Jagged Little Pill, page 9
I fire off another series of texts to Nick.
He’s not answering, and it’s leaving this hollow feeling in my chest. I screwed that up by doing . . . whatever I did with Andrew. Ugh.
I take a breath and exhale. Monday. Okay. Tomorrow’s going to be awful. School. Everyone’s judging eyes. For every single person messaging me, there’s probably a good dozen or so people I don’t know who have seen this. That’s how it works, right? But it’ll fade. Everyone will forget by the end of the week, and we’ll be on to the next slice of drama. That’s this town, I know it. You keep your head down, and people move on.
I just have to pray Mom and Dad don’t see this. That one of my idiot classmates doesn’t show it to their parents.
Whew. Anxiety swells in my chest. I’m going to be carrying this fear for a while.
It’s okay. People will forget. It’ll all go away—
“Bella?”
I jump in my bed, and my bedroom door creaks open. Mom peeks in, her eyes searching me, a little smile on her face. My heart is absolutely pounding in my chest. This is it. She’s seen the photo, she’s read the social media updates, someone, somewhere, told her—
“You awake?” she asks, stepping into the room delicately. The two of us look wildly alike, which makes for annoying boys telling me how hot my mom is. God, if I had a dollar for every stupid comment from Andrew about wanting to “bang” my mother—
Andrew.
“Hey,” I mutter, sitting up in my bed.
“Getting a bit late,” she says, smiling a little at me. “Someone maybe had a bit too much fun at that party?”
“Mom,” I groan. But I’m relieved. This conversation doesn’t seem to be heading the way I feared. She doesn’t know. She hasn’t seen.
“It’s fine. You know I don’t really care as long as you’re being safe and getting home.” She hands me a tumbler I didn’t notice was in her hand. I pop it open, and the smell of coffee wafts over me like a warm blanket.
“You’re just the best.” And she is. Supportive and altogether there, she’s a rock in the face of so much. It almost makes me want to tell her, but the idea that she might crumble makes me rethink all of it. This could be the thing that breaks her.
“Oh, shush.” She waves me off, heading back out of my room. “But get yourself together. Two of your friends are here downstairs.”
“What?” I ask. “Way to bury the lede there, Mom.” I force myself up, my whole body fighting with me. It’s almost like I’m still drunk, but mentally I feel very here. It makes no sense.
It’s not the first time I’ve come home from a party having had a few too many. Mom never really cares. I mean, she does. She wants me to be safe, and I always am. No driving. Have a friend who has your back. Try not to come home too late. Don’t party with strangers. She lays out rules, and I do my best to follow them. She’s been a great buffer with Dad, who would probably be slightly pissed.
Not sure who had my back last night, though. It’s all a bit of a blur, and I’m not even sure how I got home. Did I walk from Andrew’s? That feels impossible; my house is on the other side of the big park, and there’s no way I’d stroll through there that late at night.
I throw on my pants from last night and a new shirt and make my way downstairs, taking each step carefully, still feeling all kinds of woozy. The one upside to all of this? At least Mom didn’t come barging into my room shouting about how not careful I was, seeing as there’s a nearly shirtless photo of me circulating around my entire high school less than twenty-four hours later.
And there, in my living room, sit Frankie Healy and Jo Taylor, sipping on coffee on our couch. I remember Frankie bailing the party early with that hot new kid, who looks like a Jonas brother blended with a vintage thrift shop. And the way their eyes flit up to me, both of them, cups in their hands, tells me everything.
They’ve seen it.
“Hey,” Frankie starts, getting up.
Not here, I mouth silently, before talking. “Hey, you.” I smile. “What’s up, Jo?”
“Hey?” Jo says, her tone the same as Frankie’s.
Is this what it’s going to be like? The quiet pity in the voices of my friends and the laughter from those who aren’t? I mean, I haven’t heard anyone laughing yet. My notifications haven’t been negative, save for Lily’s; it’s mostly been people messaging me to make sure I’m aware of what happened. But it’s only a matter of time. I know it.
