Before You Go (8 page)

Johnny Milton yelled, “There she is guys, the poster child for STDs.”

I didn’t say anything. I just kept walking, inching toward my door.

By this time people are peeking out of their dorm rooms, gathering in the hallway. Then Milton threw a condom at me and said, “Tabby, maybe next time you decide to put on a little show and make your way around the hockey team, you should use protection.”

The package hit
my back.

When I reached t
he door to my dorm room, it was papered with photos of me at the party posing with various guys. Of course, their faces were blacked out. I was topless and bombed out of my mind, there in color for everyone to see.

I remember t
he way the walls tilted in and the floor moved in waves. I was dying. Bit by bit. The name-calling and attacks were getting worse and there was nobody to save me.
I took it. I took whatever they threw at me every day, because I deserved it. Because what I did was bad, and gross, and stupid. And it made me bad. And gross. And stupid.

I stop
ped in my tracks, stared at the ground, and told my feet to run, but they didn’t listen. Slowly giving up, I took a deep breath and tried to focus. Milton moved in, catching my shoulder. He spun me around so I faced him and his gang of mutts.

But b
efore Milton could say anything, someone approached him. A hand clamped down on his shoulder. Then a rough spin landed him ninety degrees in the other direction. The rest of Milton’s pack scattered.

It was Michael.

And Michael’s fist.

It dove in and landed on the side of Milton’s face.

There was a loud slapping noise, followed by a crunch. I tightened my arms around my body. Michael was silent for the entire altercation, until his ass kicking left Johnny Milton curled up on the floor. Then he bent down and leaned in real close.

“You got off easy this time, you dumb fuck,” he spit. “The next time you bother my sister, you won’t get up. You get me?”

Milton moaned.

“I said, do you get me?” Michael asked again after a kick to Milton’s ribs.

“Yeah,” cough, cough (real ones this time). “I get you, I get you,” he said.

Milton never bothered me again.

Too bad that wasn’t the end of it.

THIRTEEN

The following Monday, Noah and Jenna are having another strained exchange in front of Professor Sands’ class. I duck my head and try to shuffle by them again. This time, I’m nearly knocked over by Jenna as she pushes her way ahead of me through the door. I regain my composure and get to my seat.

Before class even starts, Jenna stands up and flings her designer school bag in a dramatic swoop that clears the surface of my desk and sends my papers flitting and my pencil rolling.

She doesn’t even look back—out of ignorance or arrogance, I’m not sure.

“Don’t worry, I’ll pick that up,” I mumble. “I’m invisible anyway.”

Funny thing, I’m not even upset. It doesn’t matter. I’m only buying time here, simply trying to get through each day. Nothing more.

“Aw, give her a break,” Noah’s voice snaps from behind. “She’s having a rough day,” he adds trying to come off laid back, but I can hear the irritation in his voice and I shiver. That familiar feeling of judgment and disdain is back and a stifling sadness washes over me.

I hate that he’s gotten under my skin.

“Who isn’t?” I say over my shoulder.

“Hey.” He touches my elbow. “Are you okay?”

Could this guy have any more crazy mood swings?

I turn to face him. “Yes, I’m great. Between your little speech at the bar and Jenna’s regular tantrums, it’s a complete pleasure to sit between the two of you.”

I start to turn back when he grabs my elbow.

“What do you mean my little speech?” He looks confused.

“You know, that I’m basically a slut with the way I act around men.”

Noah flinches as my words come out. “What?” He’s almost yells before he realizes it. “Tabby,” he whispers now. “I would never say anything like that.”

“Oh really,” I roll my eyes. “Because you did.” I whip back around in my chair. I don’t want to look at his perfect, judging face anymore.

But I can’t leave it alone. What he thinks does matter to me.

I turn back to him again. “And just so you know, you were the first and only guy I’ve ever brought back to my apartment. I have no interest in Foster, but Jules introduced us and it was nice to maybe count two people as friends in a city where my only social interaction is dinner with my parents. And that guy at the bar? He is my brother, you pretentious dick.”

And with that, I storm
out.

FOURTEEN

In the morning, I get ready for my appointment with Dr. Payne, my shrink. And yes, that is her real name. You can’t make this shit up. The timing is perfect after my little confrontation with Noah. I smile at the memory.

It
felt so good!

Dr. Payne and I have
had more than two dozen sessions in the past three months, so she pretty much knows everything that happened. Actually, she knew most of it from our first family session. Dad pulled no punches and pretty much laid it all out on the table.

Thankfully, I go to therapy by myself now and we’re down to one day a week.

Today, Dr. Payne waits for me on the steps of her old Victorian where she houses her psychiatric practice in Uptown. She slides her orange reading glasses down the tip of her nose and greets me with a smile and a hug. Sometimes we go into her office to
talk
, but most sessions are held in the multicolored rocking chairs on the porch.

“Have a seat Tabitha,” Dr. Payne says in her raspy voice, gesturing to the row of chairs. I hate this part. It seems like a test. I worry about the color of the chair I select.
Does it mean something if I take a seat in the chair closest to the garden or closest to the door?

She studies me as I make my selection, I’m sure of it. That makes me even more nervous.

I realize it’s taking me too long to make a decision so I grab the chair closest to me and sit. It’s the red one. Dr. Payne takes a seat in my rocker’s blue neighbor.

“How are you, Tabitha?” she asks, sliding her glasses up her long face.

On. Off. On. Off. All session, she messes with her glasses. It drives me insane.

“I’m fine I guess,” I tell her with a yawn.

It’s early, too early for therapy.

