She wiped a wayward tear from the corner of her eye. “The reason I’m telling you this is because one in ten of you have had the same thing happen. The fallout is ugly. Most of us don’t report it. I didn’t. I tried to make sense out of it. And, you see, because I’d been drinking I thought it was my fault. I thought I must be broken. But I learned that I wasn’t broken. I was a victim. I wanted to hide. I felt if I kept it a secret, if nobody knew, it would go away. Then we moved here. There was no way anybody would know my secret, right? But somehow, it got out. And my
friends
at the Purity Club decided I needed to be punished.”
She looked out across the faces staring at her. Some shifted uncomfortably in their chairs. A couple of girls wiped their eyes and she wondered if they’d been victims too.
“Dating violence is real. Physical abuse. Controlling behavior. Rape.” Her pulse drummed in her head. She’d run out of words. She picked up the note cards and flipped through them. Maybe she could get back on track. Seconds dragged on. The microphone amplified her exhales like a punctuation mark to her awkwardness. She found the last line on the card and finished in a flurry of words. “Join us in stopping the hurt.”
The applause was slow. Then a group of the football players stood and clapped. The rest of the school followed suit. Tears burned in Ryan’s eyes. She didn’t want this kind of attention. She just wanted to tell her story and hope that someone would be saved from the pain of what had happened to her.
Mrs. Bettis walked to the front and gave her a tight hug. “That’s not the speech we discussed.”
“I’m sorry, I just felt…”
“You are a very brave woman.” She hugged her again.
Braden talked about controlling behavior, and bullying. Ryan tried to listen, but she was still shaking from her speech. And at that moment, all she wanted was to see Justin. She knew he hadn’t made it back in time for the assembly. Maybe he’d be home by the time she got out of school.
Mrs. Bettis talked a little more about the Teens Against Violence Club. When the assembly was dismissed, Braden turned to her. “I didn’t know you were going to tell that story. Man, I’m sorry that happened to you.”
“I didn’t really know I was going to tell it either. I hadn’t planed to. It just sort of happened.”
He stood and shifted from one foot to the other. “Are you okay? I mean, it was a horrible thing…”
“I’m good.” She didn’t want to think about it, much less talk about it. “So, you and my sister…”
“Yeah?”
“What’s the story you two are working on?”
He gave her a smarmy smile. “You’ll have to wait like the rest of the school.”
“She’s been pretty upset lately. In the interest of the assembly we just put together, let me just say, if you hurt her you will get it back twice over.”
“Hey, I don’t know what you’re talking about. But if she’s been upset, it doesn’t have anything to do with me. I swear.”
She nodded. “Just giving you fair warning.” Kelsey, Mackenzie, Austin, and Travis waited for her in the front row of the auditorium.
Mrs. Bettis hugged Ryan again. “Are you okay?”
Ryan shrugged. “Yeah.”
She looked into Ryan’s eyes. “If anybody so much as whispers something ugly, I want to know about it.”
“Yes, ma’am.” She clunked down the steps to the auditorium floor.
Kelsey wrapped her arms around Ryan and hugged her tight. “My God, what you did was insane and unbelievably brave.”
“I don’t know what happened to me. I wasn’t even planning to go there. Maybe it’ll help somebody. Who knows?”
Mackenzie hugged her twice as hard as Kelsey, but she didn’t say anything. Ryan finally pulled away from her. “Hey, let’s get out of here.”
She texted Justin to see if he was home, but by the time they reached the truck, he hadn’t answered. Kelsey kissed Austin good-bye through the open window on the driver’s side and started the engine. As usual, Ryan sat shotgun and Mackenzie sat behind her.
Kelsey was just pulling from the parking space when Mackenzie burst out crying. Not just tears in her eyes, or even tears streaming down her cheeks. Loud, uncontrollable sobs.
Ryan unbuckled her seatbelt and turned around to face her sister. “Kenzie! What’s wrong? You have to tell us.”
Mackenzie jabbed herself in the chest with her thumb. “It was me.”
“What was you?” Ryan’s mind was racing a million miles a second.
What the hell was she talking about?
Mackenzie shook her head. “I’m so sorry. It was me. I did it.”
Kelsey stopped the truck in the middle of the parking lot. “What was you? You’re not making sense.”
“I told. I told Macey Brown about you.”
Ryan’s heart pounded in her chest. She had to have heard wrong. “What did you say?”
Mackenzie rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. “I told Macey. I’m sorry. I didn’t know she was going to do that to you.”
