Jodie Picoult - Salem Falls

“I never thought they would, either.”

“Who?”

She lifted her face. “The boys who did it to me.”

She had been sixteen, a straight-A student at Salem Falls High School. The editor of the school newspaper, with dreams of becoming a journalist. Deadlines often kept her working late, but because her parents were busy with the diner, she wasn’t missed at home.

It was cold for April, so cold that when she closed the door behind her and struck off across the playing fields she wished she’d worn jeans instead of a thin skirt. Pulling her coat tight, she skirted the football field, heading toward town.

She heard their voices first-three letter athletes, seniors, who’d led the team to a state championship this year. Shy-brains didn’t mix with jocks-she gave them a wide berth, pretending that she hadn’t seen their bottle of Jack Daniels.

“Addie,” one of them said, and she was so surprised they knew her name that she turned.

“Come here for a second.”

She went over the way a bird hops toward food-cautious, a little hopeful, but ready to fly at the first movement of a human nearby. “You remember that article you wrote on the last game of the season? You did a real nice job. Didn’t she, you guys?”

The other boys nodded. There was something almost beautiful about them, with their flushed faces and the bright caps of their hair, like some strange breed she had read about but never really studied firsthand. “Problem was, you spelled my name wrong.”

“I didn’t.” Addie always checked everything; she was a stickler for detail.

The boy laughed. “I may not be as smart as you, but I know how to spell my own name!” The others elbowed each other and snuffled laughter. “Hey, you want a sip?” Addie shook her head. “It’ll warm you up . . .”

Gingerly, she took a drink. A comet, streaking down her throat-she coughed up most of it into the grass, her eyes tearing. “Whoa there, Addie,” he said, bracing his arm around her. “Take it easy, now.” His hand began to slide up and down. “You know, you aren’t nearly as skinny as you look walking around the halls.”

Addie tried to draw away. “I’ve got to go.”

“First I want you to learn how to spell my name.”

As a compromise, it seemed fair. Addie nodded, and the boy beckoned her closer. “It’s a secret,” he whispered.

Playing along, she bent down, her ear near his lips. And felt his tongue slide inside.

She backed away, but his arms held her tight. “Now you repeat it,” he said, and ground his mouth into hers.

Addie did not remember much after that. Except that there were three of them. That the bleachers, underneath, were painted blaze orange. That fear, in large doses, smells of sulfur. And that there is a place in you that you don’t even know exists, where you can simply stand back and watch without feeling any pain.

“Did you never wonder about Chloe’s father?” Addie asked.

Standing in her living room now, Jack swallowed around the block that had settled in his throat. “Which one was it?”

“I don’t know. I never wanted to find out. I figured after that, I deserved for her to be mine and only mine.”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

“Because I would have been branded as a slut. And because I’m not sure . . . I’ve never been sure . . . that they even remembered it happened.” Her voice hitched. “Wish I had been so lucky. For years I’ve wondered what I did that made them do that to me.”

“You were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Jack murmured. We both were.

For eight months, he’d hated the system, which gave women the benefit of the doubt. But seeing Addie-well, a million men could be locked up wrongfully, and it still couldn’t make up for what had happened to her.

“Do they . . . live in town?”

“Going to slay my dragons, Jack?” Addie smiled faintly. “One died in a motorcycle crash. One moved to Florida. One stayed here.”

“Who.”

“Don’t go there.” She shook her head. “No one ever knew what happened except my father, and now you. People figured I was sleeping around and got in trouble. And that’s okay with me, Jack.” Her features softened. “Out of that horrible thing, something wonderful happened. I got Chloe. That’s all I want to remember. That, and nothing else.”

Jack was quiet for a moment. “Do you believe I’m innocent?”

“I don’t know,” Addie admitted. Her voice dropped to a whisper. She had known Jack for such a short time that the depth of her feelings for him seemed disproportionate, as if she’d turned on a faucet and unleashed a geyser. She did not understand this, but then there was much in the world she did not understand. Raw love, like raw heartache, could blindside you. It could make you forget what you did not know to focus exclusively on those few pieces you could commit to heart. “I want to believe you,” she said.

“Then that’s where we’ll start.” Jack closed his eyes and leaned forward. “Kiss me.”

“I don’t think this is the time or-”

His eyes opened a crack. “I want to prove to you I’m who I say I am. I want to show you there is nothing you can do, nothing you can say, that’s going to make me attack you.”

“But you said-”

“Addie,” Jack murmured, “let’s do this for both of us.”

He spread his arms wide, and after a second, Addie leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek. “Oh, come on. That’s not your best shot.” She trailed her mouth from his neck to his jaw. A filament of sensation sizzled between them, like a thin string of kerosene that, for the love of a match, could turn into a wall of fire.

This wickedness, this wanting . . . it was like seeing color for the first time and stuffing her pockets full of bright violets, rich oranges, sizzling yellows, afraid she was going to be caught for stealing something that wasn’t hers, but certain that if she took no souvenir, she would never remember it as clearly.

She was ready. She wanted. Addie lifted his hands to the top button of her uniform-only to have Jack move his arms back to his sides.

He won’t do it. He wants me to.

In her life, she had never undressed for a man. Her own father had not seen her naked since she was ten. Shy and fumbling, she fudged the button through its hole, then moved down to the next one. Shelled in the thin pink silk of her bra, her breasts blushed under Jack’s gaze. She unclasped the catch and drew Jack’s head down to map her skin.

“Are you all right?” he whispered.

In response, she kissed a trail down his chest and belly, stopping at the spot where Jack’s jeans tented. Her hands unbuttoned the fly so that the plum-purple weight of him rose into her outstretched hands.

In that moment, she had never felt so safe in her life.

“Let’s do this for both of us,” Addie repeated. In tandem, they reached between his legs, pulled aside her underwear, and gently fit themselves together. He fills me, Addie realized with wonder; at the same moment that Jack thought: So this is what has been missing.

July 1999

Loyal,

New Hampshire

“Jack,” the police officer said, “you need to come down to the station.” Jack tucked the portable phone against his shoulder to finish stuffing papers into his briefcase. “Can’t. I’ve got a meeting this afternoon. But let’s meet at the gym for a game at seven.” Since moving to Loyal and taking a job as the town’s sole detective, Jay Kavanaugh had been Jack’s frequent buddy and a hell of a racquetball partner-they’d whip each other’s asses on alternating days and then go lament the lack of single women in the town over a beer.

“Jack, I need you here now.”