Page 130 of The Way I Am Now
White Hair scoffs and says, “Again, at any point during this encounter, did you verbally say no?”
This is it. The last question. I have to get it right. I search my brain, but I can’t find the no I’d memorized. It was supposed to be right there, waiting for me to scoop it up and throw it in his face, all business and casual. But what the fuck. I open my mouth and literally nothing comes out.
“Your Honor,” he says.
“The witness will answer the question,” the judge says.
I look down at my hands in my lap, and I see my dandelion sticking out from under the cuff of my shirt. “There was no question,” I hear myself say, quietly, into the microphone.
“Please speak up,” the judge says.
“There was no question,” I repeat.
White Hair sighs and says, slowly, enunciating his words: “The question was, did you, at any point during the encounter, say no?”
“And my answer is, there was never a question.” I hear my voice shaking. “He never asked.”
The lawyer repeats himself, this time adding, “Just yes or no.”
“There wasn’t a question to answer,” I say again, and I can see how mad I’m making him, his face turning red and his mouth going all rigid as he speaks.
“Yes or no,” he says. “Did you tell him no?”
“I couldn’t answer a question that was never asked.”
“Did you ever say the word no?” he almost yells at me now.
I look down at my tattoo again. Then back up, except this time, instead of looking at White Hair or CeCe or Mara or Lane, I look at Kevin. He’s watching me closely, that same knifelike stare he used to control me, all this time, up until now.
I lean into the microphone, even as my whole body is trembling, even as I feel the tears rushing to my face, and say with precision now, not breaking eye contact with him: “He. Never. Asked. The. Question.” I bypass White Hair and look up at the judge, sitting there perched above my shoulder. “That’s my answer.”
The next thing I know, I’m busting out through the doors, racing down the hall, trying to remember if I’m headed in the right direction for the bathroom. Mara’s running behind me, calling my name. But I don’t stop until I make it. And then I push the door open and throw up. Everything.
Mara holds my hair back and keeps telling me how amazing I was.
I hear Lane’s heels against the tiles. She says something like “Oh! Eden. Okay. It’s okay.” And then I’m sweating and freezing and laughing and crying all at the same time as I kneel on the floor next to the toilet. Mara flushes it for me, and Lane brings me some wet paper towels to wipe my mouth, and then even she kneels down on the floor next to me and Mara.
“You did it,” Lane tells me with a big smile.
“She was awesome, right?” Mara asks Lane.
She nods, echoing, “Awesome.”
When we finally get out to the car, Mara checks her phone. “It’s Josh,” she tells me as she reads the text.
“He’s textingyou?” I double-check.
She nods. “He didn’t want to bother you. He’s asking how it went. Is it okay if I tell him you kicked ass?”
I laugh but then say, “Okay.”
Her phone dings immediately. “He says: ‘I knew she would.’”
We sit there for a moment, and I can feel the effects of the midwinter heat wave that hit this week. Sunbeams catching dust motes in the stuffy car. The silence isn’t uncomfortable, and it breaks when Mara leans forward to start the engine and rolls down all the windows, letting in the fresh air.
I realize there’s a calmness inside me, for once nothing warring in my head. No fears or guilt or regret or even sadness, just a plain open quietness. I’ve done what I came to do, and I did it the very best way I knew how. I look at the courthouse, the massiveness of the building striking me as cruel and cold, as I think about Mandy and Gen still in there, waiting. And I wish I could somehow share just a little bit of this feeling with them.
I pull out my phone and find Amanda’s number, adding Gen to a new group text. My fingers hover over the letters unsure of what words I can, or should, say. So instead, I send a heart. Just one. Purple. Amanda sends one back immediately, then Gen.
