She calculated the cost of the pizza—once again proving her thesis—and thought, fine, pizza for a blow job. But even that wasn’t enough. After a few minutes, he began tugging at her shorts, trying to pull them off without bothering to unzip. She wrestled with him, finally saying she didn’t want to. At least that’s what she thought she said. But whatever words came out, it was too late. She’d gone along with so much already, and he’d disappeared into that zone guys go where the only words that enter are the ones they want to hear.
He kept saying, “You want me. You want me”—an odd choking sound in his throat.
The shorts got hung up on her hips, and she clutched at them thinking he might let her be, but with one massive yank he had them off, her skin left raw from the rough seams. She had a choice. She wouldn’t deny that. They were speaking different languages, and she could resort to one he knew. She could scream or knee him in the groin or gouge at his eyes. He’d likely understand that. She could see how that would go—out there, alone in the woods. He probably didn’t mean to rape her. Probably didn’t.
She pushed back and caught sight of his face, a muddle of anger and sadness and longing. This scared her even more, because what could it mean? She decided not to risk it. You go along to get along, right? Her foster dad had taught her that. Besides, she’d already established what she was.
She said to at least use a condom. Not that it mattered, nothing did, but she needed to take some element of control. Only he didn’t have one and said he’d pull out in time. She tried to ignore what happened after that, but with each thrust a broken piece of rattan stabbed at her scalp, deeper and deeper until it seemed to be hitting bone. When his thighs and buttocks tensed and his back went rigid, she shouted, “Pull out!”
Maybe he tried, but he didn’t quite make it in time.
A few minutes later, they were back on the trail, Daniel striding ahead, letting her fend off branches herself. Evangeline gingerly touched her scalp, her fingertips returning bright with blood.
When they reached the car, he turned toward her, but he was looking down and away, anywhere but at her.
“I don’t know where you live. Is it close?” he said.
“Half mile max.”
For a second, she thought he might leave her there, but he straightened like he’d decided something. “Hop in,” he said.
Except for directions, they didn’t talk on the short ride. When they arrived at her brush-clogged drive, she told him to stop there.
“Thanks for the pizza,” she said, wanting him to hear her bitterness.
His eyes darted at her, then to his lap. “I hope I didn’t . . . I mean, I thought . . .”
She waited, but he said nothing more.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, like she couldn’t care less. At least that’s how she hoped it sounded.
She hopped out, her legs trembling as she walked, barely holding her weight.
* * *
—
IT WAS WHAT SHE HAD DONE when he was still collapsed on top of her that caused her the most shame. Panting, he’d said, “God, you are so hot.” And ridiculously, it had felt good to be admired. She’d felt so dirty and foul those past weeks, like she wasn’t even a girl, just a rodent scrabbling.
So when he said it again—“I mean it. You are so hot”—she had said, “Thanks.”
Her eyes were open now, in Daniel’s house, staring at the ceiling, picturing how he’d stood, zipped his pants, said, “It’s getting late.”
And even then, she’d continued to delude herself. As she searched in vain for her panties, as she gave up and pulled on shorts freighted with twigs and dirt and tiny things crawling, she told herself that the only thing that had happened, really, was that a handsome boy had been overcome with desire for her, a boy who couldn’t get over how sexy she was, a boy she’d perhaps confused with her mixed signals and who—if she decided to give him another chance, which of course she wouldn’t, but if she did—would understand what she wanted next time, might even take her out in public.
She’d spent years contorting the facts of her life into new shapes so as to cause herself less pain. Years denying what was true. But she wasn’t in the woods anymore. She was safe in this house with a man who wanted to hear what she had to say. That was the truth of her life now.
She tried to relax into this new safety, but a body doesn’t easily forget hard lessons long learned. Her heart kept stabbing at her ribs in rhythmic bursts of pain, and she knew she’d struggle to fall asleep.
Rufus, who’d been lying by the door, stood and lumbered over. He hesitated a moment, then jumped onto the bed. He stood over Evangeline breathing heavily, then pressed his cold nose into her warm neck, snuffling and licking, until she said, “Ahh, Rufus, Rufus,” pulled him down, and curled against his back.
44
Day of My Death
The memory of my mother with her knife has faded. It’s my own knife I’m thinking of now. If Uncle Jim hadn’t given me that field kit for my seventeenth birthday, none of this would have happened.
It was Daniel who insisted we go that last night, who directed me a good ten miles out of town. Earlier in the day, he’d asked me to pick him up from football practice. He wanted to surprise Sammy by showing up unannounced at her place. That didn’t sound like a great plan to me, but who was I to question?
As soon as he jumped into the truck, I knew something was off. His voice was too loud, and he was swearing about everything and nothing and laughing at weird times. He used to do that when we were little kids to keep himself from crying.
Out of the blue, he said, “Didn’t your uncle give you a new field-dressing kit a while back?”
“Yeah. So?”
“Want to test it out?”
I didn’t. I wanted to drop him off and go searching for Red. She was all I could think of. “It’s not deer season.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“But you’re going to Samantha’s.”
“Naaaah. Let’s go hunting. You got anything better to do?”
“Maybe I do,” I said.
That caught his attention. I never had anything better to do.
“Like what? Like a girl?”
I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure I’d find Red again, and I didn’t want to jinx it.
He studied me a long while, like he was reading my face. “You’ve got nothing,” he said. “Believe me.”
I started to turn to take him home. He grabbed the wheel and jerked it. Just a little. Just to shake me up. “Come on. I know you got that field kit in back.”
“What will your dad say?”
“He won’t say anything.”
“But your rifle. He’ll hear you come in.”
“I’ll use yours,” Daniel said, pulling it from the rack behind our heads.
“And me?”
“You get to dress it out. That’s what you get.”
* * *
—
A COUPLE HOURS IN, Daniel lit the lantern he’d slung across his back and hung it on a scrawny pine. I guzzled a beer and checked out the kill, a muscular six-point buck. Daniel had landed the perfect shot, back third of the neck.