Just Listen(74)

Sophie pushed through the door, taking two big strides until she was right in front of me, and the room seemed to shrink—Will, Emily, everyone else disappearing from my peripheral vision—until it was just her narrowed eyes, her finger still jabbing, so much anger and fury.

"You're so done," she said. Her voice was shaking. "It's over for you."

"Sophie." I shook my head. "Please. Just—"

"Get out of my face!" she said. "Get out!"

And then, as quickly as it had fallen away, my view came back and I saw everything. The crowd of faces that had somehow gathered in the hallway. Will Cash, in my side vision, still sitting on the bed. The sea-foam green of the carpet beneath my feet, the yellow glare of the light overhead. It was hard to believe that only moments earlier, all of these things had been cloaked in such a thick darkness, so hidden I wouldn't have been able to recognize a single one. But now, like me, they were exposed.

Sophie was still standing in front of me. It was quiet all around us. I knew I could have broken the silence, could have spoken up. It was only my word against his, and now hers. But I didn't.

Instead, I walked out of that room and everyone watched me. I could feel their eyes as I stepped around Sophie, then pushed out into the hallway and started for the stairs. Once in the foyer, I went to the door, pushing it open, then stepped out into the night, crossing the damp grass to my car. I did all of this very carefully and with purpose, as if having control over these actions would somehow balance out what had just happened.

The one thing I didn't do, though, all the way home, was look at myself. Not in the side mirror. Not in the rearview. At every stoplight, every time I downshifted, I picked a point up ahead—the bumper of the car in front of me, a distant building, even the broken yellow line of the road—to focus on. I did not want to see myself like this.

When I got home, my dad was waiting, like always, sitting up by himself. I could see the light from the TV, pale and flickering, the minute I stepped inside.

"Annabel?" he called out as the volume on the set began to decrease, bit by bit, before falling silent entirely. "Is that you?"

I stood there for a second in the foyer, knowing that if I didn't show my face he'd suspect something. I reached up, brushing back my hair with my fingers, then took a breath and stepped into the living room.

"Yeah," I said. "It's me."

He turned in his chair to look at me. "Good night?" he asked.

"It was okay," I said.

"There's a great show on," he said, nodding at the TV. "It's all about the New Deal. You interested?"

Any other night, I would have joined him. It was our tradition, even if I only sat down for a few minutes.

But this time, I just couldn't.

"No, thanks," I said. "I'm kind of tired. I think I'll just go to bed."

"All right," he said, turning back to the TV. "Good night, Annabel."

"Good night."

He picked up the remote and I turned away, walking back into the foyer, where the moonlight was slanting in the window over the door and falling on the picture of me and my mother and sisters on the opposite wall. In that bright light, you could see every detail: the distant caps of the waves, the slight tinge of gray to the sky. I stood there for a moment, studying each of us, taking in Kirsten's smile, Whitney's haunted gaze, the way my mother cocked her head slightly to the side. When I got to my own face, I found myself staring at it, so bright, with dark all around it, like it was someone I didn't recognize. Like a word on a page that you've printed and read a million times, that suddenly looks strange or wrong, foreign, and you feel scared for a second, like you've lost something, even if you're not sure what it is.

The next day, I tried to call Sophie, but she wouldn't answer. I knew I should go over to her house, explain myself in person, but each time I began to I had a flash of being in that room, that hand over my mouth, the bang of my foot kicking the door, and I just couldn't do it. In fact, whenever I thought about what had happened, my stomach twisted and I felt bile rising in my throat. Like some part of me was trying to push it up and out, purging it from my body entirely in a way I could not seem to do on my own.

The alternative wasn't good either, of course. I'd already been labeled a slut, and who knew how the story had grown in the hours since. But what had really happened was worse than anything Sophie could make up and pass on.

Even so, deep down, I knew I hadn't done anything wrong. That this wasn't my fault, and in a perfect world, I could tell people what happened and somehow not be ashamed. In real life, though, this was harder. I was used to being looked at—it was part of who I was, who I'd been as long as I could remember. But once people knew about this, I was sure they'd see me in a different way. That with every glance, they'd no longer see me, but what had happened to me, so raw and shameful and private, turned outward and suddenly scrutinized. I wouldn't be the girl who had everything, but the girl who'd been attacked, assaulted, so helpless. It seemed safer to hold it in, where the only one who could judge was me.

Still, I had times when I wondered if this was the right decision. But as the days passed, and then weeks, it seemed like even if I could have told my story, now it was too late. Like the longer the distance from it, the less people would be willing to believe it.