Everyone uses words like
disabled
, whatever that word even means, and half say I’m a dwarf, because that’s what makes the story so brilliant. I mean, everyone loves a teenage sex scandal—all that smooth skin and innocent crime—but what could be better than one that’s also a circus freak show? Even I can see the appeal.
My fourth day here, I read a letter in the
Detroit Free Press
from Norman Crump, Ms. Doman’s husband, asking why they were covering the story at all, and proposing that any coverage is invasive, unethical rubbernecking. I could tell from the writing that he considered it a heroic move to put his name on a letter like that, and I bet my parents were happy. Maybe they even celebrated the letter, read it out loud, felt grateful. But to me, he was just getting in on the action.
And why are all the reporters making me out to be such a victim? I mean, no one has given me any credit for being sane or independent enough to run away. I feel like they should write that I’m brave. Because less than twelve hours after I watched the video and Meghan and I listened to my mom sobbing like she was going to die and telling my father she wanted to leave the state forever and didn’t give a shit about Judy’s Grill and wanted to bring me up in the witness protection program and I don’t know what and my dad was all quiet, listening, comforting her, finally telling her she had to calm down, had to be quiet, that she would wake us, as if we were sleeping. Listening to my dad tell her she had to take something and her going into the bathroom and the water running—what did she take? Sleeping pills? I mean, they hadn’t even seen the video yet. And the next night I made the most decisive move of my life, even faster and with less hesitation than I had decided to smoke with Ginger or climb up into Kyle’s bed. My mom and I had dropped Meghan off at the airport, a totally changed person after spending those horrific days with me. I, selfishly, was glad she had been there. Because I thought she, more than anyone else, knew who I was. Or at least who I had been. After Meghan left, promising to call every hour for the rest of my life to check on me, my mom confessed that she had to go to the Grill for twenty minutes to take my dad the key to the safe or something. She would be right back, she promised, he could handle the dinner rush alone, and would I be okay? For a few minutes? Anxious for any break at all from her withering, well-meaning scrutiny, I practically shoved her out the door. And as soon as I heard her car drive off, I threw away forever my already broken good-girl record by taking five hundred dollars from the cash box I knew she hid in her closet. I unzipped my giant backpack and packed seven clean outfits, including the $118 jeans from Nordstrom’s, a CNN T-shirt Molly had given me for a nightshirt, my toothbrush, twelve Power Bars, a bottle of water, all my gum, and
The Bluest Eye
. By the time my mom came home from the Grill, I had stuffed the full backpack into my closet and climbed into bed, where I spent the entire afternoon and evening, fake-sleeping. My cell phone was under my pillow on vibrate, and it rang a million times, Ginger half of them, Sarah and Molly the other half. Meghan wasn’t home yet, so her hundreds of calls didn’t start until later that night. I didn’t pick up for anyone, not a single time, although I did wonder why Ginger was calling. I waited all the way through dinner, still pretending to be asleep. My mom came and checked on me ninety-five times, but I never moved under the flowery duvet. I felt bad about Sam, especially since I hadn’t apologized for snapping at him at breakfast the day before, but I couldn’t see a way to get through dinner without lying directly. Not saying good-bye made me feel guilty, but I couldn’t say good-bye without them stopping me, so what could I do, really? As soon as I heard my mom and dad go to bed, I walked downstairs and right out the front door. It was so easy, I wondered why I had never run away before, and then I remembered that my life had never been hideous enough until now. Maybe I’d had no agency the night Kyle taped me, but now I was an outlaw of my own making. As soon as the outside air hit my skin, I felt better, freer, stronger.
