Empty (8 page)

He leans down and kisses me. All 286 pounds of me melts into the daisies. I don’t want him to stop. Brandon is a good kisser—tender, not too much tongue—and he keeps his spit in his own mouth. As he’s kissing me his hands are doing all kinds of things. One is up underneath my shirt trying to unhook my bra, while the other unbuttons and unzips my jeans. I am amazed at his multitalented hands.

He laughs and snorts. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he says to himself.

He thinks this is a joke. He doesn’t want me. A rush of heat floods to my chest, and I can’t catch my breath. My hands are glued to my sides like terrified children afraid to pull away from
their mommy. In one long exhale I say, “PleasestopBrandon.” I heard my voice that time. I don’t want to do this.

Brandon takes my hands from my sides and places them on his naked back. I’m too scared to move my arms, even a centimeter.

“Touch me.”

I shake my head and instantly regret it. Everything goes double. Even him.

“Come on, Dell, touch me,” he demands.

I close my eyes to clear my vision. I can’t do this. I feel like I’m on a broken merry-go-round whizzing and spinning out of control. I try to sit up. His arm blocks me. Brandon grabs my hand and puts it on his penis. I yank it back, my elbow jamming into his chest. “Ow!” he shouts. Then he leans down. “Let me put it in.”

My mouth and brain aren’t connected right now. My drunkenness has stolen my voice. Inside my head I say, “Don’t want to. Please stop.”

Brandon pulls my jeans down from the ankles.
He can’t see me naked. I’m too fat.
The room is suddenly plunged into darkness. The music from downstairs seems louder in the dark. My eyes take a few seconds to adjust. I’ve missed my opportunity to sit up. To get out of this room. Brandon straddles me again.

“I want to go,” I say out loud.

In one snap, he undoes my bra, and my boobs are freed. He squeezes them both. I try to push him off me, but it is like trying to move a car. I bite my lip and close my eyes. I’m falling, falling, falling.

And shattering.

Then he pulls my underwear down and says, “Stay still.” Just like that, he’s inside me. I squeeze my legs closed because it hurts.

He scolds me like I’m a child. “Dell, stop!”

Brandon jerks a few times, and then his body goes stiff.

He pulls out and rolls over on his back, panting and wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. “I told you to stop,” he says nonchalantly.

Tears roll down my temples into my hair. I have nothing to say. I make no move to cover my nakedness. I lay there like a blob of inhuman matter. I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and do everything in my power to smell the “perfect love smell” of my little sister. I need to smell love right now. It doesn’t work, because it never works, and all I smell is sweat.

Brandon is fully dressed and standing at the door. He turns around and says, “Don’t tell anyone. This never happened.”

The corner of the room gets light for a second as he leaves, and then it goes dark again. I am alone with the daisies.

CARA SPENT THE NIGHT DANCING AND TALKING—
not drinking, so she drives home. I say nothing to Cara about what happened with Brandon. If I open my mouth, I’m going to vomit. I grip the car door handle to steady my spinning head and let her go on and on about how much fun she had dancing. She didn’t even realize that I’d disappeared for twenty minutes. How could she not notice? I would’ve known if she’d up and vanished at a party.

I am home by eleven, and my mother is in her bedroom with the door closed, watching the news. I knock to let her know I’m back on time. “Good night, Adele,” she calls over
the drone of the news. Just once I wish she would invite me in. I’d sprawl across her bed, and we would talk about my night. But this never happens.

“Good night,” I call back. It’s probably better she keeps her door closed. I don’t want to see her pill bottles scattered everywhere, and I’m sure she doesn’t want to smell the beer on my breath. I try my best to be quiet in the kitchen, but I bang into just about everything. My mother never comes out. I make myself a huge ham-and-cheese sandwich. It’s so thick I can barely get my mouth around it. But I do.

Then I make myself a second sandwich. I am slowly starting to feel un-hollow. And way more sober.

