Page 26 of The Locked Ward

I’m jerked awake, my senses under assault. Light pierces my eyes, music pounds through the air, and an alien force is pinning down my limbs.

I thrash around and free myself from the sheet I’m twisted in. I squint and take in my surroundings. A shade is gliding up, revealing a wall of windows and the cardinal and violet hues of the sunrise. Beyoncé is singing about girls who run the world.

Someone got into Georgia’s apartment and turned on the music and flicked the switch to raise the blinds. I’m no longer alone.

“Hey!” I shout as I leap out of bed. “Who’s there?”

No answer.

I look around wildly for a weapon. I keep a baseball bat under my bed at home, but unfortunately my twin doesn’t. I yank open the drawer of her nightstand, hoping to find a can of Mace but it’s empty.

All I have to defend myself are my hands and feet. But I can fight well; I’ve done it before.

The bedroom door is wide open. I move to the side of it, my breaths coming fast and shallow. I spread out my feet so it will be harder for someone to knock me off balance and wait for the intruder’s next move.

Nothing happens. It’s hard to hear over the music, but I don’t pick up sounds that indicate anyone is approaching.

Then the lyrics hit me: Beyoncé is singing about working hard, doing the nine-to-five, making her millions.

I think I know what’s going on now.

But the only way to prove my theory is to test it. I leap out into the hallway and spin around, looking in all directions. No one is in sight. I walk into the living room, more casually now, peering into the open door of Georgia’s office as I pass it.

The apartment is empty.

Apparently Georgia likes to wake up abruptly, like diving into a cold swimming pool. The music and blinds must be set on timers, maybe through a device like Nest.

My sister may look like a pampered socialite, but she’s hard-core in some ways.

She once competed in an ultramarathon, running fifty miles in a single day.

She built her own business—a very successful one.

And based on what I saw in her eyes when I met her, she has successfully manipulated the legal system to allow her to stay in a psych ward rather than jail.

Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised by her boot camp–style alarm clock.

I rub my eyes and peer at the clock over the microwave. It’s 5:45 A.M. It takes discipline to get up this early when you don’t have to—and to work as hard as Georgia does when you don’t need to. People probably underestimate her all the time. That’s something else we have in common.

People think I kept Sweetbay’s to hold on to a piece of home, and they’re right.

The pilsner glasses I use are the same ones my mom and dad filled countless times.

When my fingers work the cash register, they graze numbers worn from their touch.

If it’s slow, I pull out a stool tucked next to the ice maker where my father rested during breaks.

My patrons think my sentimental streak is sweet.

But they don’t see the thing I changed about my bar.

I added a small safe just beneath the cash register.

I keep a six-shot pistol in it, fully loaded.

I took a course at a shooting range, and I break down and clean my gun myself.

And when the occasional fight erupts at my bar, I don’t hesitate to step in and help break it up.

I’m a red belt in tae kwon do, and when my nose was broken in a sparring match last year, I would’ve kept fighting if the ref hadn’t stopped the match because of all the blood.

A woman closing up a bar late at night could become a target, and I don’t ever intend to be a victim. I’ve witnessed the devastation caused by sexual assault. It happened to my college roommate, Beth.

It was our junior year. Beth was heading out to a fraternity party at the invitation of a guy she had a big crush on.

I helped her pick out her outfit: her favorite old jeans, because she didn’t want to look like she was trying too hard, paired with my emerald-green halter top, which made her hazel eyes pop.

I did her eyeliner because she was so nervous she couldn’t draw a straight line.

“How do I look?” Beth asked just before she walked out the door.

“Beautiful but scared,” I told her. I grabbed a bottle of lemon-flavored vodka from our minifridge and poured a shot. “Drink this.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Really?”

Beth was innocent in some ways. She’d never touched alcohol before college, and she’d slept with only one guy. She usually sipped beer at parties, and I’d seen her tipsy just a couple of times.

I urged her to do the shot. Told her it would take the edge off.

I hate myself for that now.

She swallowed the vodka, her mouth puckering.

“Have fun,” I told her. She threw her arms around me, and as I hugged her back, I caught a whiff of my perfume.

Beth hadn’t asked to borrow it because she didn’t need to ask.

We’d gotten close during freshman year and we’d roomed together ever since.

We shared everything: clothes, inside jokes, class notes, and confidences.

We were both only children who were used to being alone, and neither of us needed a big circle of friends. All we needed was each other.

Beth walked into the party and greeted her crush, who grabbed her hand and pulled her to a table where people were playing beer pong. Beth kept losing; that much she remembers. She had to chug beer after beer. But she can’t recall what happened after that.