The night was silent, the church asleep, the trees in our backyard dark and all
Wizard of Oz
in the night. I wished I had red glittering shoes, could click them together and be somewhere safe. I wished I had an emu, or a noose. I needed something, magic or not. I crossed Washtenaw and boarded the first AATA bus that came along. There was one guy on the bus, sleeping, and the bus driver, who looked so tired I thought she might fall asleep at the wheel, too. If she noticed me get on, or had any thoughts about my being a little person, she kept it to herself. The doors swung shut and I hopped up onto the first seat, the one reserved for disabled people. I rode down Washtenaw again, the nine millionth time in my life, past the once-gas-station-now-coff ee-shop, past the rec center where my mom works out, past the Barnes & Noble, past Huron Parkway, where I would have turned off to go to Kyle Malanack’s house, past Arborland, and onto 94E. I wondered if the police were at Kyle’s house now, and what questions they would ask if they were. Although maybe if I wanted the police to ask him anything, I would have to be the one to call them. And what would I say on the phone? This guy I’m in love with made a video of me with some of his friends? If I said that, how would I prove I hadn’t wanted to? And even if I could establish that, then would I be a powerless, pitiful victim? And a victim of what, exactly? The sex? The tape? What had they done by accident and what had they meant to do? I tried to put it out of my mind, to imagine everything would resolve itself without my involvement. When the bus sped up, a feeling of genuine exhilaration came over me. I was free! I could go anywhere, do anything.
But ten minutes later, I was scared and hungry. I thought of the cops again, of calling them, of a trial. Would there be a trial now? What if I found out Kyle had orchestrated the whole thing? What if there were other tapes? Had he taped me those first few times, too? I looked out the window: Ypsilanti, a place I had been twice—once to a music festival with my parents, during which I had jumped in one of those inflatable bouncy houses, and the other time to go Halloween shopping at Value World with Goth Sarah. We drove by the huge penis of a water tower. When I saw a McDonald’s, I got off the bus. The parking lot was empty and littered with beer bottles. I went inside, and ordered a six-piece McNugget Happy Meal. It came with a plastic Barbie mermaid named Kayla. According to the package, “secret items from the ocean” were going to appear on her body if I dipped her in cold water. I sat there, totally silent, dunking rubbery, reconstituted chicken into rubbery, reconstituted BBQ sauce. I had the distinct sensation that this was another video, a movie of my life that I was watching, and in a minute I’d turn the TV off and be safe on the couch with my mom and dad and Chad and Sam.
Then I heard laughter, and realized that the kids working behind the counter had noticed me. I didn’t care. No one could see or say anything about me that hadn’t, at this point, already been seen or said. As long as they weren’t violent or going to kill me, I didn’t care. And frankly, even then I wasn’t sure if I cared. The sound of their laughter reminded me of the video. I closed my eyes, thought how it had been one day since I’d seen the video, and how now my life would be a million more days long. I wasn’t sure if I could get through them.
I got up and left quickly, not bothering to throw away my fries or Happy Meal box. I left Kayla the mermaid on the table and hurried out into the blank parking lot, feeling only cold. It was windy. I didn’t want to stand there, waiting for a bus, so I started walking. I could sense suddenly how I might have looked from the outside, to my mom, for example, like a little kid, walking along the highway in Ypsilanti at one in the morning. As soon as I saw the Motel Manor, I went inside, decided to live there for the rest of my life, and why not? It was $106 a week. I could stay a month with the money I’d brought in cash, and I had my mom’s credit card, too. I was hoping not to use it, because if I did, they could track me down right away, but in case they needed a deposit or something, proof I could pay, I was holding it, ready to show it to the clerk.
She took my $106 in cash without asking any questions, or even looking at me really, and reached over the counter to hand a heavy metal key down to me. The place was a dingy fun home, full of warped mirrors, peeling paint, and insects. There was a dilapidated couch across from two chairs in the “lobby,” occupied by a sleeping man who was either homeless or a hotel employee. It was impossible to say which. No one seemed concerned that he was there. Of course there was no one to be concerned, really. The desk clerk was so tired and haggard that she looked barely alive. I thought of Judy’s Grill, the buzz and fuss of the place, my mom behind the counter, smelling like shampoo and talcum powder and french fries. I contemplated boarding the first bus back in the direction of my parents’ house, but then I propelled myself forward to room 204, thinking I had to give it at least a night—
it
being the new, independent, defiant me. I couldn’t be Judy Lohden anymore, smarty, chore-doing, upstanding daughter. Now I was a tough runaway, so I’d have to last at least twenty-four hours. And in spite of myself, I wanted Kyle to hear that I had disappeared, to worry. I wondered if he would worry.
