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Someone has put an elephant on my chest.
Her eyes narrow, questioning me. Then she asks, “You sure you can handle this?”
I take a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Yeah.”
Her eyebrows pitch down with skepticism, but she continues. “You were naked.” Her face flushes with embarrassment for me. “And tied up with all these brightly-colored scarves. It was disconcerting. And then I realized you weren’t wearing a red scarf. You were covered in blood.”
She closes her eyes and looks like she’s holding her breath. She bites her lower lip. Seconds pass. When she lets it go, I see deep tooth marks.
“And?”
“And what I later realized was semen.”
“Oh.” The word comes out of me like someone has blown, lightly, on a dandelion gone to seed, as if all that was needed was that one puff, enough to spread scores of seeds into the wild.
“I screamed and rooted through my purse for my phone.” Jane puts her hand over her heart. “My mom yelled at me, later, when I told her the story. She said the scream could have brought the attackers back.” She snorts. “Like I was thinking clearly at the time?”
I don’t know what to say. I feel like I’m watching me and Jane from ten feet above us, floating on the ceiling, looking down.
“I called 9-1-1. When emergency services asked me what the problem was, I couldn’t really say it. I just said I’d found a woman tied up and bleeding, and I thought she’d been s-s-sexually assaulted.” Jane’s hand that isn’t holding mine is now shaking. I see it tremor on the table top.
I see it from ten feet away.
“Oh.” A thought occurs to me. “How did you know?”
Jane’s entire body leaps a fraction of an inch into the air. “How did I not know, Lindsay?” she hisses. Then she closes her eyes. “It was, um...” She’s trying to compose herself. I feel sympathy. This must be so hard for her. All my sympathy is radiating to her. I squeeze her hand.
And yet my own emotions feel so far away.
“It was the blood. Where all the blood was. Your face was covered in blood and, um, you know...but your lower half was worse. And your shoulder was dislocated and—”
“Okay. Okay.” I think I’m about to throw up. I guess my feelings aren’t so distant, after all. “I understand.”
“I’ll stop,” she says in a rush of words. “I’ll stop and I’m sorry, but you asked and there’s so much to tell and no one lets us talk about this. No one.” Her eyes dart to catch mine. For a split second, I swear she looks excited. That can’t be right.
Must be nerves.
“Us?”
“I mean...me. I said us because—” An expression of distaste covers her face. “Because I don’t know. I’m still used to us being us. Not me only being me.”
“Because Mandy, Jenna and Tara did something.”
“Oh, yeah. Did they ever.” For the first time since we started talking, Jane struggles to make eye contact with me.
“What did they do?”
“You really don’t know?” She’s shocked. Genuinely shocked, her mouth in a little O of reaction, her wide eyes so innocent and filled with a sense of outrage on my behalf. “How isolated have they kept you?”
“Very.” The part of me that is ten feet in the air, watching this scene unfold, moves about five feet closer. I can tell I can trust Jane. She’s not playing me. I’m not some specimen for her to watch and control.
“You mean, you know nothing? I thought you said you knew about what Mandy, Jenna and Tara did.”
“I woke up in a mental institution four years ago, Jane, and haven’t had any contact with the outside world that hasn’t been carefully monitored since. Yesterday was the first time I’ve had any freedom.” I roll my eyes. “If you can call it that.”
I’m not telling her the whole truth. I know more than I let on. But why should I show all my cards when I don’t know if she has any tucked away somewhere?
I can’t trust anyone.
