The Prologue (15 page)

After the blurred edges from the pain fade away and my vision refocuses, I see my dad next to me, sitting in a chair pulled up to the edge of the bed. His elbows are balanced on his knees, his hands clasped in front of him as his head rests on them. Seeing him causes a wash of relief to go through me, something comforting that brings a feeling of safety, though I can’t remember why I should feel afraid.

“Daddy?” I try to speak, but my voice comes out as a croak. I realize my throat is bone dry.

Regardless, his head snaps up at my small sound. I’m startled by his haggard face, the deep lines around his mouth, the dark circles under his eyes. Even the relief washing over his face does little to improve his appearance.

“Evie,” he says, sounding a little strangled. In an instant he is up and out of the chair, sitting on the side of my bed and taking my hand into his own, though he’s careful not to jostle me much. “Evie, baby, how are you feeling?”

I try and clear my throat, but I can’t seem to produce any saliva and my mouth burns at the effort. “Thirsty,” I force out. “Water?”

My dad scrambles off the bed to the small bedside table, where there is a pitcher of water and a cup with a straw. He pours a glass and holds it up for me, and I drink greedily, even though it hurts to move my face in any way. Dad pulls the glass away before I feel even close to being rehydrated, and I make a sound of displeasure before I can stop myself.

“A little bit at a time,” he tells me, returning the glass to the table and then resuming his place in the chair, still holding my hand.

Even though it hurts a little bit to have him touch me, I don’t want him to let go and I wish I could squeeze his hand. We’re silent for a moment, looking at each other, and I take in his disheveled appearance; dress pants with an Ohio State football t-shirt, his unwashed hair and long stubble.

“How long?” I ask, and my voice sounds strange to my own ears, hoarse and tired.

“It’s Tuesday,” he says, and his voice sounds different too, thick and choked with emotion. “The wedding was Saturday night. You… you remember the wedding?”

Heat flushes through me as my mind sorts through a barrage of memories. The wedding. Tony’s strange quiet all evening, Zeke caressing my hair at the coat check and Tony going crazy in the bathroom. At least now I know why he was so strange all that week; he had somehow seen me with Zeke Monday night, at the dance studio. All the rage must have been building for five days, and the scene at the coat check must have confirmed every suspicion that he’d had about Zeke and me.

I blush for a whole new reason as I remember my own words after Tony’s accusations, the way I taunted him and drove him over the edge. I deserve every twinge of pain, every bruise I have on my body for being so stupid as to push Tony. But I can’t summon regret over what I said. It had felt good to get a blow or two in, even if they weren’t physical. Then I remember that in the end, even though I’d struck back, I had been prepared to give up, to give in and let Tony kill me. Shame fills me, and I know I’ll take that secret with me to grave.

Tony.

Suddenly my heart is pounding, and I can actually hear the beeping of the heart rate monitor next to me accelerate as I try to sit up. I only get the slightest movement before pain hits me and I cry out and fall back on the pillows. My dad is instantly on his feet, hovering over me.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, eyes wide in fear. I’ve never seen him look so scared before, and it makes me scared. “What’s the matter, Evie?”

“Tony,” I say, filled with a strange, irrational fear at the idea of seeing Tony. “Where is Tony? Who found me? Who got me out of the bathroom?”

I can tell right away that he knows it was Tony who hurt me, because his voice becomes calm and soothing, his doctor voice as he keeps me down. “Tony isn’t coming near you, Evie. I promise you. Tony isn’t going to get close to you ever again. You’re safe here. You’re safe. I’m going to stay with you. No one will hurt you ever again. You’re safe. You’re safe.”

He says it over and over, until my heart stops pounding and I actually believe him and lay still once more. I will my chest to stop heaving in panic, because it hurts and because I know there is no need. There is a long silence as my dad returns to his chair, and when I finally look over at him, I’m shocked to see that his eyes are bright with tears. I’ve never seen my dad cry, not ever before. Even when my mom died, when I was six, he held me while I cried, but I never saw him do it.

