I was grossed out by this question, since it suggested to me that there was a place in my mom"s imagination for the possibility that people could "decide together" to make a s.e.x tape. And I was furious again at having to repeat what I"d already told her.
"Of course not! I already said I didn"t know. You already asked me that. Do you think I"d agree to making a video of myself having s.e.x? Are you insane?"
"Of course I didn"t think-I just hoped-" My mom cut herself off.
"Hoped what? That I was a p.o.r.n star rather than a wretched victim?"
At this, Meghan flinched. I was too much, even for the people who loved me most.
My dad rejoined us at the table. I saw him inhale, preparing himself for whatever they were about to say.
"Honey, we"re just trying to protect you," my mom said. "We"re going to have to get rid of the video, and get a lawyer. We"ll figure it out." She looked over at my dad, desperately.
"Figure what out?" I asked.
"How best to defend you from whatever"s coming," my dad said.
"Whatever"s coming? Isn"t the horror show already here? I mean, I don"t give a s.h.i.t what happens from here on out-everyone on the planet has already seen that video-except me! It"s probably already on MidgetHos.com! My life is completely ruined!"
This made my mom stand up and come over to my chair. She put her arm around me and moved the chair out from the table. "Let"s go upstairs," she said.
I climbed down and let her lead me to my bedroom. Meghan followed us. My mom sat on the bed with me and rubbed my back for a few minutes, silently. She didn"t ask me anything else, and eventually she leaned down, kissed me, and stood to leave.
"Honey, we"ll help you fix this. This isn"t unfixable. Your dad and I will call a lawyer, get rid of the video, and deal with whatever the potential criminal aspects might be. We"ll-"
She was off and running, list-making, organizing us out of whatever had happened. But I was thinking, potential criminal aspects? I didn"t say anything, couldn"t tell her that it wasn"t only Kyle, that there might be others, too. It was too sickening, too sordid, too much. I just nodded, thinking I would listen to my parents later, hear whatever they actually thought. Maybe I would have to decide whether to press charges against Kyle and Chris and Alan, like in the movies. I had an image of myself in court, naked, everyone talking about whether what happened was my fault. The doorbell rang, and my mother went to answer it. A moment later, Sarah appeared in the doorway. She looked like someone she loved had died.
"Holy s.h.i.t, Sarah," I said. "What the-"
She came into the room and closed the door.
"I have a copy, Judy," she said. She took a DVD out of her purse and handed it to me. I looked at it. It was unmarked, which surprised me, although I don"t know what I was expecting, Kyle"s handwriting? "Me and Judy f.u.c.king"? "The End of Judy"s Life"?
"How did you get this?" I asked Sarah.
"From Alan."
"You called Alan?"
"I went to his house."
"You went to Alan"s house?"
"Right."
"And how"d you get him to give it to you?"
"I threatened to tell his mother or call the cops."
I closed my eyes. "Have you watched it?"
"Part of it."
"Because it"s too terrible to watch the whole thing?"
"I didn"t think it was my business," she said. "Um, Judy?" she started.
I was holding the DVD, frozen, unable to put it into my computer.
"Yeah?"
"I"m not sure you should watch it, actually."
"I know," I said. "I appreciate all your help. But I have to. I can"t be the only one who doesn"t know what it is. I mean, I can"t live with that, either." I leaned down, started to put the disc in, and then turned back up to the two of them, standing behind me, looking terrible.
"Do you guys mind if I watch alone?" I asked. "I mean, I" ll-"
"Of course not. Tell me what we can do to help. Anything," Meghan said.
She reached up and took Sarah"s arm and led her into my little bathroom. I could hear the water running.
As soon as they were gone, I had the distinct sense of standing on the edge of something, the knowledge before I even put the DVD into my computer that it was about to change my life forever, that even watching it would be an utterly disastrous event. There are certain things we"re never meant to see, and this was one of them.
