Exposed (5 page)

Right now,
I have something to tell my brother.

He Says

“I would never hurt Kate!
We had sex! I didn’t
rape
her!”

He says she was sleeping on the couch
and woke up when he brought his bag
down to the laundry room.

He says they talked
and then he kissed her.
He says she kissed him back.
“Then we had sex. It was just sex, Lizzie.”

“That’s not what
she
says.”

He asks me why he’d even tell his friends
he had sex with Kate if he raped her—
why he would be that stupid.

And I guess he has a point
because my brother could not be
that stupid.

Signs

She had no bruises
that I could see.
No cuts, no swollen eyes.

I saw no scratches,
next morning, on Mike.
So which one’s telling lies?

Keeping Secrets

I can’t believe this is happening.
I’m about to hang up the phone
but Mike says something that stops me.
“It’s not like it was the first time we hooked up.”

“What?”

He keeps talking.
“We never had sex before.
But we kissed. Last year.”

I can feel the hairs tingle
on the back of my neck.
“When?”

I scan my brain for any memory
of Kate telling me anything
close to this.
I get nothing.

“One night in the kitchen,
while you were sleeping downstairs.
She came up to get something to drink
and I was having a late-night snack.”
Mike forgets that Cap’n Crunch
is supposed to be a breakfast food.

“Foster just dumped her
and she started crying,
then we kissed for a while.”

“How come you didn’t tell me?”

“She didn’t want you to know.
Figured you’d be mad or something.
Said you always said I was ‘off-limits.’ ”

Now I know my brother’s
telling me the truth
because I used those exact words
many times,
joking but not really.

Off-Limits

We sat on the front steps,
the sun hanging low,
and watched him
come up the driveway after a run
taking deep breaths, hands on his hips.

She said he was her prince
in sweaty sneakers.
I laughed and said
he was off-limits.

We chased his car, waving,
as he left to take Mary Draper
to the junior prom.
She said, “He looks cute in that tux.”

“Put your eyes back in your head,” I said.
“He’s off-limits.”

When we watched him
play football
in the backyard with his friends
she said, “He could tackle me anytime.”

“No, he can’t,” I said.
“He’s off-limits.”

She didn’t listen,
kept secrets from me,
cheated on Trevor,
crossed the line
with
my
brother.

Five Minutes Later

Mike calls back,
tells me I’ve got to set her straight,
that it was just sex.

Tells me not to tell Mom and Dad.
“They’ll kill me if they knew
I had sex in the house.”

There’s a pleading in his voice
that stirs something inside me.

Before I can say anything, he says,
“Who else has she told?”

Panic

Panic makes its way up my spine
like ice water through a straw—
who else has she told?

Who Can I Tell?

Brian makes it over here
in ten minutes flat.
I swear to myself I won’t cry
but before his dented chariot
pulls out of the driveway
his shoulder is drenched.

He puts his foot on the brake
but I flap my hands,
telling him to keep going.

He heads toward Bright Penny,
but I don’t want to pollute our beach.
So I make him pull into the deserted parking lot
behind the town hall,
and we sit on a worn wooden bench
where everything spills out of me:
thick, sticky, black,
like oil.

A Mess the Morning After

It’s always pitch-black
in the room off the darkroom
where we process film into negatives.
If the tiniest bit of light gets in
it can ruin the roll.

It took me a long time to get used to
loading the film onto the development reels
in the dark
but I’ve gotten so good at it
that everyone asks for my help.

I’m helping Carla right now,
Carla with zero personality,
large, yellowed teeth,
and a good photographic eye.

But I can’t get my fingers to work
at all
and I’m pretty sure I’ve destroyed
all the shots she took
at her family-with-big-teeth reunion
and I’m spilling solution
all over the place.

But I’m glad for the darkness.

Otherwise, Zero P
would see
I’m spilling tears, too.

Watching

When I come out of science class
I see Kate by her locker,
smiling while Amanda gabs away.

I can’t hear Amanda’s words,
but how can Kate be smiling?

At the Sink

I come out of the stall in the girls’ room
to find Kate
staring in the mirror.
Panic spreads
across her face when she sees me.

“Will you talk to me?” I ask.

She’s shaking her head and I know
she’s about to say no
and I don’t want her to say no
so I tell her that Mike said
he would never hurt her.

Her eyes don’t move.
They’re fixed on me.
“You believe Mike.”

She hits the button on the soap dispenser
again and again,
but there’s nothing left.

I ask her what I’m supposed to think when
she won’t tell me anything.

“I told you he raped me,” she says.

“What else do you need to know?”

“I need to know why
you kissed him last year
and never told me.”

There’s a crazy-scary fire in her eyes.
“I’m not surprised he told you that.
He wants you to take his side.
I bet he didn’t tell you about the pillow.”

I ask her what she’s talking about
and she says, “Figures.”

She shuts down.
I can actually see her shutting down,
body sagging, eyes closing,
head tilted to the side.
I’m losing her.

There are things I should say
but I can’t speak.

She turns away
and the nagging question,
the one I shouldn’t ask but I need to ask,
pushes out of my mouth.
“Kate, have you told anyone else?”

“No,” she says, and I close my eyes,
waiting for the words
not yet
,
but the
wrrshhhhh
of the hand dryer
and the solid closing of the door as she leaves
are the only sounds bouncing
off the tiled walls.

Red Eyes

There’s a light tap-tap on my shoulder
as I grab my coat from my locker.
I spin around, hoping it’s Kate,
but Trevor’s standing there—
one hand scratching the back of his head,
the other shoved
deep in the pocket of his jeans.

“Hi, Trevor.”

He doesn’t say hi back,
just blurts out,
“Is Kate okay?”

I’m not sure how to answer this.
I’m not sure what he knows.
I look straight into his eyes
and see that they’re rimmed with red.