“Who found me?” I finally ask. “What happened?”

My dad searches for my hand, and I let him squeeze it tight, even though it makes my whole arm ache. I feel safe as long as he is here with me, especially with his warm, reassuring touch on my hand.

“Zeke Quain,” my dad says thickly. “Alex’s nephew? The one that works at the club? I know you go to school with him.”

If I had the strength, I would laugh at the pure irony of it all. Zeke, rescuing me from Tony. Memories begin to seep through my subconscious, images of being in the sterile white bathroom, shouting and screaming between two male voices. Being carried, feeling safe. Zeke had urged me to tell someone, to tell my dad about Tony. He’d gotten his wish, in one hell of a dramatic way, that was for sure.

“I know Zeke,” I say faintly, closing my eyes because I’m feeling exhausted by all the emotions rolling around in my head, and dizzy from trying to sit up a moment before. “His sister takes dance with Jenny.”

There’s a long silence, and when my dad doesn’t say anything, I finally open my eyes to look at him. I’m startled to see that he’s still crying, tears running in slow rivers down his cheeks.

“Evie,” he says in a low voice. It’s one I’ve never heard from him before, full of an emotion that I’m unfamiliar with in my dad: fury. Deep, dark anger, rage that is making his hands tremble on mine and his voice shake. “Evie, I need to ask you something, and I want you to tell me the truth. I want you to remember you’re safe now, and no one can hurt you.”

Dread fills my stomach, because I know what he’s going to ask, and that my secret is well and truly out. “Okay,” I whisper, and close my eyes, because I can feel them filling up with tears, stinging and burning.

“Zeke…” my dad begins, and then trails off to clear his throat before starting again. “Zeke told me that he saw you and Tony together at the wedding last week. He said that this… wasn’t the first time Tony has hit you. Is that true, Evie?”

I take in a shuddery breath before opening my eyes and looking right at my dad. “It wasn’t the first time,” I say quietly, and feel his body tense up. “It was the worst, though.”

My dad shifts again, coming to sit on the side of the bed again and reaching for my other hand, so that he’s holding both my hands in his as he looks down at me. “I need to ask you one more thing, Evie,” he says, and again I know what he’s going to ask before he says it, and it makes me feel sick. If it wouldn’t have hurt so much, I would have thrown up. As it is, I push down the bile in my throat and force myself to only look into my dad’s eyes, focus everything I have on them.

“I’m not going to lecture or judge, Evie,” my dad says in a low, soothing voice. “But if we’re going to keep you safe from Tony, build a case against him, then you need to be completely honest with me. I’m just going to ask you once, and I
need
you to tell me the truth, baby. The nurses who changed you found older bruises on your thighs.” There’s a short silence and I see him struggling with the question, trying to find the most delicate way to ask. Finally he asks, now unable to look me in the eye, “Did you and Tony ever have sex, Evie?”

I close my eyes as the light, spacey feeling enters my brain, and I know I’m going to be helpless to fight it, to keep myself on earth. I could move, make myself burn with aches and pains, but today I feel like I should embrace the nothingness, allow myself to float away and not have to worry about anything. I don’t want to be anchored to this world anymore, don’t want to see the ugliness here, the horrible things people are always hiding, the way nothing is ever as it seems.

I don’t want to see all the things that have happened that I can’t change.

“Not willingly,” I finally whisper.

There’s a sort of choked growl from my dad, and then his weight is off the bed as he stalks out of the room, and I allow myself to float away into nothingness.

Ezekiel

20

The rumors are flying before I even make it back to school on Monday. I wake up on Sunday morning to over a dozen text messages asking me why I beat the shit out of both Evangeline Parker and Anthony Stull. Dominic and Koby are in full freak-out mode, asking me three times each if I’m in jail. In fact, it’s the two of them pounding at the door early Sunday morning that actually wakes me up, along with my dad shouting for me to answer the door so he can get some rest.

