Brandy Colbert - Pointe

She says: “Theo, don’t you know he raped you?”

Rape.

Rape.

Rape.

No. That’s a word for what happens to women who get jumped on street corners or girls whose dates won’t take no for an answer. I was in love with Chris. He didn’t force me to be with him or drop something in my drink so I didn’t have a choice.

Sure, he was a little too rough sometimes, but rape? It’s what people think he did to Donovan, but he didn’t do that to me. We had sex and he left without saying goodbye but he didn’t rape me.

I have to get out of here. My shaking hand jiggles the door handle and I step outside so I can get away from Ruthie, from that same pathetic expression she’s been giving me since I brought up Chris’s name. I can’t handle her looking at me like I’m the one people should be feeling sorry for.

Ruthie gets out of the car, too. Her curls catch the watery beam of the parking lot light as she stands by the hood. They glow whitish blue like the sky at dawn and she looks like an angel now more than ever.

“Cartwright—”

“He was my boyfriend. He didn’t . . . You can’t go around telling people he—” My tongue twists around my own words and I can’t say the one that makes my chest constrict. “You can’t, Ruthie.”

She lets out a deep breath, a translucent cloud that curls over the hood of her car and disappears into the night air.

“You can’t tell, Ruthie. You can’t. You can’t tell. You can’t say anything. ” I repeat this over and over until she’s standing in front of me, until Ruthie Pathman’s arms are wrapped tight around me in the empty parking lot of a train station.

“Promise you won’t say anything.” My face is smashed into the shoulder of her wool coat, my voice muffled, but there is no doubt what I said. “Promise me, Ruthie. You have to promise. You have to—”

“I won’t say anything.” She pulls back to look at me, to look dead in my eyes as she says this, and I believe her.

Perhaps I’m being foolish. I have to believe there’s someone I can trust.

I WAS SUPPOSED TO RIDE TO SCHOOL WITH DONOVAN THE LAST day I saw him, but he ditched me.

We rode the bus during winter because it was cold and our parents didn’t like us traversing the icy roads with our flimsy bike tires. But once spring hit, we were free to bike to and from middle school, and we always took advantage of it.

The bus smelled like dirty gym socks on a good day and there was always some sixth-grader crying in one of the front seats. Plus, riding our bikes gave us more independence. We didn’t have to be outside immediately after the last bell rang, and we could stop off at the convenience store if we wanted to waste some time before we went home.

And once we met Chris, that’s what we always wanted.

I’ll never forget the Monday we showed up after school and Chris wasn’t there. Mondays were his afternoons behind the register, but the gum-smacking cashier told us he’d quit.

Quit?

“Yeah. Just stopped showing up,” she said, flipping through the back half of a tabloid. Tiny star tattoos swam around her wrist and her hair was a watered-down red that frizzed to a stop at her shoulders. “Told Larry not to hire him.”

“Why not?” I crossed my arms as I stared at her.

“Because I knew he’d pull some crap like this.” She paused on a picture of an actor sporting a house-arrest ankle monitor. “He was lazy and I think he was stealing, too. Thought he could get away with it ’cause he was cute. Wasn’t that cute.”

The cashier shook her head. I looked at the name tag hooked above the pocket of her yellow polo. Her name was Penny.

“Larry called him a couple hours ago,” she said around a mouthful of strawberry bubblegum. I could smell the artificial flavoring across the counter, see the pink wad as she twisted and pulled it around her teeth. “Says his phone was off.”

Donovan and I exchanged a look. He must have been in trouble, like a car accident. Or maybe he was sick and that’s why he couldn’t answer his phone.

“Did he . . .” I paused, not wanting to give away too much. Just in case he showed up and got his job back and Penny started asking questions. But I had to know, had to do as much as I could while I was there. “Do you have an address? We . . . we need to talk to him.”

“Couldn’t give it to you even if I had it. Confidentiality and all that.” Penny straightened behind the counter and gave me a careful look. “Got yourself a little crush? Trust me, pretty boys like him are a dime a dozen.”

“I don’t . . .” But I didn’t know how to finish. I couldn’t tell her that I wasn’t some little girl who came in after school to hang on the counter and stare at him while he was working. I was his girlfriend. The crush stage had passed months ago.

Penny swapped her tabloid for one on the counter behind her. “He’s gone, girl,” she said, giving me one last look. “And I don’t think he’s coming back.”

Donovan disappeared exactly two weeks and a day later.

After he was so short with me, so secretive (“We don’t have to do everything together”), I marched back down the stairs and out the door and got on my bike, trying to fight back the tears. First Chris had disappeared, and now Donovan was being weird. Too private.

Everyone was pulling away from me—but nobody was telling me what I’d done wrong.

Later, when I was in the principal’s office, there was nothing I wanted to do more than pull away myself. I was seated across the desk from Principal Burns and next to Donovan’s mother. The office was freezing and I was starving. I hadn’t eaten lunch. I’d sat in the cafeteria with Phil and stared at my cheeseburger and fries until they were cold, sitting on my tray in a soggy, abandoned pile. Not eating felt good. It made me feel strong. In control.

“Theo, can you tell us one last time what he said to you?”

Principal Burns had a kind face. I knew I wasn’t supposed to think so, but the lines around his mouth and eyes were comforting, like a grandpa. And he made sure to tell me right away that I wasn’t in trouble, but when I saw Donovan’s mother, saw the worry behind her eyes, I knew something was very, very wrong.

I took a deep breath before I began telling them what I’d already said at least five times. “He said he had to take care of something. But that he would show up later and we’d ride home together.”

There were only two more periods left, though, and I think all of us were pretty certain Donovan wasn’t going to show up to finish the school day. I’d expected him before lunch and clearly that hadn’t happened. He wasn’t answering his phone; it went straight to voicemail. And no one else had heard from him—not Phil or Donovan’s parents or any of his friends from the baseball team.

“What would he have to take care of?”

Mrs. Pratt wasn’t looking at me as she said this, but her eyes were wild as they moved around the rest of the room. She was barely sitting in her seat—perched on the very edge—and she kept twisting her hands in her lap.

“That doesn’t sound like him, keeping secrets.” Her eyes landed on me then, and I wanted to look away but I couldn’t. “Why would he keep secrets from you, Theo? You’re his best friend.”

Principal Burns moved a glass paperweight from one side of his desk to the other, cleared his throat. “Theo, is there anywhere you can think that he might have gone? Somewhere outside of town? Someone’s house? Maybe there was a place he went to get away from everyone?”

“Well.” I gazed down at my lap, at the hole that was starting to tear in the knee of my jeans. “We used to go to the convenience store sometimes. After school . . . the one on Cloverdale.”