Page 83 of The Way I Am Now
“And did you know how old Kevin was at the time?”
“He was almost twenty,” I say, repeating what the DA had said.
“So, he was nineteen, right?”
“Right.”
“But did you know at the time how old he was? At the time?”
Except now I’m doubting myself. Did I think he was eighteen, nineteen, twenty? “I mean, I really don’t know if I knew exactly.”
DA Silverman stands up and sighs. “Is this going anywhere?”
“Did he know how old you were at the time?”
She sits down and then shoots right back up. “Speculation, Your Honor.”
“Did you have a conversation about how old you were?”
“Well, he knew I was in ninth grade.”
“Yes or no—did you have a conversation about age?”
“No.”
And so it continues for what feels like hours. Pointless questions mixed in with important ones, always withrightordidn’t youtacked on to the end. Dissecting all of my sentences into smaller and smaller fragments until they barely make sense anymore.
“One last question, Eden. Did you ever say no?”
“Say no?”
“Did you ever verbally say no at any point that night?”
“I couldn’t speak. He covered my mouth immediately, and then he—”
“Did you say no?”
“I fought him, I hit him, I kicked him, I—”
“But did you ever say the word no?”
I look at Mara, then Lane, then the DA.
“I—I already said I couldn’t speak.”
“Your Honor, please instruct the witness to answer the question.”
“Please answer the question,” the judge says.
“No, but—”
“Thank you,” he says, and smiles again, like I’d just handed him a fucking cappuccino or something. “I have nothing further.”
And as he turns around and walks back to the table, I make the mistake of watching him—this old, frail, white-haired fossilized monster—and as he sits down, my eyes drift too far until I realize I’m looking at him. Kevin. And he’s looking at me. He has me pinned like a dead insect mounted on a foam block, with only his eyes, like he had that night.
I hear this sound in my ears like the ocean. I close my eyes. I’m going. Leaving my body. Disappearing. Gone. The next thing I know I’m in the bathroom, Lane there, telling me how great I did. “Great” is the word she used. It echoes in my head.Great great great. And she’s smiling at me in the mirror.
I look at my hands—I’m washing them at the sink. I’ve torn my bandage up into ribbons, the tape peeling off, the two red welts on my palm, only just starting to scab, now picked over and bleeding in patches. I don’t remember doing that. I don’t remember leaving the courtroom.