I nod toward the door.
“Mom, we’ll be right back!” I shout toward the kitchen.
“Okay!” she says, and I hear some dishes clattering about. “Wear a jacket!”
The girls and I make our way out the front door, and I stop after I shut it, leaning against it on our little patio. I cross my arms.
“Well?” I ask. “I’ve seen it. I know.”
“Yeah, I mean, we figured,” Frankie says, looking down at her shoes for a moment.
“We wanted to make sure, you know?” Jo says, her face turned up in a wince.
“Yeah, you and, like, two dozen other people at school, all messaging and texting me,” I scoff.
“Ugh, I’m sorry. If you want to talk about it . . .” Frankie takes a step forward. “I just want you to know that we’re there for you.”
“Frankie, I . . .” I exhale. “I like you and Jo, I mean, obviously, but . . . why would I want to talk about it with you guys? Or anyone, really?”
“That’s fair.” Jo nods and looks over at Frankie, a beat of awkward silence between all of us. I feel like Jo wants to bail, something I appreciate. She catches the implied social cue of “I’m fine, please leave,” but Frankie doesn’t.
“It’s just . . . sometimes it can be hard to know who is there for you in moments like this. And it’s not okay that someone did that to you without your consent.”
I squint at her, and my throat goes suddenly dry. I clear it. “Did . . . did someone say something to you about what happened?” I ask, trying to recall more of last night. The drinks, the dancing, Andrew . . . It’s all still a blur. “Did Nick say something?”
“Nick?” Frankie asks, glancing at Jo.
“I mean, I remember . . . I was doing shots with him and Andrew.” A little bit of the night comes back, like snapshots scattered across my mind. “And then . . .” I shake my head. “I don’t know, I remember throwing up in a trash can by the bed, and then Andrew and me doing . . . something?
“But it was like . . .” I swallow. “You ever fall asleep, wake up, but you can’t quite open your eyes? You’re there, but it’s like you’re frozen, and it takes a minute to shake out of it? It was like that, like I was just stuck there. And the next thing I know, it’s morning, I’m here.” I glance at my house. “I’m not even sure how I got home.”
Frankie and Jo are looking at each other, their faces aghast.
“What?” I ask.
“Bella . . . that’s . . .” Frankie shakes her head. “If Andrew did something to you . . . that’s rape. You know that, right?”
“No,” I scoff, my heart suddenly racing. “No, no way. It was just . . . I was a little out of it, that’s all. Andrew wouldn’t . . . he couldn’t. No.”
“Look, do you want to . . .” Frankie nods at the door. “Do you want to tell your mom? Do you want us here with you when you tell—”
“No, no,” I spit out. “She’s the last person I want to tell. I was hoping the stupid photo would just blow over and she’d never know. Do you have any idea what something like this would do to her? She’s like a . . . a mother from a sitcom. She’s not ready to have a very special episode. And my dad?! He’s the same, which means he’ll probably go try to beat up Andrew’s dad or something.”
“Do you know who took the photo?” Jo asks. Frankie looks at her. “I mean, if Andrew and Nick were there . . .”
“You don’t think Nick would have let that happen?!” Frankie gasps. “No. I . . . did he?”
Frankie’s looking at me.
Jo is looking at me.
It suddenly feels like everyone is looking at me, not just these two, and something just seizes up in my chest.
“I . . . I don’t know!” I almost shout, and I can see my hands are trembling.
“Maybe we should go to the police,” Jo says.
“Are you fucking kidding me?!” I snap, and turn back to the door. “Like I’m really going to walk over there and say Andrew Montefiore . . .” I lower my voice now. “Everyone, everyone, in this town worships his family. There’s a statue of his great-grandfather in the downtown plaza near that coffee shop you two hang out at all the time.”
They look at each other, surprised.
“What?” I sniff. “I go there too. You two aren’t exactly secret agents. No one is going to believe me. When something like this happens, no one believes anybody anyway. Who is going to believe me?”
“We believe you,” Jo says, taking a step toward me.
