He shakes his head.
“You got picked up for smoking dope in your car at a grocery store? How stupid are you?”
Now he won’t look at me.
“So they asked you who sold you the pot, and you gave them West’s name. Even though it was a lie.”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“You had a choice. You just chose what was easy. Why not pin it on West? Nate hates him, anyway. It’s not like West is your friend. He’s just a dealer. He’s expendable. He’s nobody. It’s not like anybody loves him or anyone will care when he’s kicked out of school, right? He’s not as important as you. No one is as important as you.”
And the longer I’m talking, the angrier I’m getting. Not even at Josh. At Nate.
I was never really human to him. Never fully a person. If I had been, he wouldn’t have treated me the way he did—not while we were going out, not in August, not now.
He’s behind this. I don’t care if it’s Josh who turned West in—it’s Nate who made it possible. Nate who convinced all our friends, Josh among them, that I was a psycho bitch. Nate who treated me like shit, hurt me, and assaulted me, and Nate who got away with it.
I’ve spent so many months not being angry with him.
Why the fuck have I not been angry?
“Where’s Nate?”
“I don’t know. Sleeping?”
“Is he home?”
“Huh?”
“Did he go home to Ankeny for break yet? Or is he still here?”
“He went home.”
“Thank you.”
I jog down the steps, leaving Josh there for … whatever. For the crows to pick at. For April’s rains to wash away.
I don’t give a shit. I’ve finally got force and velocity, a direction to point in, and as soon as I hit the sidewalk, I start to fly.
By the time I get to Ankeny, it’s nearly eight, and the highway is clogged with people on their way to work. The traffic in Nate’s neighborhood is all headed in the opposite direction from me, so I already feel like I’m breaking rules when I park in his driveway. Even more so when his mom comes to the door.
His mom is so nice. She was always great to me. She seems not to know what to do with the fact that I’m standing on her doorstep, which I can understand. I used to be allowed to come in without knocking. I practically lived here senior year.
Now I’m dangerous—to her son, to her peace. She knows it. I can tell.
“Is Nate here?”
“He’s not up yet.”
“I’d like you to wake him up.”
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“I am here.”
“You ought to let the college handle this, Caroline.”
I’m tired of the word this. I’ve heard it a lot since I first heard it from my dad—a word employed as a refuge, a little piece of slippery language that can be pulled over the head and hidden behind. This situation. This trouble. This disagreement.
I’m a prosecutor. I won’t allow her to hide behind words.
“Did you see the pictures?”
She can’t look at me. “Caroline, I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Did you see them or not?”
“Yes.”
“Did you recognize Nate’s comforter in the background?”
She crosses her arms. Stares at a spot on the ground by her foot.
“It’s me in those pictures,” I say. “But it’s your son, too, whether he likes it or not, whether he wants to admit that he’s the one in them with me. And I didn’t tell a single person they existed, so the fact that the whole world knows now? That’s on him. Nate has things to answer for. I’d like you to wake him up.”
For half a minute we stand there. I think she must hope that I’ll go, change my mind, but that’s not happening.
Eventually she turns and ascends the carpeted staircase. She leaves the door open. I stand on the threshold in the gray light of morning. An unwanted gift on the doorstep.
I can hear the radio on in the kitchen. From upstairs, a murmur of voices, a verbal dance between Nate and his mother too muffled to make out the specifics of.
A complaint. A sharp reply. Then the conversation gets louder—a door has opened.
“Why are you taking her side?”
“I’m not. But if I find out you did this, don’t expect me to support you just because you’re my son. It’s despicable, what happened to her.”
“What she did is despicable.”
“What she did, she did with you. Now, get dressed and get down there.”
Footfalls. Water running in the upstairs bathroom.
Nate comes down barefoot in a red T-shirt and jeans, smelling like toothpaste.
He rubs his hand over the back of his neck. “I’m not supposed to talk to you.”
“Who says, the dean of students? Please.”
“I could get expelled.”
“Maybe you should have thought of that before you tried to ruin my life.”
His eyes narrow. “Melodramatic much?”
“You think I’m exaggerating?”
“Nobody tried to ruin your life, Caroline. Your life is fine. It’ll always be fine.”
“What’s that even supposed to mean?”
His lips tighten. He doesn’t answer.
“You have no idea.”
It’s just dawned on me that he doesn’t. I mean, he really doesn’t.
When he said we’d always be friends, in some twisted way, he meant it.
“You think it’s … like a prank. Like the time you and the guys soaped all the windows at the high school or rolled the football coach’s car to the park and left it on top of the teeter-totter. What did you do, stay up late with a six-pack of beer, jerking off to porn, and then think, I should put Caroline up here?”
“Someone stole my phone,” he mumbles.
“Oh, bullshit. That is such a giant, steaming pile of shit, I’m not even going to—God. You did, didn’t you? You thought you could do this and it would just be funny or awesome or what I deserved. You didn’t think it was going to mess up my chance of getting into law school. Ruin my relationship with my only living parent. You didn’t know it would make it so I couldn’t sleep for months, couldn’t look at a guy without flinching, couldn’t pull on a shirt in the morning without thinking, Does this make me look like a slut? I thought about changing my name, Nate. I get phone calls from strangers telling me they want to stick a razor blade in my cunt. That’s what you unleashed. That, and a million other awful things. I want to know why.”
“I didn’t do it.”
His voice is small, compressed. This is a lie, a bald and ridiculous lie that he’s abandoned here in the space between us. Too pathetic even to back up with volume, body language, anything.
“You did it.”
He shrugs.
“You’re pathetic,” I say. Because he is. He’s so pathetic. Hiding behind his hate, looking down on me, looking down on West. “I feel sorry for you.”
“Yeah, well, you’re a bitch.”
“Why? Why am I a bitch? Is it because I broke up with you? Because I’m standing here? Because I wouldn’t let you put your penis in my butthole? I was good to you, Nate! I loved you! For three fucking years, I did every nice thing I could think of for you, and then you paid me back with this. I want to hear, from you, what you think I did to deserve it.”
“I’m not telling you shit.”
His expression is so mulish—I wish his mom could see him right now. I honestly do. He looks like a four-year-old.