Authors: Kahoko Yamada
I
’
m such a fucking moron
! Sara stomped into her house and slammed the front door shut behind her, and then, remembering that her father was upstairs sleeping, called out, “Sorry, Dad!” She continued to rebuke herself while going up the stairs: How could she have been so stupid to believe that she had genuinely made a friend? How could she not have learned her lesson after Kimberly
Weitsel?
She hung her jacket in her bedroom closet and then went into the bathroom to wash the sweat and fake blood off her face.
Sara hated that Jason had seen her eating. When he’d had that shit-eating grin on his face, he’d probably been thinking about telling all of his friends about her stuffing her piggish face full of chips. And he’d had the audacity to tell her that ridiculous lie about how he had been thinking about football, and she, like a gullible fool, had believed him.
She started to wonder what else Jason had lied about. Had any of the stuff about his parents been true? Or when he had called her in the middle of the night and told her he was so scared about college—had any of that been true? Had he truly cared about her mom dying? Had he even really needed help with calculus? The more she thought about all the different ways Jason might have deceived her, the more pissed off she became, but as angry as she was at him for lying to her, she was even angrier with herself for believing all his bullshit, all because she had thought she had finally found a friend.
Idiot
!
She wasn’t angry with herself for going to that party though. Sure, she’d had a horrible time (she hadn’t even been there for five minutes before those assholes had started making fun of her), but had she not gone, she would’ve never found out that her
friend
had made some kind of bet about her (it was a good thing she hadn’t made it far enough to find a back door to escape out of). She wondered what it was, the bet. She should’ve let the bitch answer before she had ripped him a new one. On second thought, she was happy not knowing. She was better off not knowing (this was one of the few times where ignorance was bliss). She had discovered Jason’s true nature, and she had escaped whatever he and his buddies had devised for her, unscathed, and that was all that mattered. That, and being smarter and tougher to prevent something like this from happening to her ever again. She didn’t need friends (she had made it through life without them so far, and she would continue to make it without them); she needed to be a bigger bitch.
She finished in the bathroom and then plodded to the kitchen to nosh on Doritos.
This was the worse night of Jason’s life: he wasn’t having any fun at a party, and he wasn’t having his perfect night with Sara; and if all of that wasn’t bad enough, he might have to pay his friends four hundred dollars.
He polished off his can of beer. It was his tenth that evening.
“What happened? I heard you got into it with Hungry Hippo.”
Jason looked up and saw Emily walking into the kitchen toward him.
“Who the hell invited her, anyway?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe she smelled food like a shark smells blood and wandered in.”
Emily laughed. He hadn’t noticed it earlier, but her costume did a great job of amplifying the features of her amazing body: the bustier made her plump, perky breasts look bigger and her svelte waist look smaller; the boy-short panties made her tight, round ass look fuller; and the knee-high stiletto boots made her long, lean legs look shapelier.
He motioned for her to come to him. Emily wrapped herself around him and nuzzled his neck. He kissed her on the cheek. “Sorry I was an asshole to you earlier.”
“You’re forgiven. Just don’t let it happen again,” she said in a faux-pouty voice.
“Still wanna go upstairs?”
“Mm-hmm,” she purred.
Emily wasn’t the one Jason wanted to be with tonight, but she was a decent consolation prize, and he deserved someone to lick his wounds with after the beating he had taken from Sara and his friends. He grabbed Emily by the hand and took her upstairs. There were no empty bedrooms, so he took her into one of the bathrooms.
He backed her up against the door and ripped her panties off. She undid his flies and stroked his dick until it was hard and had pre-cum dripping from the slit while he fingered her to get her wet. Once he felt her fluids run down his fingers, he lifted one of her legs and entered her, pounding her hard against the door. He kept his eyes closed, so he could pretend that it was Sara he was making love to and that they were having their perfect night.
Jason woke up with a massive hangover and regrets over what had transpired with Emily last night: he had lasted several minutes inside her, and as soon as he had finished, he wished he had never slept with her. It wasn’t because the sex with Emily had been bad; on the contrary, it had been quite good. It was because it was sex with the wrong person. He had screwed up things with the right person, and he needed to fix it.
