The more Ramona wallowed, the less useful she was becoming. Ellie changed the subject. “Speaking of crushes, did Julia have a boyfriend?”
“No. Not any single boyfriend, at least.”
Ding ding ding.
“Look, you said you need to know everything about Julia, so I’ll tell it like it was. You’ve got to understand. Julia was adventurous. Fun. Crazy as hell, sometimes, but fun.” She smiled sadly at some memory only she knew. “But part of the adventurousness and craziness was her—openness, let’s say, with guys.”
“Like who?”
“Honestly? It was a lot of people. Marcus Graze was her first kiss and probably took her V-card. He goes to Casden too. They were never really together, but constantly hooking up, if that makes any sense. And there was a trainer at her gym. I don’t even know his name. And one time she”—her cheeks blushed—“she blew some guy in the parking lot of Lily Pond to get a ride back from East Hampton last summer, even though we can always call a car service. I know it sounds awful, but it’s like she wanted the bragging rights.”
“No one’s judging your friend,” Ellie said.
“But that kind of lifestyle can be dangerous,” Rogan added. “Did any of these men ever want more from her than she was willing to give?”
She shook her head. “No. If anything, Julia appeared to have calmed down the last few months. She was spending a lot more time at home. For once, I was the one begging her to go out, and she’d be the one who wanted to stay in. That’s why I didn’t talk to her since Friday. I went to the Hamptons with my parents, and all she could talk about was how much she was looking forward to a weekend alone in the city.”
Rogan moved a creepy doll with ringleted hair and a red velvet dress farther down the sofa to give himself a little more room. “Julia’s mother said something about some street kids who were over at the townhouse at least once before?”
Ramona rolled her eyes. “Of course she’d have to bring them up. That’s Casey. He went to Julia’s, like, once with a couple of friends, but like I said, he’s really more my friend. If Katherine’s trying to blame him—”
Rogan cut her off. “No one’s blaming anyone at this point. That’s why we investigate. On that note, would you mind giving us a quick DNA sample? Just a cheek swab so the lab can eliminate any stray hairs you may have left behind at Julia’s house.”
Now that they were working this case as a homicide, the lab would be busy eliminating known samples to focus in on any unidentified DNA found in the house.
After Rogan took the swab, they had Ramona run through her final conversation with Julia one more time, but the girl had no new revelations to offer, only more regrets about the unspoken feelings, which led to more crying. As they reached the bedroom door, Ramona said she was sorry she hadn’t been more helpful.
But as far as Ellie was concerned, Ramona had helped plenty.
Witnesses never seemed to realize that what seemed to them like an idle observation could make a case look entirely different to the police—or, in this particular case, could be construed entirely differently by two different police detectives.
Rogan started in on his interpretation as soon as they hit the car. “I don’t buy for a second that Julia Whitmire had calmed down recently. A weekend home alone?”
“Exactly what a depressed girl might prefer,” Ellie said.
“No way. The type of girl who bangs personal trainers and hands out blow jobs at the beach in exchange for transportation doesn’t suddenly calm down because she’s depressed. Julia’s mom said she hated being alone. If Julia had leveled out, I bet you anything she had a new man on the side—someone she was being hush-hush about, even with her best friend.”
“Either way, we’re still looking at a depressed bulimic whose parents had abandoned her. No forced entry. Nothing missing. Don’t forget the slit wrist and suicide note. On the other side of the ledger, we’ve got a missing notepad. Plus that stuff about Julia saying that Ramona’s mom had been a better mother to her than her own? One more indication that Katherine Whitmire was a cold, crappy mother, and that her daughter, Julia, wasn’t quite as tough about it as she let on. Who could blame her for drinking herself numb and checking out?”
“We still owe it to that girl and to those parents to be a hundred percent positive before we take her name from the board.”
The car fell silent once again. Ellie finally reached for the radio but Rogan blocked her hand.
“None of your new wave Devo Flock of Seagulls shit when I’m driving.” As far as Ellie could tell, Rogan thought any music by white people between 1983 and 1997 was either Devo or Flock of Seagulls.
But then the silence must have gotten to him, as well. He turned on the stereo and stopped the dial on a rap song she actually recognized. She muttered the lyrics as she looked out the window. “Ain’t nothin’ but a g-thang, baby.”
It was enough to get a laugh out of her partner. “You kidding me with that?”
“What? I grew up in Kansas, not on a commune.” She put a little more swagger into her performance, swaying in her seat. “And now all you hookas and hos know how I feel.”
“Damn, woman. You got to ruin everything for me, don’t you? I won’t be able to listen to that again without picturing your bony butt bouncing around.”
She placed a hand on her hip. “Ain’t nothing bony about this. You just want a small piece of some of that funky stuff.”
He shook his head, but he was smiling. “This mean we’re all right?”
“We’re always all right. You should know that by now.”
“But you still think you’re right and I’m wrong.”
“Yep.”
“Want to go talk to this homeless kid, Casey?”
“Nope. But I will. Last time I checked, that’s what we do.”
Chapter Eleven
Second Acts: Confessions of a Former Victim and Current Survivor
“MAKE IT STOP”
I’m continually surprised at the way ordinary events trigger revelations about abuse and survivorship. This morning, my daughter awoke to the sounds of jack hammers thanks to a construction project on the street below her bedroom window. She wandered from her bedroom bleary-eyed and bed-headed, her palms pressed against her ears. “Make it stop. That’s all I want right now: Just make it stop.”
Make it stop. It’s a perfectly rational reaction, isn’t it? To want to put an end to whatever unpleasant stimuli one is experiencing? To crave the exact opposite?
Ear-shattering noise? Give me total silence instead. Blisteringly hot food? Hand me cold water. Blinding light? I shut my eyes to enjoy the darkness.
Rape? Make it stop.
But what does it mean to crave the
opposite
of rape? No sex? No physical contact? No men?
But rape, we must always remind ourselves, isn’t about sex. It’s about power. Our abusers want to exercise dominion over us. They want to steal our agency.
And so what do we do? We take our agency back, however we can.
I couldn’t force that man out of my house, but I could choose not to go to school. I couldn’t bar him from my bedroom at night, but I could get a fake ID and a six-pack at three in the afternoon. I couldn’t stop him from eyeing me every time my mother averted her gaze, but I could start hanging around the people my mother had always called “bad influences.” I needed to know I could make choices that belonged to me.