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Instead, I’d stopped dead outside the microfiche department.
My feet had led the way in, and when I asked for the films from any Tennessee newspaper concerning a recent trial involving Ronnie Arnold, my voice sounded like it came from another world.
It only took the librarian about ten minutes to find what I’d requested, and as I sat at the machine, moving the viewfinder over the various articles, my gut roiled.
The teenager testified that her step-father, forty-one year-old Ronnie Arnold, coerced her into an ongoing physical relationship…
Mr. Arnold insisted the relationship was consensual and mutually satisfying…
Miss Allen cried as she described the first encounter with Mr. Arnold, which she’d endured at the age of just thirteen…
I’d felt dizzy and sick, but I printed out the last article detailing the sentencing and showing Tamara leaving the courthouse. The caption beneath the photo read—“After a brutal nine hours of cross-examination from the defense, Miss Allen and her parents were rewarded with the jury’s finding of Guilty after only twenty minutes of deliberation.”
She didn’t look rewarded. She looked devastated.
And she would be, on some level, from now on. I’d been there in her shoes, walking down courthouse steps the supposed-victor, but really the forever-loser. There was no real way to win when the man you called Dad took your innocence. Even when I’d claimed my power during the rape, I hadn’t won. I had, as Luke said, survived.
And that was all I’d ever done since that day.
Every fantasy of love, every shining smile, every playful screw,every line of cocaine, every acid trip, every brutal fuck from Kyle—all of it was just survival. Nothing more.
My HIV diagnosis had revealed the truth of me—I was a façade of glitter and gloss around an empty, sucking core of despair that could only be filled with pain and glorious fucked-up power trips. Everything else was just hollow.
What if meeting Luke and being with him the last few months was the best part of my life? And what if everything went downhill from there? It was inevitable. He’d get sick, or I would, and then what? Wouldn’t it be better to go out in a blaze of ecstasy while I still felt physically healthy?
I shook my head, thinking of the sweet way Luke had held me on Thanksgiving Day. We’d cuddled together in the queen bed at that expensive, fancy hotel room while my mother slept in her bed a few feet over. I’d felt so warm and safe.
I made myself remember all the fun we’d had at Biltmore House itself too. That whole day I’d pretended we weren’t dying, that a place like that astounding mansion could be our future, that we could be kings and live on a fabulous estate, and we’d be happy forever.
But none of that was true.
I was a soon-to-be-dead student with no money.
I unfolded the printed microfiche page and looked at the photo next to Tamara’s. My father. Hands behind his back, a guard leading him from the room, and yet he didn’t look ashamed. Had heeverlooked ashamed? No. Not when he raped me, not when he went to jail the first time, not when he showed back up and demanded that I…
I closed my eyes. Remembered the weight of him in my mouth.
I needed pain to block it out. I needed Luke.
The last few days, whenever I’d return to my dorm room to rest between classes, I found messages from Kyle on the answering machine. He had a real way with words when he wanted to. He’dspelled out in crystal clear detail how—despite my HIV status—he still wanted to choke me out and fill me with his jizz. He said exactly that in most of his messages.
I should have told Luke about them, but I didn’t. I was afraid he’d want me to do something—like take the tapes to the police or press charges.
Ishouldhave deleted them, but I didn’t. I couldn’t.
Every word was dark and fucked up, and I couldn’t let go of them. Kyle was the knife I kept ready to use at any time. He could slice the horrible memories of my father out of me and strip all the shame from my mind once and for all.
I just had to give myself up to him…
With Luke gone, Kyle drip-drip-dripped through my head like some kind of poisoned honey that promised me permanent release. Whenever I remembered my diagnosis, whenever I thought of my father, whenever I looked at the piece of paper with his face and hers, side by side on the page, that flame of shame licked up the side of my face again, and I’d think of what Kyle had to offer. The pain. The oblivion. The death.
Because I still believed Kyle had it in him to kill me. He was my out. If I got sick, if I started to show signs of AIDS, then going out with Kyle’s hands around my neck would be—
No.
I forced myself to give up that line of thought again. It’d be so much easier if Luke were here to distract me from it. It didn’t have to be with the tools in this room. It could be with something sweet and easy—like chocolate chip cookies or a Tom Cruise movie on cable. It didn’t matter. In Luke’s presence, in the light of his love, I could shut it all off. But alone? My pain raged.
I strolled to the cage, crouched down, climbed inside backward, and shut the door behind me. There was no way to lock it, but if I stayed here, I’d be safe from myself.
