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| { credit to me } |
It all started out as a joke. No one was supposed to get hurt.
Chris was the one to start it. He suggested to go down to the beach ‒ he said he had an idea. We didn’t object.
So we went down to the beach. Chris, slightly drunk, was telling us about his brilliant idea on the way, very enthusiastically.
“And if we find turtles… those funny ones, ya know?”
“You mean the Terrapene carolina?” Spencer asked. “That species is the most common in the North American re–”
“Uhum, sure, that one.” Chris waved his hand dismissively, seemingly uninterested. “So if we find one of those, we, uhm, try to turn it out of its… back… thing.”
“Back thing?” Spencer laughed. “You mean shell. Or, I suppose, you could specify if you were referring to the top or bottom part of it, in which case‒”
Alex huffed, as if to signal he was bored. “Why you be tellin’ him what he means? He means whatever he wants,” he stated in his deep voice. It kind of came off as a warning.
“Yeah! Whatever he wants!” Nic echoed.
Spencer cleared his throat nervously, and turned his attention back to the rocky slope that we were inching down on to get to the beach.
Spencer and I, we weren’t one of them. They ‒ Chris, Alex and Dominic (aka Nic) ‒ were the “cool gang,” the universal models of the typical emotionally undeveloped Popular Guy: a hundred percent masculine look (muscles, square-like angles, harsh lines), the very best of the football team, stars of weekend parties, masters of chasing girls and making girls chase them… There’s no bigger cliché imaginable than these guys, but there they were in front of us two, leading the way to the beach. Us two ‒ the “nerd” Spencer with the knowledge of everything and even more, and me, your very average “wallflower” bookworm and, I’m honored to say, Spencer’s long-time best friend.
I suspect that the surreality of the whole situation contributed a lot to the way the events of that night transpired. I wasn’t even sure I was awake. It didn’t help either that we’d had a few drinks beforehand; the guys weren’t sober either, but they were definitely more experienced than us when it came to alcohol.
How we had ended up in their company ‒ now that’s a mystery to me. I’ve been thinking about this very, very hard in the past weeks, months since that night; I’ve been trying to remember how it had all started, like for real, but‒ nothing.
All I know is that Spencer and Chris had got… tangled up about a month prior to that night. The how and why are a story for another day. (Maybe I will tell that story too one day, based on the things Spencer had shared with me, but not now.) I hadn’t known about it for a long time. I’d seen them bump into each other on the school corridor accidentally, run into each other in the shadow’s protection in a corner of the hall, sneakily disappear behind doors; I’d seen the looks they secretly shared, and some days I’d even got some strange excuses from Spencer when I wanted to go over to his place. After a while, I mentioned all this to Spencer who, after a bit of nudging, gave in and outlined what had been happening with him and Chris. (He made me swear, of course, that I wouldn’t tell a soul; he said I was the only one that knew, and it had to stay that way for the sake of Chris’ reputation.)
So the reason we’d got there that night was obviously tied to the thing that had been going on for several weeks between Spencer and Chris, though I still have a bunch of question marks in my head regarding a few details. We’d been drinking ‒ it started with vodka, with intermissions of beer ‒, then we went down to the beach. Those dumbasses followed Chris, and we followed the dumbasses.
However smart and intelligent Spencer was, or I for that matter, we were just a couple of teenage guys after all. A couple of teenage guys with a one-time ticket into the inner circle, even if only for a night ‒ we simply couldn’t waste this opportunity.
“Anyway, I won’t be a part of your turtle homicide,” I said. My stomach turned upside down just thinking about it. Or it could’ve been because of the alcohol. Maybe both.
A couple of rocks down Chris stopped and looked back at me at the end of the line. This is it, I thought, he’ll send me away because I don’t want to join his ‘brilliant idea’. This is where my five minutes in heaven end.
Finally Chris just shook his head and continued his way down. He yelled back, “So you’ll be the one catching a turtle for us.”
Although I didn’t especially like the role of turtle hunter any more than murderer, I didn’t want to argue. I knew I was on pretty thin ice already, so I had no intention of making it worse.
