“It’ll be okay,” I said to Laurel, when she froze. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“And I’ll be right out here.” Clem pointed to a bench.
“Come with me,” Laurel said. “I need you both to make me do it.”
Clem and I looked at each other.
“Of course,” she said.
I think that was the moment I decided to love her.
We waited our turn to talk to the woman behind the counter, who was gray-haired and old enough to be our grandmother. “Yes?” she asked without looking up.
“We’re… I’m here…” Laurel’s voice faltered. She looked down at her hands, her fingers twisting.
“Laurel was hurt by a boy named Andrew at a party,” Clem said, looking at the woman expectantly. “We have his address. We can take you there.”
“She was raped,” I clarified. The word reverberated in the lobby, but I pressed on. “We need to file a police report. Press charges. Whatever the protocol is.”
The older woman pushed a clipboard at Laurel, then pointed to the chairs. “Fill this out, then you’ll wait to speak with a detective.”
From the paperwork, I learned Laurel’s last name was Hargrove, that she was from South Bend, Indiana, and that she had only a mother left, like me. Then we waited. And waited.
Finally, the receptionist led us through the door into the heart of the station, a massive open room full of desks, and dropped us off at one with a placard that read Detective Adam Dorsey. Officers milled around, and for some reason, even though we were here for help, they put me on edge. I tracked their movements out of the corner of my eye as we waited. It was only the circumstances, I told myself.
Detective Dorsey rushed to us, obviously in a hurry, and perched on the edge of his desk. He leaned close to Laurel, eyeing her. She leaned back. Then Dorsey studied Clem and me, lingering on Clem’s pink hair. “So. You want to report a rape?”
His casual bluntness was startling. Clem adjusted in her seat. “Laurel was at a party—”
“I want to hear it from the girl,” the detective said. “Not her friends.”
It was an odd way to talk about Laurel, who was sitting right there, but she gathered her breath and told the detective every detail. He kept interrupting to ask terse questions: Had she thought Andrew was attractive, had she been interested in him? To which Laurel replied, red-faced, yes, but obviously only at first. Had Laurel intended to have sex with him, and if so, had she hinted at the possibility? To which Laurel grew even more red-faced and said no, she hadn’t been planning to have sex with him. Because she was a virgin, and a party wasn’t how she’d imagined her first time.
The detective breezed on from that, but I could tell Clem and I were thinking the same thing: If Laurel had kept her virginity until college, that meant she’d been precious about it. She’d probably planned on romance and maybe even love for her first time. Instead, she’d been raped. Yet another blow.
At the end of a long line of questions, Detective Dorsey sighed.
I bit. “What?”
He gestured at his legal pad, where he’d scribbled notes. “There’s not much to go on.”
“What do you mean?” Clem asked. “She just told you every detail. You have his name and address. Go arrest him.”
“There were no witnesses to the alleged assault,” Dorsey said. “No one to confirm Ms. Hargrove’s accusation.”
“How many times are there witnesses to a rape?” I asked. “Seems rare.”
The detective narrowed his eyes at me, then turned back to Laurel. “You can go to the hospital and get a kit done, but I’m warning you, it’s invasive as hell. Some girls say it’s like being raped all over again. And you’ve waited an awfully long time. Would’ve been better if you’d reported this last night, while it was fresh.”