Her irate expression, no doubt resulting from the dozen-odd times he’d rung the doorbell in as many seconds, evaporated upon seeing him. “Hello?”
In his imagination, he’d walked right up to the house and there had been this Earl fellow and DJ had just torn right into him, no questions asked or needed. “Hi… are you Mrs. Jenner?”
“I’m Mrs. Shannon. Heather. Jenner is my maiden name—are you here to see Brittney?” It was clearly not the first time she’d had to explain.
“Um, yeah. Is she here?”
“Yeah, I’ll get her, come on in.” She let him into the foyer and called Brittney’s name, saying that she had a visitor. DJ looked around, but didn’t see anyone else at home from the foyeur.
“So you’re a friend of Brittney’s?”
No, I just raped her and traded her for butt-sex with my sister’s high-school friend. Maybe a simpler, less accurate response was warranted. “Yeah, I go to school with her.” He almost added he was her RA, but wondered if her mom knew anything of what had been going on. He stopped there.
Seeing his taciturn demeanor, she just made an ambivalent face and excused herself. Brittney came down a moment later; to her credit as an actress, she looked both surprised and pleased to see him. “DJ! Wow, I didn’t expect… wow!” She rushed to him and hugged him. Awkwardly, he returned it, but quickly drew back. “Did you come out here just to see me?” She smiled like she was pleased rather than horrified to be so important to him.
Well shit. In all his imaginings, he hadn’t actually considered what he’d actually say to her. He’d just been thinking about that asshole who hurt her.
The other one.
“Mercedes gave me your address. I… I…”
She smiled patiently. “Let’s go to my room and talk there, OK?”
“I didn’t come here to have sex,” he said, far too defensively.
Brittney’s eyes bulged in surprise, and she made a shushing motion. “Upstairs, OK?”
Silently, he followed her to her room. It was nothing like the one she shared with Mercedes—that was a college girl’s room, filled with selfies and books and Christmas lights and tiger-print dorm furniture. This… this was a true girl’s room. The walls were pink, bedspread pink, a heart carved into the headboard. There were unicorn decals in several places, framed by glow-in-the-dark stars, and those spangled with glitter.
She shut the door and sat down on her bed, inviting him to sit next to her. “I’ll stand, actually.”
“DJ, is something wrong? You’re acting really weird. I was literally packing up to get ready to go back to school when you rang the doorbell. What was so important that it couldn’t wait?”
He averted his eyes, not sure how to tell her what he’d done, invading her privacy—and thereby learning he’d violated her in so many other ways. Worse, that he’d been so willfully ignorant that he’d not even known he was doing it.
As he pondered what to say, he heard a male voice from downstairs, muffled, but clear enough to hear a “who the hell was that” through the floor. He didn’t hear Heather’s response, but his retort to it came through clearly. “So you just sent this boy on up to her room? … yeah, well I heard him say wasn’t gonna fuck her too but you know as well as I do your daughter can’t keep her damn legs closed… I heard that, Heather!”
Brittney winced. “Is that Earl?” he asked.
“How do you know his name? I never talked about him to you. I hardly ever talk about him to anyone.” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously.
“Oh, fuck. I don’t know how to say this so I’m just gonna say it. Brittney, I found your journal.”
She stiffened. “You did, did you. I knew I should’ve hidden it somewhere harder to find than under my mattress. Wow, that’s so embarrassing… I wrote some really personal things in there, about our sex life and all. Did it get you all hot and bothered? Is that why you drove out here?” The blonde smiled coyly.
“I found that one before break, and yeah, it did. Today I got home, and Mercedes said she was following your example, mentioned how your typing keeps her up nights. So I thought to myself, ‘type? That was hand-written, not typed. That’s crazy.’ It took some doing to find it once I started, but… I found it.”
She paled. “You weren’t supposed to find that. Oh gosh, DJ, I am SO sorry. You have to understand, I didn’t mean ANY of that—it was just, um…”
Leave it to Brittney, too honest to even come up with a convincing lie. “I know you meant it—and… I’m so, SO—”
He was interrupted by the door being opened. Standing behind it was a man who could only be Earl, although he looked a little cleaner around the edges than DJ had pictured, clean-shaven and with a fresh haircut. He was even a little handsome, he supposed, though his current disapproving frown masked it somewhat.
“So, Brittney, who’s your little friend? Little scrawnier than your usual haul, looks like.”
“Earl, this is DJ. DJ, this is my step-father, Earl.” Her voice was tiny. Her fear of him would have been obvious even if he hadn’t learned what he had.
He looked around the room and quickly found a unicorn figurine a good eight inches tall, hard plastic and with a nice little spike in the forehead. DJ was reasonably sure that if he swung hard enough, he could puncture this man’s skull and go right into his brain. He also knew this fucking asshole would lie there and let himself be hurt without even trying to fight back. He didn’t deserve that chance. He sure hadn’t given it to Brittney, or to her mother.
He picked up the unicorn.
“Something wrong there, BJ?” he asked, his tone becoming more confrontational in response to the young man’s silence. “What, you just came over to play with her dolls?”
Keep talking, Earl, DJ though as he paced over to the man, studying where exactly he wanted to strike. It didn’t happen often, but sometimes people were capable of a little sass towards him; he suspect it was just the nature of some people without even intending to be rude. Mercedes and Ashley were both good examples.
Ashley. Mercedes. What have I done to you? He looked to Brittney, whose eyes were darting back and forth fearfully between the two men. She knew what he was about, clearly. “DJ, please, don’t…” Obviously, she remembered him dropping that asshole Brayden.
“Earl, you got one hell of a family here, if you don’t mind my saying so,” he said casually, still eschewing eye contact to study the best place to pierce his cranium.
“I like them OK my own self. Guess we both got good taste in women.” He smiled at Brittney, though DJ thought he could see traces of a leer there.
That was it. The smug smile on his face… time to wipe it off, permanently. This man had raped his step-daughter, beaten her, terrorized her. He had done the same or worse to his wife. He glanced one last time at Brittney, who could see all too plainly what he was about. Stop, please! she mouthed at him, eyes welling up with desperate, impotent tears.
Nevermind that. Brittney was an amazing young woman who had suffered more than most ever would. This guy deserved death, and DJ was all too happy to give it to him. Whether Brittney wanted him to or not. It was what he wanted, and nobody could stop him.
DJ froze as that sentiment crystallized in his head. I want this, and it doesn’t matter whether she wants it or not, I’m going to do what feels good to me.