Spencer glanced at me, then quickly turned back to the road. I saw the nervousness on him ‒ he didn’t like the idea either, obviously ‒, but there was something else too that I wasn’t able to identify. Actually, there was something else in the whole situation ‒ us being there with them, the way Chris was acting ‒, something I just couldn’t put my finger on, something I didn’t know of.
We got to the beach in silence, but in an overall good mood. The guys thought the turtle thing to be funny, and I just thought it to be a joke (a not particularly funny one). I reached the conclusion that, surely, they weren’t going to do it, and we would just laugh it off.
Chris looked to the left and to the right, and then, shouting “this way!”, went to the right. And we all followed.
We ended up walking down the beach all together, and of course seeing no turtles on the way, so the big idea was quickly forgotten. The mood was thriving though. We were talking, laughing, and passing around the flask ‒ and, truth be told, it was pretty fun. I was feeling almost like I was one of them. As Chris gradually got drunker and drunker, and the others had drunk enough so that the conversation didn’t quite get to them anymore, Chris’ real self was starting to show more and more. I was beginning to understand what Spencer might have seen in him. (Beside the muscles.)
And I saw the way they interacted. Although both of them were trying their best to convince themselves that the whole thing was no more than sheer bodily attraction (perhaps Chris was denying even that, I didn’t know), I saw that it was more than just that. Maybe they would realize it soon too, I thought.
In that moment, Chris suddenly stopped at the front, and he shouted at Spencer whom he’d been talking to. “Who the fuck do you think I am?!”
Spencer stepped closer, holding his hands up in an attempt to calm Chris’ temper. He began, “Chris, I just‒”
But Chris pushed him away, defensively and out of reflex. “I’m not a fucking faggot!” he yelled.
Before Spencer could’ve reacted, Chris stormed away, leaving the surprised group behind.
I quickly glanced at the guys before moving to Spencer. To my relief, they didn’t seem to have registered any of the scene; Alex looked like he was trying to fight the urge to puke, and Nic was just… staring off to the distance.
“Are you… you okay?” I asked as I stepped in front of Spencer. I tried my best to keep my words together, but they kept falling apart due to the amount of alcohol I’d consumed.
Spencer came to right away; he blinked twice, and turned back into being his average self.
“I’ve got used to it,” he said with a smile that indicated exactly that, and looked away in the direction Chris just left. After a long pause, Spencer scoffed warily and said, “We have this conversation every time. I actually have to reassure him each time that this does not make him gay, and only then does he drop down to his knees to suck my dick like the most enthusiastic guy on the whole fucking Earth.”
I just stared at him in return.
We’d been best friends since kindergarten, but we had never ever been this straightforward with each other. We’d never even talked about Spencer being gay; at one point he simply just mentioned the biceps of the man that had just walked past us, or commented on how handsome the new cashier in the corner shop was, and that was it. He knew it, I knew it, and this was perfectly okay for the both of us. He was supportive when I had been trying to ask a girl out in eighth grade, which I’d been absolutely overthinking, of course, and he kept on being supportive after that girl had rejected me. When he’d told me about his affair with Chris in a nutshell, I supported him too, in return, and I think I’ve been a supportive and good friend overall and ever since.
This was the first occasion, however, that he said something like this so explicitly. And all I could do was stare at him.
Spencer laughed a little again, awkwardly, and looked down at his shoes. “Sorry, it must be the alcohol,” he muttered.
I was just opening my mouth to say something anyway (though I’m quite sure I had no idea whatsoever about what I was going to say) when we heard someone call out of the darkness with a shout.
“This way!” was what Chris shouted. Alex and Nic followed the voice right away, obediently, and excited that something was finally happening again. I looked at Spencer with a question on my face, but he just shrugged and went after the others with rather unsure steps, slightly swaying.
The sand and the amount of alcohol consumed didn’t exactly help my speed, but soon I catched up to them. Or rather, I stumbled on a leg in the darkness and hurry. As I realized, then, the guys were all laying in the sand, forming a half-circle. Spencer was squatting at one end of it, opposite of Chris, and he distanced himself a little bit from the whole situation, too.
There was a girl in the middle.
Chris was right next to her. Very, very close to her.