I put it in the drive, and my computer whirled and then the screen turned blue, offered me some choices, start movie, resume movie, exit. I thought how I"d like to exit, pushed start movie, let the tiny forward arrow pulse with my choice to watch, and then came the bed, the room, the walls, the people. For a minute, I had a surge of hope, because our faces weren"t clear, that we weren"t recognizable. Maybe no one would know it was me. But then I realized that I was three feet nine, standing next to that foldout bed in the bas.e.m.e.nt, the one I"d woken up on. I was wearing a T-shirt I didn"t recognize, very long on me. I couldn"t tell whether I still had my corduroy skirt on underneath. I was standing there, kind of swaying, laughing. Kyle was already on the bed, under a sheet, and I climbed up next to him and pulled the long T-shirt over my head, like a stripper. I did have the skirt on. Kyle was watching me, peeling the sheets back, and I lay down next to him on my side, and then, to my surprise, turned onto my back as if we had agreed on what was going to happen next. It was all strangely ch.o.r.eographed, looked like it had happened the way it happened because there was no other way it could have gone. Kyle climbed on top of me and pushed the skirt up and started moving his body up and down like an enormous puppet. Then another figure was standing next to the bed. Alan. I heard myself breathe in, but couldn"t tell if it was the me watching or the me in the video. I squinted my eyes as if I might be able to block out what was about to happen, what had already happened, by not watching it. But I couldn"t. So I saw Alan stand at the side of the bed and unzip his jeans. I saw him pull them down and his underpants off. He was naked, and I remembered it again-his legs, his body, familiar and yet utterly strange. Kyle climbed off the weird miniature woman in the video, and she turned over toward Alan, moved her mouth close to where he stood at the edge of the bed. Then the video cut, and I was there, close up, clear, smiling, saying, "Lohden. My name is Judy Lohden." I looked really pretty in that shot.
They had edited it. They had cut in the footage of me meeting Kyle at Chessie Andrewjeski"s party. In the bathroom. The chair I was on and the floor dropped out from underneath me, the walls began to melt. Everything felt like slush. Midwestern-highway-style, polluted, melting, poisonous slush. They had edited the video so I would name myself, grin like an idiot at the end. They had, he had-taken the time to make sure everyone would know it was me. Why?
It cut back to the dark room, the bed. After Alan, Chris Arpent came into the frame, his muscles so big they were discernible even in the blurry, badly lit video. He was wearing nothing but boxers. He walked over to the bed, and-the bathroom door opened and I frantically shut down my computer, turned to see Meghan standing there with Sarah behind her, still in the doorway to the bathroom. I got off the chair, but as soon as I was standing, I felt boneless, flesh all the way through, Silly Putty, Gumby. I sat down on the floor. Meghan came toward me. I had no idea how much time had pa.s.sed since I"d begun watching the video, since they had gone into the bathroom, since-maybe it had been five minutes, maybe five hours. The world started spinning faster and I thought I might faint.
Meghan said, "I"m so sorry, Judy. I just, you know, heard you crying, so I wanted to ask if I could help, if I-"
I reached up and touched my face, hadn"t realized it was wet.
"Is it horrible?" Meghan asked. She crouched down so we were both on the floor.
"It"s unbelievable," I said. "They-someone edited it." Sarah had emerged into the room and now she sat on the floor too.
"Did you see that part, Sar? Did you see where I say I"m-"
She shook her head no, but I didn"t know whether to believe her.
Meghan wrapped her arms around me and then Sarah moved in closer, and the three of us just sat there on the floor, not saying anything else.
But after several minutes-or again, maybe hours-like that, I stood up. "I have to watch the rest," I said.
"Do you want us to-?" Sarah gestured back at the bathroom.
"No," I said, "stay."
So we all stood in front of my desk. I didn"t sit at the chair again, just leaned forward and clicked the play b.u.t.ton, and watched the remaining minute, during which Chris came into the shot and climbed onto the bed, me, moved like a monster. I turned the sound up-not loud enough to bring my parents knocking on my door, I hoped, but loud enough that I could hear laughing.
After six seconds of it, Meghan covered her face with her small, tan hands and cried.
13 If the media"s love of me is any indication, maybe I was in fact meant to be a movie star. I am the tragic heroine of their stories, the victim. No one is spinning this with any kind of she-was-asking-for-it angle, because apparently I"m so deformed and undesirable I couldn"t have asked even for abject humiliation. Everyone has run with it like I"d been lobotomized, unable to make a decision for myself.
When the news first broke, you could tell it was a hit reality-TV show in the making: "Authorities at Darcy Arts Academy in Ann Arbor, Michigan, say they are investigating charges that a s.e.xually explicit videotape circulating among students shows three male students engaged in s.e.xual relations with a sixteen-year-old disabled girl from the school. It is unclear whether the act was consensual or whether the boys will face prosecution."
Some of the stories are more salacious than others, but the reporters all pat themselves on the back for not naming Kyle, Alan, Chris, or me "because of our status as minors," and mine as a potential rape victim. The whole not-showing-the-face thing. None of the TV news can do anything, because they can"t show any of us. They must be grinding their teeth, covering the coverage instead of the actual s.e.x story they"d love to show. They"ve all clearly seen the video. The first time I saw a TV reporter mention it, I was sitting on the bed, and by the time I realized I had heard the words video we received of a disabled girl from a local private performing arts school I was already under the covers, shaking. I couldn"t even come out to find the remote, so I couldn"t turn it off and had to listen to them rhapsodize about their decision to show no footage and name no names.
