Lemon (20 page)

Doyle glances over his shoulder. ‘Where should we go?'

‘To the police,' I say. ‘I'll stay with you, Ross. You won't be alone.'

‘All cops do is ask questions like “What were you wearing?” Unless you're dressed like
a church lady, they figure you asked for it. I was drunk, Lemon, and I thought it would be fun, with Jake anyway. I wanted to piss off Kirsten.'

‘It's still rape, Ross. I heard you screaming.' While I was sitting around sucking on pretzels.

‘Cops make you stand naked on a piece of paper while they stick swabs in you. They don't even let you piss. Forget it. I just want to shower.'

‘So where are we going?' Doyle asks.

‘Lemon's. Is that alright?' She still looks like the kid whose bike was stolen, except there's makeup smeared all over her face.

‘If you shower before the police examine you,' I say, ‘those shits will get away with it and they'll gang-bang some other girl.'

‘Forget about it, alright. Girls like me always lose at rape trials. The horny judge'll say I deserved it.'

She's got a point.

‘Alright,' I say, ‘let's go to my place.' Chances are Drew and Vaughn are asleep. She can use the basement bathroom.

Doyle stops in front of the house but doesn't get out. ‘I'll see you later,' he says.

‘Sure,' I say, although I don't want him to go, don't want to be alone with the rape victim. ‘Thanks.' He shrugs, not looking too excited about being a hero.

She showers until the hot water runs out. Vaughn comes down to find out what's going on. I tell him my friend got raped. He doesn't seem surprised, gives me the tree-frog stare.

‘What happened to your face?' he asks.

‘You should see the other guy.'

‘Do you need help?'

‘With what?'

‘Anything.'

‘She'll freak if she comes out and finds you here.'

‘I'm gone.'

‘Don't tell Drew.'

‘Of course not. You should put ice on your face.' He goes back upstairs.

Rossi exits the bathroom looking like a peasant woman who's popped sixteen babies that all died. I hand her some of my clothes, expecting her to say, ‘No way I'm wearing this shit.' But she puts them on. She looks different without makeup. Washed out.

‘Want some tea?' I ask.

‘Whatever.' She sits on the couch that Kirsten and the gang were fake-fucking on. Kirsten has a point, I mean what kind of sick mental case pretends to write a play so she can get people to fake-fuck in her basement?

It's while I'm waiting for the kettle to boil that my legs quit. Whatever's been holding me up is gone and I'm squatting on the floor looking at the grime you can't see when you're standing, the grime hidden under the lip of the counter and the drawer handles. The grease stuck to the oven door and the side of the stove. The dust collecting under shelves and around the garbage can. The inevitability of more grime and grease and dust accumulating sickens me and I have to lie face down on the grimy floor, bond with it, accept it, I who have sexual fantasies about the father of a dying child; I who get people to fake-fuck in my basement; I who let my friend get raped. I'm Clarissa in prison, penitent, waiting to die, only I'm not going to be partying with God, I'm going to dissolve into more grease and grime.

‘Lemon?' It's washed-out Rossi, shivering. ‘Are you alright?'

‘Sure.' I manage to sit up by clinging to grimy and greasy drawer knobs.

‘Why are you on the floor?'

‘I slipped.'

‘We should phone my mum. Can we say I'm staying over?'

‘Of course.'

I watch her dial and listen to her lie. I picture Mrs. Barnfield relieved that her daughter is snug at her girlfriend's house. I see her turning off the tv and swallowing her meds. With her baby safe, she can sleep now.

The couch is a pullout bed. We find the sleeping bags and crawl into them. I'd like to talk the way we used to during sleepovers, convinced we'd gab all night but then suddenly waking to find it morning.

‘Are you asleep?' I ask after what feels like hours.

‘No.'

‘Are you okay?'

‘I'm cold.'

I slide over so we're back to back, warming each other.

‘Nobody's going to touch me now,' Rossi says. ‘Not even Doyle.'

I shoved his T-shirt in a Ziploc bag and stuffed it in the freezer because I figured it might have forensic evidence on it. She was sitting on it in the guzzler, there must have been leakage.