I squatted beside Spencer. I whispered, “What happened?”
“Chris found a girl,” Spencer said. “Looks like he reaaally wants to prove to me that ‘he’s not gay.’” He rolled his eyes.
“Or to himself,” I said. “Who’s the girl?”
“I don’t know,” Spencer answered. “But she looks familiar, I think… She might go to our school.”
I squinted to try to see her face in the dark, but I couldn’t really. As much as I saw of her, she could’ve been anybody.
(She could’ve been anybody.)
“Chris said he found her like this, laying here. And this, of course, comes really handy for him right now,” Spencer added with an irritated sigh.
I turned my attention back to the scene in front of us. It was dark, my head was spinning, my sight was blurry ‒ but Chris was definitely playing with her hair and whispering in her ear, and she was laughing sweetly. Alex inched closer on the other side of her, and started kissing her neck.
And that’s how it started.
In a few minutes, they were all over her. On one side Chris, the other side Alex, and Nic on the third. She was silent.
The memory is blurry, but I know that at some point Spencer, however reluctantly, somehow happened next to Chris, and I must’ve been pulled into the circle too because suddenly I found myself on the girl.
I was able to make out her face then; she did look familiar, yes, maybe I had seen her around in the school. I wasn’t entirely sure. What I was sure of, however, even if the observation didn’t really reach my conscious, was that she was awfully silent. And that whichever of us she looked at, she wasn’t actually looking at us; it was as if she didn’t really see us, she just stared past us. But she was smiling.
Chris was the one to start it. He dragged her jeans down, and his own too. He was looking deeply into Spencer’s eyes as he was fucking her. If I would’ve paid attention, I would’ve noticed the tears running down on Spencer’s face.
I didn’t pay attention. I was preoccupied with the girl’s boobs ‒ it’s not something a teenage guy sees often. Well, I had never seen boobs before.
Alex was next. Then came Nic. When he finished, he pushed me forward.
I can’t forget that night. That was my first time.
I just hope it wasn’t hers.
We left her there. We wandered home, and we left her there in the sand, with her jeans around her ankles. She was still smiling, and staring at the sky.
I can’t forget that night.
Since then we’ve been avoiding even eye contact with all the guys. If we accidentally do look at each other in the school, we quickly look away, embarrased, and hurry off to class or something. I haven’t talked to Spencer either, not more than a few words. Judging by their behavior, I’d say the affair between Spencer and Chris is over too.
I haven’t seen the girl since. I hope I won’t, either. I know it’s a selfish thing to think, but I am already very overwhelmed by guilt ‒ I don’t know if I would survive seeing her. This way I can at least hang onto the thought that I just imagined the whole thing, that it was just a dream or vision or whatever.
That I didn’t rape an unconscious girl in the sand.
That we didn’t all do it.
The conclusion I’ve come to after all these weeks, months spent thinking is that it’s something I just have to live with. I can’t do anything else, really. For sure, I am never, ever drinking alcohol again, and I’ll have to bury this memory somewhere deep inside of me.
A month later, my phone rings while walking to Algebra. I fish it out of my pocket, balancing my textbook, notebook, and calculator on one arm, and I hold it up to my ear. With that move, my calculator gracefully slides off from the top of the pile.
“Hello,” I say to the phone that I’m pressing to my ear with my shoulder while trying, rather clumsily, to grab the calculator from the ground.
“Hello darling, it’s Julie,” she says quietly.
I smile upon hearing her voice, and then I swear a little when everything else falls off of my arm due to the calculator hunt.
Julie is definitely taken aback.
After I apologize a few times and explain the situation, she relaxes a bit. Being Spencer’s mom, she’s known me since kindergarten so she’s like a mother to me, and my own mother would scold me for swearing too, especially when done as a greeting.
“Darling…” Julie starts, and I can hear she’s been crying.
“What’s wrong?” I ask worriedly.
“Spencer…”
I haven’t talked to him in months. I haven’t even seen him around in school in the past few weeks.
“What… what’s up with him?” For some reason, the question comes out quieter than I meant it to.
