Please be advised that this story takes place after a sexual assault
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It was the summer of 1999, and
Emily Freeman was thinking of something unimaginable.
This would’ve been unusual—or,
better yet, completely and utterly
insane—on any other day. But after what she’d told me? After what she’d
described?
“So,” Emily said, lowering her
cigarette and blowing smoke out of her mouth. “What do you think, Morgan?
Should I do it?”
“Should you?” I asked, adjusting
my skirt across my legs.
Emily shook her head and took
another drag off her cigarette as she turned her head to stare into the
distance. With her eyes dilated from the bright Texas sunlight and her lips
pursed into a frown, she appeared to be considering the world and how it had
wronged her. Worst yet: she was waiting for me to give her an answer.
In the moments of silence that
followed, I tried my hardest to concentrate on my best friend—to think of what
to say to a seventeen-year-old girl who’d had her sense of self ripped from
her. Grackles cawed in the trees. Cars rolled down the nearby street. Leaves
blew at my feet, and for a quick second, I wished I could be one of them, a
girl magically escaping in the breeze.
Then, I realized something.
I couldn’t leave Emily alone. Not with her thoughts. Not with this.
Emily exhaled. Took a moment to
consider the distance. Sniffled. She reached up to pad her eye with a finger,
careful not to smudge her mascara. Then she asked the question that I knew, but
was afraid, she would ask: “Will you help me, Morgan?”
The reality set before us was far
from grim, the potential consequences even more so. But the truth, as cruel as it happened to be, was that he’d taken
something Emily could never get back, and there was only one thing to do.
Scott Powers had to pay.
So, I said the only thing a best
friend could.
I said: “Yes. I’ll help you.”
The only question was: how would
we pull this off? “How,” I asked, “will we get the gun?”
“Simple,” Emily said. “We steal
it.”
“From who?”
She turned her head to consider
me, all blonde-haired and blue-eyed, and though I tried my hardest not to
tremble, I did just that. “Your dad, silly.”
The word was so innocent, so powerful, that at first, I wondered if
Emily knew what she was doing. But then, I realized: of course Emily knew. She was like sunshine. Like rain. Like a
train running on a warm summer’s day. Bound for my heart, she could shower me
with her words, her desires, her affections; and I, the adoring friend, would
accept them for what they were. The truth was: I would do anything for Emily.
But this?
I frowned as she I considered her
features, windswept on this simple day in April. I asked, “What do you mean steal it from my dad?”
“He has a gun, doesn’t he?”
“Yeah. He has it in his
nightstand drawer.”
“So… what’s the problem?”
“I can’t just go into their room and take his gun. They’d commit me in a
heartbeat.”
“Not if you have these,” Emily said, before drawing, from
the handbag sitting at her side, a translucent orange pill bottle.
“Emily—” I started.
“Relax, Morgie. Mom bummed ‘em
off someone in psych.”
“Your mother is stealing prescriptions
from the psych ward?”
“Shh shh!” Emily said, twisting
her neck about like an owl to survey the area. She then smiled and said, “Someone might hear.”
“No one’s here, Em.”
Emily extended the bottle of
pills to me. “Two should do it. One in your mom’s, another in your dad’s.”
“Are you sure it’s not—”
“It won’t hurt ‘em,” she said,
and hopped off the wooden table she’d been seated upon. She smoothed her short
skirt over her lean white legs and lifted her eyes to face me. “We have to do
this, Morgie. We have to get him.”
“I know,” I said.
I tightened the bottle of pills
in my hand.
“Tonight,” Emily said. “After the
dance.”
“After the dance,” I replied.
Then we nodded, and turned to go
our separate ways.
* * *
Mom and Dad were fighting again.
It wasn’t unusual, all things considering. But hearing them argue was getting
old. However, this gave me the chance to do what Emily had asked.
One in each, she’d said. One
for Mom, and one for Dad.
I popped the pills in their
drinks, then turned toward my bedroom.
All I had to do was wait.
* * *
And wait I did—until they were
both passed out on the couch: mouths agape, drool trailing from their lips.
Their sluggishness, then eventual departure to the world of drug-induced dream,
had concerned me at first. However, given that they were still breathing, I
decided not to think too much on it, and instead, stole into my parents’
bedroom.
It took mere seconds to stride
over the ugly brown carpet and to my father’s nightstand, a few choice moments
for me to adequately prepare myself for what I was about to do.
Remember, a part of me whispered, what he did.
With a long, uneasy breath in, I
pulled the nightstand drawer open—
And revealed the gun within.
I took only one look at it before
dragging it from the drawer, checking to ensure that its safety was on, then
shoving it in my bag.
Then, I turned and made my way
out the front door.
* * *
Emily was waiting for me in her
off-white Camaro when I stole away from the porch. My backpack in hand, my
sequined blue dress on, I slid into the passenger seat and watched Emily
Freeman apply her signature baby-pink lipstick.
“So,” Emily said, smacking her
lips to finish applying her lipstick. “You have it?”
“I do,” I replied, stiffening
beneath her gaze. I inhaled a long, deep breath, then exhaled it before finally
saying, “Maybe we shouldn’t do this.”
“Why not?”
“Because I—you—”
“We what, Morgan?”
