The Love Story (The Things We Can't Change Book 4) (9 page)

How much do you charge for rape these days?

Zeke’s entire body goes stiff and I can see the moment that his hands begin to tremble. “Evie,” he says in a low, articulate voice. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him use this tone before. “Who put this in your locker?”

“I don’t know,” I say, stubbornly truthful. I know which group of people
may
have put it in my locker, but I don’t know which of them did it and I will never be able to prove it.

Zeke looks up at me, his eyes snapping with unbridled fury. “
Who
?” he snaps. “Evie, this is… this is disgusting. How long have they been leaving notes like this? This isn’t the first one, is it? You knew what it was. Who is doing it?”

All of the sudden, anger floods over me. Frustration at Zeke and his mood swings, anger at the constant bullying I seem to be facing from every direction and a good dose of fear at the notes and the people leaving them. They’re getting worse and without Zeke as a pillar to cling to, to comfort me, I don’t know if I can stand up to them.

My lips thin and I can’t control myself any longer.

“Oh, so now you care what’s going on with me? That’s rich, Zeke.”

I snatch the paper out of his hands and crinkle it up violently before throwing it into my locker and slamming the door shut as loud and hard as I can. I don’t even have my books for first period but I don’t care.

“Newsflash: I’m fine and you can lay off, okay?” I toss his own words back at him and take off down the hallway again.

This time, he doesn’t follow me.

Ezekiel

90

If I didn’t have drawing for my first period class, I probably would have had to go home to calm down. That or hide in a maintenance closet with a sketch pad and pencil for the entire morning. As it is, I get to drawing and take my seat next to my tablemate—who I’ve finally discovered is named Paula, now that we’re a good month into school—and immediately pull out my sketchpad, ignoring our teacher as she starts to demonstrate some techniques for our next project.

My hands are shaking so badly that my drawing is shit, but it doesn’t matter. The practice of putting pencil to paper still comforts and soothes me. It allows my screaming brain to settle and quiet so I can sift through everything with a bit of cool distance.

I can’t believe someone would actually write that. Anyone, no matter how cruel. I wouldn’t have even guessed that Tony himself would actually do something like that. Don’t they realize by now that it isn’t all just rumors? That Evie’s side of the story is the true one, not Tony’s? Even on my darkest day and in my lowest moment, I could never say or think something like that. There’s a freaking lawsuit happening. Can’t they get it into their thick, over-privileged heads that Evie has been through something horrible? Something they can’t even begin to imagine?

And yet their answer, as friends, is to belittle her. Make fun of her, strike fear and intimidation into her and make her relive the whole, horrible thing with every chance they get. It’s disgusting. I actually feel bile rise up in my throat at the whole idea, especially when I wonder what the other notes have said. If they say something worse than this one or if there is anything worse than this to say.

Somehow, I doubt there’s much worse than that note. If there is, I’m at least glad that I haven’t descended so far down that I can think of it.

I draw furiously through my first four periods, finally feeling a single iota of calm overtake me by the time I have to go to lunch and face Evie. I expect her to still be pissed, and she has every right to be. I think of my behavior outside school where I threw her concern back into her and cringe. She should have slapped me or something, but I know how she feels about violence. Still, I deserved it.

A small, dark haired figure is waiting at the doorway to the cafeteria and I have to push my feet to keep going and not slow down. The Evie waiting for me, however, is far different from the one I expected. Her face is drawn tight and she’s frowning, but with worry, not anger. I get up to her and before I can even apologize, she’s babbling.

“Zeke, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to snap at you,” she says, so fast I almost don’t even understand her. “I didn’t mean to get angry but I just haven’t been sleeping well and I know that’s no excuse but please don’t be mad. I’m really, really sorry.”

She keeps going, apologizing and offering excuses, so frantically that all I can do is stare at her. I’m shocked when I see that she has tears brimming in her eyes. That finally galvanizes me into action, as well as into the realization that I should have had weeks ago: something isn’t right here.

I reach out and grab Evie by the shoulders, pulling her against me in a sudden movement. It’s a little rough but I don’t have the presence of mind to be careful or gentle at the moment. I just want her to shut up. I stroke her hair with one hand, inhaling the scent and letting it wash over me. It calms me more than drawing all morning did. She finally stops talking and I feel her take a deep, shuddery breath.

“Stop apologizing,” I say firmly. “
I’m
sorry. I shouldn’t have treated you the way that I did. It was inexcusable.”

“But I-I snapped at you!” Evie says shakily.

I draw back a little and look at her quizzically. “You used to snap at me all the time and not think twice about it. So… relax, okay? Everything’s fine, all right?”

She sniffs and wipes away a single tear and I’m glad I was able to get her to stop before it became full-on crying. “Really?” she checks.

“Really,” I confirm, wondering where this dithering Evie came from. “Come on, let’s go eat.”

“Okay.”

She follows me obediently and barely speaks all through lunch, keeping her eyes trained mostly on me. I ask her a couple times if everything is okay and she smiles and nods.

But more and more, I’m getting the feeling that everything is far from being okay.

For the first time since my dad kicked me out, since I started getting the notes, I pull myself out of my misery. I quite feeling sorry for myself, quit spending all my time trying not to feel anything and just start watching.

Watching Evie.

I spend a week, a solid week, trying to be there for her, standing next to her in the mornings and between every class that I’m able. I stand guard, arms crossed over my chest and glaring at anyone who dares to so much as look our way. The bullying toward me has mostly stopped since my fight with Josh in the parking lot, but that leaves me worried by a consequence that I hadn’t even considered: what if twice the effort of their bullying was now directed at Evie?

