All the Rage(76)

Mom is crying, her hands over her mouth, and Todd, he’s pale. But Turner—

Turner laughs.

“Oh,” he says softly. “I see how it is.”

Two girls on a road.

“She saved me.”

“No,” Turner says. “No—”

“She saved me—”

“No,” he says, and he stands and I step back. “Alice, you want to do something about your daughter. I have never seen anyone so desperate for attention in my life.” He stares at me with such hatred and disgust and he tries to make me wear it. “You want to make Penny’s death about your lies—” I step back again. “Your lies about my son. I will not let you do it—I won’t—”

“I’m not—”

“You’re lying, you—”

Todd slams his hand on the table. “Don’t call her liar—”

“Romy,” Mom says. “Romy—”

“Where does she think she’s going?”

Going. I’m going. I push through the door and the screen door and step onto the walk and then they’re following after me, and I hear my name at my back.

“Romy—”

And I run.

I run and I see Penny—

I see Penny, sitting in a booth across from me and I see her and she says—

No. I focus on my pulse. I breathe hard, forcing the air into me and I run and I see Penny, sitting in a booth across from me and she says—

I want to talk to you and then I’ll leave.

No, no. I don’t have to hear this because you’ve already left, Penny. You’re gone. You traded your life for a girl who was already dead and I’m sorry you gave up everything for her, but I can’t listen to you now.

Sweat coats my skin. My shirt clings to my back. I run and I see Penny, sitting in the booth across from me, and I don’t know what I can give her for what’s been taken away.

Please.

I know I can be faster than this, I know I can be faster than this. I can outrun the boy in the truck bed. I can outrun the boy in the truck bed and all the boys who made themselves in his likeness just because they could, just because no one said they couldn’t …

Godwit … there was this girl … she told me it wasn’t safe to be alone with him. She wouldn’t say why, but the look on her face …

You can still report it.

And then the sick give of my body, the sound of it when I hit the ground. I push my palms to gravel, try to struggle to my feet, but I can’t, so I sit in the road with my hands against my knees, pressing my fingernails into new wounds and when I pull them away, they’re red.

They are so red.





AFTER





“my question is, how does an entire community turn a blind eye—”

It’s cold out now. The air like metal in your mouth.

“—to a party where teens are unsupervised and known to drink in excess? This isn’t a party nobody knew about. It’s a tradition. We’re so eager to point fingers at this boy—and I wish people would stop calling him a young man, because he is a boy—but how much of the blame truly falls on him? It’s sort of inevitable, isn’t it? What happened?”

I stand on the porch, staring at the street, trying to block out the voices on the radio in the kitchen, even though I was the one who turned it on.

“I don’t think second-degree murder is an inevitability of a high school party—”

“Sorry to break in, but did he rape her? Have they—”

“His legal team has vehemently denied that he raped her and the authorities have also confirmed no evidence has come to light suggesting that he did—”

Because he wasn’t there to do that to her. He wouldn’t have done that to Penny.

Just me.

“—well, now that we have that as fact, I hope people stop asking that question, but to go back to what you were saying—Laura, would you argue that teenagers and alcohol usually lead to very, very poor decision making?”

“That’s not what you were saying, Jean.”

I stare at my phone. Yesterday, Leon sent me a text message. GOT THE HAT YOU LEFT AT SWAN’S FOR AVA. IT WAS SWEET. THANKS FROM ALL OF US.

This morning my fingers trembled a text back, YOU’RE WELCOME, and I’ve been staring at his reply ever since.

IT’S ALWAYS GOOD TO HEAR FROM YOU.

I close my eyes. I can’t stand if he knows but I also miss him and it depends on the day, which one of these feelings is stronger than the other.

YOU TOO.

I turn my phone off and then I see her.

Tina. Coming up my side of the street. She reaches the house and hesitates when she sees my silhouette through the mesh. I raise my chin and she starts over the walkway. I open the door, stopping her at the steps because she’s not coming in. She looks up at me, holding herself like she always does even though she doesn’t look the same anymore. She’s hollowed out a little, like maybe she’s not sleeping as well as she needs or eating as much as she should. But that’s me too. These days.

“Thanks for seeing me,” she says.

She wouldn’t stop calling. The first time her number lit up my phone, I didn’t know who it was and when I answered, and heard her voice, heard her asking me to meet her, I hung up. She left messages, texted me. Every time I thought she’d finally given up, she’d start all over again. Yesterday, I finally told her to come and then to leave me alone. Now she’s here, waiting for me to speak.