“Why do you two even care about what happened?” I ask, turning away. “We aren’t that close.”
“Hey,” Frankie presses, and I glance back at her. She swallows. “Because it could happen to any of us.”
Chapter Ten
Nick
I walk into my house and toss my sweaty track jacket onto a hook on the wall, then promptly take it off. It’ll be a whole thing with Mom if she spots it there, still wet and cold, though she’s nowhere to be found. Both she and Dad just weren’t here this morning, a little note on the fridge telling me and Frankie to “order in, we’ll be back later.”
I want to hope the two of them are on, like, a date or something, which I’m aware is a little weird. Hoping your parents are out somewhere, holding hands, eating something too expensive. But I want them to be normal, especially with me leaving soon. Frankie deserves that much. I make my way upstairs and throw my coat into my room and close the door just as the front door to the house swings open again. All the opening and shutting rattles my hungover brain, and I head back down, wincing at the creaking of the stairs.
“Nick? Nick!”
Frankie is shouting, and I can hear her stomping around the house before I see her. I hop off the stair, landing and peering in the living room.
“There you are. Did you get my texts?”
“Texts?” I ask. I pull my phone out, and it’s absolutely lit up with notifications. “Oh, damn, sorry, no. I was out running and playing basketball. What’s up?”
“What’s up?!” she snaps. “Are you kidding me?!”
“What . . .” I groan and run my hand through my hair. “Can you keep it down? I’m crazy hungover from Andrew’s, and he put me through it this morning.”
“You saw him?!” She sounds horrified.
“Yeah, we work out every Sunday . . . Is something wrong?”
“Yeah,” she says, crossing her arms. “Andrew. That’s exactly it. Don’t you have anything to say about him? You guys had your morning run and your bro time, so what did you talk about?”
“What are you going on about?!” I yell. She looks like she’s about to boil over, the way she does when she and Mom are fighting, but here I am, having done nothing.
“You mean to tell me you didn’t see what happened,” she says, her tone flat. She storms toward me with her phone out and flips to something before handing it to me.
Bella’s on the screen.
Her shirt is up.
She’s on Andrew’s bed.
She does . . . not look aware of what’s happening. Or happened.
Oh no.
“I’m going to kill him.” I grit my teeth, balling my fists. I glance back up at Frankie, her face full of worry. I exhale, loosening my hands, and I can feel my nails plucking out of my palms. I can’t believe he would . . . He said he was going to take care of her.
“You shouldn’t get involved in this.” I shake my head. “We . . . I don’t know if we should. But you definitely shouldn’t. I’ll go handle Andrew.”
“What?!” Frankie yells, pulling the phone back. “Showing up and kicking Andrew’s ass doesn’t fix anything. Did you not just see this?! Don’t you care about her? She wasn’t able to say yes. She wasn’t able to have a say. You were supposed to look out for her. You’re supposed to—”
“I can’t look out for everybody, Frankie!” I shout. She cowers, and I breathe out. “I’m sorry, but I can’t. I can’t look out for you, for Mom, for Bella, for Dad, for every single person in my life at the same time. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of all of it.”
“What’s going on here?” someone who isn’t me or Frankie asks.
It feels like all the air has just been ripped out of the room.
Mom is standing by the front door, her car keys still in her hand. Her eyes are a little bloodshot, like she maybe didn’t sleep at all last night. My heart is racing madly in my chest, and that blending with my pounding headache makes me feel like I’m going to throw up again. I’ve tried so hard to be good, to be perfect, to watch out for everyone and just keep my head down, and now it’s all going to completely unravel.
“Don’t say anything,” I whisper to Frankie.
Frankie launches into it anyway. “Mom, you know Bella—”
“She thinks Andrew assaulted her at the party,” I interrupt, and immediately hate myself.
“Thinks?” Frankie snaps.
“What do you mean assaulted?” Mom asks, her brow furrowed. She walks toward us, but she’s moving weirdly slow. I look over at Frankie, but she doesn’t seem to notice it, she’s just glaring at me like she can burn holes through my face with her eyes. “And Andrew Montefiore? That Andrew?”