‘You can't seriously
want
any of those psychos after this,' I say.

‘Kirsten exposed herself on YouTube and nobody's calling her a whore.'

‘That's because she's queen, Ross. They're all scared of her.'

‘Do you have to scare people to make them respect you?'

That's a good question. All those kings and queens slaughtering people, were they respected? Or just feared? ‘I don't think they respect her, exactly, they're just scared of her.'

‘I don't want to scare people,' Rossi says in a small voice I haven't heard for years. ‘I just want them to like me.'

‘Yeah, well, most people don't want to bother with the little guys who just want to be liked unless there's something in it for them. You're better off not wanting to be liked. Then if a person turns out half-decent, it's a bonus.'

‘It's going to be all over the school by Monday.'

‘All over the world.'

‘They called me trash.'

If people say things about you over and over, if all you hear is how you're lazy or stupid, a skank, a whore, trash, you start to believe it.

Peggy, the obese nurse with rheumatoid arthritis, is arguing with a couple of parents. This happens all the time, Mom and Pop refuse to believe they can't buy their way into a private room. Most of the rooms are private anyway but there's one with four beds in it. Acouple of newborn twins are in there now. They were diagnosed with cancer before they were even born. Tumours showed up on an ultrasound. I squeeze past Peggy and head for Kadylak's room, telling myself not to freak if someone from the waiting list has filled the bed. I tell myself I'll act normal, get them a freezie then start reading a story. Maybe
Jane Eyre
. I started reading it again last night while Rossi was twitching around. I'm not wild about the second part when Jane's obsessing over old Rochester, but I like the beginning when John Reed beats the crap out of her and Mrs. Reed calls her a liar and naughty and all that. Jane tries hard to please Mrs. Reed, but the old warhorse locks her up in the haunted room anyway. Spooked, Jane starts screaming and Bessie, the maid, lets her out but the battle-axe locks her back in there. Jane begins to wonder if she really is all those shitty things the Reeds say she is. Which is what I mean when I say if people keep saying rotten things about you, you start to believe them.

I push open the door and it's Kadylak in the bed. She looks up as if she's been waiting for me. She holds out her arms and I hug her and start bawling, which is completely freaky for me. I don't want her to see so I hide my face in the little curve between her neck and shoulder but then my ribcage starts to spasm and I'm making horrible sounds like I'm dying or something, and the tears are burning my eyeballs, which can't be normal. Kadylak just squeezes me harder and we stay like that for
ages. She's even skinnier than before, I'm scared I'll crush her. I want to tell her what's happened but I know I can't. I thought I was dealing with it pretty well. I ate Shredded Wheat and had a shower and put on clothes and all that. It was on the subway I felt their hands all over me. And the sharp cold of the bottle. Bonehead's dick against my teeth.

‘I missed you,' she says.

‘I missed
you
.'

‘We should be sisters, then we could live together always.' She has two sisters but they hate her because her cancer stole their parents from them.

‘We can be sisters anyway,' I say, still holding her. If she sees my face she'll know something's up. ‘I'm so glad you're better.'

‘It was a close one,' she says.

‘You've got to start eating more.'

‘I will,' she says, but I know it's torment eating with sores in your mouth and constant nausea. She stops hugging me and I have to face her, leaving a dark patch where I've soaked her hospital gown.

‘Why are you crying?' she asks.

‘I'm so happy you're better.'

‘I'm not really better. I'm better for now.'

‘That's all any of us have, really, if you think about it.'

She grabs Sweetheart the penguin and holds her close. ‘What happened to your face?'

‘I fell down.'

‘Where?'

‘In my kitchen. It was the weirdest thing. I just kind of slipped on grease or something.' I've never lied to her before. I feel chains tightening around me.

‘It must have hurt.'

‘Not really. What do you feel like doing? Do you want to go to the playroom or something?'

‘Can we read
Tilly?
'

There's this brutal silence while
Tilly Tilly Tilly
reverberates inside my head, that piece-of-shit book I can't even locate in my memory. I try to believe it's in the bottom of my backpack and that I'll be able to find it in a jiffy. I start feeling around for it. I'm sweating, can't speak.