I look at this crumpled boy
and wonder if Kate
would have kissed Mike,
would be accusing him of rape,
if I hadn’t picked on Trevor,
hadn’t told her to take a chance.

He stares at a spot on the floor.
“She broke up with me.”

I tell him I know,
and he walks away
looking like a lost dog,
leaving me filled
with so much sorry.

Slumber-Party Games

When I get home I call Mike.
He picks up on the first ring.
He says he knows nothing about a pillow
except that maybe
they were tossing one around
on the couch,
and he can’t understand why
she’s saying these things.

I hear that pleading again,
the tone a younger Mike used
when Mr. Rubin, Little League coach,
failed to believe Mike didn’t steal
Scott Rubin’s glove,
identical to the glove Mike wore.
Scott, who couldn’t run bases to save his life.

Failed to believe him
until Scott
found his glove
beneath the bleachers.

Straight To …

It’s late Friday afternoon
and the sky is turning
the color of pumpkins.

Dad asks,
as we rake leaves into piles,
how things are going.

“They’re going,” I say,
and I pray he doesn’t need
more than that.

I pray he doesn’t ask me
where they’re headed.

Happy Girl

I’m happy to be on this ferry today.

Happy to be away from school,
away from my parents,
who should probably know
what I can’t tell them.

Happy to be training Randall,
who can’t even manage
to work a microwave,
who doesn’t know me at all.

It’s cold on this early afternoon.
Gray clouds hover, not allowing me
to shoot film in the best possible light.

But I am happy.
Happy, that’s me.

High-Speed Film

I take a zillion pictures:
weathered rowboats lined up
on the strip of shore along Beach Road,
scrub pine, driftwood,
rusty blue bike, long abandoned.

I used to take photos a few times a week,
but now my camera fills my afternoons,
my weekends, the holes in my life
that Brian can’t fill.

I used to take time to look,
to see.

But now time is something to get through,
so I aim and shoot at everything
crossing my line of vision.

Party Boy

Mike shows up at Kyle Jagbee’s party.
He’s not supposed to be here.
He’s supposed to be at school,
but he used to run track with Kyle
and Mike’s always up for a party.

I’m hanging in the den,
my camera focused on Brian
celebrating his team’s big win,
when something crashes out on the patio.

Along with everyone else,
I run out back
and find Mike lying on the ground,
while his best friend, Tanner,
slams his fist into Mike’s face.

Damage Control

“What did you do?”
I hiss in his ear,
helping him into the patio chair,
blood dripping from his nose.

“I was just joking around with Callie
and Tanner went nuts,” he says,
as if there’s nothing wrong with
hitting on his best friend’s girlfriend.

“Like you joked around with Kate?” I ask,
watching drops of blood pool on his sneaker.

I’m sure I look like the caring sister
as I grab a napkin lying near
the shattered glass of the overturned table
and hand it to him.

“I told you,” he whispers,
his voice full of gravel,
“I didn’t rape her.”

I believe him.
But I’m pissed that he ruined the party,
pissed that he fooled around with my forever-best,
so I tell him to try telling that to Kate.

He reaches out
for his half-empty bottle of beer
but I grab the bottle before he can
and throw the beer in his face.

Then I leave him
brewing.

A Caring Sister

A caring sister
might worry
when rubber burns in the driveway
and Mike’s car peels off.

But all
I feel
is relief.

Stunned

It’s three a.m. and two policemen
are at the door.

I thought Mike
drove back to school,
but when the doorbell rang
he emerged from the den,
all bloodshot eyes and Mentholyptus breath.

Mom and Dad stand there
as a cop asks Mike where he was
earlier tonight.

Mike tells the cops he was at a party.

Dad rubs his hands across his face
and Mom looks hard at my brother
when he admits that, yes, he did leave the party
and go to the home of Katherine Morgan
at approximately twelve-thirty a.m.

Dad crosses his arms
and Mom’s mouth falls open
when he admits to throwing rocks at her window
and taking off when Kate’s dad
came barreling out of the house.

Dad tells Mike not to say anything else, asks the cop,
“Are you charging my son with something here?”

Mom moves toward my brother,
like she’s the track star,
when the old cop with the pockmarked face
says they have a warrant for Mike’s arrest.

“He’s being arrested
for throwing pebbles at a window?” Dad yells
as Mom grabs Mike by the arm,
a vein threatening to explode
in her long, thin neck.

The older cop looks at Dad and says,
“No, sir. Your son is being charged with rape.”

Mike’s face loses color, our eyes meet,
and he looks and sounds like he’s about to cry.
“I told you, Lizzie. I
swear
I didn’t do it!”

“There must be some mistake!” Dad says
when the younger cop asks my brother
to place his hands behind his back,
asks my mother to take her hand off Mike’s arm
as he reaches to his belt for the cuffs.

“Don’t worry! We’re right behind you!” Mom calls out
when the cops lead my brother to the squad car.

My parents stand there
a second longer.
Then they turn
to me.

What I Know

“What do
you
know about this?” Mom asks,
yanking off her robe.

I shiver, sure as if I’m lying naked in snow.

I tell her that Kate says rape
and Mike says not.
That it happened at our Slumber
after I went upstairs.

She grabs for her coat.
“After the big fight?”

“It wasn’t a big fight!” I yell
as guilt spreads its wings like a falcon,
talons clawing my gut,
digging in.

The Best Trick

When we were small
Mike and I thought
Dad’s friend from college
was better than Houdini,
the way he could make coins
vanish into thin air.

But now Uncle Nate’s traded his pouch of change
for a law degree and a Brooks Brothers suit,
and it’s my dad who’s on his cell phone
heading out the door, hoping Uncle Nate can make this
nightmare disappear.