Everyone uses words like disabled, whatever that word even means, and half say I"m a dwarf, because that"s what makes the story so brilliant. I mean, everyone loves a teenage s.e.x scandal-all that smooth skin and innocent crime-but what could be better than one that"s also a circus freak show? Even I can see the appeal.
My fourth day here, I read a letter in the Detroit Free Press from Norman Crump, Ms. Doman"s husband, asking why they were covering the story at all, and proposing that any coverage is invasive, unethical rubbernecking. I could tell from the writing that he considered it a heroic move to put his name on a letter like that, and I bet my parents were happy. Maybe they even celebrated the letter, read it out loud, felt grateful. But to me, he was just getting in on the action.
And why are all the reporters making me out to be such a victim? I mean, no one has given me any credit for being sane or independent enough to run away. I feel like they should write that I"m brave. Because less than twelve hours after I watched the video and Meghan and I listened to my mom sobbing like she was going to die and telling my father she wanted to leave the state forever and didn"t give a s.h.i.t about Judy"s Grill and wanted to bring me up in the witness protection program and I don"t know what and my dad was all quiet, listening, comforting her, finally telling her she had to calm down, had to be quiet, that she would wake us, as if we were sleeping. Listening to my dad tell her she had to take something and her going into the bathroom and the water running-what did she take? Sleeping pills? I mean, they hadn"t even seen the video yet. And the next night I made the most decisive move of my life, even faster and with less hesitation than I had decided to smoke with Ginger or climb up into Kyle"s bed. My mom and I had dropped Meghan off at the airport, a totally changed person after spending those horrific days with me. I, selfishly, was glad she had been there. Because I thought she, more than anyone else, knew who I was. Or at least who I had been. After Meghan left, promising to call every hour for the rest of my life to check on me, my mom confessed that she had to go to the Grill for twenty minutes to take my dad the key to the safe or something. She would be right back, she promised, he could handle the dinner rush alone, and would I be okay? For a few minutes? Anxious for any break at all from her withering, well-meaning scrutiny, I practically shoved her out the door. And as soon as I heard her car drive off, I threw away forever my already broken good-girl record by taking five hundred dollars from the cash box I knew she hid in her closet. I unzipped my giant backpack and packed seven clean outfits, including the $118 jeans from Nordstrom"s, a CNN T-shirt Molly had given me for a nightshirt, my toothbrush, twelve Power Bars, a bottle of water, all my gum, and The Bluest Eye. By the time my mom came home from the Grill, I had stuffed the full backpack into my closet and climbed into bed, where I spent the entire afternoon and evening, fake-sleeping. My cell phone was under my pillow on vibrate, and it rang a million times, Ginger half of them, Sarah and Molly the other half. Meghan wasn"t home yet, so her hundreds of calls didn"t start until later that night. I didn"t pick up for anyone, not a single time, although I did wonder why Ginger was calling. I waited all the way through dinner, still pretending to be asleep. My mom came and checked on me ninety-five times, but I never moved under the flowery duvet. I felt bad about Sam, especially since I hadn"t apologized for snapping at him at breakfast the day before, but I couldn"t see a way to get through dinner without lying directly. Not saying good-bye made me feel guilty, but I couldn"t say good-bye without them stopping me, so what could I do, really? As soon as I heard my mom and dad go to bed, I walked downstairs and right out the front door. It was so easy, I wondered why I had never run away before, and then I remembered that my life had never been hideous enough until now. Maybe I"d had no agency the night Kyle taped me, but now I was an outlaw of my own making. As soon as the outside air hit my skin, I felt better, freer, stronger.
