Page 29 of Electricity

“ I ’m so sorry about that—she’s so embarrassing.” I whispered, as we crested the hill and started down its far slope, lemonade in hand. “I hate her.”

“At least she’s sane.”

“That’s debatable.”

Razor howled at us, throwing his body against the fence, trying to gnaw away the wood.

We found the same grassy spot as last time, where the power lines stretched overhead like shining train tracks.

I waited for a minute trying to think of the right thing to say, and when I couldn’t I just asked, “Danny?”

The distant look on her face toughened into an angry mask. “Yeah. Danny.”

“Did he do it? I mean, he’s saying he did.”

“Yeah.” She pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes.

“I don’t remember everything—but in the blurs—some colors, and his voice—it sounds like him.

Plus, if you had to poll the student body about ‘which baseball team member was most likely to rape’, I think everyone would agree. It makes sense, you know?”

“But now that you know it’s him—can’t you go to the cops?”

“The police that I just told I wasn’t raped? The ones I told to ignore everything?”

“But how do they know you did that for sure?”

“Because I freaking told them.” She unlocked her phone and brought up ZB before handing it to me and everything new on it flooded my mind before I could read.

I did what you asked.

A long lag.

Thanks. For calling off the cops. And for being a good fuck.

A series of emojis followed, angels, and devils, and one smiley face licking its lips.

Do you expect me to say you’re welcome, asshole?

Lacey had responded, and gotten nothing back.

I handed her back her phone. “You think it’s over?”

“I fucking hope so. I just can’t believe he told everyone.”

“Not about the rape.”

“That’s even worse! Making it sound like I wanted him?

” She did a full body shudder. “Do you know how many guys are gonna assume that just because I put out for Danny, I’ll put out for them?

And then, if I don’t put out for them, they’ll think it’s because Danny’s dick set the bar for all other dicks in my life, and their dicks can’t compare or some stupid shit?

It’s a win-win for him, and a lose-lose for me. ”

“I’m so sorry, Lacey.”

“It just fucking sucks. All over again. It’d have been bad enough to not have anyone believe me—but now? I’m still a whore.”

I prayed to God that no one had written that on her locker this afternoon. “You know you’re not, right?”

“Of course I know. But everyone’s going to be thinking it.”

“Not me.”

She thumped against me, and put her head on my shoulder with a sigh. “Thanks.” Then she made an exhausted sound, leaned back the other way to right herself. “I’d better get back home. I can’t leave my mom alone for too long.”

“What is she, a puppy?”

“Close to it. She’s just not handling things well. You know how she’s dramatic, right?”

“Yeah.” Ms. Harper desperately needed to spend some time out in the real world.

“Well this hasn’t helped.” She stood and I followed her lead, we walked to the corner of my yard furthest away from Razor.

“You coming to school tomorrow?”

“Don’t know. Prolly won’t till tomorrow.”

“Not to sound callus, but if you do come to school, please dear God come rescue me from the bus.”

“If I do, will do,” she said, and waved low as she walked off.

Dinner that evening was a difficult affair. I could trust myself to cook now, but now that I’d opened the door to Allie’s participation I couldn’t close it again. So I herded her through the motions and we triumphantly had hamburger meat and boxes of noodles that were only a little bit chewy.

“I was thinking,” my mother announced, halfway through her first serving.

“Yeah?”

“You really do need to get out more, Jessie. High school’s the best time of your life, you know that, right?”

I stared blankly at her. A) While certain of my classmates were awesome, high school was objectively terrible and B) I always wanted the best part of my life to be ahead of me. Always. Looking behind you all the time was what got you trapped places like this, here.

“I just want you to be like me, to have good memories to look back at. I know you’re smart—but that’s not the only important thing in life, you know? You need to be more social while you can.”

“Uh huh,” I said, non-committal.

“You can try to do that some, can’t you? For my sake?”

I nodded slowly.

“Good. I’d just be a terrible parent if you didn’t live your high school life to the fullest.”

I said the only thing I could think of to end the conversation as quickly as possible. “Thanks, Mom.”

She smiled at me like a benevolent fairy godmother. “You’re welcome, Jessica.”

The next day I got a reluctant Allie out to her bus-stop in time and was trudging over to my own when a familiar car pulled up and honked. I was grinning by the time Lacey’s passenger window rolled down.

“Hey pretty lady. Want a ride?”

“Yes,” I said emphatically and hopped in.

I settled myself into her passenger seat, aligned my seatbelt, and looked out at the world as it was meant to be seen.

“You have no idea how happy I am to see you. I mean, I’m happy to see you yes, but OMG I would rather gnaw my leg off than ride the bus again. ”

“That bad?”

“You have no idea.” Or maybe she did, since Emily had gone out of her way to attack her. “You going be okay today?”

“Yeah. It’s going to fucking suck. But I can’t hide at home forever—and I’m over my mom’s BS.”

I could only guess how bad Lacey’s mom was if she’d rather be at school than at home with her. “Well, I’m glad to see you. And—things’ll blow over soon. With prom coming up, you know someone’ll do something stupid and then everyone’ll forget about this.”

She rocked her hands back and forth on the steering wheel, white-knuckled. “Yeah. They will.”

