I pass her a plate, and she immediately turns and hurls it. I give her another and another, placing them into her waiting hands, and every time she throws one, she turns back to me, shoulders heaving with quick breaths.
She’s enjoying this.
And god, she couldn’t be prettier if she was standing in a field of wildflowers in one of those flowing dresses, hair and makeup professionally done, waiting for a photographer to come put her on the cover of a magazine.
“Want to try a teacup or jar?” I ask, swallowing past the thickness in my throat. The lump refuses to just be pushed down. Not when Loreena looks so truly, exhilaratingly happy. She’s glowing in that jumpsuit and all that safety equipment.
“Sure.”
I pass her a teacup and it quickly meets its demise, followed by two jars that look like they once contained pickles or pasta sauce, though the labels have been scrubbed off.
“Do you want to try?” she spins around and asks.
I shake my head. “You look like you’re doing just fine.”
She processes that. “But this is for both of us. You have to warm up too, before we start swinging around mauls and sledgehammers.”
I laugh. “I’ll have a go yet. We still have five shelves to work through.” You really get your money’s worth in here.
She picks up a plate of her own choosing, setting several aside before she makes her choice. She steps back past me and stands stock-still for a moment, the silence vibrating through the roof, before she raises both hands overhead and hurls it at the wall with unusual force. It downward spirals and burst apart right at the foot of the wall. The way it hit, if the thing wasn’t reinforced with wood, it would have stuck the plate clear into the drywall.
She keeps her back to me and then she speaks, her voice metallic and sharp as a blade. “He said that they shouldn’t have posted the party online. The address and everything.”
My heart clangs in my chest. She’s talking about the man who attacked her. I asked her once in her kitchen and I had no idea. I was such a fucking idiot. So unprepared and callous.
I don’t know what to do. Should I touch her shoulder, her hand, take her in my arms and hold her while she spills this out?
She shows me what she wants by pivoting, grabbing another plate, and hurling it at the wall. It shatters violently and her shoulders heave.
“I didn’t know anything about that. My parents wanted my sister to watch out for me. I’d graduated and she was halfwaydone college, but she was the one who had done everything. Had the whole experience. Lived in a dorm, went to parties, made friends, messed around, went to all the shit that was happening. Plays, music, athletics, art—whatever it was, she was doing it. She didn’t even have bad grades. She was like that in high school too. Naturally smart, where I had to work for it. I had to study. I wanted to spend time writing papers. I liked the library far more than anywhere else. She hated that I was the nerd who our parents were so worried about. She was the younger one. If anyone was taking care of anyone, it should have been the other way around.”
Another plate, another hard hurl at the wall.
“I didn’t even want to go to the stupid party, and then as soon as we got there, she went off with her friends and left me alone. I couldn’t find her. No one knew where she was. I spent so much time looking for her, and the place was so packed and it was just… horrible. Sticky and loud and full of drunk and high people. People making out, people having sex in places that weren’t even private. People can do what they want, I guess, but it wasn’t for me. I wanted to go home.”
She picks up two plates this time and hurls them, one after another. She goes back for a jar and a cup and lets them fly as well. She grabs two more plates, her shoulders heaving with hard breaths, but not sobs. She’s not crying. Her face is perfectly dry as she passes me. I let her go. Let her get this out on her own terms without interfering.
“The block was so full of cars when we got there earlier that I had to park and we had to walk a long way. My sister had wanted to take a cab, but I knew I wouldn’t be drinking. I thought that it was the safe, smart decision. I’d get us home because I could rely on myself. She might have convinced me togo to the party, even though I knew she didn’t really want me to go at all, but I was going to do the big sister thing and watch out for her. In the end, I couldn’t watch out for her. I sent her probably a hundred texts and she didn’t answer any of them. She was the experienced one. I didn’t want to leave her there, but I figured she’d know how to get home.”
She hurls another plate, letting out a short little grunt of dismay when it bursts at the wall, but it’s not about the broken glass.
“I decided to cut through the park so I wouldn’t have to walk so far. The neighborhood was ritzy and there was this wall surrounding the path that led between these massive houses. It wasn’t that high, but it was made of stone. Stone blocks. He was waiting just on the other side of it, in the shadows.”
My blood turns to ice in my veins, but in the next heartbeat, it’s a roaring fire. I hate this for her. I hate that this is the nightmare she’s lived over and over again. I can’t take this away from her. I can be her support and let her lean on me now if she wants to, but that’s all I can do. I can comfort, but I can’t fix this.
She doesn’t want to lean on me. She stalks past me and gathers up a whole stack of plates. I figure she’s going to hurl them one after another, but she swings her arms to the side and lets them fly. Some of them crash to the floor, far short of their target, but a few make it across the room.
I don’t even know if I could have accomplished that. It’s the anger making her strong.
“He hid there, knowing that someone would come eventually,” she pants. Her hands clench into fists at either side of her coveralls. “It was me. I was the stupid one, walking aloneat night. I thought it would be okay. That bad things don’t happen in good neighborhoods. That bad things don’t happen to good girls.”
I want to tell her that she’s not stupid, but cutting in now would only ruin her peace. She’s upset. She’s throwing things. She’s angry. She’s panting. Her hands are fists. But she has every right to express this how she needs to. She doesn’t have to tell me anything. This is for her more than it’s ever going to be for me.
She stands statue still, her shoulders heaving up and down with her breaths, but that’s the only part of her I can see moving from this angle. “I should have run, but I don’t think it would have made a difference. He would have caught me. He was on me in asecond. I was so scared I couldn’t move. He shoved me up against that stone wall and pulled a knife out. He pressed it up against the side of my face. He told me if I made a sound, that he’d gouge my eyes out and cut my lips off and leave me there to bleed out and die. He did move the knife eventually, and that’s when his hand wrapped around my throat. He choked me. I clawed at him, trying to buck and kick, but he pinned me against the wall.”
She was right about everything. The wrath is a slow, creeping thing, spreading insidiously through my body, but soon I’m nothing but fury. It wraps around my muscles like a snake closing in on me, squeezing tighter and tighter until I’m breathless. I can’t suck in air. I’m rooted to the spot, a pillar of fire, consumed entirely.
“He cut my air and my voice right off and when he was sure I couldn’t scream, he punched me in the stomach. It was blow after blow after blow. It hurt so much at first, but then I- I just stopped feeling it. Maybe it was shock. It was so fast,just… unmitigated violence and then… he turned me around and I thought he was going to… to violate me, and it brought all the sensation back. I was slammed right back into my body. I couldn’t make a sound. I couldn’t even breathe. I was gagging and drooling and wheezing, bleeding out of my mouth and my nose and my insides felt all wrong. So hot. Like he’d cut me up all over with his knife, but I knew he hadn’t. He told me that if I ever told anyone what he looked like, he’d come and kill me.”
