Emerson
(Then)
The phone rings.
“Don’t answer,” I hear my dad grunt angrily.
It keeps ringing, plaintive at first, as though begging us to answer, but then, when no one picks up, the ringing seems to become accusatory, before plain irate. I cover my head with the pillow and scrunch my eyes shut. Finally, it stops, and I let out a deep breath. But then a few seconds later, it starts up again. A pneumatic drill through my skull.
Before I can bury my head under the pillow again, I hear my dad stomping across the hallway, my mom’s voice, soft and pleading, following behind him. The ringing is cut off abruptly.
“Bugger the hell off! We’re not answering any questions,” my dad yells before banging down the receiver. My mom mumbles something, and I strain to make out the conversation.
“. . . another journalist?”
“I don’t know. I’m going to unplug it.”
“But what if . . .”
My dad’s fuming. I can hear him pacing. His anger is a palpable thing—a force that makes me want to crawl under the bed and hide. I can’t look him in the face. Looking anyone in the face has suddenly become impossible.
I keep wondering if I should have lied, though—told my mom I was fine. What if I had just stayed silent? Made something up? Told her that Coach had just bawled me out for attacking Reid?
No. No. No. You did the right thing. That’s what my mom told me. That’s what my dad told me too. That’s what they kept telling me all night and all day, through the numerous interviews with the cops and a social worker. You’re doing the right thing.
But why does the right thing feel so bad?
“I’m going to go there!” My dad’s voice carries up the stairs. “I’m going to deal with this my own damn self. Goddamn cops. They’re just sitting there on their asses doing nothing. Why haven’t they arrested him? He should be in the county lockup, not walking around preying on—”
“Shhhh, shhhhh,” my mom urges, hushing my dad, clearly scared I’ll hear him. Too late for that.
He drops the volume to a whisper that still has the force of a tornado behind it. “What?!” he whisper-shouts. “I’m just expected to sit here and do nothing while they conduct some sham investigation? We all know he and the coach are buddies. It’s his word against Em’s, and we know he’s denying it. Who’s the sheriff going to believe?”
“Quiet!” my mom hisses.
“You saw they didn’t believe her. They think she’s making it up!”
I draw in a breath and something sharp as a screwdriver twists in my gut.
“She’s not making it up,” my mom says. “I was there. I saw.”
“You didn’t see it happen, though, did you?”
There’s that pain in my gut again—twisting hard.
“Well, no . . . ,” I hear my mom say. “But I saw her face. I could tell something had just happened.” A pause. “She wouldn’t make this up.”
There’s another, longer pause, and I find myself gripping the edge of the bed, heart pulsating like a frog in my throat. Doubt charges the air like static before a thunderstorm. He doesn’t believe me. My dad doesn’t believe me. It’s as if someone has taken the screwdriver and punched it right through my rib cage into my heart.
“I’m going to kill that son of a bitch!” my dad yells, making the floorboards leap. The breath bursts out of me in a sob. My gut untwists as relief rushes through me. He doesn’t doubt me. Of course he doesn’t.
“No!” my mom shouts.
I don’t catch the next few words she speaks, but I hear my dad mumble something and then my mom urging him into the kitchen, using the same placating, sympathetic tone she uses on him when his team loses the playoffs.
I slump back on the bed. I knew that the cops didn’t believe me. It was obvious from the sideways glances they were sharing with each other and the patronizing tone they used to interview me, not forgetting the way they spoke over the top of my head, acting like I wasn’t even in the room.
“Are you sure she wasn’t imagining it?”
“You know, girls these days, they’ve got active imaginations.”
“He’s a good guy. I can’t believe he’d . . .”
I glance down at my palms. I’m digging my nails in and they’ve made a row of crescent moons. But I don’t feel anything. I stare at my arms. At my legs. They feel weird. My body doesn’t feel like my own anymore but like a costume I’m being forced to wear. I press my fingers to my lips. They’re dry and flaky. Nausea whooshes suddenly out of nowhere and a ball of vomit rockets up my throat. I swallow it with difficulty and then curl onto my side.
Jake’s face appears in my mind’s eye, and I try to blank it. I don’t want to think about him. It makes me feel squirmy and hot inside. He must have heard by now. Everyone must have heard. My mom says I shouldn’t worry about what anyone says because we have the truth on our side, but I can’t help but worry because I know what the kids at my school are like. They’re like snipers, always on the lookout for anyone to take a shot at. I’ll be a prime target. I can just imagine them laughing, making comments, calling me a liar. I can picture the graffiti on the bathroom walls.
There’s a projector screen in my head, and it keeps on playing back what happened on a loop. I’ve managed to partially block it out by forcing myself to recite poems and the lyrics to songs, but every so often my focus jumps to the screen—to Coach Lee moving toward me—to his face in my face and his hands . . .
The thought of other people—of Jake—imagining it is too horrible. It’s his uncle. I sit bolt upright. It’s his uncle, I think again. Jake worships his uncle. His uncle was once a national hockey player. Jake dreams of being a hockey player. He’ll never believe me over his uncle. Why would he?
The knife is back—twisting, gutting, slicing, ripping.
I look around. The room feels suddenly too small to contain me. My body feels too small to contain the screams that are ricocheting around inside my chest like echoes trying to find their way out of a deep, dark cave. My mind is too small to contain the images flickering onto the projector screen. I need to get out. My legs twitch. I need to get out of here.
I need to disappear.