“Absolutely,” I said.

On our own, neither of us were fully convinced, but if we stuck together we could make it through the day.

“And I, uh, didn’t tell you,” I said as we walked in, “there’s been some additional redecorating of your locker.”

Lacey shrugged. “Whatever.”

“I cleaned it up yesterday but if there’s more, I can help out again.”

“Cool,” she said, with a curt nod. I expected more from her—fear, worry, softness?—but I realized I was watching her put her armor on again. Lacey wasn’t just my best friend—she was also like a Robocop for our shitty times.

If only she came with laser beams or machine gun turrets installed.

I followed her through Redson High’s front doors and entered Lightning Land.

Texts flew with abandon, continuous streams of information back and forth from everyone’s phones, the walls pulsing with power, the lights overhead glowing.

Snippets of conversations, corners of photos—everything passed through me, and I paid attention to all of it and none of it at once.

I felt a hand on my arm. “You okay?” Lacey asked.

“Oh, yeah,” I said, shaking my head and concentrating on the now. “Don’t worry about me.”

“Okay. Weirdo,” she said, with a slight grin.

She led the way to our lockers. Some kind janitor had finished the job I’d started, scrubbing all the letters off all the way—and they hadn’t been replaced. Prom was just a week away, maybe we were right and things were already dying down.

So she knelt down to and dialed her dial, while I dialed mine above her, and it was almost like old times—as old as last week, when things didn’t suck quite so bad—and then she gasped as her locker opened and pictures flooded out.

Into her lap and over my shoes—sharp-cornered glossy squares—I recognized the red background from the ZB threat, and saw her on all of them, her mouth was open this time and someone had his thumb in it like she was a hooked fish.

I heard her gasping like she was drowning, trying to pick them all up and shove them all back.

I looked around quickly—no one else had noticed yet—we were in the pre-class rush.

“Jessie—this—” she sputtered the words, trying to shove all the proof of her assault back into her locker like she could go back in time.

Those texts I’d snooped on yesterday—Danny. That asshole—or Azzho1e. This was supposed to be over—and he was a fucking liar. Even though she’d told him she wasn’t going to talk, he was scared and wanted to keep her quiet. Or, he couldn’t stop himself from kicking her when she was down.

Either way—anger flared in me, bright and true.

I knelt down and grabbed her shoulders. “Do you trust me?” Her eyes went from being glazed to focusing on me alone.

“Get out all the books you need now. Don’t come back here for the rest of the day. We’ll clean out your locker before we go home.”

She did as she was told, pulling half her books out with the faint stink of sulfur rising, then she stood, slamming her locker shut. I knelt and re-did the lock.

“All day long, pretend that nothing has happened to you. That you didn’t even notice this. That you definitely, absolutely, do not give a fuck. Can you do that?”

She caught her breath and nodded. “Yeah.”

“Okay.” The warning bell dinged overhead. “I’ll see you at lunch.”

I walked through the halls to biology with a purpose.

I saw myself more as a creature of light than as human anymore—I didn’t want to be human, if being human meant hurting like this.

I expanded myself, my consciousness, I didn’t know what words to use for it, only that I felt wings unfold from me like a net to snoop-taste-spy on everything within range.

Whoever had done that to Lacey—surely they’d stuck around to see her reaction—and surely they had to crow about it to someone.

I stumbled into biology feeling like I was leaving half of myself in the hall and sat down by Sarah, conscious of the worried way she was looking at me but too busy listening to the chaos of everyone else’s phones.

“You’re acting weird, Jessie,” she whispered.

Ms. Liebel closed the door, same as teachers all around the school, and the level of it’s my birthday!—is your brother’s friend visiting from college this weekend?—look at my shoes!— dampened. I turned towards Sarah slowly. “It’s been a weird week.”

Her nose crinkled. “Are you high?”

“What?” I wheeled on her, condensing all of my attention back to the real world as she studied my pupils.

“Just asking. It’s a valid question.”

“Not of me, it isn’t.”

“Sorry, I forgot you’re all straight edge and stuff.” There was this thing about having an alcoholic parent that Sarah could never understand—booze didn’t interest me in the least.

“So—about Liam, you promised,” she went on, whispering under her breath as Ms. Liebel began to lecture.

“I think I got him an A on our pop quiz yesterday—and he invited me to a party on Friday.”

Her eyes widened and she made a silent scream. “Is this an invite, like, as a friend? Or, something more?”

“Doesn’t matter. I said no.”

She punched me, hard. “Are you insane?”

“Ow!” I yelped, and held my shoulder where she’d hit me.

“Ladies!” Mrs. Liebel said, and both Sarah and I pretended to pay attention. Halfway through the first sentence she wrote on the board, Sarah elbowed me, muttering under her breath.

“You have to go.”

Charge built in me. I was ready to take it out on her—how dare she say that when she didn’t know what they’d put Lacey through—then I immediately deflated, both because she was my friend and because she was right.

“I’ll see if I can go,” I muttered back.

Sarah beamed at me like she’d solved world peace, and turned back to take notes—while I spent the rest of biology trying to figure out how I was going to explain my change of heart to Liam—and then wipe Danny’s phone.