I just want to be in my own bed and bury myself under the blankets. Forget everything. I wish I had never woken up this morning, and everything is so, so wrong. Caleb helps me to my feet, then half-carries me downstairs. There’s a car I don’t recognize parked in front of the house, and Tristan is sitting in the driver’s seat. Caleb says something I don’t understand, the car starts moving, and I vomit my guts out.
After that, everything is a blur. They take me to the hospital, where the nurses take my blood and give me an IV. A doctor examines me and then confirms what I figured out too late.
I can’t remember anything.
I only see black spots in front of my eyes, and I want to die.
My parents come. They also want to call the police, and I know it would be the right thing to do. It’s what you’re supposed to do in a situation like this. If you’re thinking rationally, that is.
But I’m not rational anymore. I’m broken, and I don’t know anything anymore.
It feels like drowning. I can’t breathe.
It has to stop. Everything has to stop.
Please.
Chapter 31
Jase
It took Mom five weeks to get in touch with me after I was kicked out. Five fucking weeks. And even then, she didn’t ask me to come home. She only said that she’d pay my tuition fee and that Dad could never find out about it. She didn’t ask me where I had been living or how I was. Nothing.
—Jase
I’m in shock. I must be. There’s no other way to explain why I’m so calm. Zoe is sitting on my bed. She’s wearing one of my sweaters because her cardigan was soaked from the rain. It’s way too big for her. She has her legs pulled up, arms around her knees, just like yesterday before I kicked her out. It all feels like a fucking dream.
Yesterday we lay in this bed, she was on top of me, moaning, and today she tells me that she was raped. At that party. After we kissed. After I went to the treehouse to wait for her, until the sun came up. She didn’t show up, and I came to my own conclusions about her silence. And Caleb’s. But I had no fucking idea what really happened.
I feel like I need to throw up, but I can’t move. I lean back against my desk, arms crossed over my chest, and try to figure out how this could have happened. The problem is, there’s nothing to understand. There’s no good reason for something like this. There’s only one bastard who made a decision. That’s it.
“I’m so sorry,” I say with difficulty. The words taste bitter and feel totally wrong. They don’t even begin to express what I’m feeling. I hate what happened with every cell of my body. I’m so furious that I want to burn the whole world down. At the same time, I want to hold Zoe close and never let her go.
But I can’t do that, not now.
A sad smile appears on her face. “You know what I don’t understand? Why do people use the same words to apologize and to express empathy? Every time someone saysI’m sorry, even though they never did anything wrong, I have the urge to ask them exactly what they’re sorry for. And why. And then it occurs to me how difficult it is to answer those questions. That’s why I don’t say it anymore.”
I can’t ask her what happened afterward. How she felt. “I don’t know what else to say,” I finally admit helplessly.
“That’s okay. What elsecanyou say?” She bites her lower lip. She takes a deep breath. “My parents wanted me to go to the police,” she says. Her voice is firm and determined, just like the expression on her face, but I can see her eyes gleaming with tears. She blinks, forcing herself not to cry. “But for me, just the thought of having to talk to someone I didn’t know was unbearable. I couldn’t... I still can’t remember what happened. After a certain point in the evening, my memory just stops. It’s completely blank. It’s like I just fell asleep and woke up without even dreaming. Except thateverything was different afterward. The feeling of waking up and—” she breaks off.
“You don’t have to tell me about it,” I say, because she really doesn’t have to, even if part of me wants her to.
Zoe sighs and starts to pull the hairpins out of her bun. “I know. I don’t have to do anything. Just what I feel comfortable with. My therapist has been telling me that for months. But I want to talk to you about it.”
I nod. My heart leaps.
“You know, sometimes I think if Caleb hadn’t brought me to the hospital and I hadn’t been examined, maybe I never would have known what happened. Maybe it would be like waking up from a nightmare. Because I can’t remember that night at all.”
One hairpin after another drops onto the mattress until Zoe’s hair falls over her shoulders. Then she starts weaving single strands into tiny braids, as if she needs something to do with her hands.
It’s hard for me to breathe, and I clear my throat, because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to say a word. “Then there were... traces?” The question sounds just as wrong asI’m sorrydid before. But fuck, everything about this is wrong.
“Nothing helpful. They were able to detect the roofies in my blood and figure out that I... I was raped. But there was no trace of who... did it.” Her hands are shaking, and all I want to do is take her in my arms and hold her. But I’m not sure if she wants that, and I can’t ask her right now.
“Later, my parents talked to Charlotte’s parents. They wanted to know how this could have happened in their house and who was at the party. I heard them arguing. Caleb and I were sitting together on the stairs, and our parents were downstairs. It was...awful. Charlotte’s parents said I was lying, that I made up the whole thing to create a scandal for her family and get revenge on Charlotte for taking my part inThe Sleeping Beauty. Even though I had proof of what happened from the medical exam.”
“What?” I almost shout in disbelief.
