High Heels and Lipstick (2 page)

I groaned. Ever since I'd told Guillermo Garcia and my guidance counselor about what happened to me the previous summer, my parents had been hyperprotective and right in my face most of the time. They figured if they had me in sight all the time and I only went to school or out with my friends, no one would hurt me again.

They were naïve as hell. People at school, including some of my former friends, were the ones hurting me now. And the guy who'd raped me hadn't been any random stranger. I'd been dating him off and on, and sleeping with him by choice. That one time, I'd said no, and he hadn't liked my answer. He hadn't given me the choice. And according to everyone else, my saying no made it a crime.

He wasn't the one being punished, though. He hadn't gone to court yet about what he'd done to me and Maryellen, a freshman girl who'd come to me after she heard I'd reported him. I only hoped when his court date came around, they would make him suffer the way Maryellen and I had. We shouldn't have been paying for what he'd done, but that was just how it was.

“Chastaine! Now!”

“Yeah.” I didn't know or care whether Mom heard me. My stomach rolled, and I shoved the computer off my lap and went downstairs.

I'd skipped supper, which hadn't impressed my parents at all. Mom's cooking was legendary, and in my family, you never skipped meals. Ever. Eating large, multicourse meals was part of the deal if you were a Rollo. Or a Martinelli, or any of the other last names that were somehow or another related to us.

My plate was on the table, and Mom and Dad were sitting there with no plates in front of them. My two older brothers, who still officially lived at home, weren't around, fortunately. They and the two who'd moved out had all been ganging up with Mom and Dad lately to lecture me and tell me I should never leave the house again.

They hadn't actually gone that far. But that was what I felt like they were saying every time they told me not to go to parties, not to go to the mall alone, or not to ride public transit by myself.

“Have a seat, Chastaine.” Dad's tone left me no room to argue. At least he didn't sound angry like Mom. “And please eat.”

I sat and picked up my fork. The linguine on the plate smelled incredible, but food made my stomach roll. They probably assumed I hadn't eaten because I wanted to avoid them or was pissed at them for grounding me for the weekend again, but the truth was I didn't eat a hell of a lot anymore. I either felt too sick to even try, or I couldn't keep the food down.

“Eat,” Mom said. “We're worried about you.”

“You've
been
worried about me,” I muttered. “I'm fine. Just not hungry.” I was too nauseated, but saying so would only have made Mom more concerned.

“The attorney called,” Dad said.

Mom shot him a death glare. Obviously she'd been trying to ease into that little piece of news.

My heart stopped, and oxygen didn't seem to exist. For a few seconds, I was afraid I would vomit all over the linguine. I hadn't even wanted to press charges against Jim. It was my word against his, and I'd had sex with him enough times that no one would believe I hadn't wanted it. Or they wouldn't care. Some people believed if a girl said yes once, it was a permanent yes. Girls didn't have the right to change their minds.

I'd gone through with reporting him partly because of Maryellen. If Jim had only done it to me, I probably would have let it go. But if he'd done it to Maryellen too, he might not stop there. That possibility was what had finally pushed me into going to the police.

The way Dad was looking at me, I couldn't guess whether the news was good or bad. I wasn't sure I wanted to know.

“Go ahead.” I took a deep breath.

“I wanted you to eat before we talked about this.” Mom glared at Dad again, then tried to smile at me. She totally failed. “There won't be a trial. You won't have to sit in court and talk about yourself or anything you've done.”

“I shouldn't have had to anyway. I'm not the one who did anything wrong.” I stared at the food in front of me. My stupid stomach rolled too badly for me to even think about eating. I needed more information. Not having a trial might mean they'd decided he was innocent. Or they were dropping the charges. I couldn't get the words together to ask.

“You know how those trials go,” Mom said. “They always ask what the girl was wearing or how many people she's slept with. They try to make it the girl's fault. You might have had to tell everyone….”