‘Didn't you bring it?' she asks. Her head scarf's falling off. I try to straighten it. ‘You thought I died,' she says.

‘No, I just forgot, I … It's been crazy the last few days.'

‘Why?'

‘I've had a lot of schoolwork,' I lie again. The chains rattle. ‘And I've been extremely worried about you.'

‘If
you
worry,' she says, ‘
I
worry. Please don't worry. Mama worries. She's always sick now.'

‘Has she come in?'

She shakes her head. ‘She's scared I'll get her flu.'

‘What about your dad?'

‘He comes. He's very tired. He doesn't like Brenda. Why's she so bossy?'

I try to think of a reason other than that Brenda's a miserable sow with a miserable life who gets off making people miserable. ‘It's her life purpose,' I say.

‘What's a life purpose?'

‘A reason to get up in the morning.'

‘Why do you need a reason?'

That's a good question. ‘I guess because sometimes you feel like it's too much, all the crap you have to deal with.'

‘What crap?'

‘What a loser you are and all that.'

She thinks about this, fiddling with the tube on her porta-cath. I pull her hand away from it because that's my job, and because I want to hold her hand forever.

‘When I go to sleep,' she says, ‘I'm glad when I wake up.'

I kiss her forehead. ‘That's because you're special.'

I scoop ice cream on automatic. Everything looks meaner and uglier, and standing for eight hours proves more challenging after all that kicking and punching. My body aches while customers carp. When they stare at my face I try to stare back but they scare me. They could hurt me. I didn't use to feel this. The movie crowd swarms the food court, bitching about the special effects in some movie. With bulging eyes and guts they bark orders, leaning against my counter, leaving greasy popcorn prints all over the glass. Some Flintstone type, loitering with his wife and kiddies, keeps telling Wilma to shut up. ‘Did I ask your opinion?' he keeps saying. ‘Shut your trap.' Wilma slumps under the weight of a hostile marriage. Her porcine and needy-looking children shove each other while staring hungrily at the flavours. I imagine the counter collapsing under their bulk, the Flintstones crashing into me, smothering me, shoving their greasy fingers under my clothes.

Wilma goes for the cappuccino. I want to tell her about corn syrup and corn starch and corn oil, how it's put into every prepared food going and that if she wants her kids obese, keep dining at the food court. I want to tell her it's not worth being Fred's semen receptacle. But I don't say anything because Fred might hurt me. In
Jane Eyre
when Helen Burns is dying, she says she's happy because death will end her suffering. She says if she grows older she'll keep making a mess of things and getting into trouble and making people miserable. Dead, she won't have to worry about keeping her drawers tidy or paying attention during lessons. When you think about all the effort that's required to
not
make a mess of things and get into trouble, and make people miserable, and keep your drawers tidy and pay attention during lessons, dying of consumption starts to look like a reasonable alternative. Helen says it's painless, except for the cough.

The Flintstones want different flavours and double scoops. I dig around in the various tubs.

The worst part is knowing those goons have seen my snatch. I told Ross I'd corroborate her story that we got wet in a sprinkler, which is why she was wearing my clothes. I can just see poor old Mrs. Barnfield saying, ‘A sprinkler? That must've been fun. You two used to
love
running in sprinklers. How was your date, angel?'

Doyle's hardly speaking to me. He can't feel too swell about his date dumping him to get raped. He asked if Rossi was alright and I said of course she wasn't. He's hiding in the back, doesn't even come out to harass me about the scoops. Yang Yang, the Chinese girl who has to stand on a footstool, has been accepted to a thousand universities. She's spread their catalogues all over the counter, pages of happy happy students with big futures. She's so busy looking at the catalogues she has no time to wipe things down or rinse the scoops.

I give Mr. Flintstone the wrong change, which is highly unusual for me. He gets uppity and starts bellowing that I owe him eighty-nine cents. ‘Sorry,' I mumble, feeling my hands shake, which they never do.