She was looking straight at him.
Instantly, all moisture evaporated from his lips, and a strangled croak emerged from his throat. He had to remind himself to watch the road, but as hard as it had been before, it was next to impossible now that she was awake. He swallowed with an audible click. Hoped she didn’t scream like she had the last time she’d seen him.
“Hello Ma’am,” he said.
“Who are you?” she replied, and for the first time in his life, Pete had to think about the answer.
“Uh…I’m Pete. Pete Lowell. I’m a friend.”
Her voice was soft, so soft he had to strain to hear her over the droning of the tires, the hum of the engine. “Where are you taking me Pete?”
She said my name. The butterflies in his stomach caught fire, lighting him from the inside out.
“Hospital. You know…to get you fixed up and back to wherever you come to Elkwood from. Doctor Wellman told me to take you. Hope that’s all right.” He smiled, forgetting she probably couldn’t see it in the mirror. “We all want for you to get better.”
She stared for a moment, then her one uncovered eye drifted shut. She was silent for so long he thought she’d gone back to sleep, but then he heard her whisper, “I don’t like to sing either.”
Pete nodded, his smile threatening to split his face in two, and felt something like sheer, uncontaminated happiness settle like a warm blanket over his soul.
“I live in Columbus,” she said. “You know where that is?”
“No,” he said, and wished he did, if only to seem worldlier than he knew himself to be.
“Ohio,” she said. “When I’m all better, I want you…to come see me. So I can thank you.”
Pete didn’t think he’d ever felt such elation. What had previously only seemed like unattainable fantasies were rapidly evolving into possibilities, and he vowed to explore as many of them as she saw fit to allow him.
Her voice was growing softer, and he felt a pang of sadness that it might be the end of their talk. “Will you come?”
“Yes Ma’am,” he said, grinning toothily. “I swear I will.”
He went back to watching the road.
PART TWO
-13-
For an eternity she lives in a world of dreams, and there is no pain. She is vaguely aware of figures dressed in white constantly shifting in and out of the twilit world between waking and sleeping, but most of the time she does not fear them. Their presence soothes her, represents a reprieve from the pain. Sometimes there are voices but when she tries to focus on the speaker, she sees only blurry shapes sitting on her bed, figures cut from the daylight pouring in through the large veiled window. They tell her things about her body, about her progress, but the words mean nothing. Sometimes there are others, voices she knows, familiar voices that make her heart ache as they weep beside her, and hold her. She does not like to be held, feels her skin crawl as their hands alight on her tender flesh, but she knows they do not mean to harm her, and so she says nothing, even as she withdraws a little more inside her shell. For a long time she says nothing. For a long time she lives inside her head, crouched in the dark peering out at the light, at the endless parade of unclear faces, not yet ready to accept them but glad they are there.
She does not want to be alone.
Alone, the nightmares come unbidden. The men put their dirty hands on her naked body; crush her beneath their weight. She smells their sweat, a stench she will remember for the rest of her life, feels the piercing pain in her groin as they roughly enter her—no romance, no desire—just rape, taking what they want, what they have no right to take, delighting in her objection, relishing the violation over and over again, stealing a little piece of her every time. Then their smiles as they step back to appraise her, crooked yellow teeth gleaming, eyes like polished stones, studying her, taking in every bead of sweat, every hair, every part of her bare battered body. In their hands they hold dirty blades as they turn away like magicians waiting to spring a surprise on the audience. Though she has transcended pain of the physical kind, she wishes for death, for sleep, for escape. Most of all, she yearns for the chance to turn back time, to contest Daniel’s decision to shun the highway in favor of a merry jaunt through the backwoods. But she’d been outvoted, and a little drunk, a little high, and so had kept her mouth shut as they headed off down the narrow path marked by a signpost that told them they were three miles from a town called Elkwood.
This is where the nightmare began in real life, and in the realm of turbulent sleep, it does not deviate from the script, though sometimes the scenes are rearranged at the hands of a deranged editor.
The four of them, toting backpacks, a colorful bunch: Daniel in a gray Old Navy T-shirt, knee-length jean shorts with frayed hems and sandals; Stu in an appropriately loud lemon T-shirt and red and green floral-patterned Bermuda shorts, his shades hanging around his neck, a NY Mets cap pulled backwards on his head; Katy, more conservative in a khaki “skort” and a lime green polo shirt marred by slight sweat stains beneath the armpits, her dark hair tied back in a ponytail, one thick lock of it following the curve of her cheek; and Claire, wearing denim shorts and a white cutoff shirt that displays her toned stomach and the belly-button piercing she’d had done before they left Columbus. She remembers that ring most of all— a silver circlet running through a small fake diamond—because it was the first thing the men ripped from her body.
Her mind skips to this scene:
She is still dressed, but tied to the stake. She screams against the oil-stained gag as the man she will later attack with the wooden spur laughs through his teeth and pulls the ring from her navel, then holds it up to show her. There is a little speck of her skin still attached. And as he brings it close, she recalls the courage it took to get it done, and the complete absence of that same courage every time she thought of having to show it to her mother.
Then back to the carefree wanderers: Daniel and Stu walking ahead on the shaded road, trading memories of the last drunken night in Sandestin and chuckling while the canopies of oak leaves allowed golden pools of sun to warm their backs, Katy and Claire following, Katy strangely quiet. Bug spray doesn’t dissuade the clouds of mosquitos that hang around them like stars around the moon.
Are you worried? Claire asks her friend when the guys are far enough ahead of them.
About what?
I don’t know. You’re not saying much.
Katy shrugs, smiles just a little. Just thinking. About us.
You and me? Or…
Yeah, Katy replies. Or.
He seems to be all right, Claire tells her, with a nod in Stu’s direction. You don’t think so?
Another shrug. Seems to be is exactly the point. He hasn’t said a thing. Not a damn thing.
Maybe that’s for the best. Maybe it’s his way of letting you know it’s over and done with, water under the bridge.
Katy looks at her then. If you cheated on Danny, you think you’d take him being quiet as forgiveness?
In the dream, before Claire gets a chance to answer, a disembodied hand appears before Katy, dirt under its nails, grime covering the skin, as it drives a rusted metal spike upward, penetrating the soft skin underneath her friend’s chin. Blood spurts, Katy’s eyes widen in horror, but she keeps talking, keeps trying to explain why she did what she did, why she betrayed her boyfriend with someone she had no feelings for, but the words keep getting harder and harder to get out as the spike appears inside her mouth, still traveling upward, puncturing her tongue and driving it toward the roof of her mouth. And now Katy is speaking as if she has never learned the right way to do it, as if she’s been deaf since birth and will never be sure if the words are produced the right way. I… hink… I wanhed… to… hurt him… buh I hon’t knowww why… Then, as the spike continues its passage through her skull, Katy’s eyes roll and bulge, begin to leak blood.