When We Were Bright and Beautiful(25)

“Can you believe that kid is our brother?” Nate asks, marveling.

“He’s not a kid anymore.”

My brother’s body is both a work of art and a machine. He didn’t come to running until high school, but it changed everything in his life. He was miserable at Groton and begged to come home. But when a teacher suggested he join the cross-country team, around the same time he went through a growth spurt, a star was born. By fifteen, Billy had an ideal sprinter’s body. He gains and loses weight easily and has a higher percentage of what’s called “fast-twitch” muscle, so he excels at explosive sports that demand force and speed.

Billy is intense and obsessive when he finds something he likes. Running was no exception. He trained four days a week, eleven months a year. He competed around the state then across the country, breaking records, winning medals, and impressing recruiters. For our family, seeing him run was thrilling, but so was seeing him gain confidence. Now he’d introduce himself without being prompted. He had friends, went to parties. It was a revelation, like watching time-lapse photography of a flower in bloom. But despite his physical transformation, Billy was still inexperienced with girls, and his shyness persisted in college. He was like an innocent kid, na?ve and trusting—the ideal target for Diana Holly, a manipulative woman seeking a boy to mold however she pleased.

*

As the sun sets, Nate, Billy, and I head out of the park. Our shadows stretch along the pavement, so it looks like we’ve multiplied and are walking with a crowd. The air has grown chilly, and under my tank top my sports bra is damp.

Seeing me shiver, Nate hands me his sweatshirt. “Put this on.” I do as I’m told. Meanwhile, he’s looking at Billy. “Can I ask you a question?”

Billy’s face is flushed and dripping sweat. “If it’s about Diana, then no.”

“So, you’re never gonna tell us what happened?”

“I told you. We dated, we broke up, she got upset. We dated again, we broke up again, she got upset again. Then she got really upset. And now here we are.”

“With all due respect, Elmo,” I say. “She’s a little more than ‘upset.’”

“She’s fucking unhinged.” Nate flings his arms across our shoulders. “If you can’t tell us, who can you tell? We’re the Three Musketeers, remember? All for one, one for all.”

Nate came up with the Three Musketeers, but Lawrence had planted the seed, calling us the three stooges; the three little pigs; Huey, Dewey, and Louie; Charlie’s Angels. Like Nate, my happiest memories are from our summers at the beach. My brothers have July birthdays, and mine is in August. So our weekends were filled with parties, balloons, presents, and cake. Two years in a row, Lawrence hired a plane to spell out Happy Bday 3 M’s across the sky.

We’re almost home when Billy says, “I know you don’t understand my feelings for Diana. But we were happy. We had problems, but doesn’t every couple?”

“What kind of problems?” Nate asks.

“I don’t know, regular. She was a perfectionist. I’m . . . well, you know how I am. But we were crazy about each other. Have you ever heard me say that before?”

Their relationship, Billy reiterates, was fast and furious. He and Diana met in June at Sloan-Kettering, where they were summer interns. Diana’s family lives somewhere near Pittsburgh, but she was subletting a studio in the city, so they saw each other every day. It was a fantastic three months. Then when September came, and Billy felt crunched, Diana was surprised. “I told her we needed to slow down. She didn’t take it well, which I already told you. She called a lot. She cried nonstop. Then she started following me around.”

“Did it bother you?” I ask, thinking of Marcus. At times, I carried on like this, calling and texting him nonstop.

Billy shrugs. “I love her.”

“Not an answer, Billy boy,” Nate says gently.

“Yeah, okay. It did bother me. But we got back together, and it was fine. Then December rolled around. I told her I had to focus. She said she understood. But when I couldn’t see her, she got angry.”

“You mean she went nuts,” I say. “Again.”

Billy nods. Still, he held firm. He didn’t see her for a while and felt more in control of his life. Then, last week Diana invited him to a party. Billy doesn’t drink. He’ll have a beer to loosen his tongue, but alcohol blunts his speed on the track. Plus, he had to study. He told Diana no, but she kept texting him: Don’t blow me off, it’ll be fun, come say hi, cajoling him until he finally relented.

“And you have all these texts?” I ask.

“Cops took my phone, but yeah.”

Billy figured they could talk, rationally, like adults. But by the time he got there, Diana was wasted. He downed two beers and a shot of whiskey to catch up. Unaccustomed to the alcohol, he got very drunk, very fast. They went to a back bedroom and ended up fooling around. A little while later, they left the party together. They stopped in a playground, where they kissed on a tire swing then moved to a grassy area. After that, Billy says, it’s hazy and distorted. He felt Diana unzip his pants, pull down his boxers and reach for his— Billy is shaking, his eyes glazed. “I t-told her n-n-n-no. I sssaid n-no.”

She started to stroke his penis. He was too far gone to stop. Her dress got hiked up. Billy recalls being inside her but not for how long because he was hit with a wave of nausea. He stood up and pulled down Diana’s dress—he distinctly remembers that she wasn’t wearing underwear. He turned and vomited, when he was suddenly tackled by what felt like a gang of men. He kept trying to get up, but they had him pinned. He threw up again, which made him dizzy, so he closed his eyes. Next thing he knew, the police were there.