In this single, crashing moment, I know what happened to you in December, and the horror of it is almost unimaginable. And yet it all makes sense now. Why you withdrew from me at Christmas. Why you acted so strangely at the dance. Why you wouldn’t tell me what was going on with you. Because, more than anything else in the world, you’d want to protect me from this. Because if I knew, then your pain would be my pain too.
Because you were raped.
The drawing: you’re on the floor of the school art studio, naked. It’s night. Surrounding you is your sculpture; a beautiful winged harpy, her body a see-through wire mesh, her insides a helix of red ribbons. Your main A-level project, finally completed. Your fingers reach through the mesh, the ribbons wrapped around your wrists and taped across your mouth, binding you, silencing you. The details are so painstaking it hurts to look at them. Your sculpture, this beautiful monster, has become a prison.
It was such an awesome piece; I never did understand why you destroyed it after Christmas. Thought it was just you being tough on yourself. Now I get it. Becausehisfingerprints are all over her.
A frosty moon glares behind the windows of the studio. There’s no one around to see, and so the featureless man looming above you, towering over the sculpture, has no fear. He’s smaller than you in real life, weaker, but none of that matters. Words circle the image, writhing around your tortured face. Words I know he must have implanted in your head:IF YOU TELL, NO ONE WILL BELIEVE YOU.
Your face is slack, your eyes huge. Haunted windows looking out at me, asking where I am. Playing video games with Mike? Watching TV? I don’t know. I can’t remember.
No one will believe you.
ButIwould have believed you, El. Of course I would. So why didn’t you tell me? Because he got inside your head? Because he made you believe that you were somehow to blame for what happened to you? You were raped, El. None of this was your fault.
Why didn’t I understand what you were going through? Why didn’t I put the pieces together? It all seems so obvious now. But when you came back after disappearing on me for that week in December, I was just so relieved to have you back that I stopped looking for answers…
Okay, stay calm. Think it through. What are you going to do?
But I can’t stay calm. My hands can barely hold the yellow sheet. Cold beads skate down my back. My mouth and throat and tongue are like bits of roadkill roasting in the sun. I can’t breathe or swallow. All I can do is sit and stare at the trembling devastation in my hand.
Oh God, Ellis. I get it now. It’s like Raj said, you cared about me too much to bring this darkness down on me. And Jesus, this is the worst kind of darkness I could ever have imagined. I want to cry and scream and rage against it. Christmas makes sense. Easter makes sense. You pulling away from me, filled with all that misguided shame; I understand everything.
I don’t know how long I sit there, frozen, screaming inside my head, but suddenly I’m moving, slowly, deliberately, pulling fresh clothes from my backpack and changing into them. The internal screams continue all the while. They follow me into the bathroom, where I mechanically brush my teeth. They echo round and round as I splash cold water on my face and watch the droplets cascade in the mirror. They almost drown out my voice as I speak to Carol and Big Mike in the living room:
“Hey, guys. I’m going over to see Julia. I can probably stay with her a few days. Will you tell Mike I’ll see him later?”
“Honey, are you sure?” Carol asks.
“I can drive you if you like?” says Big Mike.
I shake my howling head. “No need. I could do with a bit of fresh air.”
Outside, I huddle inside my jacket, every part of me shivering as I make my way down the road. A George Ezra tune you played on the Nissan’s stereo randomly invades my thoughts. I don’t know the title or the lyrics. Why didn’t I pay more attention to the things you loved? Too late now.
Birds caw overhead. Blackbirds, eyeing me from twisted branches. It’s strange. Despite the screaming in my skull and the sickness in my stomach, I feel floaty and elated, like in the very last seconds of the very last exam before school breaks up forever. We’ll never know that day, Ellis. Never know that giddy wonder as we burst out through the fire doors, setting off alarms, consequence free, grabbing at each other’s autographed school shirts, running and sliding across the football pitch only to catch each other, laughing and hiccupping, dreaming dreams of that little university flat that awaits us. This mad lightness I feel now is the closest we’ll come.
My phone rumbles. It might be Mike or my mum or Carol. I don’t want to talk to any of them. I whistle George Ezra and watch the blackbirds in the trees.
The only annoying thing is that I have to wait. Reaching the edge of the woods that border Ferrivale High, I hunker down, elbows planted on my knees. My watch tells me it’s 12.36. Three hours, maybe four, and finally I’ll have my answers.
I watch the rhythms of the school day from my vantage point. Lunch is over and kids swarm out onto the field for twenty minutes of texting, bullying, consoling and running around in pointless circles. Then they crowd back in, only for some to swarm back out again, a few scrambling about like puppies, others dawdling towards the unbelievable agony of PE. I catch a glimpse of Ollie as goalie, an unusual position for him. He barely moves during the game and concedes four goals, winning the middle finger from his teammates. Then Mr Highfield whistles them all back inside and I watch an hour of Year Nines trying to stay awake as Mrs Gupta reads aloud fromOf Mice and Men.I know it’s Steinbeck because Gupta always stands on her desk to read the Lennie parts.
The end-of-day bell makes my heart leap into my throat. Flexing the cramp from my fingers, I call Mike. Kids are flooding through the gates as the call connects. I think I see Gemma and the committee girls, but maybe I’m imagining things. It would only be right to glimpse them before the end.
“Dylan,” Mike blurts. “Where the hell have you been? Is everything okay?”
“Yes, mate. I hope it will be.”
“What…” I hear him swallow. “What does that mean?”
“I know who it was,” I tell him. “The person who scared El at the dance. The one who…” I can’t say it. I don’t want to put the image from the yellow paper in Mike’s head, so I simply say, “I know what happened to him at Christmas. It was someone from school. They did something very bad to him and I need to ask them why.”
“Okay,” he breathes, “but, Dylan, you shouldn’t be doing this on your own… Dylan?”
“I love you, Bitch.”
“Dylan? Dylan! Talk to me. Whatever you’re thinking of doing, just—”
