The Girl Who Cried Rape

Despite my decidedly frost attitude and exterior Eric does not leave me alone and I soon find us falling into a pattern, in which he does not leave me alone, instead he waits for me between classes and sits with me at lunch, offering me a ride to school every morning only to hop in my car when I decline.

I don’t want to, I really, really don’t want to but I find myself growing attached to Eric. I know I would be sad if one day I were to walk out of class and he not be there, it might even crush me. He is all I have at this point and I can’t stand to lose one more friend.

“Do you want a drink?” Eric asks sitting opposite me at the table in the loud and busy cafeteria a concerned smile on his face, a few feet from us people laugh and I let my head fall into my hands, my head throbbing with each beat of my heart in synchronisation.

“Uh huh” I mutter not able to lift my head and offer Eric some form of a smile in appreciation.

“Anything in particular?” I mumble something about water and Eric leaves. I push the palms of my hands into my eye sockets not caring if I smudge my eyeliner, desperately trying to rub away the headache now turning to a migraine.

“Who is that?” A now familiar voice asks plopping down into the chair next to me, I don’t bother to look up at Jenna and grumble out a reply.

“Eric” I remove my hands from my eyes and stare at Jenna.
If there is one thing I have learnt about Jenna in the past two weeks we have been hanging out together, it is that she chews gum, like every second of every day she has a stick of gum in her mouth. I am already accustomed to the chewing and bubble blowing.

“He’s cute” She muses staring at me with wide innocence before continuing her musings, “Are you two?” She leaves the question open ended for me to interpret how I want. I am too tired and sore to talk about this so I simply shake my head thinking nothing more of her question until she starts talking again, “So you wouldn’t mind if I got to know him a little better?”

I want to say no instinctively but I don’t understand my reasoning behind it, Eric and I are friends nothing more. I don’t even think that I want something more so why so I feel so opposed to letting Eric and Jenna ‘get to know each other a little better’?

“Guess not” I mumble because there is no reason that makes sense to me about why my back stiffens at the mention of Eric and Jenna. They are both my friends, and friends were a luxury I thought I couldn’t afford in my life anymore, so why does their changing relationship frighten me, terrify me even?

I want to voice my concerns to Jenna but the words won’t come, and I am stuck staring at her as she introduces herself to Eric with a flirty little smile on her face, a smile that a year ago I may have worn myself when meeting Eric for the first time.

There is no denying that Eric is good looking, but the part of my life of liking boys is over after what happened, it has affected me so deeply that the thought of someone touching me or kissing me makes me nauseous with anxiety.

It unsettles me that I have a problem with Jenna and Eric becoming friends, but I can’t quite work out why. My restless heart hurts more than my head now.

Late that afternoon, I sit in an uncomfortable leather chair in a stuffy room filled to the brim with furniture, books and plants, glad I had worn jeans today. “How is school?” My forty-something blonde shrink asks from across the room staring at me intently as if today is the day I am honest.

I hate disappointing people, but today is most definitely not the day. I have been fighting a headache all afternoon and now Petunia, my shrink, is making notes about me and won’t let me see them. Maybe I don’t quite hate disappointing Petunia.

“I’m failing math” I like the pepper my sessions with truths and lies, I am currently failing math because I am finding it impossible to concentrate in my bedroom with my homework, where a few weeks ago I tried to commit suicide. And I am sure if I am going to do it again.

A part, a large part does not want to, I don’t want to hurt anyone anymore but a smaller part of me feels it would be easy to say goodbye to my parents and sparse friends. I hate that that part resides within me.

“Are you not good at math?” Petunia asks, everything is a question in this room, all questions lead back to me divulging truths about myself.

“I was,” I admit chewing on my lip thoughtfully not sure how much to divulge, I wish it were easy for me to tell the truth but my truth was stolen from me a long time ago and I have never gotten it back, so these truths I hold close to my chest, protecting them like I wasn’t.

“What changed?”

“Me, I guess” I say with a shrug trying to act disinterested though I am anything but, I stare behind Petunia at her Yale diploma, with the way my grades have been slipping the past year I will be lucky to get into a community college let alone an ivy league.

“How?”

“I don’t know,” I say with a sigh stuck at my lips. I don’t want to talk about this anymore and I am making that as clear as possible without actually having to say the words, the ones that will tell Petunia that I am not okay, that my failing grades are akin to something much bigger than not understanding the topics.

“Ryan,” Petunia says with a concerned frown on her forehead, “This is a judgement free room, anything you say here stays here.” I nod but I don’t really believe Petunia, I know she is calling my parents after every session and filling them in on our progress, so the truth is not something I can offer her at this point.

“My friend says he will tutor me,” This is the first time I have referred to Eric as a friend, and I guess that is what he is. A good friend, I still feel unsure about my reaction towards him and Jenna, but shake it away I don’t want Petunia reading my concern and confusion across my face. Petunia is nothing if not good at her job.

“Who is this friend?” She asks writing something down on her pad of paper, I stretch to see what she has written but she covers it with her hands in a casual gesture that feels anything but.

“He’s not really a friend” I reply trying to backtrack, I don’t know why calling Eric a friend freaks me out so much probably because it means that I am getting attached and after my attack attachment to the people around me is the last thing I want or need.

“He’s my neighbour actually, he just hangs around me at school,”

“Sounds like a friend to me,”

“I guess we have different definitions,” I reply easily, sweat breaking out on my forehead. The session still has another forty-five minutes, I shift in my seat awkwardly.

“I suppose so; did you have a lot of friends in the past?”

“Yes,”

“What happened?” Petunia is so casual I almost don’t see through her, I know what she is doing and I refuse to play her game.
“They stopped being my friends”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,”

“I think you do,”

“So do I.”