The stairs to the second floor were concrete, with a slab of gray carpet thrown over them, not properly secured. It was peeling up, flapping where it met the banister on one side and the wall on the other. I had a special close view of this because the stairs were deep enough that I was like a tiny mountain creature on them. The top step was wet with something—blood? pee? coffee? rainwater?—so wet that it squished under my boots. I hoisted myself up to the landing and walked down a dim hallway to room 204, where I had to stand on my absolute tiptoes to reach the lock, mysteriously located above the doorknob. The door creaked open into a room of more darkness. I groped around in the dark for a light switch and found it, about three inches over my head. The light hummed and buzzed, barely lighting a dirty gray carpet. There was a double bed with a brown blanket on it, across from a very small television set on a table with two folding chairs. The bathroom was to my left. I dragged one of the chairs into the bathroom, where I used it to stand at the counter. I saw myself in the mirror, red-eyed, lost, unrecognizable. Then I plugged the filthy sink and filled it with water, took my cell phone out of my jeans pocket, with its million missed calls and names and voice mails all lit up like horrible reminders of a world I’d once belonged to—some of them were even from my former friends from Huron, so I knew the news was literally everywhere—and I dropped the phone in. Some bubbles rose up, as if it had been alive. I named the bubbles: Ginger, Sarah, Molly, Elizabeth Wood, Stockard Blumenthal, even Rachael Collins, as unfair as that was. I never wanted to think of anyone at D’Arts again, never wanted to see a single name or face from the school. Kyle and his friends I couldn’t bear to think of at all. I felt relief, watching it underwater, drowned. I was uncontactable, hidden, safe. I walked back into the hideous bedroom and climbed up onto the bed, so exhausted I wasn’t sure my arms could even handle the task. But they did. Then I had an image of myself climbing onto Kyle’s bed. I collapsed onto the Motel Manor bed with all my clothes and shoes still on. I didn’t even bother to peel the covers back. Not to mention washing my face or brushing my teeth. I felt all my routines short out, and my old self vanish. I mean, I am so deeply not the kind of person who sleeps in my clothes or skips face-washing or teeth-brushing. But there it was. And for the first time since that Friday night at Kyle’s ice palace, I slept. It was a hot, sweaty, cold, wakeful sleep, during which I had the dream I’ve now been having over and over since I ran away. In it, I’m in a courtroom, watching Kyle and Chris and Alan admit what they did. There are thousands of people in the audience. The principal, Mr. Grames, is giving a presentation, holding a red pointer he shines first on the video and then on my body. He makes me stand up so everyone can see that I’m there. I’m wearing a sheet or something—something loose and thin that might fall off.
“Judy was naked!” Mr. Grames says, and the video plays, the red dot of his pointer following the lines of my body like a bright bug crawling on me. “We can see here what happened.” And it’s so real I now can’t remember what the differences are between my nightmare video and the real one. They’re both appalling, me arching my back, turning to face Alan, huge on the wall of some dream courtroom, everyone looking at each other with their mouths open, like they’re about to drink my humiliation, devour me. Then a judge who looks just like Mr. Luther but isn’t him, says, “She was a virgin! It’s not her fault! She was a virgin! It didn’t count. It didn’t count. It didn’t count.”
He says it just like that, three times, and then in the dream I put my head into my hands and Kyle gets up and he’s laughing, and he says no, she wasn’t, she’s a slut and why is everyone so surprised that she got drunk and gangbanged me and my friends?
And then I stand up on top of a table, and the sheet feels like it might fall off, and I start to say no, no, I had sex with Kyle only three times and that was because I thought we were in love. But my throat closes, and my teeth are locked together so tight it feels like they might break. And I’m thinking, in the dream, my teeth are going to shatter and I can’t talk. So I stand there totally silent in my sheet, with my locked jaw. And even in the dream, where logic is all fucked up, the truth is so humiliating that I know on some level it’s better for everyone to think I was a willing participant. Because then I was just fun and crazy and doing my own thing, right? Rather than being violated? Then, when I finally risk opening my mouth, hoping to make this point, all my teeth start to fall out after all. And because I know the sheet will slip off if I move my arms, I keep them pinned at my sides and let my teeth spill down and bounce all over the desk like marbles. I don’t even bend to pick them up.