Sticky Fingers (21 page)

P.S. I have a friend I’d like you to meet. And no, he isn’t the type to pressure you for sex. Yes, he’s straight; yes, he’s smart; and yes, he’s good looking (or so my female friends tell me—much to my disgust—using words like “hottie” and “incredibly gorgeous” to describe him. Apparently they haven’t taken a good look at me….). And no, you don’t have to go out with him. My guess is, you’re not ready for
all that, anyway. But it might be good for your ego to realize there are other guys out there, and that they’re far better than what’s-his-face, who will die if I see him first.

Sometimes, when I’m on the library steps, I still think about Scott Bannister and the day we came here on our college tour. The day he promised that we’d be spending this year together.

And even though at the time I thought it was the most romantic thing in the world, now I stand here and think about how happy I am that things didn’t turn out that way. That he’s living his life, doing his thing, and that I’m living mine.

What happened in the months after the roofie incident is a blur. For me, it’s a blur by choice. I
simply don’t want to think about it too much. For everyone else, it’s become the stuff of urban legend around South Framingham High School. Like the gossip that’s spread in the halls after the popular kids’ parties, where no one quite remembers who said what to whom. The kind of gossip I never thought would be about me.

Anne says that she’s heard people talking about it—mostly the new freshmen and the sophomores—asking one another if they’d heard about the senior who gave his girlfriend the date rape drug last year, and that the girlfriend busted him to the police. Anne even told Courtney that one time she over-heard one freshman tell another that the girlfriend died, but that the administration wants it kept quiet so no one will think there’s a drug problem in the school.

And in a way, I guess I did die on that New Year’s. Or part of me did. The part that thought I was bulletproof. The part that believed if I studied hard and followed all the rules and was nice to everyone, that nothing could hurt me. And the part that believed I could keep other people’s problems from
affecting me. That I could stand on my own two feet without help from anyone else.

I learned that those things aren’t necessarily true. Being strong is important. But knowing who you can count on is equally important.

In the end, Scott got off with community service … well, and a mighty punishment from his mother, who was probably the only person more angry about the whole thing than I was. She convinced Scott’s dad that the Jetta needed to be sold and the money donated to a drug awareness charity to teach Scott a lesson.

He’s here somewhere. At Harvard.

It’s not a surprise that he got in, really. I heard that he got in everywhere he applied. Even Brown, with that insane Walter Mondale essay. (That thing earned him a scholarship. Go figure.) But he was apparently telling me the truth when he said Harvard was his first-choice school, because I’ve seen him here a couple times.

Once, he was standing in line behind me in a bookstore. After I paid for my books, I made a beeline out of there without talking to him. The other
time, he was with this really cute redhead, walking along the Charles River. After they passed me, it occurred to me that I should warn her. Like I wish Courtney had warned me.

If I see her with him again, I might.

But I’m not sure it’d be the right thing to do. I mean, I still wonder if he did what he did out of immaturity, or because he was still a little insecure after his whole blowup with Bridget over the Holliston Hottie. As stupid as it was, as dangerous and deceptive as it was, I don’t think he was evil. Like all of us, he has shades of gray. And a hopeful part of me wants to believe that Scott learned his lesson, like I learned mine.

I know Courtney learned hers, too. We’re still tight. Maybe tighter than ever, even though we don’t see each other like we did in high school. She lives in one of the BU dorms, across the river from me. But sometimes on weekends I pack up my dirty clothes and take them over to her dad’s apartment in Brookline. We spend the afternoon doing our laundry together and talking about our classes and all our new friends. It’s really nice, since we both know we
can share everything new that’s happening in our lives and get a totally unbiased opinion about things. And it gives us a chance to get away from the dorms, away from all the drama.

I think we both had enough drama last year to keep us for the rest of our lives.

Sometimes Mat comes over too. He and Courtney are more in love than ever. And even though he’s still a bit of a flirt—it’s definitely a cultural thing, by the way—they seem so grown up when they’re together that it scares me sometimes. Not because I think they’re making a mistake or rushing things. It’s actually the opposite: There’s a peace and a maturity to their relationship that I just don’t see in other couples.

It wouldn’t surprise me if they get married after college. I know that’s three years away, but sometimes you just have a gut feeling about these things.

When I mentioned it to Courtney once, she told me to stop trying to read people. But she blushed when she said it.

I think it’s helping Courtney that she’s in counseling too. After the shoplifting thing—which the
police said they wouldn’t even pursue, since the stores decided not to prosecute once she paid them back for the stolen merchandise—she started thinking that maybe all the college stuff and her parents’ divorce had been getting to her more than she wanted to admit. She says now that though she didn’t realize it at the time, somehow the double whammy of having her parents split and my getting into Harvard and having my future all mapped out sent her into a kind of tailspin. Like she didn’t know what her life was about anymore, and she couldn’t count on anything or anyone. It’s probably more complicated than that—like Courtney says, I’m horrible with understanding people issues—but I think she knows she can count on me. And on Anne and her parents, too. Mostly, though, I think she’s learning to count on herself.