She trailed off and clasped her hands together. Her face was red. She couldn't say I might have had to tell people I'd had sex with Jim and other guys before. Or that the day he did it, I'd been wearing a tiny little bikini. My parents hadn't found out about my sex life until I reported Jim. Now they tried to pretend I was still a virgin.

I didn't want to deal with the judgment and bullshit. At least anger cleared my brain enough for me to ask the question I needed to ask. “What did they say?” I demanded. “I won't have to testify. Why?”

“He admitted what he did,” Dad said. “Pled guilty. He hasn't been sentenced yet, but the fact that he already has a record doesn't look good for him, from what I was told.”

“He didn't have a record when he did it.” I couldn't process what Dad had said. Jim had pled guilty. Why? After all the things he'd done, he'd decided to admit to the worst thing possible. It made no sense.

Besides, one of the lawyers we'd talked to had told me the fact that Jim had been sentenced for beating up Evan Granger wouldn't count against him when it came to what he'd done to Maryellen and me. Dad must have been wrong.

“He was on probation when you reported it,” Dad said. “I don't have all the information, Chastaine. It was a short phone call to let us know you won't have to go to court. They'll call us after the judge signs off on his sentence. He's not in jail or anything right now. They released him to his father. But he can't come anywhere near you. The judge ordered him to stay away.”

It took a minute to sink in. I wouldn't have to sit in court and tell people what Jim had done to me. I'd already told way too many people, so not having to go through it again wasn't a bad thing. And Maryellen had barely been able to get a single sentence out about what he'd done to her before she completely broke down. I'd had to take her to the nurse because she started crying so hard she couldn't breathe.

That was all I wanted to focus on. We wouldn't have to talk about it again, at least not to strangers. I would keep talking to my counselor about it, because I was supposed to. I didn't know whether Maryellen was in counseling or not, but I hoped so.

“He admitted it,” I said slowly. “He didn't try to cover it up or say it didn't happen the way Maryellen and I said?”

“Right,” Dad said.

“They can't let him go if he admitted it. They have to sentence him to something. More than some stupid probation or community service or whatever.” I didn't know enough about the legal system to figure out what they would do to him, but it didn't matter. Somehow or another, he would be punished. He would have more of a record, at least for now. Maybe it would be erased when he turned eighteen or twenty-one or whatever age someone wasn't a juvenile anymore, but for now, it would be right there in writing. He would never be able to deny what he'd done.

“They aren't letting him off,” Dad said. “As I said, he hasn't been sentenced yet, but he will be. It's over. That's the point. You won't have to testify, and maybe now people will leave you alone. It isn't your word against his anymore.”

“Yeah.” I didn't bother correcting him. Dad had no clue how the world worked. Some of the people who'd been posting and saying crap about Maryellen and me wouldn't care that Jim said he was guilty. They would still say she and I had led him on or lied or deserved what he did. When a girl slept with more than one guy, she was a slut and “couldn't be raped,” as one moron had put it.

When a guy slept with lots of girls, everyone clapped him on the back and congratulated him.

Double standards really pissed me off, but a lot of people thought that way. Which was how I knew Dad was wrong. The harassment wouldn't stop.

“Are you all right?” Dad asked.

I shrugged. “I guess. I'll feel better once I find out what they're going to do to him. At least he owned up to it, but that doesn't mean I won't still have people giving me a hard time. Some people….”

I stopped myself before I went off about how Maryellen and I had put ourselves out there to get justice and make sure Jim never hurt anyone else. How we had to walk down the school hallways knowing half the other students hated us and considered us whores.

None of that was my parents' fault, and I didn't want to take out my frustration on them. They weren't the ones who'd talked me into reporting Jim. They'd stuck with me through the whole thing and hadn't given me too much of a lecture when they found out I'd been sleeping with other guys. No matter how much I wanted to scream at them, I held back. They couldn't fix things. They couldn't fix
me
.