That afternoon Jason showed up at Sara’s house, carrying a bouquet of
blue hydrangeas
he had bought from the fancy floral shop on Franklin Street (they had set him back fifty dollars, plus tax), as a last-ditch effort to win her affections. He waited until the afternoon to go to Sara’s because he knew her father would be at work by then, and he didn’t want to run into him. He had guns, and there was no telling what Sara had told him. Also, it would be easier to crack Sara if she was alone.
He would go in, flashing his puppy-dog eyes (they were bleary and slightly bloodshot, but they had never failed him, and he was still as handsome as ever), extending the beautiful flowers, and offering his sincerest apologies. She would instantly forgive him, and then they would have sex while he secretly filmed it to win the bet. This plan had worked for him before, and it would work for him now. He was wearing his letterman jacket and his lucky blue plaid boxers, so he was feeling especially confident.
He rang the doorbell. Sara answered after two rings, wearing a blue T-shirt and jeans. Her long red hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She tried to slam the door in his face once she saw him, but he blocked the door with his free hand.
“What do you want?” she said, fire and fury in her eyes.
“I came to apologize,” he said, with his puppy-dog eyes and contrite face. “That bet thing—it was so fucking stupid. I’m so fucking stupid for even agreeing to do it. The thing is, I like you. A lot. I’ve never met a girl like you. I mean, you’re smart and funny, and I know you probably don’t think so, but you’re really pretty. I got you these.” He tried to hand her the
hydrangeas
, but she refused to take them.
“Oh my fucking god! This has got to be the lamest fucking trick you assholes have ever tried!” she sneered.
Jason looked at her, thunderstruck by her response to his apology.
“What, you thought I wouldn’t recognize game when I heard it? I’ve never had a boyfriend before, but that doesn’t mean I don’t realize when I’m being played. Just leave me alone, I’m not interested.”
She tried to close the door again, but Jason blocked her.
“No one’s playing you, not this time. This isn’t some prank or trick to make fun of you, Sara. I’m dead serious when I say I like you. In fact, I”—his voice caught in his throat as he struggled to put into words what he had been feeling for weeks now. He had been a coward before when he had tried to tell Sara how he felt, but he wasn’t going to be one this time—“I think I love you.” There. He had said the words; he had made himself transparent. It felt like an eternity on a falling rollercoaster as he waited for Sara to forgive him, apologize for being a bitch, and say she loved him too.
“Ugh! Just go find one of your bimbos to fuck and leave me alone, ’cause I’m done with you. I’m fucking done with you!” was the response she gave him instead.
She tried to slam the door in his face for the third time, but he blocked her with his free hand. Dropping the
hydrangeas
, he used his other hand to shove her inside.
Sara screamed as she hit the floor.
Jason locked the door and approached her, enraged. Who did this fat bitch think she was? He had countless—not to mention much hotter—girls throwing themselves at him every day, but he chose her, and
she
kept rejecting
him
? Uh-uh, not this time.
Sara tried to run, but Jason grabbed a fistful of her hair and pulled her to the floor. She dug her nails into his hands in an attempt to free herself, but all it did was make Jason kick her in the stomach until she desisted. He climbed on top of her and tugged on her jeans, causing the button to pop off as her jeans came down. Sara made another attempt to defend herself by trying to punch Jason, but he grabbed her arms and pinned them on the floor above her head with one arm. She spat in his face; he punched her in hers, giving her a nasty nosebleed.
“No! Please, please, please!” Sara begged, but Jason ignored her pleas, pulled down her panties with his free arm, and then forced himself inside her. Sara felt Jason’s warm cinnamon-coated breath on her neck as he violated her; she felt the calluses on his hands as he used them to continuously restrain her; and she felt the warm crimson blood running from her nose down into her ajar mouth as he writhed against her. There wasn’t anything covering her nose and mouth, but she felt as though she couldn’t breathe, nor could she think, fear and anxiety having taken her mind prisoner the same way Jason had taken her body. All she could do was stare at the picture of her mother hanging on the wall until it was over.
It had been an hour since Jason had left. Sara hadn’t moved from the spot on the floor where he had left her, once he had finished. She was in a paralytic shock: she had often fantasized about what it would be like to have a boyfriend, to have someone want her, to have someone make love to her, to even have someone make love to her roughly, but in her wildest dreams, she had never imagined that something like this would happen to someone like her. And for Jason Pruitt, of all people, to be the perpetrator was even more of a mindfuck.