“Would you like to tell me?”

“No,” But it is too late she has triggered something unstoppable with inside of me, a memory floats through my mind and for a moment it is like I exist only to see this memory and for nothing else.

“Ryyyyannn” A voice whispers in my ear. I smile and turn to Seth, he is drunk, like way drunk and I am worried I will have to leave this party early to help Tamara deal with him. The ___’s house party has been going strong for nearly two hours and anyone who is anyone is here. I have lost Tamara in the crows when she went off for a drink, I search drunken faces for hers now.

“Have a drink,” Seth entices holding a red solo cup towards me, he has been plying me with drinks tonight because he thinks I am hilarious when drunk. I take the cup and sip, it tastes a little funny and burns my throat as I sip but I barely notice, too intent on looking for my best friend.

“Where’s Tamara?”

“Upstairs I think,” Seth says grabbing my hand and leading my up the stairs, I am following him when I hear my name, it sounds shouted and almost frantic, not a memory, not something different, it is the present calling to me I think.

Oh wait, it is just Petunia, she sounds nervous.

“What?” I ask frowning as my eyes open, I take in my surroundings remembering slowly where I am.

“What happened just now Ryan? Where did you go?” Petunia asks writing more notes on her paper in her chicken scratch that for the life of me I can’t decipher.

“I don’t…” I start unable to finish the sentence, the taste of vomit clutches at my throat and tongue and suddenly I feel uncontrollably dizzy.

“I’m just tired,” I mutter staring at the ground trying desperately to remember something more, something important, something meaningful that will tell me I am the victim I want to be and not some responsible player in my rape.

“Are you sleeping?”

“No,”

“Why not?”

“I haven’t slept well in a really long time,” I mutter not bothering to tear my eyes from the grey carpet and to Petunia’s face.

“There are some relaxation techniques I could show you,” Petunia tells me kindly and softly like she is terrified I will break at a loud sound. I try desperately, almost feverishly to pull back the fragments of a memory I have long ago suppressed, only to remember at the most inconvenient of times. Petunia’s voice drones on while I try to remember the memory clutching at the confines of my tired mind.

The next day after school I find myself sitting on the curb between Eric’s house and my own in his shiny sports car. Eric and I both come from well off families, Eric’s a little bit more well off than mine, a family in which no one is afraid to flaunt their wealth, his father wearing the crispest of shirts and shoes and his mother wearing thousands of dollars’ worth of jewellery every time I have seen her. My family is more sedate in their wealth, my father believing in making money but not necessarily spending it unless it is completely necessary.

“Where do you want to study, my house or yours?” Eric asks breaking me from my thoughts, since my therapy session yesterday I have been intently trying to remember more of that night, I don’t know if it is helpful or a hindrance to me.

Eric’s car is idling and I know I need to make a decision but it seems impossible to me. Little things are starting to become obscenely difficult to me such as picking a house to study at. I glance at my large white house with it’s perfect picket fence and open floor plan and see my mother through the kitchen window singing to herself with happiness, she thinks she has her perfect little daughter back and I have yet to shatter her dream.

With that in mind I reply to Eric, “Your house.” There is no room for negotiation in my voice and Eric does not even try, I think by this point he knows better than to argue with me when I use that tone of voice. It means I have made my mind and there is no changing it.

Eric’s house is filled with bright coloured furniture and family pictures on nearly every surface, I pause staring at a photo of a young Eric, I wonder if I ever possessed such childlike innocence. I hope so, I would like to think it was just lost along the way and not during my attack.

I climb the spiralling staircase to the second floor to the last room on the left, whilst Eric and I have hung out at my house a hundred times I have never actually been inside his bedroom, his parents far stricter than mine.

I step inside and look around, on one side sits a double bed taking up the majority of the room, a basketball hoop sits on the back of his bedroom door, and a desk and computer set up sit opposite the bed, with a large TV at the end of the bed. His filled room makes me realise how bare and empty my room truly is, but then again I am bare and empty too.

“I like it,” I tell Eric moving inside further, Eric smiles and goes about cleaning off papers from his desk chair so I can sit down. It strikes me that I am standing in a boy’s room and I am not having a nervous breakdown, it hits me as odd, because with anyone other than Eric I would probably be in the foetal position hyperventilating by now. I think it might be due to the fact that Eric is barely a boy to me, he just is.

Eric and I set up at his desk spreading out my maths homework and my text books, we start with the newest chapter all about Pythagoras, “So Pythagoras is a formula…” Eric starts before I cut him off,

“For finding the unknown length of a triangle, I know,” A year ago I was at the top of my maths class but as my sanity and well being slipped so did my grades, I am not even passing at this point. I know I should care more about school and my future but I can’t. The future I envision for myself is so bleak and empty that I can’t even look towards it let alone work towards it.

“What happened?” Eric asks suddenly serious as if he knows my history with math,

“Everything just kind of fell apart,” I reply with a truly bitter laugh,

“How?”

“You sound like my shrink”

“Sorry,” Eric says blushing beneath his glasses, I find it kind of endearing almost. I shake away that thought because I realise I am getting far too attached to Eric and that is just not good.

“I just can’t see to remember anything anymore, everything just seeps out of my brain,” Eric nods and draws a box in the right hand corner of my homework, sketching a lopsided triangle he labels it’s sides A, B and C.

“What you do is tick which you have and you’ll then be able to figure out what technique you need” I nod slowly as Eric begins talking again, it feels as if I already possess the knowledge that he speaks but by the end of the lesson it has left my brain again. I hate it, but I kind of enjoy having an excuse to hang out with Eric, which freaks me out to no end.