And as I stay silent and watch, I worry that’s the case. Two more mornings that week, I see Evie scramble to catch a note and pretend not to notice. I don’t know if I can handle reading another one. I’m relieved when Evie doesn’t even bother to read them either. She just crumples them up and tries to discreetly throw them away before I can see. But I still see it all.

For the first time in a while, I listen to the jeers that follow us everywhere, and realize that most of them are about Evie now. I’ve established that I won’t be pushed around, that people should think twice before saying anything to or about me. But if Evie ever wants some peace, she’s going to have to do the same thing.

For the most part, Tiffany and her crowd are controlled at lunch and in Speech when I’m around, but Evie told me at the beginning of the year that she has several classes with them earlier in the day and I worry about that. More than once when I meet her outside her classroom door, she rushes out like a scared cat, her eyes glassy with unshed tears, and I wonder what went on in the last few minutes of class, when words are easily concealed from teachers by the sound of everyone getting their things together and the bell ringing.

But despite the bullying, despite the fear, the thing that suddenly starts worrying me the most is Evie’s behavior with me. She seems to liven up a little bit whenever she sees me and whenever I ask her what’s wrong or what happened, she tells me that it doesn’t matter now that I’m around. Every time she throws away a note from her locker, she takes my hand and squeezes it, as though wanting reassurance. And I realize that Evie is depending solely on me as a lifeline through all of this.

Normally, I wouldn’t think twice about something like that. Looking at it abstractly, it makes perfect sense; Evie was abused, raped and beaten. Of course if she’s getting bullied, she would cling to someone and I, as her boyfriend, am the only rational person around. Especially since her old friends are the worst offenders. But the longer I watch Evie and think about her past behavior, the more I see that it isn’t good at all.

Evie is slowly but surely sinking back into her old self.

I think about what she’s told me of her relationship with Tony; the constant striving to please, never stepping wrong, living for his approval and doing everything, from talking to walking to dressing, with him in mind. And I finally connect the dots.

Evie is doing the same thing with me. I think of her frantic apologies at lunch after the note incident. I think of her quiet, unusually subservient behavior after our first date, when I first started pulling away. I think of the times she asked if I liked what she was wearing, or how often she does her hair in the style that I like, one I’m pretty sure is time consuming and not easy—though I’ll be the first to admit my knowledge of hair is limited.

Even now, the actual way she’s dressing rings a bell with me. She’s reverted back to her old style, the one she wore when I first started noticing her. Concealing, boring clothes: ones that cover her up, make her look like the mini country club wife she was destined to be. Clothes like what Tiffany and her friends wear. It’s not anything really obvious, but when I remember her foxy outfit the night we went to the party, how she told me she went shopping and wanted to stop dressing the way Tony wanted, I finally begin to see it.

Maybe she’s doing it because she’s afraid she’ll get bullied worse if she doesn’t dress like them. Maybe she’s doing it because they feel safe to her. But then I look down at myself and my own clothes. I’m still dressing in my baggy shirts and jeans, even though I promised myself it was just for the first week of school. Somehow, I feel better in them. I’m letting my feelings out through drawing and I feel like I need the disguise of the clothes so people don’t see how I’ve changed.

I know exactly why Evie is doing it. Because it’s easier to fall into her old self—scared, terrified, quiet and aiming to please just one person—than struggle and push and curse her way into being the new one she discovered over summer break. My mind tells me I’m doing that same thing, but I shrug it off angrily, telling myself to focus on Evie. Besides. I’m drawing, I’m feeling—sort of. That’s more progress than Evie seems to making, although she’s not cutting or going to visit Tony.

I have to wonder
why
. Why does she feel the need to be that way with
me
? All summer she fought and clawed with me, driven mostly by rage at first, but still, she fought back. The Evie of the summer would never have allowed me to yell and snap at her as I have the past few weeks. Why is she acting the way she used to, as though she doesn’t possess anything remotely like a backbone?

And then I flush hot with shame and anger at myself as something occurs to me. She’s been acting like her old self because
I’ve
been acting like my old self, especially to her. I’ve been an ass to her, no black or white about it. I’ve snapped at her, shouted at her, pushed her away as hard as I could. I’ve taken all my problems out on her.

Just like Tony did.

Thinking about it, I wish I could claw that ugly realization right out of my chest. But I can’t. Especially since it’s true. It makes me feel disgusting and repulsive. Pushing away Evie has a whole new meaning now that we’re dating. It makes me no better than Tony. It really doesn’t. I think back to my endless conversations with Evie on the subject, on asking her why she would stay with Tony for so long and through so much.

She always said I wouldn’t understand and for the most part, I still don’t really get it. But one of the bigger reasons that I can fathom is that despite everything, Evie still loved the part of Tony that would come out sometimes, the normal part. She still loved him, despite how mangled he made that love. And she was afraid of losing him.

Evie won’t fight back, won’t do anything to upset me, because she’s afraid of losing me. I’m not so vain as to think it’s because I’m so wonderful that any girl would be afraid of losing me. I’m not stupid. But what if someday Evie doesn’t want me? Will she let herself be trapped in a relationship with me forever?

What if I really did start to hit her someday? Is she letting herself walk into another abusive situation? What if I can never actually tell her how I feel, what if the emotions always get the best of me and I can’t ever love like a normal person? I can’t let Evie be trapped by that. Someday she’ll realize she can do better, that she’s meant for better things. And I want her to be strong enough to get rid of me when she realizes that.

As the glimmer of an idea, of what I have to do, occurs to me, it brings with it an easy escape. An escape from the guilt I feel whenever I remember those notes and that night with Dr. Parker. I think of my skin, hot and prickly when I think too long and hard about what Evie means to me. I think of the truth I’ve been living with all my life,
you lose everything you care about eventually. It always gets taken away.