“I‒ I just thought, you know, I’d call you, yes, because you… you have to know, right? You, you have… since you were children‒ and, and I just thought, I’d tell you, tell you now, because…”
I have never heard her this disoriented. Julie has always been the most organized and put-together person I knew. And her voice too, now it’s so… thin. Something is really not okay. So very not okay like it’s never been before.
“Julie,” I whisper. “What about Spencer?”
I am squatting in the school corridor with the mess of torn textbooks and used notebooks around me, pressing my phone to my ear with one hand. I’m afraid to breathe because then I might miss the answer.
For long, nervous moments, I just listen to the woman on the other end of the line sob and take big, calming breaths.
A bad feeling creeps up in my throat, forming a lump there. I expect the worst.
“Darling,” Julie whispers ever so quietly, “Spencer is dead.”
All my strength leaves me; my legs go weak and I fall to sit on the ground of the school corridor, and the phone slips out of my hand.
She found him in his room yesterday. He was hanging from the lamp.
Julie fainted.
This is what Spencer’s seven year-old brother came home to: Spencer’s body on the lamp, his mother on the ground.
He was the one to call 911. By the time the ambulance and police arrived, Julie came to. The little boy ran to hug his mother, crying.
There was a torn-out page of a math notebook on the table. It said:
i can’t bury it
The police tried to question Julie, but they couldn’t get much out of her. For one, she was constantly on the verge of hyperventillation, and secondly, she honestly had had no idea about his son feeling (this) bad. Which then, of course, just pushed her further in the direction of a complete mental breakdown: why did she not know?!
Julie said they’d call me in for questioning too.
They did so right that day.
Considering everything, I’ve decided to tell them about all of it. So this is it; this is what happened.
A week later, after having questioned the other boys too, the police confirmed it was a suicide and closed the case.
We didn’t get anything for what we’ve done.
I didn’t go to school in the coming days. I couldn’t; I stayed snuggled up in my bed, in my warm, soft bed, and I did not move from there.
My mother sat there with me from time to time, caressed my head, said something. I didn’t hear any of it. Didn’t say anything either.
Then one morning she pulled me out of bed, gently but determined, tucked me into the car, and delivered me to school personally. Once there, she made me get out of the car and into the building. She said she understands how hard it must be for me right now, and I did absolutely deserve these few days off ‒ relaxing, distancing ‒, but now I have to try to move on with my life. She also told me to go see the school psychologist.
I feel like I’m in an a fish tank. The voices are faint, sounds muffled, the world is swimming around me, and I just keep wandering along the school corridors, powered by nothing else or more but routine, but none of it really penetrates my conscious mind.
I do go see the school psychologist. It’s worse then; I get shifted back into reality, and that shit hurts. I cry in the office of the fucking school shrink. But when I walk out of there, it is a tiny bit better.
Somewhere very, very, very far away, a pinpoint of light appears at the end of the tunnel.
Chris is approaching me. I automatically get scared and shrink, but as he gets closer, I see that he is, too, just dragging his body along, and there’s shame and pain in his eyes.
We sit on the back of a bench in the schoolyard, and stare through the wired fence. He extends his hand, offering me to take some from the bag of chips. I look up at him, and do so.
We chew and crunch next to each other without saying a word, and that’s when I understand what this is supposed to be. It’s solidarity. Strength in unity. Let’s help one another. He’s just not very good at this.
As I later learn, it’s because of his father. (Just when I think this guy can’t become more of a cliché…) His father is the kind of agressively masculine man who never shows his feelings. His mom died when he was little.
I try to help him; I try to be an example. He, in turn, tries to keep me strong.
As it turns out, we balance each other out pretty well.
I think this feeling will never go away completely ‒ these feelings, plural, because there are multiple, a lot of them ‒, but with others’ help and some time, it does get better.
We’re stronger together ‒ Julie, Chris, I, we’re all in a similar boat.
After a while, I decide Chris has learned enough about his feelings that I can bring up that night.
For a minute, he just stares into the distance, and his body tenses. Then I can see the process of him breaking down the walls he automatically started pulling up all around himself at the mention of the topic.
Finally, he speaks. His voice is harsh, like he’s bringing this up from somewhere deep, deep inside, and the words have to travel a long way for him to be able to say them out loud.