“I'm not hungry,” I said.

“You need to eat,” Mom said. “It isn't healthy for you to skip meals the way you do. At least a little.”

To make her happy, I ate a few forkfuls of the linguine. It tasted great, like everything Mom cooked, but in my stomach it was a nasty lead weight. I hoped I'd be able to keep it down.

My parents didn't say any more about the court thing, but both of them stayed at the table with me until they decided I'd eaten enough. As soon as Mom nodded at me, I got up and bolted back to my room with a bottle of ginger ale.

I flopped onto my bed and ignored my laptop. The last thing I needed was to give in to the temptation and look at whatever other nasty comments had been posted on my accounts. If I could pretend the laptop didn't exist, I wouldn't open it and read anything.

I had homework, thanks to some teachers who figured the first day back from winter break was a great time to pile on the assignments, but I didn't feel like doing it. I had to keep up my grades so I would pass the year and move on to twelfth grade, but it wasn't as important to me as it had been before. Sometimes I wished my parents would let me do online school. At least then I'd be able to just work and not have to listen to all the rumors and insults.

I was used to having rumors about me floating around school. I'd started half of them myself. But this was different. Hearing people talk about how Chastaine liked to fool around and dated more guys than the entire cheerleading squad put together was entertaining, and some of the girls who talked sounded more jealous of me than anything. I didn't have a problem with them being jealous.

Hearing people talk about how Chastaine was a skanky slut who deserved to be raped because she gave it up all the time anyway wasn't so much fun.

My eyes watered. A lot of people hated me. Jim admitting what he'd done wouldn't change that. For years, my friends and I had pretty much ruled the middle and high schools. We were the cool crowd. Of course some of us talked behind each other's backs, but that was just what people did. We still all hung out and partied together.

Now most of them only spoke to me to call me names or accuse me of lying. I didn't party anymore, and I'd fallen from the top of the school totem pole to the bottom. The kids I'd looked down on before looked down on me now. I kind of hated myself for the way I'd treated them now that I knew how it felt,
but I couldn't change it. I couldn't unsay anything I'd said to
them.

I couldn't go back in time and not report Jim. I couldn't stop people from posting nasty messages about me all over the place online. I couldn't keep my so-called friends from turning on me.

People sucked.

I let out one quiet sob, and a couple of tears trickled down my cheek. That was it. I wasn't going to wallow. Chastaine Rollo didn't let other people's insults get to her. I was strong and tough. I had to be to have survived in a house with four older brothers. Even when people hit me where it hurt, I didn't show it. Maybe I was no longer able to stalk down the hall at school and have people watch me and get out of my way, but I damn sure intended to still act like I could. If I cried, all the jackasses would win.

I took a deep breath and picked up my phone. I didn't want to start thinking. My brain would just go in circles, and I'd end up spiraling again into the dark place where I wanted to hurt myself.

So far, I hadn't actually done it, but I'd been damn close at the beginning of the fallout from reporting Jim. I'd always managed to stop by reminding myself why I didn't want to cut. I'd read about how it could become an addiction, and how it left scars forever. I liked my skin the way it was, and I refused to become addicted to anything. My life had gotten out of control,
but there was no way in hell I would let something else control
me.

But sometimes I still felt like I deserved to be hurt. And sometimes I wanted scars people could see, because no one besides my counselor and a couple of friends recognized the scars Jim had left. Right now, I was way too close to that head space.

I went to the contacts list on the phone and stared at Holly McCormack's name. A few months ago, I wouldn't have even had her number in my phone. Now she was one of the only names there, since I'd changed my number when the harassment started and hadn't wanted most people to know the new number.

Until November, I'd never talked much to Holly or her cousin Evan. I'd known them. We lived in a small town, and it was hard not to know people at school. Especially Evan. He was the most flamboyantly gay guy around. He'd come out in fifth grade, and wore makeup and nail polish and sometimes even women's clothes to school.