“That one,” Frankie says, venom in her voice. “Bella was raped. Andrew forced himself on her when she was too drunk, or too drugged, to do anything about it. And Nick was there hanging out with him at the party! He saw how drunk she was.” She whips back to me, lashing out. “You were there. You need to come with us to the police!”
I look back at her, and the rage has been replaced with a look of pleading. I wince, my headache pounding, trying to recall more of the night: Andrew flirting with Bella all night, following her around, popping up whenever we had a moment to ourselves to talk . . .
Like he was trying to herd her around the house, away from me. From anyone.
He said he’d take care of her when she was too many drinks in and . . .
No. He couldn’t.
He wouldn’t.
“Nick . . .” Frankie presses, looking at me intently. “Come on, I . . . Don’t make me go there, of all places, to see a bunch of cops without you.” She looks at Mom and grimaces. Mom won’t get it. But I do.
“Frankie—” I start.
“You can’t just go calling the police because some girl got drunk and there’s a bunch of he said, she said. You’ll end up ruining that poor boy’s life,” Mom chimes back in. “If someone drinks herself to the point where she doesn’t know what’s going on, these things happen. We’re all responsible for our own actions.”
There’s a beat. A pause. And so much is in there and unsaid.
I feel like that’s the awful victim-blaming thing you don’t say out loud, and Mom just came out and said it.
And even though I’m not entirely sure what happened, bits are floating to mind, and I know that what Mom is saying is completely off base. Something isn’t right. That photo. Andrew leading her around. His weird apology on the basketball court that made it seem like . . . like she was the one who wanted something to happen, without actually apologizing for a damn thing. Not to her.
“Hey, Mom, I don’t know if—” I start.
“How?” Frankie interjects, her tone crushed. “How can you say that, Mom? How can you stand there and say something like that?”
“A girl got drunk, and someone took advantage,” Mom continues, just barreling ahead with all the wrong things. I want to say something. But what good is it going to do? I just need to keep my head down, think about last night. Remember everything that happened, pull those details out. And after all this blows over, figure out a way to fix Mom and fix Frankie and fix—
Just fix all this.
“You can’t go and make this your new cause of the week,” Mom says, turning to walk up the stairs.
“Cause of the week?!” Frankie shouts, storming over. “Why . . . ? Why did I think you, you of all people, would understand?”
She walks right by Mom and toward the front door, but Mom keeps looking ahead and then up the stairs, her gaze somewhere else. Somewhere far away. Frankie grabs the doorknob and swings the door open and turns back to glare at me.
“I’m so fucking disappointed in you,” she says, and with that, she’s gone.
I glance back at Mom, who has a hand pressed up against the wall.
“Nick, were . . . you drinking?” she asks, not looking at me.
“Does that even matter?” I ask, walking toward her.
“I told you,” she says, breathing heavily. “I told you this party was a bad idea. There is no reason for you to get involved in any of this. In whatever Frankie is doing, in all this . . . don’t you go and—”
“Borrow trouble.” I finish the sentence for her, one of her favorite little sayings.
She reaches down from the steps and pats my cheek with one hand, though it’s like she’s moving in slow motion still.
“Good boy,” she says. “That’s my good boy.”
She makes her way up the stairs, quietly, slowly, and vanishes up to the second floor.
Chapter Eleven
Phoenix
I don’t know why I’m so nervous walking into this new coffee shop. I mean, it’s new to me. London Fog. It’s not new to anyone else; I can tell by the way everyone in here seems to be so . . . comfortable. Like they’re just a part of the soft couches and wooden chairs they are sitting on. I feel like if any of these people get up, there will be a perfect indent where they were sitting. Even on the stools that look like they’re made of wrought iron.
There are warm, earth-toned furniture and Edison lights everywhere, making it feel all at once old-fashioned and modern. I see a mix of people with their laptops out, some typing away wildly, and others fiddling on their phones. I make my way over to the barista station, passing by a large bookshelf packed full of novels.