The night was silent, the church asleep, the trees in our backyard dark and all Wizard of Oz in the night. I wished I had red glittering shoes, could click them together and be somewhere safe. I wished I had an emu, or a noose. I needed something, magic or not. I crossed Washtenaw and boarded the first AATA bus that came along. There was one guy on the bus, sleeping, and the bus driver, who looked so tired I thought she might fall asleep at the wheel, too. If she noticed me get on, or had any thoughts about my being a little person, she kept it to herself. The doors swung shut and I hopped up onto the first seat, the one reserved for disabled people. I rode down Washtenaw again, the nine millionth time in my life, past the once-gas-station-now-coff ee-shop, past the rec center where my mom works out, past the Barnes & n.o.ble, past Huron Parkway, where I would have turned off to go to Kyle Malanack"s house, past Arborland, and onto 94E. I wondered if the police were at Kyle"s house now, and what questions they would ask if they were. Although maybe if I wanted the police to ask him anything, I would have to be the one to call them. And what would I say on the phone? This guy I"m in love with made a video of me with some of his friends? If I said that, how would I prove I hadn"t wanted to? And even if I could establish that, then would I be a powerless, pitiful victim? And a victim of what, exactly? The s.e.x? The tape? What had they done by accident and what had they meant to do? I tried to put it out of my mind, to imagine everything would resolve itself without my involvement. When the bus sped up, a feeling of genuine exhilaration came over me. I was free! I could go anywhere, do anything.
But ten minutes later, I was scared and hungry. I thought of the cops again, of calling them, of a trial. Would there be a trial now? What if I found out Kyle had orchestrated the whole thing? What if there were other tapes? Had he taped me those first few times, too? I looked out the window: Ypsilanti, a place I had been twice-once to a music festival with my parents, during which I had jumped in one of those inflatable bouncy houses, and the other time to go Halloween shopping at Value World with Goth Sarah. We drove by the huge p.e.n.i.s of a water tower. When I saw a McDonald"s, I got off the bus. The parking lot was empty and littered with beer bottles. I went inside, and ordered a six-piece McNugget Happy Meal. It came with a plastic Barbie mermaid named Kayla. According to the package, "secret items from the ocean" were going to appear on her body if I dipped her in cold water. I sat there, totally silent, dunking rubbery, reconst.i.tuted chicken into rubbery, reconst.i.tuted BBQ sauce. I had the distinct sensation that this was another video, a movie of my life that I was watching, and in a minute I"d turn the TV off and be safe on the couch with my mom and dad and Chad and Sam.
Then I heard laughter, and realized that the kids working behind the counter had noticed me. I didn"t care. No one could see or say anything about me that hadn"t, at this point, already been seen or said. As long as they weren"t violent or going to kill me, I didn"t care. And frankly, even then I wasn"t sure if I cared. The sound of their laughter reminded me of the video. I closed my eyes, thought how it had been one day since I"d seen the video, and how now my life would be a million more days long. I wasn"t sure if I could get through them.
I got up and left quickly, not bothering to throw away my fries or Happy Meal box. I left Kayla the mermaid on the table and hurried out into the blank parking lot, feeling only cold. It was windy. I didn"t want to stand there, waiting for a bus, so I started walking. I could sense suddenly how I might have looked from the outside, to my mom, for example, like a little kid, walking along the highway in Ypsilanti at one in the morning. As soon as I saw the Motel Manor, I went inside, decided to live there for the rest of my life, and why not? It was $106 a week. I could stay a month with the money I"d brought in cash, and I had my mom"s credit card, too. I was hoping not to use it, because if I did, they could track me down right away, but in case they needed a deposit or something, proof I could pay, I was holding it, ready to show it to the clerk.
She took my $106 in cash without asking any questions, or even looking at me really, and reached over the counter to hand a heavy metal key down to me. The place was a dingy fun home, full of warped mirrors, peeling paint, and insects. There was a dilapidated couch across from two chairs in the "lobby," occupied by a sleeping man who was either homeless or a hotel employee. It was impossible to say which. No one seemed concerned that he was there. Of course there was no one to be concerned, really. The desk clerk was so tired and haggard that she looked barely alive. I thought of Judy"s Grill, the buzz and fuss of the place, my mom behind the counter, smelling like shampoo and talc.u.m powder and french fries. I contemplated boarding the first bus back in the direction of my parents" house, but then I propelled myself forward to room 204, thinking I had to give it at least a night-it being the new, independent, defiant me. I couldn"t be Judy Lohden anymore, smarty, ch.o.r.e-doing, upstanding daughter. Now I was a tough runaway, so I"d have to last at least twenty-four hours. And in spite of myself, I wanted Kyle to hear that I had disappeared, to worry. I wondered if he would worry.
