“Fuck!” Smooth hadn’t expected her to be so fast, she knew from the surprise in his voice, but she was, in spite of the pain, incredibly quick. She pulled the blindfold off, throwing it behind her as she ran down the path. Her lungs ached and the ground bit at her feet, but she didn’t pay any attention. They were behind her, coming for her, and she had to keep going.
“Going somewhere, hot stuff?” He grabbed her hair, yanking it hard and stopping her short. Gritty panted up behind him, and Lindsey turned her face up toward them both, on her knees now, panting with her effort to get away.
Smooth was just as smooth as she’d imagined, older, his tanned, lined face twisted into a sneer. His hair was bleach blonde and spiked, though, not the dark she’d imagined, and he looked strangely like he was wearing a halo as she stared up at him. Gritty bent over, panting, hands resting on his knobby, hairy knees. His pants were completely off, and his belly hung almost low enough to hide his softening dick.
“Not done with you, yet.” Smooth had his jeans on, but they were still undone, and he brought her face toward his crotch, rubbing it there, the teeth of his zipper raking her lips, making her wince.
“I saw you both.” It was all she said before she brought her head down and then up hard into his crotch, thanking god for all those years of learning how to head-butt a soccer ball. Smooth went down in a hissing, writhing heap, and she was gone again, off running, finally, for real this time and not in her mind, her body finally cooperating.
She didn’t stop until she reached the edge of the path, glancing behind her to make sure they weren’t following. Then she pulled her clothes quickly on, although she knew they didn’t cover the mess she was. Thank god it was nearly dark, now, and she limped home as the moon started to rise, an orange blaze over her shoulder.
She didn’t make a garden stop to change back into her regular clothes. Instead, she tried to sneak quietly up the back stairs to her room. Her mother’s car was gone, but her stepfather’s was in the driveway, and that meant she would have to be extra careful.
Breathing a sigh of relief, she shut her door behind her and leaned against it, closing her eyes. Everything hurt-it even hurt to breathe-but she was home, safe in her own room. That, at least-
“You little slut.”
Lindsey’s eyes flew open at the sound of his voice. Her stepfather was sitting on her bed, and the sight of her journals open in a heap around him made her stomach sink to her knees. They had been hidden in the wall, behind a loose piece of paneling. She thought they would never find them…
“If your mother saw these, you know what would happen.”
If she could have taken a step back, she would have, but the door was solid behind her, barring the way. He was coming for her, towering over her, and she shrank down into a ball on the floor, covering her head with her arms.
“We’re going to burn them.” He grabbed her by the hair, pulling her up, and Lindsey flashed back to the woods and fought the urge to scream. “And you are never… ” He shook her, holding her shoulders now, his fingers digging into the tender, broken flesh of her back. “… ever, ever going to do something like that again!”
Something inside of her broke open, spilling out in hot waves as she stared at him. “What? What did I do?”
He shook her, his face inches from hers, teeth clenched so tightly it was hard to understand him through the sneer. “You know just what you did, you teasing little whore!”
“It wasn’t me!” Lindsey shook her head, incredulous. “It was you! You!”
“You asked for it.” He dropped his hands from her and went over to the bed and started throwing her journals into a box. He was going to burn them, as if he could rid himself of her and everything that had happened, sweep it away and pretend it never existed.
“Maybe I’ve deserved every horrible thing you’ve ever done to me.” Her voice shook as she watched him stacking the scarred and pained words of her adolescence into a cardboard box. “I just hope it was worth it. Did it make you feel like a man-fucking your twelve-year-old stepdaughter?”
He turned to her, his face red with anger at the words, but Lindsey didn’t stop. “Oh right, I’m not supposed to talk about it-and who would believe a little slut like me, anyway? Certainly not my own mother. Not after the stories you told about me.”
Lindsey paused to take a shaky breath, remembering the slow erosion that had happened between her and her mother over the years as he started to harp on Lindsey about her clothes, her developing body. “I wasn't a slut until you made me one… going on and on about all the boys I’d fucked at the ripe old age of twelve… when the truth was, the only one who ever touched me was you!”
“Shut up!” He came toward her, his posture threatening, but she couldn’t stop. Something had cracked open in her tonight. Maybe it had happened in the woods, when they tied her up, forced her down, worked her cunt as if that was all she was, holes to be filled, something to be used and tossed away. It had begun seeping out then, like the blood from her lip, but now it broke open, a flood.
Like the night the moon was in my window…
She remembered that in a flood, too, a deluge, and the memory tasted bitter, like copper on her tongue. Even that memory was unsafe. It came in a flood, like the blood between her legs had flowed when he forced himself on her, in her, and she couldn’t do anything but endure. The moon had floated in a square patch of window, and she had gone away then-I fell down, Daddy-all the way to the moon, just like she had earlier tonight.
“You knew I was a virgin!” Lindsey screamed, the ache in her chest bursting as she sobbed, not wanting to but remembering everything she’d been hiding, covering, holding back-everything she had poured into those journals. “And you left me… in all that blood… so much blood… ”
Her voice cracked and she spat the last at him. “I had to throw the sheets away and turn my mattress over so my own mother wouldn’t see what you’d done to me!”
Lindsey grabbed the edge of the bed and shoved it toward the wall, tipping the twin mattress up, revealing the darkened stain underneath as it slid off the box spring. She pointed to it, trembling, remembering how she had scrubbed and scrubbed, tears and snot mixing with the blood on the mattress, wishing she could just melt away, erase herself, until she became transparent.
“Get out!” He reached past her for the doorknob, his voice shaking. “I want you out of my house.”
“Oh, I have no intention of staying.” Lindsey turned to go, and they both saw her mother standing just outside the door, hand raised as if to knock, her face pale, eyes wide.
Lindsey just brushed past her, not saying a word. Her whole body ached as if it was on fire, beaten, broken, but somehow she felt lighter as she walked, barefoot, down the street, looking for the nearest pay phone where she would call Zach and ask him to come for her. Maybe, she whispered to the rising moon, just maybe, there was finally someone in the world who might believe her.
Chapter Eight
She wouldn’t have done it for anyone else, and her eyes sought Zach’s after every question. Yet she still found the words sticking in her throat as the officer scribbled on her pad, trying to look unbiased and nonjudgmental. Lindsey didn’t think she was doing a very good job, and she thought sending a woman was just cheap-as if she would feel more comfortable with a female? Not likely.
“So, did you know any of your assailants?”
Lindsey cleared her throat. “I… no.” It was the first time she’d lied, and the first time she didn’t lift her eyes to Zach’s.
“And you obviously resisted, fought back, told them no?”
“Yes.” She traced the top edge of the thin hospital sheet covering the hospital gown the nurse insisted she wear. Her voice was almost inaudible, but she couldn’t seem to make it any stronger. “But I always tell them no.”