Sucker punched. Pain in her chest. A twist in her gut.
Ryan got out of the truck and walked toward the school building. She couldn’t be near Mackenzie.
It took a lot of hate to do something like that. Maybe she deserved it. The move here had been her fault—her dad had admitted as much. Of course Mackenzie hated her. For her, it wasn’t just about leaving friends. Mackenzie had to give up gymnastics. Training six hours a day for all those years and for what? So that her older sister could ruin it all.
The football players were out on the field, so she made her way to the stands to watch. She couldn’t quite wrap her brain around Mackenzie’s confession.
Kelsey joined her on the bench. “You okay?”
Ryan looked across the field. “Where’s Mackenzie?”
Kelsey indicated the direction with her head. “Waiting in the tunnel. You two are going to have to talk.”
“Not now.”
“At least come back to the truck. You have to come home. You don’t have to speak, but we’re expected to be home.”
Ryan looked out across the field for Justin’s player number, but couldn’t find it. Maybe she could get him to take her home. She checked her phone.
Justin: Hanging with my parents tonight. I’ll see you tomorrow.
Tomorrow. Surgery tomorrow and she still hadn’t told him. And now it seemed she wouldn’t have a chance to. And, forget getting a ride from him.
Ryan followed Kelsey down the ramp and through the tunnel where Mackenzie waited. She didn’t look at her sister—she couldn’t. Too many emotions played inside her. She was full of anger and sorrow and she wasn’t sure which was aimed at Mackenzie and which was directed at herself.
During the drive home, the only sound was the country music playing over the radio. When they got home, Kelsey went to the kitchen, while Ryan and Mackenzie each went to their rooms. It wasn’t long before her mom appeared in her doorway. “Mind if I come in?”
Ryan leaned against her headboard, laptop on her knees, scrolling through Facebook. Mindless entertainment. She set her computer aside. “Sure.”
Her mom sat on the edge of her bed. “How’d the assembly go today?”
Wow, that seemed like eons ago. “It was good. I think we reached at least a few students.”
“Kelsey said you didn’t exactly stick to the script.”
Ryan pulled her knees close to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “Yeah. Sorry. It just sort of happened. Nobody seemed to get it just from watching the video.”
“No need to apologize. It’s up to you how much you want people to know. I’m proud of you. You might have made a real difference. There’s probably some girl right now going through what you went through.”
She shrugged. “I hope I helped.” She waited for her mom to mention Mackenzie. If Kelsey had talked to her about the assembly, surely she’d mentioned the drama afterward.
“Are you ready for tomorrow?”
Ryan nodded.
“Any nerves?”
“Some. I’ve never been put under. That kind of scares me.”
“Do you still want to do it?”
She nodded. “Having a messed-up lip for the rest of my life scares me more.” She stretched out her legs. “Mom, what happened to those girls? I know they were sent to alternative school, but do you think they’re okay?”
“It’s a hard lesson for those girls to learn. Their parents have paid for your doctor’s visits as we agreed. They are paying for your surgery. It speaks pretty highly of the parents that we didn’t have to take legal action against them. For the most part, I think they’re good girls. They just got the wrong message. Macey has some issues, but so does her dad.”
“I saw Macey at The Grind. She’s crazy, Mom. She threatened me.”
“If it happens again, we need to know.” Her mom let out a deep sigh.
Here it comes. We’re going to talk about Mackenzie.
“Well, I’d better get dinner started. Uncle Jack is going to watch the store tomorrow so both Dad and I can be with you.” She stood and left. Just like that.
So Kelsey hadn’t told Mom what had happened.
Should she go to Kenzie’s room and talk to her? What would she say? She hadn’t figured out yet whether she should be angry or sorry. The whole thing was messed up. Why had she told Macey? What purpose could it have served? At least Mackenzie’s overreaction to all things having to do with the fountain incident made sense now.
She glanced at the wall that separated them. She wasn’t ready to talk to Mackenzie, but she needed to talk to someone. Justin was hanging with his parents. She wasn’t about to interrupt that.
So Kelsey it was. She found her sister in the coop. “Hey, Kelsey.”
Kelsey scattered chicken scratch on the ground. “Have you talked to her?”
“No.” She shoved her hands in the pockets of Justin’s jacket. “So you didn’t say anything to Mom.”
She shook her head. “This is between you and Mackenzie.”
“The thing is, I don’t know how I feel. Part of me wants to slap the crap out of her and the other part wants to apologize.”