The stairs to the second floor were concrete, with a slab of gray carpet thrown over them, not properly secured. It was peeling up, flapping where it met the banister on one side and the wall on the other. I had a special close view of this because the stairs were deep enough that I was like a tiny mountain creature on them. The top step was wet with something-blood? pee? coffee? rainwater?-so wet that it squished under my boots. I hoisted myself up to the landing and walked down a dim hallway to room 204, where I had to stand on my absolute tiptoes to reach the lock, mysteriously located above the doork.n.o.b. The door creaked open into a room of more darkness. I groped around in the dark for a light switch and found it, about three inches over my head. The light hummed and buzzed, barely lighting a dirty gray carpet. There was a double bed with a brown blanket on it, across from a very small television set on a table with two folding chairs. The bathroom was to my left. I dragged one of the chairs into the bathroom, where I used it to stand at the counter. I saw myself in the mirror, red-eyed, lost, unrecognizable. Then I plugged the filthy sink and filled it with water, took my cell phone out of my jeans pocket, with its million missed calls and names and voice mails all lit up like horrible reminders of a world I"d once belonged to-some of them were even from my former friends from Huron, so I knew the news was literally everywhere-and I dropped the phone in. Some bubbles rose up, as if it had been alive. I named the bubbles: Ginger, Sarah, Molly, Elizabeth Wood, Stockard Blumenthal, even Rachael Collins, as unfair as that was. I never wanted to think of anyone at D"Arts again, never wanted to see a single name or face from the school. Kyle and his friends I couldn"t bear to think of at all. I felt relief, watching it underwater, drowned. I was uncontactable, hidden, safe. I walked back into the hideous bedroom and climbed up onto the bed, so exhausted I wasn"t sure my arms could even handle the task. But they did. Then I had an image of myself climbing onto Kyle"s bed. I collapsed onto the Motel Manor bed with all my clothes and shoes still on. I didn"t even bother to peel the covers back. Not to mention washing my face or brushing my teeth. I felt all my routines short out, and my old self vanish. I mean, I am so deeply not the kind of person who sleeps in my clothes or skips face-washing or teeth-brushing. But there it was. And for the first time since that Friday night at Kyle"s ice palace, I slept. It was a hot, sweaty, cold, wakeful sleep, during which I had the dream I"ve now been having over and over since I ran away. In it, I"m in a courtroom, watching Kyle and Chris and Alan admit what they did. There are thousands of people in the audience. The princ.i.p.al, Mr. Grames, is giving a presentation, holding a red pointer he shines first on the video and then on my body. He makes me stand up so everyone can see that I"m there. I"m wearing a sheet or something-something loose and thin that might fall off.
"Judy was naked!" Mr. Grames says, and the video plays, the red dot of his pointer following the lines of my body like a bright bug crawling on me. "We can see here what happened." And it"s so real I now can"t remember what the differences are between my nightmare video and the real one. They"re both appalling, me arching my back, turning to face Alan, huge on the wall of some dream courtroom, everyone looking at each other with their mouths open, like they"re about to drink my humiliation, devour me. Then a judge who looks just like Mr. Luther but isn"t him, says, "She was a virgin! It"s not her fault! She was a virgin! It didn"t count. It didn"t count. It didn"t count."
He says it just like that, three times, and then in the dream I put my head into my hands and Kyle gets up and he"s laughing, and he says no, she wasn"t, she"s a s.l.u.t and why is everyone so surprised that she got drunk and g.a.n.g.b.a.n.ged me and my friends?
And then I stand up on top of a table, and the sheet feels like it might fall off, and I start to say no, no, I had s.e.x with Kyle only three times and that was because I thought we were in love. But my throat closes, and my teeth are locked together so tight it feels like they might break. And I"m thinking, in the dream, my teeth are going to shatter and I can"t talk. So I stand there totally silent in my sheet, with my locked jaw. And even in the dream, where logic is all f.u.c.ked up, the truth is so humiliating that I know on some level it"s better for everyone to think I was a willing partic.i.p.ant. Because then I was just fun and crazy and doing my own thing, right? Rather than being violated? Then, when I finally risk opening my mouth, hoping to make this point, all my teeth start to fall out after all. And because I know the sheet will slip off if I move my arms, I keep them pinned at my sides and let my teeth spill down and bounce all over the desk like marbles. I don"t even bend to pick them up.
I never fall asleep anymore without having some version of this dream. Sometimes, Mr. Troudeau, the AP history teacher, pounds a gavel until I put my hands over my ears. I look over at him, to say, please, stop, and it turns out he"s pounding his hips into the desk like he"s f.u.c.king the drawer. Then I look out at the audience and everyone is laughing. Ginger, Kyle, Alan, Chris, their moms, my mom, even Goth Sarah and Meghan-they"re all laughing that laugh and sticking their tongues out.