Jason was by all accounts the hottest guy in school, and he was a football star; he could willingly have any girl he wanted, and he often had—Emily Bulstride, that stupid bitch Kimberly Weitsel, and countless others (Sara didn’t have any friends at school to give her the latest gossip, but she had frequently overheard people talking in class). So why had he come after her? She wasn’t pretty, she wasn’t sexy, she wasn’t skinny, and she wasn’t popular, so why her?
As Sara cogitated, trying to make sense of what had happened to her, her mind drifted back to the party—where she had found out about the bet and where her relationship with Jason had turned sour—and she had a sickening thought: what if the bet had been to sleep with her, the ugly, fat girl that no one liked and that everyone found disgusting? It would explain why Jason had come by to apologize, why he had tried to feed her that lame cock-and-bull story about his attraction to her, and why he hadn’t taken no for an answer. He had been trying to win a bet.
The hatred Sara had for herself for letting Jason in increased tenfold: Jason was an asshole and a piece of shit for playing her, but she was the fool who had fallen for his bullshit, resulting in her receiving a brutal attack in her own home. And she had thought she would get away from Jason and his friends unscathed.
The world had never let Sara get away unscathed. It always made sure she suffered. It had made sure she had suffered on the playground, where the other kids had rejected and taunted her for being fat; it had made sure she had suffered in junior high, where the other kids had shunned her unless they needed help with their schoolwork or wanted to
pull a harmless prank
on her; it had made sure she had suffered at her cousin Marie’s birthday party, where her aunt had shamed her; it had made sure she had suffered when her mother had died prematurely; and now the world had made sure she suffered in high school.
But she wasn’t going to suffer alone. While Sara felt that her being too trusting and too desperate for friendship had led to her assault, that didn’t absolve Jason from guilt. And just as he had made sure she had received her punishment, she would make damn sure he received his.
Sara slowly peeled herself off the floor. As she stood up and the shock of her attack began to wane, she realized that Jason’s depravity had injured her physically almost as much as it had mentally: her shoulders ached from Jason pinning her arms above her head and against the floor, her nose burned from Jason punching her in the face, and her vagina was raw and tattered from Jason’s relentless thrusting.
When Sara went to put on her panties and jeans, she discovered that only her jeans were in the pile. She looked around the room for her panties, but she didn’t see them. Had Jason stolen them? For what purpose? To add insult to injury (literally)? As a memento of his success, of his conquest? She pictured Jason and his friends sitting around laughing as they passed around her size twenty-two panties. She put her jeans on. She hobbled across the living room to reach the phone and dialed 911.
“Hello, this is 911, what is your emergency?” Sara was grateful she had received a female operator; she wouldn’t feel comfortable discussing her situation with a man.
“I’ve . . . I’ve been attacked, sexually. In my . . . in my home.”
“You were raped, ma’am?”
There it was. That ugly, vicious word Sara had been so careful to avoid in her thoughts and words had just been said, point-blank. She felt silly for being so persnickety about which words were acceptable to describe her attack with, as though saying any word other than
rape
would make what had happened to her seem not that bad.
“Yes,” Sara replied. “I . . . I was raped.” She had said it; she was dealing with it, or trying to at least.
“What is your name, ma’am?”
“Sara Krason.”
“Is your attacker still there?”
Sara, still not fully in her senses, shook her head no instead of saying the word.
“Hello? Miss, are you still there?”
“Yes.”
“He is?” the operator asked, concerned.
“No—I mean, yes, I’m still here, but no, my attacker is not.”
“Have you been injured?”
“Yes.”
“And your address is 232 Pilstine Drive, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Help is on the way, ma’am. We—”
Sara hung up on the operator. She migrated to the couch to lie down until help arrived. The conversation she’d had with the emergency operator was short, but it wasn’t sweet: it was taxing, to say the least, to reveal something as embarrassing and as shameful as what had happened to her to a person she had never met before. She wanted to calm her nerves before she had to reveal her assault to even more strangers.
Half an hour later, Sara’s doorbell rang. She was already up, her respite having done her no good, because all she could think about was her attack: she should’ve never opened the door when Jason had come over; she should’ve fought harder to get away; she should’ve called for help when Jason had climbed on top of her; she should’ve said no, should’ve yelled it, should’ve screamed it.