“I loved him,” he says. “I was in love with him. So I acted like an asshole.”
I smile softly, and nod.
He looks at me. “You feel guilty, don’t you?”
I nod again, and my smile fades away.
“Still?”
“You don’t?”
He thinks for a moment. “Yeah. Somewhere, behind a wall, it’s there. I hid it.”
“Do we even know who she was? Did anybody care?”
There’s a long, overwhelming silence.
Only the sound of the clock on the wall, ticking…
Then Chris says, “We need to find her. We have to apologize.”
Her name is Heather. She transferred to another school shortly after the incident.
When, stepping out of the building, she sees me and Chris at the bottom of the stairs, she freezes. Then she turns around and hurries back inside.
Chris and I look at each other, and run up the stairs and in after her.
“Hey!” Chris calls. “Heather, wait!”
We catch up to her at the end of the hall. She stops in front of the huge window, sighs anxiously, and turns around to face us. She looks up at us, waiting, with one eyebrow raised.
“Heather… I’m Chris,” Chris says. He’s visibly at a loss for words now that we’re actually here. What could he possibly say to her?
Irritated, Heather cuts him off. “I know who you are. Now, cut the crap. What do you want? Forgiveness? Closure? Ease your sinful souls? Or you want me to say that I’ve moved on, and everything’s fine?”
“Well… is any of that true?” I ask shyly.
She nearly stabs me with just her eyes. She looks at me like she can’t imagine how I could’ve thought of asking that.
“Well,” Chris begins, “then I think we’d just like to know how you are.” And he smiles at her softly.
A whole arsenal of emotions race across Heather’s face in two blinks of an eye. Finally she sighs, and waves for us to follow her.
We do.
We sit down behind the building, with our backs to the wall.
“This is my secret spot,” Heather says. “No one ever comes around here, and it’s the blind spot of the security camera too.”
She pulls a Hello Kitty pencase out of her backpack. There’s cigarette paper in there and for the filter, tobacco, and a small baggie of weed. Silently, she rolls a joint, lights it, then hands it over after a couple of puffs.
“It’s legal,” she states. “My therapist’s prescribed it.”
“Because of…?” I ask quietly, referring to that night.
Heather looks at me with an arched eyebrow, and nods.
“I had some panic attacks afterwards. Now, less. It helps,” she tells us, glancing at the joint in Chris’ hand at the moment.
“Alcohol doesn’t,” I add. “I haven’t drank any since then.”
“Not that you had before,” Chris comments.
“Well, I was pretty fucked that night,” Heather says with a shrug. Then a small, sour scoff, and she adds, “In every sense of the word…”
Chris and I turn our heads down simoultaneously, out of guilt.
Heather sighs.
For a while we just sit there in silence. The joint goes around once (I took one drag, then didn’t want more), and twice, and then Heather speaks again.
“I was at a party that night with my friends,” she begins. “Of course, we didn’t go unprepared. I don’t even know what we’d drunk, but some shots for sure, a few beers, and then I got some pills, and then who can tell what else, too. We danced. A lot. And then I somehow got to the beach. I think my friends had been there too, but then they had a bad trip or whatever and left me there. They shouldn’t have left me there.” She goes silent, and starts turning the ring on her index finger. After a few minutes, she raises her head and continues. “That’s all I had, you know? I couldn’t put the blame on anyone else. At first, I was blaming them for leaving me alone, especially in such a state ‒ to be honest, I still do blame them a little ‒, but at the end of the day, there’s no one else to blame but me. I shouldn’t have got myself into that state in the first place, so it’s all on me.”
Chris frowns his brows. He looks at me as if to ask, ‘am I right, is it the right thing?’, and I nod with a little smile. I’m pretty proud of his emotional development.
“No,” Chris says in a hoarse voice. Heather looks at him, and Chris clears his throat before continuing. “It’s not on you. Everything that’s happened is our fault. And the other two’s, Alex and Nic, even if they don’t have the size of the brain of a normal human being, not even put together.”
Heather laughs shortly; it comes out as a huff, rather.
