Page 39 of Rage
I don’t ask who she means by they. I look back toward the wall. He still hasn’t moved.
Every man who has ever had a reason to be near me has used it. Every one. The reason was always the door into something else, something I had not agreed to yet, and by the time I understood, I was already inside it.
Saint has his reasons, but he stays across the room.
Rose is right. Him watching me is the simplest thing here. I just don’t know how to let simple things be simple.
Amy
The last thing I remember clearly is the party.
Not even the party but the edge of it. The warmth of the room. One minute, I’m standing near the kitchen with my cup and the music in my chest and Rose somewhere behind me talking to the guy with the green eyes.
The smell of a space full of people who have decided, for one night, to stop being careful.
I don’t remember anyone handing me anything. I remember the dark red, sweet taste of rum in a plastic cup. I didn’t think I needed to inspect it closely enough because I poured it myself, but the room was loud, and I wasn’t being careful enough. I’ve been cautious my entire life, and I thought…I thought I was being careful.
I remember the warmth moving through me faster than it should. My stomach dropped before my mind caught up with why.
I remember a name. Marcus. Third year. He wore an easy smile and his hand at the small of my back steered me toward a door I had not agreed to go through.
I remember thinking this is wrong.
And then I don’t remember anything at all.
I come back to myself in pieces.
First, cold. The cold of stone beneath my palms, outdoor stone, the kind that has absorbed a whole day’s absence of sun. My hands in front of me, my leg slightly scraped at the right heel. A tear in my tights at the knee, the skin underneath unbroken.
Then the alley.
It runs along the north side of the east academic building, a narrow alley between the building and the stone perimeter wall.
A single security light at the far end, its bulb blown, throwing nothing but the memory of light. Behind me, distantly, the muffled bass of the party still runs.
And on the ground, six feet in front of me, is Marcus.
I don’t understand what I am looking at for a long moment.
My brain wades through the fog of whatever was in that cup, assembling the information in the wrong order. His expensive sneakers. His jacket at an angle that jackets do not go at unless the body inside them is at an awkward angle. His face turned away from me. Marcus. The guy from the party.
My first thought is that he’s unconscious.
Then I see his hand. The way his fingers are spread against the ground in odd angles, motionless.
I scramble backward until my shoulders hit the wall, and I sit there breathing through my mouth. The cold stone is the only fixed point in a world that will not stop tilting.
Marcus is not moving.
The metallic edge of the air is not ambiguous anymore.
But I don’t scream. My brain is trying to catch up to the scene in front of me.
Something in me that learned at a young age to stay quiet when the worst things were happening, keeps the sound from coming out.
I press my hand over my mouth, and I breathe through my nose in the long-controlled intervals that Dr. Osei taught me. I look down the alley, then at Marcus, and I try to understand what I’m looking at.
My clothes are on. My palm is scraped. But I’m here. I am whole.