Sara answered the door—her hands shaking resulted in her having to make several attempts to unlock it—and found two police officers on the other side, one female and one male.
“Sara Krason?” asked the female officer.
“Yes.”
“I’m Officer Barrett, this is Officer Holtz. I can see that you haven’t showered or changed your clothing. That’s good.”
“Why?”
“Because we need to collect evidence to catch your attacker,” explained Officer Holtz. “Can you tell us where you were attacked?”
She pointed at the spot on the floor where Jason had assaulted her.
“Officer Holtz will stay here and help collect evidence. I’m gonna ride with you to the hospital to get checked out. Follow me, please.”
Sara nodded, and Officer Barrett led her to the ambulance waiting in the driveway. Once inside, one of the paramedics examined Sara’s injured nose (it was sore but unbroken, and the bleeding had already ceased on its own). The other paramedic radioed the hospital to let them know a rape victim was on the way.
“Sara, I wanna ask you some questions, okay?” Barrett looked at her sympathetically while smiling.
Sara nodded.
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
“Do you know the name of your attacker?”
Sara nodded. “It’s a boy I go to school with. His name is Jason. Jason Pruitt.”
“Do it Pruitt?” the paramedic treating Sara said in disbelief. He then said, “Sorry. Huge football fan. My brother’s actually on the Tallis team. Sorry,” after Sara and Officer Barrett shot looks of anger and annoyance at him.
“Do you know where he lives?” Officer Barrett asked.
“No.”
“That’s okay, we can find that out. Do you happen to have his phone number?”
“Yes, it’s um . . .” Jason had given Sara his phone number after the two had become
friends
. The number was on the tip of her tongue, but Sara couldn’t remember it.
“Don’t worry about it, honey. You can tell us later, or we can find it ourselves.”
They arrived at the hospital. Surprisingly, Sara had to wait only a few minutes before a female nurse came to get her. She was elderly and kind, a grandmother who indulged her grandchildren when their parents wouldn’t.
“Hi, my name is Nurse Linda. What’s yours, honey?” she cooed to Sara.
“Sara.”
“That’s a pretty name. My granddaughter’s name is Sara, too.”
Nurse Linda took Sara and Barrett to an examination room. She placed a clean white sheet on the floor behind a partition. “Could you step behind the partition and undress for me, honey?”
“In here, in front of everybody?” Sara looked around nervously.
Linda turned toward Barrett.
“It’s okay, you’re perfectly safe here,” said Barrett in a soothing, motherly voice.
“But . . . you guys will still have to see me naked. Won’t you?”
“I understand how you feel,” Barrett said, cautiously approaching Sara, but stopping once she saw Sara backing up. “You’ve just been attacked, and now you’re being asked to undress in front of strangers. I know this is a harrowing ordeal, but we can’t catch your rapist unless you allow us to collect evidence. I promise we’ll make it as quick and painless as possible. Right?” Barrett turned to the nurse. Nurse Linda nodded. Barrett turned back to Sara, waiting for her decision.
Sara didn’t want to do this, but she knew Barrett was right. She sighed and went behind the partition.
“Stand on the white sheet, and leave your clothes on there as you take them off, honey,” Linda told her.
“I’m so proud of you, Sara,” Barrett said. “You’re doing great so far. Can you tell me what happened?”
“Um, Jason—I was tutoring him and we had—well, I thought we had become friends. He invited me to a party last night, but it was only as some kind of ruse, so he and his friends could do something to me. They had made a bet about me. I’m not sure what the bet was, but I . . . I think Jason bet his friends that he could sleep with me.” Sara’s voice cracked as she finished her sentence. She cleared her throat and continued. “He came over today to apologize, but that was a lie. When I told him I didn’t want to have anything else to do with him, he . . . that’s when he attacked me.”
“Okay, Sara, can you tell me exactly what he did to you?” asked Barrett.
“I have to say?” Sara whimpered.
“I’m afraid so, sweetheart.”
Sara began to tremble. She knew that she would have to recount her attack to people and that it would be a struggle, but she had never imagined that it would be this difficult. She told Barrett what had happened during the assault with such rapidity that Barrett had to ask her to slow down several times, which only made the situation worse.
“Thanks, Sara. That was perfect. Are you fully undressed now?” Barrett asked her.
“Yes.”
“Okay, we need you to come out now, so we can do the rape kit.”
