“What?” The detective leaned in, tucking a stray blonde hair from her ponytail behind her ear. “What was that?”
“I always say no.” Lindsey still didn’t look up, feeling something burning in her throat, but she went on. “It’s a game. It’s a thing. I just… I like to say no, and have them, you know, do it anyway.”
She felt their eyes on her and didn’t want to look up and see their faces-especially Zach. She half-expected him to get up and go, right then. The silence seemed to stretch forever, and then, finally, the detective spoke again.
“How are they supposed to know the difference?”
“I don’t know.” Lindsey shrugged. “Does it matter?”
“Did you have an agreement with these men? Did they know that your ‘no’ meant yes?”
Lindsey thought of Brian-of all of them, he was the only one who really knew the game. Had he told the new ones, the others? She didn’t know, but figured he must have. His continuous apology, both verbal and non, told her that much. They knew the game, but when her “no” had turned insistent, when even Brian knew she didn’t want to play the game anymore, the others had gone on.
She remembered Smooth, the look in his eyes. He didn’t care about the game-he didn’t want her to like it, and most especially, he didn’t want her to be in control. Everything he did made it clear she was helpless, powerless before him. He’d known she didn’t want what they were dishing out, that her “no” had really meant “no.”
But there was no way to tell the detective that. How could she possibly defend herself? And if she told this woman there was some sort of agreement, she would have to admit knowing Brian, tell them about her encounters with him before, even though the rest of them had been strangers to her. She remembered the tears in Brian’s eyes, the apology there, and knew she couldn’t.
“No… ” Lindsey sighed. “It was just a game I played in my head.”
The detective, who had kept her distance the whole time, business-like, writing in her little note pad, took a step toward the bed. Lindsey flinched, only able to bring her eyes up to the level of the woman’s badge.
“That’s a dangerous game, Lindsey.”
She snorted, finally looking at the woman’s face through half-closed eyes-she couldn’t open them any further, and they were still crusted with blood. “Obviously.”
“We’ll have a sketch artist contact you and I want you to look through our mugshots.” The blonde-her name, officer Deborah Bills, was embroidered on her uniform pocket, and Lindsey wondered for a moment if the woman had done it herself-closed her notebook and tucked it away into that pocket for safekeeping. “If you can identify the suspects and there is enough evidence to charge them, you’ll be asked to testify.”
The thought made Lindsey’s stomach drop, but she just nodded. “Can I go home now?”
“You’ll have to talk to the doctor about that.” The officer took a card from a holder and put it on the adjustable hospital bedside table. “This has my number on it. If you’ve forgotten anything, or there’s something new you have to say, give me a call.”
The doctor insisted she stay, but Lindsey signed herself out AMA. “I’m eighteen. I can do that, right?”
The doc was a short Asian woman with a cruel mouth that twisted when she was mad-like now-but kind eyes, and she looked like she wanted to say, “No,” but she didn’t. “Technically, yes.”
Zach spoke up then for the first time in what felt like hours. “I can take care of her, if she wants to go.”
The Asian doc looked him up and down for a moment, and finally even her mouth softened with a resigned sigh. “She’s had a good deal of head trauma. Check her often during the night, look at her pupils… ”
Lindsey ignored the rest, hopping off the bed like a five-year-old who just got her own way and, after checking one last time with the doc, went to take a shower. It was more painful that she would have believed, in more ways than one. The hot water over her lacerated back and legs hit her like sharp needles, and anywhere she touched herself with the soap felt bruised and broken. She didn’t even attempt to wash the purple and, in some places, near-black nubs of her breasts, just let the suds from her shampoo drip down her body-and that burned, too, in the little cuts and nicks along her abdomen and the front of her thighs.
She stood there a long time in the heat, letting the water massage her front, washing away the dried residue of their cum. Her memory was too clear and bright, even if it only came in flashes, like someone taking photos at night. She saw herself, still, outside of herself, hanging suspended, beaten, aching, bleeding. Flash. A slim girl spread flat in the pine needles and dirt, three men kneeling over her, working their way into her, on her, in one way or another. Flash. Brian’s face an apology, his trembling hands gripping her hips. Flash. Running, desperate, the birch trees like negatives in the growing darkness. Flash. Her stepfather, looming. Flash. A blood stained mattress, the darkness spread like a question mark, or a crescent moon. Flash. Zach’s stunned face, the twist from disbelief to anger, his hands gentle, his words soft.
She cried then, turning the water salt, shoving a washcloth into her mouth to muffle her sobs. Zach was right outside the door, and listening, she was sure of it. There was only so much pain one man could stand, she reasoned, as she bent over double, retching, nothing in her stomach, but vomiting anyway, as if she could rid herself of every memory but the last.
Finally, she stood, paying special attention to the area between her legs then, using one of the harsh, bleached hospital washcloths laved with soap to scrub herself clean. Her whole body felt raw as she used the rough, stingy towels to dry off and realized she didn’t have any clothes to put on, the hospital gown just a blood-stained ball on the floor.
“Zach?” Poking her head out the door, she spoke in a stage whisper, looking around for the doc, but she was gone. “I don’t have anything to wear.”
He looked up from where he was sitting, head in hands, in the chair next to the bed. “She left you something. I guess they… they keep stuff on hand for when… ” He let his words trail off, but the sentence finished itself in her head, anyway. “For when women get raped.” Lindsey held out her hand, thinking about the sentence he hadn’t wanted to finish, and he put a bag into it.
Raped. And so, she had been. Wouldn’t be the first time, she mused, digging through the bag. Sweatpants, bright pink, size large-she was going to swim in them-and a t-shirt with a logo she recognized from another business-sized card sitting on the table out there in her hospital room. Turning Point. It was the place that other woman was from, the one who said she was a social worker, an advocate. Lindsey had dispatched her pretty quickly, she remembered, pulling the clothes on, tying a knot in the sweats on the side so they would stay up.
“Get out,” Lindsey had insisted, pointing toward the door in case the young social worker had missed the way. “I don’t want to talk to you.”
The dark-haired woman had persisted for a few minutes, trying to explain her role. “I’m just here as a friend, really,” she explained. “Someone you can talk to.”
“What part of ‘I don’t want to talk to you’ didn’t you understand, lady?”
Lindsey had submitted to the examination, the questions from the nurse, the doctor, demanding in spite of their objections that Zach stay by her side-she squeezed his hand the whole time-not because she wanted to, or even thought it was necessary, but because he had insisted she report it. But this, this woman claiming she just wanted “to talk”-that affront was just one step too far.
She’d heard the woman whispering with the cop in the hallway, but hadn’t seen her again after she’d left her business card.