“Why’d you tell everyone that shit about me? Nothing happened between us. Why did you do that?” My voice sounds so small. My body feels so small. I shrink, but don’t disappear.

Aidan shrugs, getting closer. I can smell him. Sweat. Body spray. Detergent. Confidence. “I dunno. Something to do.”

“What?” I whisper.

“I mean, it might as well have happened. You wanted it to. We both know that.”

Closer.

My mouth quivers, and I am shaking my head no. Never. I never. I want to send out a burn, I want to insult him, but there’s a sob in my throat.

I blink and say, “Oh fucking great,” and try to move around him, but he reaches his arm out and stops me in that same moment, almost like it’s an accident, almost like I walked into him, and grabs me in the crotch. He squeezes, hard, painfully, and I gasp, and he squeezes again, leaning in, his breath on my face, and then lets go. Like it didn’t happen. Like it didn’t matter.

“Better get back to class, Stevie. I’m late myself. See ya up there.” And he turns and bounds casually up the stairs, leaving me in the stairwell, my palms against the cool of the brick, my heart pounding in my throat.

I don’t tell Dee. I don’t tell anyone. I don’t even know if it happened.

Chapter 16

16

Episode 71 00:15

So many classic movies are, I’m sad to say, full-on rape culture offenders. I mean, look at Sixteen Candles, one of the biggest culprits, and so are so many of the beloved John Hughes movies. Or Back to the Future, Nerds, Say Anything. They turn rape and rape culture into a joke, a punch line.

A few days later, Saturday, Dee meets me outside my house. I’ve been sitting on the front step, staring into space. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I haven’t felt like doing anything, not even eating, since I saw Aidan in the stairwell. Since he— Well, anyway. I look down the street at nothing while Dee sits beside me.

Our garage is open and Reg is hammering on a piece of metal, making a god-awful racket. He waves at us, asks us if we want to come check out the old railway ties he’s turning into a table for my mom. I say nothing but heave a sigh for years.

Dee looks at me, and I can see that she sees something there. Something hurting. “Hey,” she says softly, putting her arm around me, “I have an idea.”

“Oh yeah? What?”

“Why don’t we get out of here. Like, out of town,” she says, smiling.

I look at her. “Okay,” I say, morosely, “but where do you want to go?”

“I myself would like to see something wonderful, Stevie. Something enormous, dazzling, spectacular.”