Sara didn’t respond, leading Barrett to call her name.
“I’m coming,” Sara said. The mere thought of anyone seeing her naked had always terrified her, and now she would have no choice—if she wanted justice—but to confront her fear. Sweat slid down her face and back, adding to her dismay. She took a deep breath and came from behind the partition with her eyes closed—and resolving to keep them closed until this shit was over. She heard feet shuffling and then a camera clicking.
“Oh God, you’re taking pictures?” she shrieked. She tried to run, but with her eyes closed, she ended up running into a wall and collapsing on the floor.
Barrett came to her aid. “I know that this is extremely humiliating, but we have to do it. I know I probably sound like a broken record by now. It won’t be that much longer, I promise.”
“How much more do you have to do?”
“Well, right now, your clothes are being bagged and tagged, and then if you feel up to it, we’ll take evidence from your body. For instance, we’ll dig under your fingernails to get any DNA that may be there in case you scratched him. Still wanna do this?”
Sara nodded.
“Stand up, please.”
Sara did what Barrett had asked.
“Could you take a few steps forward?”
Sara moved forward, and the picture taking resumed. A few moments later, she felt a comb tearing through her hair. “Ow!”
“I’m sorry,” said an unfamiliar voice. It was cold, emotionless—a stark contrast to Nurse Linda’s and Officer Barrett’s voices. “We have to pluck several of your hairs.”
“Who are you? Who else is in here?”
“She’s the doctor. She came in while you were behind the partition,” Barrett said.
Sara gritted her teeth through the rest of the hair-collecting process. Someone touching her genital region made her jump. “What the hell are you people trying to do to me?”
“They have to collect hairs from your pubic region, too, sweetie. Just hold on a little bit longer,” Barrett said.
This is turning out to be just as bad as the rape
, Sara thought.
“Sara, can you open your mouth, please?” the doctor asked several minutes later. “We have to take swabs from your mouth. We’ll have to take them from your vaginal and anal regions as well.”
Sara opened her mouth. The metallic taste of blood was still on her tongue from her nosebleed.
The sensation of cotton swabs scraping against and inside Sara’s vaginal and anal regions made her finally break down and cry—something she hated doing in front of other people, something she had stopped doing years ago, something she had sworn no one would ever make her do again. She had thought the examination was as bad as her attack, but she had been wrong; it was worse. These people were spending what felt like hours probing and violating every part of her body and seeing every flaw, and she had no idea what they were going to do next or how much longer the examination was going to last, the suspense of their attacks heightening her already-elevated anxiety. Jason’s attack felt ephemeral in comparison.
“You’re doing great, Sara. We’re almost finished,” Barrett stated.
Sara felt her fingernails being scraped and cut.
“Sara, make a fist for me, please. We’re going to draw some blood,” the doctor said.
Sara balled her right hand into a fist and waited for the needle to pierce her skin.
“Sara, can you tell me if you use any kind of birth control?” the doctor asked.
“I don’t use any,” she said in between sniffles.
“When was the last time you menstruated?”
“Oh, it . . . I don’t know. Two, maybe three weeks ago. I don’t know.”
“Have you had any recent sexual activity with anyone other than your attacker?”
“No, I . . . I was a virgin prior to this.”
“Okay, Sara, now I’m going to administer a shot.”
“A shot?”
“Yes. It’s antibiotics to help prevent the transmission of some of the STDs your attacker may have. We’ve drawn blood to test you for HIV. The results should be back in about half an hour. We’ll also give you some emergency contraceptives to help prevent pregnancy.”
The day just kept getting worse and worse for Sara: The possibility of having Jason’s child or catching an STD from him had never crossed her mind. Pregnancy wasn’t that big of a problem. There was another way to end a pregnancy if the contraceptives didn’t work, but she remembered learning in health class that not all STDs are curable, and there was a strong possibility that Jason might have something and passed it along to her, given his reputation.
“I’m going to have to inject the antibiotics into your buttocks.”
“My buttocks?”
“I’ll make it as quick and as painless as possible.”
“Okay.”
“I’ve placed a table in front of you. You can hold on to that if you need to.”
Sara reached her hands out and placed them on the table.
“Let me know when you’re ready, Sara.”
“I’m ready.”
Within seconds warm latex gripped Sara’s butt, and then cold metal pricked it.