I lifted my head to look at
her—and though a part of me wanted to refuse her gaze, another knew that I
could not shy away from it. For that reason, I said, “We’ll get caught.”
“No we won’t.”
“How do you—”
“I just do. Okay?” She slapped
the sunshield against the roof of the vehicle and reached down to push the car
into park. “Morgan…”
“Yes?” I asked, unsure how to
respond to the explicit pause that followed.
“Do you remember that day in gym
class? When you lagged behind because you said you were in the bathroom?”
“I—”
“I saw the scars, Morgie. I saw
what you’ve been doing to yourself.”
Her words were a truth I had been
so desperate to hide. Glacial in respect, they crossed my body, chilling first
my flesh, then my bones. I instinctively lowered my hands to push my
already-long skirt further down my legs.
“Do this for me,” Emily says,
“and no one has to know.”
“You wouldn’t tell,” I say. “You…
you can’t.”
“Your mom will have you in a
psych ward faster than I can say chicken,” she replied.
I stared at Emily; and as she
navigated the roads, careful to avoid the traffic on a night when the streets
were filling with teenagers, she glanced at me out of the corner of her eye,
and asked, “Well?”
“Okay,” I said. “We’ll do it.”
All she could do was smile.
* * *
Crescent Falls High always put on
the best dances. The student-led committee lauded themselves for their
creativity, their ingenuity, their resourcefulness. Oftentimes, old decorations
were repurposed to be new. This year was no exception.
At exactly six o’clock PM, the
doors were opened; and we, the students of Crescent Falls High, rushed in to
find that the world was much like an underwater jungle. Blue and white
streamers dangled from the gymnasium ceiling, dancing in the air being pushed
from the floor fans toward the ceiling. Music blared from speakers, masking the
sound of joy, of laughter.
Of revenge.
Emily no longer appeared content.
Now consumed by rage, she turned her head to look at me, then nodded as she
turned to scour the crowd for Scott Powers.
The plan was simple: she would
find Scott. She would lure him out the back door. She would then guide him deep
into the woods, where I would be waiting with the gun.
With that in mind, I did the only
thing a best friend could:
I made my way to the back of the
gym and slipped out.
In the cool evening of this
unfortunate April night, the wind whipped about, whispering through stray trash
that had accumulated along the building’s exterior and causing the tops of
trees to sway to the tune of some unsung drum. It was so dark that at first, it
was almost impossible to see. Slowly, however, the moon and starlight overhead
began to make everything clearer.
I took my first steps toward the
woodlands beyond with the knowledge that I was about to do something
unimaginable.
You’re doing it for her, a part of me said, and every woman like her.
But was I really, though? Was I really
doing it just for Emily? Or did a
sick, twisted part of me want to do it for myself?
I shook my head as I made my way
across the parking lot—as into the dark woods I slipped. Beneath the canopy
that smelled of fresh leaves and wet mulch, I marched deeper into the
wilderness, until, finally, I came to a place where I could wait for Scott and
Emily in silence.
For several long, indeterminable
moments, I considered the reality of what I was about to do.
Drugging my parents. Stealing
their gun. Luring a boy into the woods, only to draw a weapon and point it at
and then—
The sound of crunching leaves and
twigs broke me from my thoughts.
“So,” Scott Powers said in that
usual cocky voice of his. “You just couldn’t get enough of me, could you,
Freeman?”
I drew the gun and watched as
Emily took several careful steps back.
“Something like that,” Emily then
said.
Scott stepped forward. A smile on
his face. A grin on his lips.
The moment he stepped into view,
I lifted the pistol and centered it on his face.
For a brief second, I saw true
fear in his gaze—a flash of remorse, doubt, guilt, of ridicule and maybe,
possibly, even anger.
But I didn’t give him a chance to
speak.
It took less than one second to
pull the trigger.
The sound, as it barked through
the night, caused every hair on my neck to stand.
Then, just like that, it was
over.
Emily looked at Scott. At me. At
the gun in my grasp.
“I thought—” Emily started.
“That we would just scare him?” I
asked, and waited for her to nod before saying, “No. I couldn’t let him. Not
anymore. Not to anyone else.”
“Thank you, Morgie,” she said,
and sniffled.
“So?” I asked as I lowered the
gun in my grasp. “What do we do now?”
She looked from him. To me. Then
to the gun. Then, she said just three words:
“Now, we run.”
And so we stole from the woods
and into the parking lot of Crescent Falls High. Slipped into Emily’s white
Camaro and then out of the parking space. At this hour of the evening, people
were still coming, but we—we were going, though where I couldn’t be for sure. I
knew we couldn’t go home. I knew we couldn’t ever go back to the way things
used to be, to our last year of high school and all that entailed. Not after
what we’d done, what I’d done.
“Emily,” I said, lifting my eyes
to face her. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”
“What do you mean, Morgie?”
“I’ll take the blame.”
“You’d do that for me?”
I nodded. “The truth is… I’d do
anything for you, Emily.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s what best friends
do.”
Emily reached down. Pressed her
hand atop mine. Slid our fingers together. Squeezed.
“Love you, Morgie,” Emily said.
“Yeah,” I replied, and closed my
eyes. “Love you, too.”