Vengeance

“You better be glad they pulled me off you!” I lashed out. “You say some more shit about Hannah and you’ll be taking a dirt nap!”

Hannah came over to me and tried to console me. “It’s okay. They’re leaving. They are all leaving,” she said, making her point clear.

“I should call the police on you, press charges,” Sebastian said, still ashamed about getting his ass kicked. “See how you like that.”

“No, find your center,” Nigel said to Sebastian as he took him by the elbow. “You know good and damn well you can’t call no police up in here.”

Sebastian sighed, yanking away from Nigel. “Says who?”

“Says common damn sense.” Nigel started toward the front door. “Let’s just go.”

Everyone said their quick good-byes, except for Sebastian, who stomped out without another word, and Hannah put on the five dead bolts behind them. She turned to me. “What was that all about? You could’ve ripped his eyes out.”

“That’s exactly what I was trying to do,” I admitted. Then I slumped down onto the floor. “I’m not sure what came over me. I’m sorry. Sometimes I lose control. I hope I didn’t inherit my mother’s mental issues. I often wonder about it, but no one would ever take me to see a therapist.”

Hannah sat down in front of me, Indian-style. “They never got you any therapy after . . .”

I glanced into her eyes and ran my index finger over my scar. “After my mother cut up my face? No, not really. Other than DEFACS asking a bunch of questions before making Grandma my legal guardian. My mother got locked up in a cuckoo house obviously, so they considered it case closed. Gave me some stitches and that was that.”

“Don’t you want to call her? Let her know you’re all right?”

“If I do that, she’ll try to convince me to come back. I can’t go back. Not after what happened at homecoming.”

Hannah took a deep breath. “About that. I’ve been thinking. You shouldn’t let that go. You should go back—I’ll go with you—and make them pay for what they did to you. Don’t let them just get away with it. Don’t let them go on with their lives, like nothing happened. They need to pay.”

“I can’t,” I replied. “It’s too much to deal with. But . . .”

“But what?”

“I was thinking about writing my grandmother a letter, letting her know that I’m alive but that I need space. I need to think all this through. As for them, it’s all their words against mine. No one is going to believe me. No one is going to believe that any of those boys would even want to be with me, rather less take it from me.”

Even at fifteen, I was aware that most rapes went unreported for a reason. Growing up, I had seen females who accused men of raping them end up being shunned and ridiculed, mostly by other women. I had seen celebrity men on the news get away with mistreating women like they were nothing. I had seen the most beautiful women destroyed after making such statements. And then there was me: a young, poor, deformed girl who had been fucked over her entire life. What was a gang rape or two added into the mix?

Hannah kissed me on the forehead. “Just think about it, but the letter to your grandmother sounds like a good idea. I have some stamps, so let me know. And please consider going back to school.”

“You can’t even register me for school, remember?” I stood up. “Not that I want to go back. I’ll figure out something.”

I wanted to go take a shower and try to calm down. I was still upset about the entire scene with Sebastian. I paused at the doorway to the bathroom. “Why couldn’t Sebastian call the police?”

Hannah had stood and was clearing away wineglasses and snack dishes. “Huh?”

“Why did Nigel say that it was common sense that Sebastian couldn’t call the police over here?”

“Oh . . .” She glanced at me. “Sebastian isn’t exactly walking on the right side of the law.”

“How so?”

“He’s a big-time drug addict.”

“Sebastian?” I couldn’t fathom it.

“Yes, Sebastian. You won’t see him offering to suck dick on the corner for a vial of crack or anything, but he is a serious cokehead. He’s a functional addict. Works full-time in his dad’s construction office and helps himself to extra cash out of the safe to feed his habit. Nigel probably knew Sebastian had some drugs on him tonight. That’s why he said calling the police was foolish. Popping one can of worms generally leads to popping several. Know what I mean?”

I nodded. “I guess you never know about people. He seems normal to me.”

“There’s no such thing as normal today. It’s the eighties, not the twenties. There is a sense of normalcy that people have accepted but nothing and no one is actually normal in the true definition of the word.”

I didn’t respond. I went into the bathroom, turned on the shower so the hot water could start making its slow trek up the pipes from the hot water heater in the basement of our dilapidated building, and stripped down to nothingness.