“He’s right,” I tell her. “Not about the guys, I mean. Or, well, yeah, that too, but I don’t mean that part.” I take a big breath to collect my thoughts. “If I, and guys in general, wouldn’t be dimwits, you could be in any state you’d want, wearing as few or many clothes as you’d like, and nobody would even think of hurting you. So, I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry ‒ we are ‒ for what we did.”
Heather doesn’t look up. She wants to hide it, but I see the quick, disguised movement with which she wipes a tear from her face.
Chris tentatively lifts his hand, moves to place it on her shoulder to calm her, but in the last second, he drops it back down into his lap. He doesn’t want to touch her without permission.
I smile at him proudly.
“The punchline is,” Chris starts slowly after a while, “that the fifth guy there… the one who didn’t touch you… Spencer, he was kinda my boyfriend.”
Now, Heather does lift her head at that, and stares at Chris next to her in disbelief. Her black eyeliner is smudged around her eyes.
Then she laughs. It comes from deep down, and it’s a good laugh, an honest one, but there’s also a lot of bitterness in it.
“Yup,” Chris agrees, smiling gently. “I was proving him that he wasn’t my boyfriend.”
Heather starts laughing harder at that.
“So I was… what, a spite-fuck?”
Chris nods shamefully, with the shadow of a soft smile on his face. “Sort of.”
“This is huge,” Heather says. “My therapist’s gonna love this.”
We sit there on the concrete for quite a while, with our backs to the school’s wall, in the security camera’s blind spot.
When it’s starting to get dark, we realize the school’s been closed, so we climb over the fence.
A year later, we’re all standing there at Spencer’s grave. The friend group any psychologist would dread has been created: Spencer’s once agressive, low EQ, “cool guy” secret-boyfriend, I, the new best friend of Spencer’s once agressive, low EQ, “cool guy” secret-boyfriend, and Heather, the traumatized drug user girl we raped.
We don’t go there on the date of his death that’s written in Julie’s and everyone else’s calendar ‒ we go there on the date of the incident instead.
We all know that that was the reason for Spencer’s suicide.
Plus it’s better for Heather too; this way she can tie the memory to something that she grieves once a year. She said it would make it easier.
We don’t put flowers on the grave or anything.
“That’s a stupid tradition,” Heather says.
“Spencer would think so too,” I say.
“What if we said something we liked about him?” Chris suggests.
“Cheesy,” Heather comments.
“I like it,” I say.
“It still is, though. And I don’t have anything to say, considering that I never knew him.”
We think about this for a minute.
“Well, this isn’t even about him for you,” I say. “So how about you say something about your trauma instead? Or something.”
“Uh huh, thanks, dude,” Heather scoffs. Then: “Okay.”
Chris and I actually end up telling a story each about Spencer instead of just a trait of his. Nerdy, Heather comments, but she says she would’ve loved knowing him. Nerdy, but he does sound like a good guy.
What Heather shares is that she used to feel bad about not remembering most of that night. She felt like it made her feelings about it less valid. She felt like she was just ‘making a fuss’ or like it wasn’t even that big of a deal ‒ she couldn’t even remember it, after all.
Then she talked it over with her therapist, and now she knows that it is not so. And her memories has been coming back too. She says maybe it was better when she didn’t remember. After a moment of thinking she corrects herself: no, it’s better this way, she thinks. She finds it easier to process when she knows what to process.
Chris asks if we can hug her. Heather nods, but adds that she doesn’t want to be in the middle because that would make her feel stuck between us, and that ‘might trigger PTSD or some shit,’ she says.
We hug her.
Heather lets out a sigh of relief.
Later we go to the official memorial too. We dress up for this ‒ Chris and I are in suits, and Heather shows up in a simple, knee-long dress. She’s very pretty.
Quite a lot of people have gathered around; some of them say a few words, and the three of us stand next to one another, all holding hands.
There’s strength in unity, after all.
We make this a tradition. First, the private gathering with our stories, then the official memorial. As the years go on, less and less people show up.
After a while only the closest family members and us three are there.
Spencer, if you can see and hear us:
Spencer, we remember you.
You’ll be in our hearts forever.
Take care, Spencer.
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