A few weeks later, when she and Rachel were splayed across Rachel’s bed doing homework and listening to music, her new friend broached the subject again.
“You know,” Rachel let her pencil fall to the side, “I think we can work it so you can run away, Em. Just leave it all.”
Silence.
“I mean, don’t you want it to stop?”
What a stupid fucking question.
“Once, when I was fourteen, I’d worked up the courage to tell my mother about what he was doing to me.” Emery fiddled with her pen, not looking at Rachel. “It was like he knew...he knew that I was on the verge of telling.” She took a deep breath. “I’d asked my mom to take me to the Nordstrom café because he would think we were shopping, which wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Do you know what he did?”
Rachel shook her head, her braid that wrapped around her shoulder shaking furiously.
“That morning, when we were getting ready to go…he brought Ashley down to the kitchen in a shirt and no underwear. She was seven. To my mother, it meant nothing. She just told Ashley to go finish getting dressed. But the look in his eyes…it was clear what he was doing. He was daring me to tell her, warning me that he would take my seven-year-old sister the same way he did me if I told.”
“What do you mean?” Rachel’s voice was barely a whisper.
“That’s what he told me to do, never wear underwear to bed because he didn’t want to have to bother with taking them off.”
Rachel made a choking sound.
“So, no, Rachel. I don’t think I can just run away.”
“Em…” Rachel was trying to compose herself.
“Look, this is why I don’t talk about it. It’s so fucking…”
Rachel cleared her throat. “How does your mom not know?”
“I…” Emotion threatened to close Emery’s throat. “I have no idea. I’m unrecognizable from who I was at thirteen.”
A tear fell down Rachel’s cheek. “Thirteen?”
Emery nodded. “Every time,” she began, her voice now full of steel, “I mark on a piece of paper I hide in my Bible.”
“Oh, Em…” Rachel crawled to where Emery was and wrapped her arms around her friend. Rachel’s long bangs fell from behind her ear and tickled Emery’s cheek. They were quiet; Emery let Rachel comfort her.
“One hundred and fifty-six,” she whispered in the quiet room. The words floated through the air and disappeared.
Rachel choked on a sob.
“One hundred and fifty-six,” Emery said louder this time, making it real. It was the first time she’d really thought about how many times. Before it had just been marks on a page.
The silence threatened to combust and take them with the flames.
“One hundred and fifty-six,” Emery repeated, letting the number sink into her skin and her brain.
CHAPTER FIVE
Inception
A few weeks later, Rachel lay on her back, her iPad held arms length over her face. “I just don’t get what he sees in her.” Rachel was examining her crush’s Facebook page. He’d just posted pictures of him and his latest girlfriend.
“It’s probably not what he sees…” Emery commented, looking at the pictures of a girl with the biggest fake boobs she’d seen. At Rachel’s reaction, she cringed. “Sorry.”
“No, you’re right. I know you are. I want him to want to ‘see’ that in me.” Rachel smiled as she did air quotes. “I mean, all he’d have to do is ask and I’d throw my panties at him.”
“Well, maybe he’s scared to ask because of your dad.”
“I doubt he’s scared of anything, Em.” Rachel turned her iPad so that Emery could take in the guy that commandeered Rachel’s mind from where she lay on the bed. His dark hair was cropped, almost shaved, and he had cerulean eyes that looked as if they were staring at Emery from the pages of Facebook. “He’s so confident, it’s like nothing rattles him. Oh, and look at those eyes. I mean, don’t your panties just melt?” Rachel laughed.
“He looks older than you.” Emery squinted her eyes at the picture to see the details of his face.
“He’s twenty.” Rachel tapped the screen and the picture got bigger.
“Four years is a lot,” Emery commented. He looked older than twenty, but sort of like he should be on the CW network.
“It’s not really,” Rachel refuted. “When I’m eighteen, he’ll be twenty-two. Stop ignoring my panty melting question.”
Jealousy wormed its way through her brain. She wanted to have a crush. She wanted something normal. Anything normal. “I’ve never had a crush on anyone.” Emery looked down at the book in front of her and leafed through to the right page to start her chemistry homework. “Unless you count Scott Rinehart when I was twelve.”