What We Saw (22 page)

ABOUT A MONTH
after the geology field trip, I am changing out of my plaid skirt and navy vest in the Saint Mary's locker room when it happens:

I catch sight of the deodorant at the bottom of my gym bag. Stuffing the duffel into my locker, I think about Adele rushing off to stock up on Right Guard.

And I think about the look on Ben's face.

And I smile.

It doesn't last long. A split second later, Olivia Jaynes comes bounding in with her crazy Afro in a sweatband. She is a disco dance party looking for a place to happen and, for reasons yet to be revealed, calls me “Sweet Pea.” In the month since Will
and I changed schools, Olivia has been my welcome wagon, tour guide, and activity director.

“Move it, Sweet Pea,” she barks.

I pinch her at the waist and she yelps, chasing me onto the field.

At this school, our coach is a guy, and our colors are burgundy and navy, but the line drills are the same. Coach Orson likes to see what he calls “go-getter initiative,” and by that he means people who are on the field and running drills before practice officially begins. For the past few weeks, Olivia has made it her mission to ensure we're the first ones out of the gate.

Tomorrow we have our final game. It's been an okay season: six wins, four losses, one to Coral Sands. It was weird playing my old team, but I survived, and Lindsey came out to dinner with us afterward.

That was the night I found Dad in the kitchen. I had come down to get some water before I went to bed, and he was standing at the counter making his sandwiches for lunch the next day. He's been going in even earlier lately. The developer he works for let him take on a second crew so he could cover the tuition at Saint Mary's. We've cut back a lot, but he and Mom agreed that if we wanted to switch schools we could. Will wasn't thrilled about the uniforms, but the classes are smaller, and he likes his chances of making varsity as a sophomore next fall.

I slid my arms around Dad's waist and murmured “thank you” into his back. He turned around and put his hands on my shoulders.

“I love you,” he said. “You're all right, Katie. You're all right.”

For my dad, that's as close to “I'm proud of you” as we get, and even though so much has changed, I realized then that he was correct:

I
am
all right.

Sometimes, when change happens, you can't stop it or control it or direct it. You can only hang on for the ride.

Stacey's ride took her south. Mom ran into LeeAnne in the Walmart parking lot the week after we met with the detective. She was collecting empty boxes from the Dumpsters behind the store so she could pack up. Lawyers from as far away as New York tried to convince her to bring a civil suit for damages on Stacey's behalf, but she said she couldn't put her daughter through any more. What she could do was move to her sister's house in Nashville and put her daughter in a nearby charter school for visual arts. “I can wait tables anywhere,” she told Mom. “There's nothing left for us here but heartache.”

I never talked to Stacey after I went to the police. But the day she moved, Will got the mail and found a folded piece of paper with my name on it. There were no other words, only a pencil sketch of a beautiful mockingbird, the state bird of Tennessee, its feathers spread and majestic, head held high, flying toward a new horizon.

I watch as little news as possible these days, but sometimes it's hard to avoid. Sloan Keating is a regular analyst on CNN now, and just the other day, I saw her on a screen while I was in line at the dry cleaner. The judge went easy on Dooney, Deacon,
Randy, and Greg. Dooney's dad helped the prosecutor out of a messy divorce a few years back, and when the guys changed their pleas to guilty, he bargained down the charges. All four were sentenced to just under one year each. With good behavior, they might be out as early as September, and Coach Sanders is already talking about “second chances.”

I haven't heard from Ben.

I don't expect to.

Every now and then I see him—down the aisle at Walmart or driving by on Oaklawn Avenue; in a town the size of Coral Sands, it's unavoidable.

Sometimes, I look at his Facebook page and wonder if we will ever speak again. Lindsey says that Duke is waiting until next season to give him a scholarship offer. I wonder if he blames me for the delay, and whether he ever thinks of me and smiles.

The topography of who I am is different now, but the continent of my heart will always bear a jagged edge, where once I knew the perfect fit of true connection. I used to wonder if I would ever fall in love and if the person who I loved would love me back.