Even though I keep having these dreams-or maybe because of them-I sleep so much at the Motel Manor that whenever I wake up, sometimes to the sound of someone knocking gently, I never know who or where I am. I can"t tell what"s a dream and what"s real. And in those utterly disoriented moments, I feel half happy. But then I remember reality, and I sink under thousands of gallons of water. I pull the covers back over my head and try to fall asleep again, because even though the dreams are terrible, I live for that one moment a day, when, between being asleep and being awake, I don"t remember. Even when I"m sure the knocking is real, I never answer the door.
Sometimes, I get up and go out into the hallway to find Bill. I read papers Bill brings me, and spend hours watching TV. The news has been the only way for me to follow my own story, and I think this might be the definition of having an out-of-body experience, reading your own life, as misreported by people who know nothing about you. My third day here I read that D"Arts was "cooperating with an investigation by the state attorney"s office, interviewing parents and students close to the case."
By my fifth day, D"Arts was holding a "closed hearing." According to the Detroit Free Press, "A tribunal named by the school board heard evidence on whether three male students, all seniors, acted inappropriately or broke the law by videotaping a fellow student at a party." Someone named Caitlin Newbury, who is apparently the D"Arts lawyer, had the custodian "bar a reporter from attending the hearing." What does "bar" mean? Did Mr. Nicks, the eighty-year-old janitor, have to shove a journalist out of D"Arts? Was the hearing held at school? Or in a courtroom like in my dream? And either way, didn"t they need me there? In the article, Mr. Grames was quoted saying that the school was cooperating closely with law enforcement officials, toward deciding whether and what criminal charges should be pursued.
All I could think was, what about me? What about letting me ask Kyle directly if he had done it on purpose, who had edited that horrific video and why? Wasn"t that kind of all there was to it? I mean, this article ended by saying that school officials had "declined to identify" who would hear the case. Calls to my house were "unreturned," and my parents were not commenting. No one was, as the case was "ongoing." Just that word gave me the under-the-dining-room-table, seeing-if-time-stops feeling. I wondered for a moment whether my life had stopped being ongoing, and realized that even though I was living out the rest of it at the Motel Manor, alone, away from my family and story, it was still moving forward. So can someone please give me an example of something that isn"t "ongoing"? Is there something in this life that"s ever clearly, unequivocally finished? And is it just because I"m young that I have to ask that? I mean, here"s a horrible possibility: even death can"t exactly finish us. Even if I died, which would be one step closer to no life than this Motel Manor existence is, that video and this story would still live without me. My death would just be part of that ongoing tale. And maybe it"s counterintuitive, but that makes me want to come out of hiding, show everyone that I"m alive and, if not in charge of, then at least a partic.i.p.ant in my own ongoing life.
Today the Detroit Free Press said that Kyle and Chris and Alan have been expelled from D"Arts, but no "criminal charges are being pursued." Being pursued! If that c.r.a.ppy writer had been in American lit, then Ms. Doman would have written in the margin, "Don"t use pa.s.sive voice unless there"s a compelling reason." I mean, "being pursued"? By whom? I had a.s.sumed that such charges would have been pursued by me, and that they still could be. But the paper was acting like I"m not even real, just grammatically implied.
Maybe because I ran away and wasn"t there to explain that I find the entire thing utterly sickening and was in a coma when it happened, the world has decided that we all agreed both to have s.e.x and then to make the video. In which case I can see why there"s nothing criminal about it. Maybe the world thinks I wanted this to happen. When I have thoughts like that, my veins freeze like the pipes in our house, right before the ice makes them explode and flood the bas.e.m.e.nt. I can"t believe my parents, who I a.s.sume were involved in this "hearing" in some way, would have let everyone leave believing that.
None of the articles I"ve seen has mentioned my disappearance. They"re not allowed to name me, or show my face, so they don"t even say I "wasn"t available for comment" or anything, although they all say that about my parents. They all complain about "calls to the family" being "unreturned." Sometimes I wake up at night, sweating, thinking, what if my parents" lawn is covered with tents, reporters in and out of sleeping bags, shining flashlights, peering into the windows in search of me or my parents or brothers? What if every other room in this motel is full of camera crews or something. My two small, dirty windows overlook an airshaft and garbage dump, not even the parking lot, so I can"t see if there are crowds in the front. I"ve left only twice, both times to go to Kroger, and once was my second night here, after dark, and the other time was that Sat.u.r.day morning, predawn, with Bill. Maybe by now there are throngs. Or maybe I"ve just watched too many big-budget movies and real life is slower and flatter than all that. Maybe it"s just what I"ve noticed, now that I"m the object of stories I know something about, which is that reporters actually report on one another"s stories all the time, instead of coming to investigate the truth. They copy whatever everyone else wrote, and you see all the mistakes get repeated verbatim. Maybe I never noticed this when I was reading about stuff I also knew nothing about, but once you read about something you know something about, you can"t believe how slack and inaccurate most articles are. In addition to making me want to come out and set the record straight, it makes me never want to read the paper again, since now that I know it"s all fiction anyway, why bother? I"d rather read a good book. I mean, I don"t know much about the culpability of the Catholic Church, or oil spills, or banker crimes, but now that I"ve read the stories about me and my school, I can"t imagine that reading the papers is the best way to learn much of anything about any of these other categories, either. I"m no expert, even on what happened to me, but I do know that I"m not "disabled," and that D"Arts is not "a breeding ground for scandals among the designer-drug-addled children of Ann Arbor"s elite." The unnamed perpetrators are also not (a) "all seniors at the elite Arts Academy," as I"ve now read dozens of times, or (b) "childhood friends of the disabled victim," even if "sources close to the investigation" say so.