She awoke the next morning in the guy’s bed, confused and aching, her jeans tangled around one of her ankles. He lived in a triple, and his roommates were in beds nearby. The room reeked of sour beer and sweat.

She crept out of the bedroom while her assailant slept on, a snore escaping his open mouth, a forearm slung over his eyes. She stumbled to the bathroom and threw up.

As she was leaving, she was seen by a few guys in the living room. They were slumped on couches, drinking Gatorade for their hangovers and laughing.

When they spotted Beth stumbling down the stairs in last night’s clothes, their laughter grew more raucous.

“Walk of shame! Walk of shame!” one of them chanted, and the others joined in.

They followed her out the front door and yelled it from the porch, laughing and egging each other on, while Beth ran back to our room.

I’d gone to a different party the night before, coming home around midnight. I went to bed assuming Beth was having a good time. I didn’t think to swing by the frat party. It was two lousy blocks away. If I’d bothered to check on her, maybe I could have saved her.

I woke up to the sound of Beth hyperventilating. I’ll never forget the sound of her breathing. It had a ragged quality, like her lungs had been shredded.

She was curled up on the floor between our single beds. I wrapped my arms around her, thinking someone had died. I was right, in a way. The happy, easygoing person she had been was gone.

I urged Beth to report the rape, but she wouldn’t. Instead, she fell into a spiral of shame and self-doubt. Did people know? she kept wondering. Had his roommates watched—maybe even cheered on her rapist? And oh, God, what if someone had taken pictures?

Once, when we went to the dining hall to get lunch, the guy—his name was Bradley—was at a table, his feet propped up on an empty chair, eating a burrito. Beth froze like a trapped animal. She made a small, heartbreaking sound. When I took her hand to pull her away, it was ice cold.

Rage swelled in my body. It took everything I had to not go after Bradley, to punish him for harming my friend. To make him hurt just as badly as he’d hurt her.

Instead, I walked Beth to an off-campus smoothie place and talked to her gently. She was no longer hungry. She didn’t want to talk. All she wanted to do was curl up in bed.

She lost weight. Couldn’t sleep. Started skipping classes.

It broke my heart to see her lying there, like a shadow of her happy, chatty former self. I stroked her hair, brought her soup, and told her over and over again that she’d done nothing wrong, that she was the victim of a terrible crime and deserved help.

But she moved home to Nebraska and finished the semester online. Then she transferred to a small school, and I never saw her again.

I tried, though. I texted and called, but she rarely answered. When she did, she was polite yet distant. She didn’t seem to want to be connected to anything that reminded her of that time. Not even me.

But I couldn’t stop being reminded of Beth. And I don’t think I’ve ever stopped mourning her.

Every time I saw Bradley around campus, shirtless on a warm day as he played Frisbee on the quad or doing his stupid bro handshake with his buddies, my rage intensified.

I kept thinking about how terrified Beth was that he’d taken pictures or a video—that her assault would be never-ending, with images of it passed from guy to guy.

So one night, I sought out Bradley and we had a conversation. There were pictures. I made sure no one else would ever see them.

It was the least I could do for Beth.

Now I turn off the music blaring in Georgia’s apartment and go back to bed.

I lie there for an hour, unable to sleep, before I give up and head to her shower.

I towel off and borrow her toiletries, then look in her closet.

I’ll have to wear my jeans again since hers are a size too small, but I can fit into one of her tops.

I select a black V-neck with three-quarter sleeves and a delicate ruffle on the ends.

I look at her Chanel combat boots, but there’s no excuse for me to wear them, so I put on my own slightly battered black ankle boots, the ones I bought for 20 percent off.

Caroline won’t be here for another couple of hours, so I’ve got plenty of time to pick up breakfast and a toothbrush and her family’s Bible. I sling my bag over my shoulder and walk to the elevator.

An older woman with a little white dog wearing a plaid bow on its collar is just stepping out.

She stops and stares at me. This is the most exclusive floor of a ritzy building.

All the neighbors must recognize each other.

She looks like she wants to interrogate me, but I merely step around her, into the elevator.

“Have a nice day,” I say as the doors slide shut, erasing her from view.

A different concierge is at the front desk—an earnest-looking young woman with dark braids.

I don’t hesitate. I approach her with a smile. “Hi, just wanted to introduce myself. I’m Amanda, and I’m working with Georgia Cartwright’s lawyer.”

She blinks from behind her glasses. “Nice to meet you. I’m Jordan.”

“Gavin probably told you I’ll be doing some work in Ms. Cartwright’s apartment, so you’ll see me coming and going.”

Her eyes grow wide, but all she says is “Of course.”

I feel a strange confidence. It’s as if I belong here in the epicenter of my sister’s world.

It wasn’t so hard to step into her life after all.