Now I try my best not to consider the
if
and the
when
, but to stay focused on the here and now.

The crust of our earth is in constant motion. Scientists say that at some point in the next 250 million years, the continents will have fused back together again. There will be drift and disturbance—old oceans squeezed closed, and new ones
created. All of this tectonic upheaval will happen with no consideration for the people on the surface of our world—supposing our species is still around by then. Our planet is indifferent to the life that it supports. The natural forces take their course regardless of who is standing over the fault line or lying in the path of the torrent. We feel a rumble now and then—a tiny seismic shift—a whispered reminder from the universe:

Given enough time, everything changes.

Maybe this sense of how fragile our connections are is what makes us obsessed with saving them—writing them down, taking pictures, recording them in tweets, documenting them with status updates and videos. It is clear to me now that when the earth does move beneath our feet—when our hearts slam and scrape and break apart—when we barely survive the flood, we take precautions.

We try to hold on to the things we think will keep us safe and maintain that place we can point to and say,
This is normal.
Adele and her stockpile of provisions, Connie Bonine and her storefront full of all that Willie left behind, Mom and her gallery wall, Dad and his antique flip-screen camera, the coral on my nightstand: all of these are records of an era past; the symbols we cling to that we might explain our present and chart our changes; the fossils of a secret history we carry deep within us, etched into the bedrock of our beings.

As I bend to touch the far goal line, I hear Olivia whoop for me to hurry up, and I turn on every ounce of speed that I can muster. By the center of the field, I've caught up with her, and as
the afternoon sun warms the crust of our slowly drifting continent, I push past my newfound friend.

Our teammates are all gathered now, cheering us on as we race the final fifty meters in a full-out sprint. I cross the goal line one hairsbreadth ahead of her. As we collapse onto the grass panting and laughing, I see a hawk soar high above us and feel a rush of gratitude for the knowledge that just this once we have escaped the gaze of a camera lens or a status update.

Some moments should only be recorded in our hearts.

Thank you to Michael Bourret, the best agent there is, for steering this ship with a steady hand.

Thanks also to the incredible team at HarperTeen: Kristen Pettit, whose unwavering commitment to excellence makes me work harder; Jen Klonsky, for believing I'm up to the challenge; Elizabeth Lynch, for making shit happen; and Gina Rizzo, publicist extraordinaire. Michelle Taormina, your cover design is exquisite, and, Ulla Puggaard, your handlettering turns the whole thing up to eleven. Anne Heausler, this is the first time I've ever fallen in love with a copy editor. Thank you for your eyes, and your heart.

To the writer pals who text me back and keep me sane—especially Grant Sloss, Andrew Smith, A.S. King, John Corey Whaley, Francesco Sedita, Deb Caletti, and my West Coast YA/middle grade crew: Margaret Stohl, Melissa de la Cruz, Pseudonymous Bosch, Rachel Cohn, and Tom & Laura McNeal—I'd have never survived the last year without you.

Finally, there's family: Holly Goldberg Sloan and Alice Pope, your expertise on writing is certain and sure, but it's your wisdom about life that has changed mine forever. Jenny Janisko, you are always by my side, even a thousand miles away. Jason Press, you are a true brother. Caleb Hartzler, you show me how it's done every day with style and grace—my role model, through thick and (hopefully) thin.

HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

WHAT WE SAW
. Copyright © 2015 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hartzler, Aaron.

What we saw / Aaron Hartzler. — First edition.

pages      cm

Summary: “The story of a town torn apart by the events surrounding the rape of a drunk girl at a house party, from the perspective of the partygoers who witnessed it”— Provided by publisher.

ISBN 978-0-06-233874-7 (hardback) — ISBN 978-0-06-243062-5 (int. ed.)

EPub Edition © September 2015 ISBN 9780062338761

[1. Rape—Fiction. 2. Witnesses—Fiction.] I. Title.

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FIRST EDITION