Beyond the Point(99)
Avery felt her throat constrict, but she refused to be unsettled. “To be honest, the sex was mediocre, at best.”
The judge cleared his throat. “Get to your point, counsel.”
“Isn’t it true that you initiated these sexual encounters, arriving of your own volition to Mr. Collins’s dorm room repeatedly throughout the 2000–2001 school year?”
“I . . .” Avery looked to the prosecutor’s table, and the lawyer there nodded. “Yes. But we both—”
“And he asked you to keep the relationship a secret, isn’t that right?”
“Yes. We both chose to—”
“He was ashamed of you. Wanted to hide you away from his friends. That must have been hard to hear.”
“No . . . like I said—”
“It must have hurt to think he didn’t want his friends to know about you.”
Avery steeled her jaw. She knew where Collins’s lawyer was going with this, and she wasn’t going to let him get away with it.
“What hurt was knowing that he violated an entire group of women by filming us in the privacy of our locker room and then distributing those images across campus.”
“You’ve already testified that the images that were distributed were of you. And only you. Isn’t it possible that you were angry that he’d cut off the relationship? And, feeling rejected, sent pictures of yourself to him to try and seduce him? Just like you’d done the first time?”
“No,” Avery said. Hot tears had gathered in her eyes. “I . . . that’s not—”
“No further questions, Your Honor,” he’d said. Then he sat back down next to his client, whose green eyes twinkled in smug satisfaction.
Avery wondered now how she’d been so blind. Steadying herself against the bathroom sink—another disaster area, covered with jewelry, toothpaste splatter, and a mildewing hand towel—she stared at herself in the mirror and read the verdict aloud. It’s your fault, she said to herself in the mirror. This is what you keep getting, because it’s what you deserve.
Turning on the shower, she twisted the knob until the hot water covered the mirror with steam. The pressure pounded her naked body, turning the front of her stomach, arms, and legs red. As soap crossed over her body, she realized that she’d never get clean enough. Something was wrong with a person who only chose men who abused her, or abused the men that she chose.
AN HOUR LATER, Avery made her way downstairs, dressed in sweatpants and an oversized T-shirt. The window over the kitchen sink framed the Jenkins house, across the street. She filled a glass of water, and at that moment, Eric and Michelle Jenkins walked out of their front door. They were supposed to be gone by now, Avery thought—hadn’t Michelle said they were visiting Eric’s family for Thanksgiving?
But the couple both looked pale, like they’d caught that stomach bug everyone kept complaining about. Eric slid his hand back and forth across the top of his head and wiped his nose. Michelle’s eyes were bright red, like she’d been crying. It seemed odd that they would come outside looking so disheveled, odder still that they were crossing the street toward Avery’s house. Did something happen to Bosco? she wondered. Or the baby?
Avery left the kitchen to meet them at the front door. She opened it before they could even knock. They were standing on her stoop, shivering, both of them with their arms crossed over their chests.
“We came over as soon as we heard,” Michelle said.
Avery felt her heart drop several inches in her chest as she stared at them with confusion all over her face. “Heard what?”
Eric and his wife exchanged a worried glance.
“We thought you knew,” Eric said. “Y’all were so close.”
Avery couldn’t breathe. She wanted to reach out and strangle them until whatever they were talking about came exploding out of their mouths. “Who? What’s going on?”
“Avery,” Eric said, looking her straight in the eye. “Tim Nesmith was killed in Iraq three days ago. I’m so sorry. We thought you knew.”
SEVERAL HOURS LATER, Avery had no tears left. She’d turned on her phone and it had blown up with messages—from their classmates, and from Dani, who’d left several voicemails. She was now midair, on a flight to Fayetteville.
“I don’t know what’s going on with you, Avery. But I’m going to need you to pull yourself out of whatever hole you’re in and come get me at the airport,” Dani had said in her last voicemail message. “I land tomorrow at three.”
Michelle had sent Eric home and stayed with Avery for a long time, sitting next to her while she sobbed on her bed. For two years, they’d stared at one another from across the street. Avery had always assumed that Michelle hated her, but now, everything she’d ever believed was being called into question. While Avery returned phone calls and e-mails, Michelle had pulled her red hair into a bun on top of her head and busied herself picking up dirty clothes in Avery’s room. She started a load of laundry, filled the sink with dirty dishes, wiped the counters, swept the floors. Emptied of all emotion, Avery didn’t even have the energy to tell Michelle to stop. By the time her neighbor finally left, it was well past ten P.M., and the house was cleaner than it had been since Avery moved in two years earlier.
Michelle’s kindness reminded Avery of something Wendy Bennett had said a long time ago, while they sat in that hospital waiting room. People remember who showed up for the shitty moments far more than they remember who showed up for the party. And for some inexplicable reason, Michelle Jenkins had shown up.