I open the freezer to grab an ice-cream bar, because I can never eat something like a sandwich without finishing it off with something sweet. The cold fog hits my face, and I inhale it, filling my lungs. I close my eyes. Images of bouncing red cups, exploding beer cans, and sex I didn’t want to have invade my head. I suck in a second, deeper breath. It would be nice if the cold would deaden the memories of the night. I want to slam the freezer door shut with all of my might, but that would wake everyone up. Instead, I take two bars and gently close the freezer.

I sit down at the table, rip open the first package, and take an enormous bite. Flakes of chocolate coating land on my lap.
I don’t bother to brush them away. As I open my mouth to take a second bite, I gag. As far as gags go, it’s a decent one. Bitter acid burns the back of my throat.

I barely make it to the toilet before everything comes up. And I do mean everything. I swear there are pieces of my heart in there too. All covered in vomit.

How could I have let Brandon do that to me?

I crawl into bed, trying not to wake up Meggie. I stare at the ceiling, and thoughts start slamming into one another. I am no longer a virgin. I had sex. I didn’t want to. Was I raped? Isn’t rape, like, violent and forceful, with blood and anger? Could I have really stopped him? Did I try hard enough? He didn’t even put a condom on. What if I’m pregnant? Oh my God. Maybe I wanted it. I had a guy’s penis inside of me. Someone else’s guy.

Sex is a rite of passage—that’s what my seventh-grade health teacher told us—and Brandon stole that from me. I wince. He saw me naked. He squeezed my boobs. I’d told him to stop.

I can’t tell my mother. We don’t know how to talk to each other anymore. Our brief exchanges fall apart pretty quickly these days. My stomach clenches as I imagine how that conversation would go.

Me: Mom, I got wasted at a party and some guy held me down and had sex with me.

Mom: Pass me my pills.

I should tell Cara. I look at my phone but make no effort to reach for it. I can’t do it. What just happened to me at Melissa’s party is something I should
want
to tell my best friend, but I don’t. I mean, I’ve had forced sex with a very popular guy; I should tell someone. The thing is, I know telling anyone would be social suicide. Even Cara.

I punch the mattress. I think that was rape. Why am I not crying or something? I grab my phone and then drop it onto my chest. I can’t even watch magic.

With my stomach empty, I feel hollowed out, a pumpkin scraped of its gooey insides. I squeeze my eyes shut.

I want to lay in the darkness forever.

•  •  •

The apartment is quiet when I wake up Sunday morning. I can’t believe I actually fell asleep. It must’ve been the beer. My eyes examine the water-stained ceiling as I take stock of last night. Nothing has changed. I was drunk. Brandon knew it. I was raped. Brandon’s last words—
Don’t tell anyone. This never happened
—ache in my head. I wonder how we will act the next time we see each other.

I curl into the fetal position and listen to the birds. Their peppy chirping captivates me, because happiness and its trappings remain a dark mystery. I palm my head and run my
fingers through my hair. My skin hurts.
I was raped and I can’t tell anyone.
I cover my ears because the birds annoy me now. My brain can no longer appreciate the good and the beautiful—it’s too busy cranking out shame and misery.

Eventually, Meggie’s demands to get out of her crib snap me out of my pity party. She pads behind me, dragging her blanket, as we walk into the kitchen. I see the note from my mother immediately. It’s lying next to my abandoned ice-cream bar.

Adele:

This waste makes me angry. We are not made of money. Please clean the toilet today. It’s disgusting.

I crumple her note, grab the now-liquid ice-cream bar, and throw them both in the trash, where they belong. The morning disappears in a mixture of television, science research, eating, and toilet cleaning. I print out my project during Meggie’s nap. I got permission to write a research paper because I didn’t want to ask my mother for money to buy new materials. I did
the bare minimum just to get it done, and it shows. My paper’s only two pages. Who cares? I seriously don’t.

