Page 88 of The Way I Used to Be
I don’t go to school the next day. Can’t face anyone. I’m sick, sick, sick, I tell Vanessa. She feels my forehead and tells me I’m burning up. I just sleep and sleep. And no one bothers me at all. All day and all night, it’s just me in my sleeping bag drifting in and out of consciousness.
“CALM DOWN, HONEY, it’s going to be all right, I promise,” I hear Vanessa say in a dream. In it, I’m crying and she’s trying to take care of me, and I’m trying so hard to let her. I open my eyes. A dim light glows through the curtain. My alarm clock says 5:10 a.m.
“Everything’s going to get straightened out, son, you’ll see,” Conner says, in a voice so tender, I question if I really am awake at all.
“No, Dad—you weren’t there. I just don’t think so.” It’s Caelin, and it’s him who’s crying, not me. And I am awake, I’m sure.
“Maybe you should call the Armstrongs, Conner,” Vanessa says, her voice muffled behind my locked bedroom door. The Armstrongs—Kevin—I heard that. I sit up fast, listen harder.
“No! Don’t call them. Not yet... not until we know if—” Caelin pauses and then I hear him sniffling again. But Caelin shouldn’t be here. His winter break isn’t for another week. No, something’s not right.
I unlock my door, small steps to the living room. No one hears me come in. My brother is sitting in the middle of the couch, head in hands, Vanessa in her bathrobe and slippers sitting next to him, arm draped across his back; Conner on his feet, hovering, a hand resting tentatively on his shoulder. They’re silent. Caelin’s body bobs up and down.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
They all turn their eyes to me. But they don’t say anything. Caelin drops his head back down into his lap. Vanessa’s chin quivers.
“It’s Kevin, honey,” Conner finally tells me.
“What—what did he do?”
“Do?” Caelin spits at me. “He didn’t do anything!”
“Shhshhshh,” Vanessa coos at him.
“Okay, well, what happened?” I try instead.
“It’s all going to be all right, so everybody just calm down,” Conner yells. “Edy, Kevin is... in a little bit of trouble, but it’s going to get straightened out soon enough.”
“What kind of trouble?” I scratch my arm, the anxiety bubbling up under my skin.
“This girl in our dorm is saying he raped her!” Caelin shouts. And then, at my lack of reaction, he adds, “He didn’t, obviously, but I don’t know what’s going to happen. The police came and—”
I can’t hear anything else because someone is yelling inside my head, taking a mallet to my brain. Screaming,God, no, no, no, no.I feel like I might fall over, like I might just stop breathing altogether. That old familiar bullet inches its way in deeper. I think it’s headed for my heart this time. No, my stomach. I run for the bathroom. Make it just in time to lift the lid and throw up.
I sit down on the cold tile floor. My head is pounding, like there’s literally a war going on inside my brain, complete with bombs and cannons and big guns and casualties. He did it. Of course he did it. There’s no question about that. But, did I do it too? I listened to him, I kept my mouth shut, and then he went and did it again, to someone else. Except this girl, whoever she is, she was brave, smart. Not like me. I am just the same sniveling coward I was then. I’m a mouse. I am a fucking mouse.
On the other side of the door I hear some more sniffling and low, wordless whining. Gurgling sounds from the coffeepot. I emerge, hopefully not looking like someone just kicked my ass.
“You okay, Minnie?” Conner asks, squeezing my shoulder a little too vigorously. Minnie, I haven’t heard that one in a while. How obscenely appropriate.
“Not really,” I admit.
“Don’t worry about school today.” He smiles. “We’re all taking a mental-health day. Sound good?”
I nod, try to smile back.
We sit around the house for hours, everyone looking devastated. Caelin’s a mess. Conner tries to act like everything’s okay. Vanessa vacillates between manic fidgeting and sitting too still. I feel like beating my head against the wall.
I can’t imagine eating, but I help Vanessa make lunch anyway. She says it will help everyone feel better. I seriously doubt that. As we sit around the kitchen table, mostly just picking at our grilled cheese sandwiches and stirring our bowls of lumpy tomato soup, the story comes out disjointed and biased.
Caelin tells us, “It’s his girlfriend. It just—it doesn’t even make sense—I mean, why would he need to rape someone he was already sleeping with?”
It made sense to me, of course. He needed to make her feel worthless, needed to control her, needed to hurt her, needed to leave her powerless.
“She broke up with Kevin for some reason or other—I really don’t know—but it wasn’t a huge deal or anything. And Kevin asked her to come over the one night, becauseshewas upset about the breakup, just to talk, and she says that’s when he ‘raped’ her.” He air quotes, and I want to lunge across the table and break his fingers off. “Kevin admitted to having sex with her—‘consensual’ sex.” He air quotes again.
I don’t bother telling him that if he’s trying to make her the liar, then he doesn’t want to emphasize the word “consensual.”