We open our session the same way we always do. Dr. Payne fires off her usual lists of questions and I’m all, “It’ll be okay. I’m feeling better. Talking about it helps.”

Denial, denial, denial.

Productive to my therapy? No, but it usually gets me out of the session still intact. Resistance is futile, et cetera, et cetera.

“Things are better,” I begin. “I’m doing okay in school and I saw Michael last week.”

“How is your brother?”

“Good, I think.” I have to guess here, usually my conversations with Michael are solely focused on me. I feel the shame as I just now make this realization. I’ve been taking, taking, taking. Taking from everyone, and not giving a thing back.

I look down, too ashamed to look her in the eyes. I can’t even answer a simple question. That’s all it takes and suddenly I’m sinking, lower than low.

I. Hate. Myself.

Correction: I will pretend I’m okay. Fake it until I make it.

And so begins the battle.

The shrink notices something’s gone wrong. “What is it
, Tabitha?”
“Nothing, everything is just fine.” Even I can hear the edge in my voice.

She dismisses it and moves on. She’s good at that.

“Okay then, today I’d like to talk about what lead to the events on Thomas’ birthday.”

“We’ve talked about this already,
” I say. “At length.”

“Yes, we’ve talked about what happened that night and after, but never really before. I want to know why you decided to go to the party with Megan and dance for Thomas and his friends.”

“Well,” I begin. “It wasn’t really that thought out. Megan was always telling me I needed to loosen up. She thought it’d be fun. ‘It’s just an innocent little dance,’ she told me. She said Thomas would love it. I think he’s the one who put her up to it.”

“What kind of guy was he, Tabby?”

That was the thing. The thing I couldn’t really explain to myself or anyone else. In my head I knew I was nothing more than a hook-up to him. But sometimes I wasn’t so sure. Sometimes when I was with him, I felt like it was more, or at least had the possibility of being more. So I let it play out. Hoping.

T
hat’s why it was so hard to believe he let that happen to me the night of his party. That he didn’t do anything to stop it. Or, even worse, that he planned it from the beginning.

O
nce his attorneys paid me off. That was it. Thomas didn’t answer my calls or texts and he pretended not to see me in school. I didn’t have the energy to fight him. He was out and I was on my own. I never even wanted to take the settlement, but the lawyers (and Mom) insisted. All I wanted was to forget—and for everyone else to do the same.

I don’t tell Dr. Payne all of this because I must convince her I’m better. I edit, make it less dramatic, tell her it was a difficult time but I’m getting over it.

Dr. Payne taps her pen on her notebook. I know she wants to pump me for more information, but our hour is almost up.

“Tabby, I know how difficult talking about this stuff can be,” she says moving into the
wrap it up
portion of our session. She rests her hand over the death grip I have on the red rocker.

“But you did great today,” she goes on. “We are making tremendous progress. The downside is all this talk might make it tempting to slip away from us again. But don’t go back there, Tabby.” Urgency now replaces her calm matter. The drastic change in her voice is jarring. It makes me listen. “Don’t go back to the time when all you did was react to others, instead of listen to yourself,” she says without giving me time to respond like she usually does. For the first time, she doesn’t want to hear from me. She’s in full-on lecture mode.

“It’s time to move forward, Tabby. Time for
you
to build the life you want to live and stop being a victim.”

My blood starts to boil. What did she know about it? Listening to me for a few hours a week gave her the right to tell me how to feel, how to live?

If she saw me that night with Noah, she wouldn’t call me a victim.

No, she had no idea what I was capable of.

I stopped being a victim a long time ago.

FIFTEEN

After the nightmarish therapy session, I’m back on campus with fifteen minutes to spare before Professor Cass expects me in political science. Dr. Payne has put me in what my mother would call a
foul mood
and I’m so not up for an editorialized lesson on the Supreme Court. And the thought of having to listen to Jenna’s drama and watching her little posse of wannabes hang on her every word gives me a headache.

There is only one place I want to be right now and I can’t go home so I go to the restroom to regain my composure.

Dr. Payne’s words play in my head.

Victim.

Don’t let yourself be a victim.

Dr. Payne’s voice won’t leave me alone and I start to feel claustrophobic. The solitude isn’t working. I need air. I need people, noise, distractions. I open the door to leave and bump into Jules.

“Hey,” she says, gripping a
cigarette with her lips. “We missed you at Sasha’s the other night. How’s the work at the paper going?”

“It’s going okay,” I tell her.

She raises an eyebrow, clearly not believing me.

“
Well,” I admit. “It’d be better if our assy editor didn’t have such massive mood swings.”

“Yeah, I know,” she says. “He means well, but after freshman year, I don’t know.” She considers her words. “He became more…intense.”

“You seem to know a lot about him.”

“At one time, we were good friends.
”

“Really?”

“Yeah, Foster too. We had some really good times.”

“What happened?” I ask, now curious.

“Lots of things.” She waves her hands. “We all just kind of drifted apart, I guess. Foster and I became our own island.” Jules is lost in thought for a moment.

“Can you elaborate?” My curiosity takes over my manners.

“It’s really not my story to tell, Tabby. But I can give you the dirt on the rest of the university populous.” She grins. “And there’s still time for a quick smoke break before poly sci. Are you in?”

“Sure,” I say, unable to turn away from her. And though I wish she’d tell me more about Noah, I kind of respect her more for her loyalty.

For the next seven minutes, I watch Jules blow smoke rings as she dishes out all the campus gossip. It’s funny. For a girl who seems so not into the college scene, she sure has her finger on the pulse.