The first word Meggie utters after her nap is “park.” We both chow down some lunch and head to the good park, the one just past school. I walk on autopilot. Then I hear the familiar crack of a bat as it makes contact with the ball. I stop dead on the sidewalk. The softball field is right on the other side of the chain-link fence and is covered with recognizable blue-and-white uniforms.
What is the matter with me? Why would I come this way? Half of my team has spotted me. Damnit, damnit, damnit.

In order to get this over with, I drop my head and pick up my pace. Despite this genius plan, I am one hundred percent un-missable.

I sneak a glance at home plate just as the catcher springs into action to rescue a wild pitch. She throws it back to our pitcher, and then our eyes briefly meet. My stomach flips. I half expect her to wave or acknowledge me, but she doesn’t. As I pass the pitching mound, I listen for someone to shout hello. Only traffic noises from the passing cars and the
click-clack
of Meggie’s stroller wheels fill the air. The entire team watched me walk by—I know they did. Unbelievable.

I take a right at the
STOP
sign so I can distance myself from the field. I don’t want to be near them.

Each step I take pushes softball further into my past. From behind I hear another crack of the bat—the hit was huge, I can tell—but I have no desire to turn around. I walk away from the field, away from a team that barely accepted me. I wait at the light, staring down at the top of Meggie’s little head. A sniff of love is exactly what I need right now.

I’m bent over, inhaling my sister’s perfect smell, when it dawns on me—I don’t miss softball. It was never
my
passion. And the fact I’m not longing to play or boo-hooing over getting cut proves that it’s over. In fact, I’d like to dig a hole in the ground and bury softball. There’s a ton of other crap I’d like to throw in that hole too: Brandon, DD, my mother’s pills. I’d fill the hole with dirt, pat it down with my bare hands, maybe even hum a tune while doing so. Then I’d dance on top.

As Meggie plays in the sandbox, I text Cara. I’ve sent her four messages, but so far, no response. The brief bit of peace I felt from Meggie’s smell and letting softball go is long gone. I am in full-on panic mode. I’m worrying that our friendship is over, that she has replaced me with the jumping girls. Or that she somehow found out about what happened with Brandon. I rummage through Meggie’s diaper bag and grab every snack I can find: a teething cookie, toddler fruit snacks, a squished oatmeal bar. I swallow the last tasteless bite of oatmeal bar, reach for the bag, and in an effort to find more food,
haphazardly pile the contents next to me. I’ve eaten everything. But I find an old pair of sunglasses and put them on. I can feel the tear factory gearing up.

Of course I’ve lost Cara to the jumping girls. I don’t fit in and she does. Shit, who am I kidding? I don’t fit in
anywhere
or in any
thing
. Maybe if I go on a diet and lose weight, she’ll act like my best friend again. But the problem is, imagining Cara and I skipping off into the sunset, chanting “Best Friends Forever!” is not only stupid, it’s unrealistic.

But mostly, it’s stupid.

I’M IN BED WHEN I TEXT CARA ONE MORE TIME:

You okay? I’m worried.

No response.

I can’t fall asleep, so I try watching some magic videos. They’re not helping, and I turn off my phone. My eyes are heavy, but my thoughts won’t let me sleep. I toss and turn for what feels like hours, trying to get comfortable, trying to quiet my head.

I give up and stare. Sometime after four in the morning
I conclude that sleep won’t help me, it won’t stop my pain. I should just stay awake and feel the hurt. I let it weigh on me. Holding me down. It’s a bottomless, heavy ache, so deep I swear it’s in my bones.

I turn my phone on before dragging myself out of bed, and I see that Cara finally texted me back. I read her text ten thousand times:

Phone died. I am sorry, Dell.

Her phone never dies.

I fixate on the “I am sorry, Dell.” It’s so final. There’s nothing to respond to. No opening or invitation to text her back, so I don’t. And she was sorry about what exactly? Her phone dying? Was she apologizing for something else? I devise every possible scenario, each of which crumbles to dust, leaving only one option: She ditched me for Sydney and her friends.