Wrecked(85)

“Kind of just one big ‘FERP you,’”Haley says. Instantly horrified by her own joke. Everyone stares; then, to her relief, they laugh. A little.

“The thing is,” Jenny continues when they stop laughing, “I’m really, really . . . mad.” Her face crumples when she says this. Tears slip down her cheeks. One fist rhythmically pounds the pillow alongside her. “I mean, all this, for what? Nothing? He gets off, with nothing?”

No one speaks at first.

“It would appear that way,” Carrie finally says. Her words short, clipped.

Haley can’t help herself. “No, not nothing! He’s gone. For whatever reason. You can walk around here feeling safe again. Wasn’t that the point? I mean, the most the college was ever going to do was throw him out.”

“She just. Doesn’t. Get it.” Carrie says this to the window, her voice dripping with contempt.

“Well, why don’t you educate me?” Haley demands. “Since you seem to know so much.”

“You know, I don’t think this is what Jenny needs right now,” Gail says, jumping in.

But it’s too late. Carrie whips her head around and stares at Haley. “One,” she says, holding up a finger, “there’s no closure. Not for Jenny or anyone on this campus. It’s like smoke: just drifts off and disappears. And eventually it will be forgotten. Until it happens to another woman. Two: no consequences for him. He rides off into the sunset like some happy transfer student. Three: he’s free to do it again because there’s nothing on his record and the next college that takes him will be clueless. Four . . . do you really want me to keep going?”

“Okay, how about this,” Haley says. “One: he looks guilty because he’s dropping out. Two: it won’t be forgotten! We just did this big education thing on campus. Everybody knows tons more about this issue. Three: he’s gone! The point was to get him out of here, right?”

Carrie looks at Gail and throws up her hands. Help me out here, her expression seems to say.

“Actually, Haley,” Gail says quietly, “the point was accountability. The point was for Jordan to face up to what he did. For Jenny to have made that happen.”

“Which would only have happened if the committee decided he was guilty,” Mona adds. “Sorry, but I’m going to get all pre--law on you again. Yeah, getting him out of here, making him accountable, having him suffer consequences, all of it was ‘the point.’ But none of it would have happened if the committee let him off. And Jen?” She turns and looks directly at Jenny when she says this. “It wasn’t looking so good. Was it?”

Jenny stares at Mona, her face blank. She seems to be thinking, hard. Eventually, though, her expression changes. Relaxes. As if she’s come to some realization.

“The last few days,” Jenny says, “I’ve been reading the witness statements. It wasn’t like getting raped all over again. But it came close.”

Carrie puts her hand on Jen’s arm, briefly, and squeezes.

Jenny looks directly at Haley. “No one stood up for me,” she says. “T and the girls? They wouldn’t admit they left; they said I ‘disappeared.’ No one saw me with Jordan. Brandon Exley said I was having fun dancing. Hardly anyone saw me drink. You’d think I was invisible. Or making the whole thing up. Even the investigator. You were there. He thought I was crazy, didn’t he?”

Haley knows this isn’t the time to argue with Jenny, but she can’t let this go. “I know that’s how you felt, but I don’t think he thought you were crazy. He thought you were drunk. And he asked hard questions because he was trying to sort it out. No one thinks you’re crazy.”

“Everyone thinks I’m a liar,” Jenny says. Her voice is flat. “I’ve been called a slut. An attention--seeker. A lying bitch. A few more horrible things I can’t even make myself say. On the Internet and on my door. Where I live. I walk into the dining hall and everyone stares. Like I’ve got ‘The Raped Girl’ stamped on my forehead. No, not even that, because he was never found guilty. It’s ‘The Girl Who Cried Rape.’ And the whole time I’m making a sandwich or pouring milk or walking to class, I look around and wonder which of them posted those things about me. Who believes me? Who pities me? Who hates me?”

As she speaks, the emotion creeps back into her expression, her voice, again. Her eyes fill. Haley’s do, too. She glances around the circle. Even Carrie wipes her eyes.

“I know you think the point was to get him out of here, Haley,” Jenny says. “But the fact is he’s free and I’m left with all this crap. And it’s wrong.”





. . .


The corridor sways.

“Whoa,” Jordan mutters, leaning against the wall. He pauses, waits for his feet to steady. One hand holds a bottle of water, the other a cranapple juice. She might have changed her mind.

Plus, it masks the real reason for his departure: he wanted a couple more condoms from the bathroom dispenser. He only had the one he’d been carrying in his pocket.

When the fun--house motion of the hallway slows, he continues his walk back to the room. He swings the door open.

She’s not there.

“Jenny?” he says. As if she’s playing a game. Hiding in the closet or under the bed. He knows she’s not in the bathroom since he was just there.