I"ve also realized that even though everything in the world is ongoing, or maybe precisely because that"s true, nothing lasts. The story is migrating to the back pages these days; I guess if you can"t print photos or name names, the s.e.xy, empty headlines only grip people for so long. And there"s no shortage in America of h.o.m.ophobic politicians molesting their young male staffers. A super prolific one has graciously taken the front-page spotlight off of me this week.
Mainly, what I want to know is something the media also can"t seem to figure out, which is who the "hearers" of the hearing were, what they heard and decided, and whether any of it matters for me. The truth is, I can"t know any of that without my parents. I need my parents, and I think I have to get out of here. Were they there? Was Mr. Luther? Mr. Troudeau? What about Kyle"s parents? Kyle? Chris? Alan? Who picked and how? What could they possibly have said to one another? Did those guys get to tell their sides? Sometimes, if I let myself flutter near the fire, I imagine Kyle announcing to a room full of people, including my parents, "I was drunk." He says it in the same voice he used to tell me about his sister. But when he said that, his point was like, "it was my fault," and when he says this, it"s the opposite, his point is, "I don"t even remember what happened and how can it be my fault, I was drunk." The thing is, I was drunk too, and I still can"t exactly remember what happened, so maybe he genuinely feels that way too. And what I want to know is not even about the s.e.x, really-I can guess at what happened there, and whether I said I was okay or not doesn"t seem to me to be the point. I mean, even if I said it was okay, it clearly wasn"t. Whoever created the word consent has never been videotaped doing something she didn"t mean to. What I want to know is whether Kyle is the one who edited the tape, if he was cruel enough to include that clip of my name. In my happy imaginary version of the hearing, it comes out clearly that the whole enterprise was Chris"s or Alan"s fault, and-surprise!-Kyle still doesn"t know how it happened: "When I woke up, these guys had gone through all my tapes! I had no idea they made this thing." Or in the B version, he made the tape itself, but it was for him, a private way of keeping a record, keeping track, keeping me. And he never meant for it to get out.
I don"t care about the expulsions, or at least I feel in my body like I don"t. Dropping out of the world has made me numb, I guess. Or maybe getting expelled isn"t a big deal. Is it? So they don"t have to go back to school? Who cares? I kind of wonder what Kyle is doing with his empty days-watching the video on an endless loop, congratulating himself ? Does he find the whole thing s.e.xy? Or funny? Maybe not, maybe he feels bad about it, was trying to deny it or apologize for that night. Part of me, maybe the desperate, ridiculous part, still thinks he and I will have a conversation about this someday, that he"ll be able to tell me something that makes it better. Not that that makes it okay necessarily, since how could it? But at least that makes it possible that this actually happened for some reason other than he"s a monster and I"m cursed. Maybe he"s in therapy now, becoming a better person, or figuring out why he did what he did. Maybe part of his process will be to come find me someday and say he"s sorry. One of the things my mom told me that interminable day Meghan left was that the school had asked that I be "evaluated," by a shrink, I guess. My parents and I were supposed to come in for a meeting with the school. I asked my mom if she and my dad were being "evaluated" too, and she shook her head, said, "No, I think just briefed."
Did Kyle"s parents get briefed? Did he get evaluated? Maybe his family has moved again, to hide another nasty crime while he finishes high school elsewhere. I have no idea what Chris and Alan are doing, but they"ve both already gotten into colleges early, so it probably barely matters for them. Maybe they"re writing new "real life story" screenplays in a coffee shop downtown, the expulsion a kind of artistic trophy or extended vacation. I"ve never met anyone who got expelled before, so I don"t know what it means. Probably they"ll all go somewhere where n.o.body knows what they did at D"Arts, just like Kyle already did after his sister died, if that hideous story he told me was even true. Maybe everyone knows that secret now that I told it to Sarah.
