“That one. You saw it when you were helping me come down from my panic attack.”
“Yes.”
“I usually have it covered with makeup. It’s in the shape of an ‘F’ because the girls at school wanted to burn the word ‘freak’ on me with their cigarettes.”
I felt my nails dig into my palm but I didn’t let on to my fury. I knew she’d stop talking to soothe me. She had that need to completely take care of me. I noticed it awhile ago, in everything from the way she fucked me to the way she calmed me down around the Roths. I loved it. But I wasn’t interested in that selfish pleasure tonight.
“You were bullied?” I asked.
“From the start. But what did I expect,” she murmured, staring blankly down at the floor. “My dad… he moved us to Texas on a whim. After his mom died, he wanted to leave London, and he picked this little town where one of his travel buddies from forever ago lived. I was already different when we got there – I looked different. I talked different. My dad had an accent, my mom was too nervous to speak to other moms. I was an easy target. But it got so much worse when my dad decided to represent his friend in an assault case. Some bar fight. The defendant was popular around town – he was the high school football coach, and he had a kid in my grade. Also well liked. Also popular.” She drew in a deep, trembling breath. “So everyone made my life miserable from that point on. And it got that much worse after my dad won.”
Her teary eyes peered up at me as I gently pulled her legs away from her chest, wrapping them around my midsection as I lifted her onto my lap.
“Go on,” I said as I found the scar on her arm. It was disguised well, but I saw it now, and we both gazed down at it for a moment.
“It took a couple days for them to finish the F,” she mumbled. “The girls would corner me in the bathroom. One time, they even snuck some boys in to keep me restrained while they burned me. I remembered crying, but I didn’t make a sound because I felt like that was validation for them. I was just thinking of how to get myself out of the place.” She smiled a little. “I fantasized about getaways a lot. That’s where the motorcycle thing came in. But that wasn’t realistic, obviously, so I just worked to graduate early and start completely anew in college. I already knew where I wanted to go that we could afford, and I knew what sorority I wanted to join. I knew how I would dress and act so I didn’t seem different again, like an outcast again. I had dreamt of going to prom since I was a little girl, and wearing that big, poufy dress. But since that clearly wasn’t going to happen, I told myself I’d go to frat parties, and mixers, and I’d have that perfect all-American teen life in college.”
“Did you?” I frowned. I wanted to believe the pain ended in high school, but I remembered the cloud that cast over her eyes when she mentioned college at the gas station. “You said you rode the back of a motorcycle with your best friend in college.”
“Ashleigh,” Sara breathed. The sound of the name drained the color from her cheeks. “Ash is what we called her. She was my big. I got into the sorority I wanted, I got all the friends I wanted, and I got her as my big sister, which seemed like winning the jackpot at the time. She was this insanely popular, Barbie-like girl who everyone adored on campus, and the fact that she took me under her wing was like a dream. We were inseparable from the second we met, and suddenly, just a summer after all that torture in high school, I had everything I ever wanted. I had this built in family with my sisters, and I had this girl who would drive me around, take me out, be a shoulder to cry on. I was seventeen, and she was like a god to me. She had me wrapped around her pinky so hard I didn’t question anything she asked of me.”
I brushed away the hair that fell into Sara’s face as she looked down. Her eyes refused to look at me, even after I cupped her jaw and brought them back to me.
“What did she ask of you?”
“She had me…” She breathed for a moment. “She had me perform favors,” she finally muttered, peering at me for a reaction I didn’t give. “For guys in the frat we were paired with. I knew I didn’t feel right, but I didn’t really understand what was happening. I was so desperate to believe these girls were my friends. I didn’t have coffee dates, or sleepovers, or parties back in high school, and I had all of that with these girls. They helped me study, they met me after class, they defended me to the death if anyone was even a little rude to me at a party. So I was so confused. I was…” Sara shook her head in awe of herself. “So fucking stupid.”
“You were seventeen,” I said, wiping her tears. “The kids in high school, they were blatant villains. You knew to run from them. But these girls were different. They acted like friends to play into your vulnerability, and what they did to you was heinous.”
“That wasn’t even the worst part,” Sara whispered, staring up toward the ceiling. “Ash convinced me she needed money. Something about her family being in trouble. She reminded me of all the times she drove me, or paid for me, or did whatever for me. And she guilted me into saying yes to something disgusting, because she said I’d be screwed if I didn’t do it. That college could be as bad as it was in high school. Worse maybe.”
I wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed her as she struggled to get the words out.
“It’s okay. Take your time,” I said. But she sped on, as if wanting to get the bad taste out of her mouth.
“They found someone – some man who would pay a lot of money to sleep with me. They told me he was one of our friend’s older cousins, but when I got to the motel, the man was so much older, and from somewhere else. He said he found Ash online. I remember feeling so betrayed, and I remember how annoyed he got that I cried in front of him.”
She cried again, and this time I lifted her off the floor to carry her to my bed. She let out a sigh of comfort when I laid her down and pressed my lips to her forehead, but she didn’t let me kiss her.
“I need you to know that I didn’t have sex with that man. Okay?”
“Okay,” I whispered. “It’s okay, Sara.”
“One of my sisters called the cops. I told her before we left about what Ash and the other older girls were asking me to do, and I begged her to call the cops. I didn’t think she would, but she did. I felt so disgusting for being naked when they found me. I had already tried touching that man. It honestly felt like the cops came at the last possible second. But I thank God for them anyway, and I thank God for the girl who called them for me. I wasn’t even mad at he
r for being like everyone else and ignoring me after the incident.”
“Because you called the cops?”
“Yes. Ash and the girls were arrested. Their names were in the paper, and mine got taken out when they realized I was a minor. They dropped the charges on me when they realized what was happening, and the kids at school thought that was unfair. They blamed me for everything – said I was asking for it with the way I dressed, the way I wore makeup. They had already saved the article that came out with my name in it. It’s still archived online. I tried to have it taken down, but someone put it back up, even after I transferred thousands of miles away. And it just feels like this nagging reminder that I was once this… little thing that existed solely for sex. It makes me feel dirty and disgusting and guilty for wanting sex. Especially the way that I want it. A part of me feels like I should be repenting still.”
“Do you feel guilty about what we’ve done in the past few weeks?” I asked, my chest tight in anticipation of her answer that I’d unknowingly hurt her. That she’d partially hated herself every time we slept together. But with her hands cupping my jaw, she studied my eyes and shook her head.
“No,” she said with a breath of awe. It was as if she had realized her answer that very second. The crystal sound of her whisper pierced the quiet of the room as she went on. “All I feel is good around you. I feel like I’m doing something a little wilder and crazier than I’m used to, but I don’t ever feel bad about it. Not with you. I don’t feel guilty about anything between us, and it makes me feel like I’m actually free around you. Like I’m really acting like myself instead of the girl I forced myself to be. I was just trying to make it up to myself and my parents for what I did when I was seventeen.”
“That was ten years ago, Sara. It wasn’t your fault, nor should you feel guilty about what you want. You’re not defined by what those girls did to you. You can’t keep blaming yourself.”
“I pushed it to the back of my head for awhile,” she insisted softly. “I didn’t even think about it much while I was at June Magazine. I was so overworked, but I think I liked it. I was always exhausted, too busy to do too much drinking, definitely no dating, and it made me feel like I had successfully transformed into someone new. Someone not filthy and reckless. My mother was proud of me. Everything seemed okay.”