, bulbous. “I thought so.”
“You thought right,” I agreed quietly. “Can I hug you?”
She hesitated for a moment, chewing her lip, and tears sprang to my eyes. She reminded me of a wounded animal, too scared even to accepthelp.
When she nodded, I carefully and slowly wrapped her up in my arms and stroked her hair.
“I’m sorry, Taya,” I murmured.
Her sob broke like a wave against the crest of my shoulder, and then she was crying wildly, moaning tears that filled the small room like a mournful symphony.
Haley was there then, hugging her too. And then Kenzie and Cornelia and Margie and Devon and the rest of the girls, surging forward to envelop our friend in the comfort and safety of our love. Even Flora and Courtney stepped forward, the last two, looking horrified and ashamed.
“It’s okay,” Taya said, voice thick with snot and tears and wild relief. “I almost didn’t believe it myself.”
A tear rolled down Flora’s cheek. “I’m so sorry, YaYa.”