Sometimes I think about whether those guys are scared I"ll press charges. But then I would have to talk-in public-about the whole thing. And not just that hideous night, or the video, but also the s.e.x with Kyle-from before. I"d have to admit how it was on the first date, and then he would say it hadn"t even been a real date, that he had just offered to drive me home and I had been pathetically in love with him before that, and it would be true. Chris would be there too. He would look handsome and troubled, with his shadowy eyes and beautiful mom. She"d put both her arms around him the way she did that night at the senior voice concert, and he would return the hug in his vintage I"m-a- macho-guy- but- I-love- my-mom way, and who would possibly believe he should be locked up? To say nothing of Alan, soft-spoken rich kid Alan, with his brown arms and hair so fine it would remind everyone of a kindergarten school picture. Everyone in the world would be there, gaping at us like we were starring in yet another sordid video about my life. And the audience would know that I"m not only a s.l.u.t to my core, but also a rat. And whether I succeeded or not, everyone would know that I had tried to send Kyle and Chris and Alan to jail. Now at least I have the moral upper hand, I think. And if I stay quiet, maybe it will all go away faster. Which is what I want most. Sometimes, especially at night, when I think they might be celebrating each day that pa.s.ses, I want to dial 911 and shout down the wires that I didn"t agree to any of it, didn"t want any of it, that my heart is on fire and I"m actually burning down with unhappiness and injustice. I thought Kyle loved me, and if he didn"t, well, then even everything from before was an attack too.
But, maybe because I"m me, I can always fast-forward to whatever end the fantasies come to-all of us on trial, them regretting it, their lives being wrecked, even them going to prison forever-and none of it restores my dignity, erases that video, or improves my life. Maybe that"s the conclusion my parents came to, too, and that"s why nothing criminal is "being pursued." It"s just a guess, but a pretty good one, I bet.
If it were true that misery enjoys company, then I guess I"d hope for those boys to be ruined, to go to jail instead of college. But somehow, maybe weirdly, it just seems like their lives being over isn"t really a silver lining for me. So maybe I"m not the kind of person who would rip someone else"s legs off to be tall after all.
At least I have Bill. And if I ever leave the Motel Manor, I"ll have my parents back. And Sam. I miss them so much I"ve been waking up crying. I never knew that that could happen, that you could be crying before you"re even awake. I always thought the mind had to tell the body to suffer, but even my whole body is heartbroken. I miss Meghan and Sarah and Molly, even Ginger. And I want to go home. I can"t stop wondering how Kyle can live with himself after what he did. I mean, I can hardly stand to sleep at night or be awake during the days myself, but I keep thinking when I"m crying in the morning, "Get up anyway, Judy. You"re going to be okay." Because at least what keeps me up and makes me cry isn"t something disgusting I did to anyone other than myself.
14 It"s been 9 days since I ran away, 216 hours; 12,960 minutes. This morning I woke up before it was even light outside, not crying for once, and put on my last clean clothes-and when I say clean, I mean filthy, because I"ve just been washing out the same outfits and wringing them out to dry them in rotation. I chewed some gum, sat on the bed, turned the TV on. News. People dying, markets collapsing, everyone losing their jobs. I waited for the gentle knocking, ready.
And when I heard it, I swung my legs over the side of the bed and jumped down, walked toward the door.
"Who is it?"
"It"s me."
I opened the door and there was Goth Sarah, looking totally calm, unsurprised to see me. She was carrying a Whole Foods bag. I hadn"t seen a human being I knew-other than Bill-in nine days. And since I"d ruined my phone, I hadn"t even heard anyone"s voice. More than once, I had wished for an old message from my mom or dad or Sarah, for one of their saved voices from before all this. Now, standing in the doorway of my room at the Motel Manor, Sarah was so familiar and so strange at the same time that it was like seeing someone arrive from being dead for a long time. I didn"t say anything, because I couldn"t. The tears started underneath my eyes, boiled over, and poured down my face. She watched me, deciding whether to pretend not to notice. She was wearing ripped gray fishnets and a sleeveless black lace dress with a white T-shirt underneath it. She looked skinnier than I remembered, smaller. She reached her pale arms out and hugged me.
"Hi, Judy," she said, into my hair. She was crying too.
"Hi."
She pulled back, looked at me. Her eyes were puffy, with circles under them. She didn"t have any makeup on, rare for her. "So I brought you some things," she said, wiping her eyes with the back of her right hand.
"Thank you."