I stumble down the stairs, still half asleep and knocking into walls and nearly tripping over the coffee table. Finally, I make it to the front door and let my friends inside, and my dad stops yelling and I hear his bedroom door slam shut.

“The hell?” I ask, trying to rub the sleep from my eyes.

“Dude,” Koby exclaims, and his dark eyes are so wide, I can see the white all the way around, same with Dominic. “We thought you were arrested! What’s going on?”

“What do you mean, what’s going on?” I ask, walking blindly over to the couch and collapsing onto it. “What time is it?”

“It’s almost one in the afternoon!” Dominic says. “We thought you were in jail!”

I shake my head and almost want to laugh. “Why the hell would I be in jail?” I ask, pressing my thumbs into the corners of my eyes, trying to adjust them to the bright sunlight coming in from the windows.

“Because you raped Evie Parker and beat up Tony Stull!” Koby sounds more than a little hysterical.

I laugh out loud, because the idea is so incredibly ridiculous. But as I open my eyes once more and see their serious faces, I realize that my friends are convinced this is the truth.

“Where did you hear that?” I demand.

“From everyone!” Dominic cries, snatching up a pillow and sitting down in its spot on the couch. He’s only sitting down for a few seconds before he leaps up again, apparently too filled with adrenaline to sit still. “Cameron called us last night at like, one in the morning, asking where you were, and said he heard from some other workers at the club that you attacked Evie in the bathroom and when Tony came in you beat the shit out of him and were in jail.”

I laugh again and shake my head, and my friends stare at me. I look at them incredulously. “Who do you think I am? Cameron?” I ask in a hard voice. “You think I’d rape someone? Are you kidding me?”

Koby and Dominic exchange a look, and then stare at the floor, abashed.

“We were a little distracted by the fact that you wouldn’t answer your phone, therefore making us think you
were
in jail,” Koby mutters.

“Well, I had a rough night,” I say through clenched teeth. “But thanks a lot for your faith in me, guys. It means a lot that my two best friends immediately believe I’m the one in the wrong, beating and raping women.”

I stand up and stomp to the kitchen, but not loud enough to disturb my dad. I rustle around in the cupboards and fridge, trying to find something to eat because it suddenly occurs to me that I never had dinner last night in all the chaos. Dominic and Koby shuffle in as I’m pouring myself a bowl of Cap’n Crunch, heads bowed and hands clasped behind their backs.

“So…” Dominic clears his throat. “What really happened?”

I slam my bowl on the table and jerk open the silverware drawer, still not loud enough to bother my dad, but enough to let out some of the anger inside me, and let them know I’m still pissed. “What
happened
was that I went out for a smoke break and heard Evie Parker screaming from the bathroom. I walked in and found Tony Stull beating the shit out of her.”

There’s a moment of silence, and as I sit down, I take a peek at my friends and feel a sense of satisfaction at the shocked looks on their faces. Slowly, they sit at the kitchen table with me, eyes still wide.

“Tony was abusive?” Dominic asks slowly.

“I don’t think it was the first time. Well, I
know
it wasn’t the first time,” I say, still eating as though this isn’t a big deal to me. “I saw them at the wedding last week, outside on my break again. He had her up against the wall and was slapping her. He punched her in the ribs, too. He’s crazy, I’m telling you. You should have seen that bathroom.” My hand begins to tremble and I have to put the spoon back in the bowl, because all the milk is spilling out of it. “There was blood everywhere. He was kicking her and pulling her around by her hair. She was coughing up blood.”

“Shit,” Koby mutters, and Dominic looks equally stunned.

“So,” I say, forcing a business-like air into my voice. “I ran in and punched Tony or something, I don’t even remember because I was flipping out, and I made sure he’s down and grabbed Evie and got the fuck out of there. I ran into the banquet hall screaming for Alex and Dr. Parker, and that was pretty much it. They arrested Tony, though.” I pause, and then look quizzically at my friends. “They took him out in handcuffs, actually. Who started saying it was me?”