“And why was that? Because no one ever listened to you when you said ‘no,’ did they?” He touched her cheek, his eyes pained. “Your stepfather didn’t listen. All the men who took advantage of you didn’t listen. Lindsey, baby, you’ve been saying ‘no’ all along. It’s just that no one was willing to stop and listen to what you actually meant.” Everything in her went silent as she stared at him, the slow realization creeping like cold fingers up her spine. She wanted to deny it, but she couldn’t. All that time, she’d been saying “No”-egging them on, sure, teasing them, trying her best to get herself or someone else hurt, she realized with a flush of shame-but she never once stopped saying, “No.”
“Okay.” She sat up on the couch, wiping her eyes, blinking back any more tears, and managed to give him a small, hard smile. “Let’s go.” She was going and, not just this one time, but now and forever, “No” was going to really mean “No.”
“Ugh, did you have to make me eat waffles?” Lindsey held her stomach as they approached the pavilion. It was crowded with a sea of kids in black robes, but there were far many more parents and siblings, grandmothers and uncles. All she had was Zach-not that she was complaining.
“You wanted waffles!” Zach laughed, tugging at the tassel on her mortarboard—a blue and white thing with a gold “2008”—making it go askew.
“Yeah, well… now I feel sick.” She straightened her cap with a frown.
“You’re going to be fine.” He kissed her cheek, pointing to a sign that read, ‘Graduates’ with an arrow pointing down a flight of stairs. “I guess that’s for you.”
“How will I find you after?” She clung to his hand, hesitating at the top of the stairs.
“I’ll wait right by this sign.” He kissed her again, properly this time, a slow, lingering heat filling her middle to replace the nausea. “Now go, before they start without you.”
She went down the stairs and packed herself into the crowd, hoping to be invisible in the sea of black. There were nearly a thousand graduates-it shouldn’t be that difficult, she reasoned. And after today, she would be free, one rite of passage into adulthood officially taken, and more to follow-including the job she’d started two days ago, and school, which wouldn’t start for another two weeks for the summer session.
Finding a spot by the wall, she sat down and waited for the organization machine to take over. It would, eventually, and then this whole thing would be over. Until then, she was going to concentrate on not being sick. The waffles Zach had brought to her in bed had been thick and rich and beyond delicious, and the sex they’d had afterward had been even better, but now it weighed heavily in her middle.
The truth was, she didn’t want Zach to leave, and it was only a few weeks away now, looming large. She couldn’t picture being on her own, couldn’t imagine life without him anymore. He thought she was afraid of Smooth and Gritty-Robert Barnes And Donald McMillan according to the police report the prosecutor had showed her during their meeting with him. And she was, a little-they were out on bail, after all, and the trial had been so far in the future, nearly a month after Zach was due home, in fact-but no one knew where she was now.
She was more afraid of herself, of what she might do while Zach was gone. And she didn’t even want to think about that.
“Hey, Lindsey.”
Startled out of her thoughts, she looked up to see Brian standing there in his graduation cap and gown. Speak of the devil, she thought, quickly standing.
“Hi.” She returned his greeting, and they stood there, lost in the awkwardness.
He finally cleared his throat. “I just wanted to say I was sorry.”
“Okay.” She nodded, wondering what he knew, how much he’d found out.
“I talked to Ralph. Those guys…I heard they were arrested.” So he knew. “They raped me.”
“So did I.” His voice was barely a whisper, his eyes on the floor. “I didn’t mean for it to be like that. I didn’t know…”
She put her hand on his arm. “It was bad. I’m sorry, too.”
“They’re making me testify.” He swallowed, still not looking at her. “They say they’re not going to charge me with anything, but they want me to go to court anyway.” She’d done her best to protect him and was relieved to hear it. “It got out of hand. For both of us.”
He breathed a sigh. “I’ll say.”
“Hey, they’re making us line up.” She pointed to the front of the breezeway, where their old chem teacher was directed them into two lines-boys on one side, girls on the other. A thousand students, and she ended up next to Brian, filing two-by-two into the pavilion where family and friends were waiting to cheer as they walked across the stage to accept their respective diplomas.
He reached for and squeezed her hand just before they went out. “Happy graduation.”
“You too.”
She stepped out into the sunlight, already looking for Zach, and hoped, more than anything, that they’d both get some sort of happy ending after all.
“I just want you to think about it.” Zach dug into his pocket for his keys as Lindsey unzipped her black graduation gown-it was incredibly hot and itchy, and she’d barely made it home without stripping it off in the car.
“I don’t need to think about it.” She slipped the gown off over the jeans and t-shirt she was wearing underneath.
“I get that you’re not ready to talk to her…”
Lindsey picked up the puddle of black material as Zach slid the key into the apartment lock, remembering the look on her mother’s face in the pavilion. She’d found them just as Lindsey met Zach under the ‘Graduates’ sign, coming forward with congratulations and apologies and explanations. Excuses, more like it, Lindsey thought bitterly.
“She said she didn’t know,” Zach said, pushing the door open.
Lindsey snorted. “Bullshit. If I had a daughter who was doing what I was, I’d have suspected something was wrong.”
“I guess I can’t argue with you there.” He sighed.
So she said she didn’t know, Lindsey thought, tossing her cap and gown on the sofa. Her mother had found her journals, she’d said, and she had kicked her stepfather to the curb almost immediately. A little too late, Lindsey snorted to herself, not believing it was going to last for a minute. He’d be back, she was sure. Her mother couldn’t possibly live on her own for too long.
It was the thing she’d always hoped for, desperately wished for, and yet now that it had happened, it didn’t matter at all. She swallowed past the bitter irony of that thought as Zach put his arms around her from behind.
“When you’re ready.” He nuzzled her hair out of the way to kiss her neck. “Maybe you could just talk to her?”
She shrugged and, for his benefit, said, “I guess. Maybe.”
“So are you ready for your gift?”
She could feel him grinning already.
“What do you have up your sleeve now?”
But he didn’t have to tell her. Their voices had carried into the kitchen, and now a succession of short, plaintive yelps gave away his secret. Her eyes widened as she turned in his arms, her jaw dropping.
“You didn’t!”
He was definitely grinning. “I did.”
She squealed and took off running, stopping short at the baby gate now slung across the kitchen door where a black Labrador puppy scrabbled on the linoleum, jumping up as they approached, a little black nose nudging Lindsey’s hand as she reached down to pet him.
“How did you do this?” She leaned down to pick up the puppy, who lapped happily at her face as she lifted him-yep, it was definitely a “he”, she noted. There’d been no sign of a puppy when they left that morning.