Jake
We sit on the ledge of the tree house. Em’s head is in my lap and I’m stroking her hair, watching as she scribbles in the notebook I gave her last week—a not-so-subtle hint for her to pursue her journalism dream—though frankly journalists aren’t my favorite people at the moment. She’s filled pages and pages already, and I’m glad that she’s finding a way to process things. For me it’s the ice. That’s where I work out my shit. And the thought of losing that, of not being able to skate pro, is killing me inside.
We should be at the store, but Toby and Em’s mom are covering for us. Apparently, the phone hasn’t stopped ringing all day. Out here in the woods, up in the tree house, with just the scratch of Em’s pen and the birds singing, it’s easy to believe that the world beyond here doesn’t exist—and right now that’s how I want it to be.
I think about calling Sarge to check in with him, but I can’t stand the thought of turning on my phone and seeing all the messages I know there will be, and I’m worried too about finding out what trouble he’s in because of me. I’m also tempted to call Lauren and find out what the hell she was thinking, but Em’s convinced me that would be a bad idea.
“What are you writing?” I ask Em, trying to distract myself from my thoughts.
She barely glances up at me. “Just something. A story.” She pauses, chewing the end of the pencil. “No, not really a story—more like an essay.”
“An essay?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“What’s it about?”
She sits up and squints at the forest for a long moment before turning to face me. “It’s about what happened.”
“Can I read it?”
She hesitates for a moment, looking down at the notebook in her hands.
“Okay,” she finally says. “It’s messy, though. And it’s just a first draft.”
She hands me the notepad and then gets up, stretching her arms above her head. I long for a moment to pull her back down onto my lap, but she disappears inside the tree house and I turn back to the notebook and start reading. . . .
When I was thirteen years old, I was sexually assaulted by my hockey coach. One action by another—an adult in a position of trust—and I lost everything; my sense of self, my understanding of truth, my belief in what the world was, my faith in justice, my reputation, and my best friend. I lost the image of myself as a child in my parents’ eyes. From that split second in time I became someone new. Someone I didn’t recognize. A stranger to myself. The man who assaulted me was never charged with any crime. He was never punished. Instead, it was me who was punished. For coming forward. There is something wrong with a world in which a victim, a child no less, is punished.
It took five years for me to learn that “victim” is a word I can discard too. Just as I once discarded the identity of champion hockey player, girl, friend, winner. Just as memory bound me for so long, memory also helped set me free in the end. Someone reminded me of the person I used to be before it happened, and with it came a glimmer of hope that somewhere inside she still existed if I could just find a way to set her free. . . .
I keep reading, flipping rapidly through the pages, wrapped up in Em’s story and her words, in the reality of all that happened, feeling as if I’ve opened a trapdoor into her mind and am finally seeing what it was like for her. All those questions I’ve had but never asked for fear of prying or upsetting her, are answered here. She details the hate mail, the insults, the time she walked into my uncle coming out of a coffee shop on Main Street and how he stepped aside to let her pass with a smile and a nod of his head. How she smiled back before she could stop herself and then spent three weeks playing over the episode in her mind, wondering whether he took that to mean she was complicit. I’m rapt by her account of turning around one day on a beach coming face-to-face with her past in the form of her ex–best friend and childhood sweetheart and how it opened up a Pandora’s box of emotions, but that hope too was one of them. And how it took putting on a pair of skates to finally feel like her life was hers again.
I put down the notebook and let out the breath I’d unwittingly been holding. For a long minute, I stare at the tree branches, and then I get up and walk inside the tree house, ducking my head. I find Em crouched down on the floor with her back to me.
She turns her head and I see she’s holding a penknife in her hand, and then I glimpse over her shoulder that she is carving something into the wall. I know what it is before I even step toward her. It’s our initials.
I kneel beside her and take the knife from her hand. I finish the L as she watches, her hand resting on my shoulder.
“What did you think?” she asks me, casting a surreptitious sideways glance my way.
I put the penknife down. “I think,” I say, turning to face her, “that you need to publish it.”
She laughs. “What? No. It’s stupid. It’s just for me, really. You know, journaling, cheaper than therapy.”
“Well, I think you should share it.” She looks at me as if she can’t tell if I’m joking. “I’m serious,” I tell her.
She picks up the notebook and shakes her head.
I want to keep arguing with her, but I suddenly remember the time. I agreed to swap with Toby at the store so he could get to Em’s house to oversee the plumber who’s coming to fit the bathroom, and I’m late.
“I need to go. I’m covering for Toby,” I tell Em.
Her face falls.
“Come with me,” I say.
“No. I think I’ll stay here. I want to finish this.” She holds up the notebook.
“Okay,” I say. “But I’ll see you later, yeah?”
She nods and I pull her closer.
“At my place?” I ask.
She looks up at me and smiles sneakily. She stays over every night, but I don’t take it for granted.
“Jake?” she says as I pull away.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks,” she says, her fingers trailing through mine.
“What for?” I ask.
“For coming back.” She pauses a moment. “And for the notebook.”