An Honest Lie(26)
“Ooh, I like that,” Mac agreed.
From across the room, Tara rolled her eyes and mouthed, “Of course she does.” At some point, Tara had changed from her jeans into cotton shorts and a tank top. She strolled over to the chair next to Rainy, considered it and moved to a chair on the other side of the room instead.
Rainy felt uncomfortable with the game right away. Being forced to answer personal questions directed at her by Tara, Ursa and Mac? No, thanks. But the rest of them were reluctantly crowding around the suite’s living room, finding chairs. Braithe was ripping the hotel’s notepad into thin strips of paper.
“Here,” she said, handing them around. “Write your question on this paper and try to disguise your handwriting!”
They all took a slip and one of the pens Braithe passed out and stared at her expectantly.
“Do we all have to answer the question, or is it one person per question?” Mac wanted to know. Ursa yawned and Mac said, “No, you have to stay awake. Dinner is at ten.” Rainy scratched her foot with her other foot and tried to pretend she wasn’t terrified of what they’d ask her. Let it be one question per person, she pleaded mentally.
Tara settled it. “One each or it’ll take forever.” They’d each draw a question and, unless it was their own, they’d have to answer.
“They can’t just be any questions. You have to ask really prying questions,” Tara emphasized. But they all knew each other—had known each other for years. They’d only be prying into Rainy’s life with their drilling nosiness. You only have to answer one, she reminded herself, tapping her foot with the pen.
She scribbled down her question, hoping the others would be just as straightforward, and tossed her slip into the ice bucket Mac had put on the table for that purpose. Maybe she shouldn’t have drunk her wine so fast; she was feeling weird. She wished Grant would call her so she’d have an excuse to leave the room. It would be a great time for Viola to go into labor, she thought miserably.
“Okay, okay,” Mac called. “Here it is...first question.” She held the slip of paper up, reading it carefully to herself before her face underwent several expressions, one of them embarrassment.
“Spit it out, Mackenzie,” Ursa said, and then added: “I hope it’s mine!” She rubbed her hands together theatrically.
Mac cleared her throat. “What was your first sexual experience? Describe in great detail.”
Braithe cackled.
“Yessssss!” Ursa sat upright.
Mac looked around at them nervously and then reached for her wineglass.
“My youth group was on this camping trip,” she said. “So the guys were in one area and the girls in another and we had a chaperone in each camp. One day, the girls arranged to meet the guys at the lake after our youth leaders fell asleep. They were going to skinny-dip, but I didn’t want to do it, because I was, like, terrified we’d get caught, so I stayed behind in the tent.” Her face got really pale, and Rainy felt sick. This wasn’t going to be good. She wanted to reach out and tell Mac that she didn’t owe anything to these women, and she didn’t have to say another word if she didn’t want to.
“Anyway, there was this guy I kind of liked but he never really spoke to me, even when I tried to talk to him. The others hadn’t been gone for more than ten minutes when he crawls into the tent where I’m lying in my freaking purple sleeping bag...and he starts to kiss me.”
“Wait, he didn’t ask? He just starts to...kiss you?” The delighted look had left Ursa’s face, and she was staring at Mac in horror. Mac nodded.
“But then he starts feeling me up, too, and I’m still so shocked by the kissing that I’m letting it all happen.”
“Whoa, whoa!” Braithe said, cutting her off. “How old were you?”
The room had taken on a new feel. Everyone had stopped drinking and eating and fidgeting and they were all focused on Mac. She looked exceptionally small and fragile as she sat on her knees on the hotel floor, wearing her Britney Spears T-shirt. She probably hadn’t looked that much different when she was a teenager. Rainy blinked hard, trying to clear her vision.
“Fifteen,” she said. They all flinched. It was an age where people stopped thinking of you as a child, even though you still were one. Grown men made sexual remarks to fifteen-year-old girls all the time. Rainy knew that on an all-too-personal level. She shivered as she stared at Mac, not wanting the story to go where it seemed to be headed.
“We—he had sex with me. It all happened really fast and I genuinely feel so stupid for not saying anything, or screaming, or anything like that. I just laid there, honest to God, and waited for it to be over. I never told anyone.” She folded her lips in after the last sentence and stared fixedly at the blank TV screen.
“Mac, holy shit,” Ursa said. “Does Bryan know?”
Mac shook her head. Bryan Biggs was a really nice guy, there was no other way to describe him. He reminded Rainy of what she was supposed to be: kind, patient and outgoing.
“Omigod,” Mac said in one breath. “I can’t believe I just told you all of that.” She covered her face with her hands, and Ursa went to sit by her. Mac started to cry.
“No, Mac, please don’t. We’re your friends.” Braithe reached across the table between them and placed her hand over Mac’s protectively while Ursa nodded. Rainy felt torn between comforting her and staying the observer. She noticed that Tara was watching everyone’s reactions carefully from where she still sat perched in her chair.