“Cal—” Harleigh’s sob strangled around the word. “Was it—did Buddy try something? Did it happen before or …”
Callie’s face gave her the awful answer. “He loved me, Har. He said he was going to take care of me always.”
Harleigh was literally bowled over by the pain. She touched her forehead to the filthy carpet. Tears seeped from her eyes. Her mouth opened as a moan escaped from deep inside of her body.
This was her fault. This was all her fault.
“It’s okay.” Callie rubbed Harleigh’s back, trying to comfort her. “He loves me, Harleigh. He’ll forgive me.”
Harleigh shook her head. The stiff carpet scratched against her face. What was she going to do? How was she going to fix this? Buddy was dead. He was too heavy for them to carry. There was no way he would fit in Harleigh’s tiny car. They couldn’t dig a hole deep enough for him to rot in. They couldn’t leave because Callie’s fingerprints were on everything.
Callie said, “He’ll take care of me, Har. Just tell him I’m s-sorry.”
This was her fault. This was all her fault.
“Please—” Callie’s broken nose whistled with every breath. “Please will you check?”
Harleigh kept shaking her head. Her chest felt like claws were digging into her ribcage, pulling her back into the stinking shithole that was her life. She was supposed to leave for college in four weeks and one day. She was supposed to get away, but she couldn’t abandon Callie like this. The police wouldn’t see the cuts and bruises as evidence that her sister had fought for her life. They would see the tight clothes, the make-up, the way she wore her hair, and say she was a conniving, murdering Lolita.
And if Harleigh came to her defense? If she said that Buddy had tried it with her, too, but she’d been so busy getting on with her life that she hadn’t warned her sister?
It’s your fault. It’s all your fault.
“Please check on him,” Callie said. “He looked cold, Harleigh. Buddy hates being cold.”
Harleigh saw her future circling down the drain. All the things she’d planned for—the brand-new life she’d pictured in Chicago with her own apartment, her own things, maybe a cat and a dog and a boyfriend who didn’t already have a criminal record—were gone. All the extra classes in school, all the nights she’d spent studying in between working two, sometimes three different jobs, putting up with handsy bosses and harassing comments, sleeping in her car between shifts, hiding money from her mother, all to end up exactly where every other miserable, hopeless kid in this ghetto ended up.
“He—” Callie coughed. “He was m-mad because I f-found the camera. I knew about it but not—he taped us doing—Har, people watched. They know w-what we did.”
Harleigh silently replayed her sister’s words. The apartment in Chicago. The cat and dog. The boyfriend. All of it melted into the ether.
She forced herself to sit back up. Every part of her brain was telling her not to ask, but she had to know. “Who watched you?”
“A-all of them.” Callie’s teeth had started chattering. Her skin was pale. Her lips had turned the blue of a jay’s crest. “Dr. Patterson. C-coach Holt. Mr. Humphrey. Mr. G-ganza. Mr. Emmett.”
Harleigh’s hand went to her stomach. The names were as familiar to her as the last eighteen years of her life. Dr. Patterson, who’d warned Harleigh to dress more modestly because she was distracting the boys. Coach Holt, who kept telling her his house was right up the street if she ever needed to talk. Mr. Humphrey, who’d made Harleigh sit in his lap before he’d let her test drive a car. Mr. Ganza, who’d wolf-whistled at her last week at the supermarket. Mr. Emmett, who would always rub his arm across her breasts when she was in the dentist’s chair.
She asked Callie, “They touched you? Dr. Patterson and Coach—”
“N-no. Buddy made …” The chattering cut her off. “M-movies. Buddy made m-movies and they w-watched us.”
Harleigh’s vision started to sharpen again, the same as it had during the drive over. Only this time, everything was red. Everywhere she looked—the scuffed walls, the damp carpet, the stained bedspread, Callie’s swollen, battered face—she saw red.
This was her fault. This was all her fault.
She used her fingers to gently wipe away Callie’s tears. She watched her own hand move, but it was like watching someone else’s hand. The knowledge of what these grown men had done to her baby sister had split Harleigh in two. One side of her wanted to bite down on the pain the same way that she always did. The other side wanted to cause as much pain as possible.