Page 129 of The Way I Am Now
“Yeah,” she says sadly. “And besides, this time of year is always triggering anyway.”
“You mean because of family stuff?”
“Oh,” she breathes. “Sometimes I forget you can’t actually read my mind. Um, no, it’s—the holidays, that’s when it happened. When Kevin—the assault,” she says, and I somehow get the feeling she’s trying to spare me from hearing the word “rape.”
“You never told me that.”
She sort of shrugs one shoulder.
“Um, just putting this out there. You could stay at my parents’ house, with us, if you want. Strictly friends, I promise.”
She smiles for a moment. “Thanks, but I think it’s best if I just stay here.”
I feel like I should offer to stay with her, but the fact is, I need to be home with my family this year. And for her reasons, she needs to be here. She doesn’t need me to fix this or make it better or protect her. For once I feel like it’ll be all right. Me. Her. This fledglingus.
“Okay,” I tell her. “Well, in that case, I think I’m probably heading out after this financial aid appointment, so . . .”
She sets her clarinet down on the kitchen counter. Then walks over to me, hugs me tight, breathes in and out, her head, like always, fitting under my chin.
“If you need anything,” I begin to say as we pull apart, my hands automatically on her face as I look down at her. And as she looks up at me, I think, for a moment, she wants to kiss me. So I let my hands go to her shoulders instead, back up a step.
“If I need anything,” she finishes for me, “I’ll call you.”
EDEN
The second week of January comes faster than I thought it would. It’s the same courtroom as before, except it feels even smaller now because they’re so many more bodies in it. More people sitting in the gallery on each side. Extra reporters in the back. A jury now.
I take a sip of water and look out at Mara and Lane. Then my eyes set on CeCe, who’s looking down at her notes.
Kevin is there at his table with his lawyers. The white-haired lawyer who loves to raise his hand and object and talk in circles until he makes us all dizzy asks me the same questions as last time, except in more confusing ways, trying to trip me up.
I’d been preparing myself for the past two weeks to be able to face the last question again. I studied the transcripts from the first hearing as if they were for another exam I was destined to ace. I practiced in my apartment, like I practiced the clarinet. Out loud, I practiced saying no in as many ways as I could imagine. I compared each one and ended up picking out my version of no just like I picked out my outfit. Business. Casual. Modest.No, I would say, simple and straightforward. Unemotional. Because anyone with half a brain or half a heart would understand that me verbally saying the word no was beside the point.
Last night, at two in the morning, I went into the kitchen to get some water, and when I leaned up against the sink, I remembered something. Something I thought should definitely be on this exam. I texted CeCe about how he assaulted me the next Christmas in our kitchen—I’ve had to practice using that word too, “assault.” I never even mentioned it to anyone, not the detective or Lane or CeCe. It was something I thought didn’t even matter before, wasn’t bad enough to be worth mentioning. I sent her a text that took up the entire length of the screen on my phone. I told her how I’d remembered when I was in the kitchen just now getting water that he came in when no one was there and pinned me up against the sink from behind while he put his hands all over me, up my shirt and down my pants and wasn’t it important to let them know how he kept managing to find these little pockets of terror? To remind me that he was there, to remind me that I’d promised not to tell? That he was holding me hostage for so long after that one night. Because I’d read that article—and even though Josh told me not to read the comments, I did—and I saw the one about five minutes.Onlyfive minutes. And they needed to know it wasn’t only five minutes that he had me.
CeCe texted back right away:
Thank you, Eden. This is helpful. But
please make sure you get some sleep
before tomorrow.
But now that’s what I’m thinking about as I sit here— wondering if I made my point earlier when CeCe had seamlessly slipped it into her questions that she somehow wove together to tell a story. And now I’ve missed the question White Hair has just asked me.
“Do you need me to repeat the question?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say clearly into the microphone.
Except now I’m remembering that I forgot to say the part about how he smiled at me. I was supposed to tell them this time how he smiled at me before he left. Kissed. Smiled. Boxers. Door. How could I have forgotten? Stupid. We studied this!
“Can you please instruct the witness to answer the question?” White Hair is saying now.
The judge leans toward me and says, “Eden, please answer the question.”
But wait, I missed it again.Fuck.
“Um,” I begin, and the mic lets out a high-pitched note in place of my voice. “Can you repeat the question again?” I say, too far away from the microphone.
