Alice Sebold - Lucky

"Can I get dressed?"

He moved aside and stood up, raised his pants, zipped them.

"Of course, of course," he said. "I'll help you."

I had begun to let myself shake again.

"You're cold," he said. "Here, put these on." He held my underwear out to me, in the way a mother would for a child, by the sides of it. I was supposed to stand up and step in.

I crawled over toward my clothes. Put my bra on as I sat on the ground.

"Are you okay?" he asked. His tone was amazing to me. Concerned. But I didn't stop to think of it then. All I knew was it was better than it had been.

I stood up and took my underpants from him. I put them on, almost falling for my lack of balance. I had to sit on the ground to put my pants on. I was worried about my legs. I couldn't seem to control them.

He watched me. As I inched my pants up, his tone switched.

"You're going to have a baby, bitch," he said. "What are you going to do about it?"

I realized this could be a reason to kill me. Any evidence. I lied to him.

"Please don't tell anyone," I said. "I'll have an abortion. Please don't tell anyone. My mother would kill me if she knew about this. Please," I said, "no one can know about this. My family would hate me. Please don't talk about this."

He laughed. "All right," he said.

"Thank you," I said. I stood now and put my shirt on. It was inside out.

"Can I go now?" I asked.

"Come here," he said. "Kiss me good-bye." It was a date to him. For me it was happening all over again.

I kissed him. Did I say I had free will? Do you still believe in that?

He apologized again. This time he cried. "I'm so sorry," he said. "You're such a good girl, a good girl, like you said."

I was shocked by his tears, but by now it was just another horrible nuance I couldn't understand. So he wouldn't hurt me more, I needed to say the right thing.

"It's okay," I said. "Really."

"No," he said, "it's not right what I did. You're a good girl. You weren't lying to me. I'm sorry for what I did."

I've always hated it in movies and plays, the woman who is ripped open by violence and then asked to parcel out redemption for the rest of her life.

"I forgive you," I said. I said what I had to. I would die by pieces to save myself from real death.

He perked up. Looked at me. "You're a beautiful girl," he said.

"Can I take my purse?" I asked. I was afraid to move without his permission. "My books?"

He went back to business now. "You said you had eight dollars?" He took it from my jeans. It was wrapped around my license. It was a photo ID. New York State didn't have them yet but Pennsylvania did.

"What is this?" he asked. "Is this one of them meal cards I can use at McDonald's?"

"No," I said. I was petrified of him having my identification.

Leaving with anything other than what he had: all of me, except my brain and my belongings. I wanted to leave the tunnel with both of them.

He looked at it a moment longer until he was convinced. He did not take my great-grandmother's sapphire ring, which had been on my hand the whole time. He was not interested in that kind of thing.

He handed me my purse and the books I'd bought that afternoon with my mother.

"Which way you going?" he asked.

I pointed. "All right," he said, "take care of yourself."

I promised that I would. I started walking. Back out over the ground, through the gate to which I'd clung a little over an hour before, and onto the brick path. Going farther into the park was the only way toward home.

A moment later.

"Hey, girl," he yelled at me.

I turned. I was, as I am in these pages, his.

"What's your name?"

I couldn't lie. I didn't have a name other than my own to say. "Alice," I said.

"Nice knowing you, Alice," he yelled. "See you around sometime."

He ran off in the opposite direction, along the chain-link fence of the pool house. I turned. I had done my job. I had convinced him. Now I walked.

I didn't see a soul until I reached the three short stone steps that led from the park to the sidewalk. On the opposite side of the street was a frat house. I kept walking. I remained on the sidewalk close to the park. There were people out on the lawns of the frat house. A kegger party just dying out. At the place where my dorm's street dead-ended into the park, I turned and started to walk downhill past another, larger dormitory.

I was aware I was being stared at. Party-goers coming home or grinds taking in the last bit of sober air before the summer. They talked. But I wasn't there. I heard them outside of me, but like a stroke victim, I was locked inside my body.

They came up to me. Some ran, but then stepped back when I didn't respond.

"Hey, did you see her?" they said to one another.

"She's really fucked up."

"Look at the blood."

I made it down the hill, past those people. I was afraid of everyone. Outside, on the raised platform that surrounded Marion Dorm's front door, were people who knew me. Knew my face if not my name. There were three floors in Marion, a floor of girls between two floors of boys. Outside now it was mostly the boys. One boy opened the outer door for me to let me pass through. Another held the inner one. I was being watched; how could I not have been?

At a small table near the door was the RSA-resident security assistant. He was a graduate student. A small, studious Arab man. After midnight they checked ID's of anyone trying to get in. He looked at me and then hurriedly stood.

"What has happened?" he asked.

"I don't have my ID," I said.

I stood before him with my face smashed in, cuts across my nose and lip, a tear along my cheek. My hair was matted with leaves. My clothes were inside out and bloodied. My eyes were glazed.

"Are you all right?"

"I want to go to my room," I said. "I don't have my ID," I repeated.

He waved me in. "Promise me," he said, "that you will take care of yourself."

Boys were in the stairwell. Some of the girls too. The whole dorm was still mostly awake. I walked by them. Silence. Eyes.

I walked down the hall and knocked on the door of my best friend Mary Alice's room. No one. I knocked on my own, hoping for my roommate. No one. Last, I knocked on the door of Linda and Diane, two of a group of six of us who had become friends that year. At first there was no answer. Then the doorknob turned.

Inside, the room was dark. Linda was kneeling on her bed and holding the door open. I had woken her up.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Linda," I said, "I was just raped and beaten in the park."

She fell back and into the darkness. She had passed out.

The doors were spring-hinged and so the door slammed shut.

The RSA had cared. I turned around and walked back downstairs to his desk. He stood.

"I was raped in the park," I said. "Will you call the police?"

He spoke quickly in Arabic, forgetting himself, then, "Yes, oh, yes, please come."

Behind him was a room with glass walls. Though meant as an office of some sort, it was never used. He led me in there and told me to sit down. Because there was no chair, I sat on top of the desk.

Boys had gathered from outside and now stared in at me, pressing their faces near the glass.

I don't remember how long it took-not long because it was university property and the hospital was only six blocks south. The police arrived first, but I have no memory of what I said to them there.

Then I was on a gurney being strapped down. Then out in the hallway. There was a large crowd now and it blocked the entrance. I saw the RSA look over at me as he was being questioned.

A policeman took control.

"Get out of the way," he said to my curious peers. "This girl's just been raped."

I surfaced long enough to hear those words coming from his lips. I was that girl. The ripple effect began in the halls. The ambulance men carried me down the stairs. The doors of the ambulance were open. Inside, as we charged, sirens screaming, to the hospital, I let myself collapse. I went somewhere deep inside myself, curled up and away from what was happening.