Kelsey rolled down the top of the bag of scratch and stored it in a heavy plastic tub. Then she sat on the tub. “Don’t you think you’ve done enough apologizing?”
“Okay, where’s the Kelsey I know?”
“I admit at first I was angry that we moved. And I won’t deny that I still think that what happened at Dad’s office had a lot to do with Dad losing his job…”
“I know it did. I asked him point-blank and he pretty much said so. So, really, I took Mackenzie’s life away.”
“No, you didn’t. Mackenzie lived and breathed gymnastics. But she didn’t live and breathe anything else. She didn’t have friends in school. She didn’t do anything but study and train. Look at her now. She has friends. She has two guys who like her.”
“Two? Who besides Braden McGuire?”
“Hello? Travis. They may say they’re like siblings, but he’s crazy about her.”
“Yeah, but I think it’s one-way.” She sat next to her sister. “Has Kenzie said anything more to you?”
“No. After you left, she just cried harder. I made her come with me to find you, but she wouldn’t come up to the stands.”
Ryan heard the gate to the chicken yard open and looked up to see Mackenzie squeeze through.
Kelsey stood. “This is where I leave.” Her gaze flicked up to Ryan’s. “She’s braving the chickens for you. Hear her out.”
Ryan nodded.
Mackenzie made her way over. “I was going for a run when I heard you talking to Kelsey.”
A million thoughts swirled in Ryan’s mind and she couldn’t quite settle on one to express, so she said nothing.
“I didn’t know Macey would hurt you.”
“Why would you? A normal person wouldn’t have done what she did.” Ryan looked at the dirt. “What did you tell her?”
“God, it’s so stupid. She was trying to get me to join the PC. She went on and on about how great it was that you and Kelsey had joined. It was like she thought
I
was the bad girl.”
“Yeah, well, we all know that’s me.”
“No. Yes. At the time, yes. I was pissed that we’d moved here. Kelsey could bitch about it, but I couldn’t. So when Macey pressured me, I lost it. I told her that you’d had sex with more guys than a bag of M&Ms had the color red.”
Ryan laughed. She couldn’t help it. “That’s probably the worst metaphor I’ve ever heard.”
Mackenzie ran her hands over her ponytail. “Don’t laugh. What I did was horrible.”
“Yeah, it was. It hurts that you’d tell anybody. The whole time I was in PC, I worried that Kelsey would betray me. But you? Never. Then not only did you tell Macey, you didn’t tell her the whole story.”
“I didn’t get a chance to. Eric was with her and he started going on about how he wanted to
do
you. I couldn’t stomach it so I left. Macey never bothered me again.” She dug her hands into the kangaroo pocket of her sweatshirt. “It was stupid. Can you forgive me?”
The thought of Eric Perez telling her little sister those things made Ryan’s stomach roll. So
that
was when Macey had decided she had to pay. She closed her eyes and pushed away the hurt and shame.
When she opened them, her sister was already halfway to the gate. She almost called after her, but she needed some time to think. Of course she’d forgive Mackenzie. But she was damned pissed and not ready to let her off the guilt hook quite yet.
Back in the house, the smell of fried chicken hit her as soon as she walked in. God bless Mom. She was fixing Ryan’s favorite. She was about to wander into the kitchen to help when her phone dinged.
Justin: Sorry I couldn’t see you.
Ryan: How was the appointment?
He called instead of texting back.
“So, how’d it go?” She smiled for the first time all day.
“Great. I’m not crazy.”
“Good to know.”
“How did the assembly go?”
She took a deep breath. “Okay.” She climbed the stairs to her room. She should tell him what she’d said… but somehow telling her boyfriend that she’d been raped was harder than telling the whole school. She was the crazy one. “How was family time?” she asked instead.
“It was good. Mom is committed to making our family of three work. We went shopping in Spring Creek. Thank God they have a Lowes. Mom wanted to hit all the boutiques on the square.”
“Sounds like a fun day.” She dropped onto her bed. This was when she was supposed to say,
By the way, I’m having surgery tomorrow
. But she didn’t. He’d had a great day with his family. He was happy. The last thing she wanted was to make him worry. She’d call him in the morning.
“It was.” He told her about his parents acting silly in a couple of the shops. He tried to make it sound lame, but she could tell by the tone in his voice that he thought it was pretty cool.
They talked until her mom called her to dinner. It was perfect. No drama. Just a conversation about everyday stuff. She’d made the right decision. He needed one worry-free day.