Well, and Mateus the Great. Who truly is great.

Speaking of which, I haven’t told Courtney and Mat about my new boyfriend yet. But I will. One of these weekends, when we’re doing laundry.

His name is Ryan. I met him when I went to visit Mark at Georgetown over spring break last year,
but we didn’t start actually dating until the end of the summer, when I went down to DC to visit Mark again.

Ryan’s at Georgetown on a track scholarship, but he’s not the dumb jock type at all. He’s an economics major, and he wants to go to law school after he graduates. He’s a total straight-arrow type (which I love), plus he’s funny and sweet and way beyond hot.

And he has Mark’s seal of approval, which is reassuring (though I’ll never admit that to Mark).

It’s a long-distance thing, but for now, it works. Ryan’s a sophomore, so he’s a year older than I am, and I kind of like that.

I don’t think I mentioned that Ryan is from the Boston area too. He graduated from Holliston High School, which is why Mark thought to hook us up. He knew we’d see each other on holidays and stuff like that, since Ryan’s in Boston for Christmas and during the summers. We even have a few mutual friends, which is kind of cool.

But the funniest part of it all is that Ryan recently told me about this totally embarrassing thing that happened to him in high school. He hooked up with
this girl from
my
high school during a track meet. Afterward, he found out that she had some superpopular jock boyfriend, and that the boyfriend ended up dumping her over the whole thing and going out with someone else just for revenge.

Ryan told me it’s always bugged him—just a little bit. It wasn’t like he knew the girl had a boyfriend or anything, but he felt kind of bad that her relationship ended because of him.

I told him to let it go. Not only are we all mistakeprone humans, we all have bad things happen to us that aren’t of our own doing, and that what happened
totally
wasn’t his own doing. I showed him the harmony necklace Courtney bought me, and told him I like it because it reminds me that we just have to learn from our mistakes—no matter what they are—and move on. Things will be better in the future.

What I didn’t tell Ryan is that, for me, ending up—at least for now—with the guy Scott and I referred to as the Holliston Hottie and finding out that he’s really a wonderful guy, someone who loves me for me, is pretty damned bizarre. But it’s also what I consider the perfect kind of closure.

If you’re skipping ahead and reading this before you’ve read the book, be warned: I’m about to give away some key parts of the plot. If you hate having stories spoiled, come back to this later.

What happens to Jenna in
Sticky Fingers,
unfortunately, is becoming more common. Date rape drugs—the most common are Rohypnol (roofies), gamma hydroxy butyrate (GHB), and ketamine hydrochloride—are fairly easy to obtain. When dropped into a drink, they work to render the victim incapable of controlling her behavior as she normally
would. She might appear intoxicated, as Jenna did, or confused and tired. Therefore, it’s easy for a sexual predator to coax a drugged victim away from safety. Rapes can be committed in which the victim is oblivious to the assault. The drug can cause one to lose all memory of the event or leave the victim with only a vague recollection of something bad happening. In some cases, these drugs have even killed.

What makes these drugs so attractive to sexual predators is that they’re difficult to detect—they’re odorless, tasteless, and usually colorless. They take effect in a matter of minutes and work even in water. An attacker can drop the drug into a drink with a flick of the wrist, then watch from across the room as the victim becomes disoriented, and approach after the drug takes effect. These attackers also know that date rape drugs aren’t picked up on standard toxicology tests, and that they leave the victim’s bloodstream and urine in eight to seventy-two hours—at the most. In other words, in order to know what’s happened, a victim must (1) suspect he or she has been drugged; (2) go to the police or, better yet, to
the hospital; and (3) ask that the doctor perform specific tests for this group of drugs.

Fortunately there are several things you can do to protect yourself and your friends from these kinds of attacks:

1) Never accept open drinks from anyone you don’t know or trust completely. This includes drinks in a glass.

2) If you’re at a party or in a public place like a movie theater, take your drink directly from the person who prepares it. Watch while it’s being prepared. If lids are available, put one on your drink immediately.

3) Never drink from open punch bowls and pitchers or take pre-poured glasses from a table.

4) Never leave your drink unattended on a table or turn your back while you have a conversation. If you can, finish your drink before you go dance or go to the restroom; otherwise, take the drink with you.

5) If you or a friend start to feel sick, disoriented, or “high” after consuming a drink, leave immediately with someone you trust and get medical attention.

6) If you still worry about falling victim to an attacker
in this way, consider some of the products on the market that test drinks for the presence of date rape drugs. One site offering coasters and test strips that do this is www.drinksafetech.com.

For more information, you can do a Web search for any of the date rape drugs by name. You may also wish to visit www.health.org or www.nih.gov (search these government sites for the term “date rape drug”). Knowledge is the key to prevention.