Authors: Ashley Bodette
Chapter Nine
Becca
As I walk back inside the cabin, I can’t help but wonder what our parents think is going on after coming home, seeing us holding each other like that. It felt so nice…Asher, with his arms around me. And he even kissed my hair. But what does that mean to him? And should I be letting this happen?
Olivia pulls me out of my reverie by grabbing my arm and pulling me into the bunk room. She slams the door behind us. “What on earth, Livvie?”
“Are you and Asher, like, together?”
Um, I don’t really have an answer to that question. I decide to go with what feels somewhat close to the truth. “No, why?”
“I’m not really sure how to say this. Have you checked your phone at all since we got here?”
I hadn’t thought about my phone since the moment I got into that car with Asher and his parents to come up here. And being at volleyball camp all last week means I spent a total of about thirty minutes yesterday, before we left, to check anything going on with my phone, Facebook, etc. “No, I haven’t. Is there a reason I should have?”
“Well, check your phone first. I don’t want to get involved if I don’t have to.”
“Get involved in what?” But before I can even finish asking my question, Livvie bolts back out the door. What on earth could be such a big deal that I need to check my phone, right now, and that Livvie can’t just say to me?
I pull my phone out of my purse, which is lying on my bed. I hit the power button and nothing happens.
Dead.
I dig through my duffel bag, searching for my power cord. After finding my phone charger, on the bottom of the bag of course, I plug it in, and have to wait for it to decide it’s alive enough to turn back on.
The home screen finally comes to life and my phone dings that I have a new voicemail. Then a new text message. And another. And another.
That’s strange.
As the messaging app opens, I see that I have eight new text messages. Seven of those messages…are from Trip. I’m not sure I even want to read them. Next, I open up my Facebook app, since that’s the only social media thing that Livvie and I are both on, wondering if what’s bothering her is on there. The app comes up, and I see that I have 47 notifications. “What the heck is going on?” I'm scrolling through the notifications, and notice that almost all of them are comments on a post on my wall. Since I don't remember posting anything of that kind of worth yesterday, I go to my personal page. Right at the top is a post made by Trip. It says:
So this is why you think you’re too good for me now. Hope you two had fun, because if I get my hands on you...
Below this statement is a screenshot of a check-in from Asher’s profile page. It says:
Getting my sugar rush on! – with Becca Haines at RUSH
This is not happening. No, no, nonono…
-----
Asher
Olivia came out of the cabin like five minutes ago, and Becca still hasn’t come back out. I thought she wanted to finish our game. So, I head into the cabin, deciding to go and find her and see if I can drag her back outside. I call out her name, but she doesn’t answer. I stop in the hallway, between the door to the game room and the door to the bunk room. “Becca?”
Suddenly I hear a sob coming from my right: the bunk room. I walk into the room and find Becca crying, with her arms wrapped around her knees, rocking back and forth on her bed.
I practically run across the room, sit on her bed, then hook one arm under her knees, and wrap the other around her back, lifting her into my lap. I continue to rock with her, shushing her in her ear.
When her sobs have turned into silent tears, I push her hair away from her face and ask, “Becca, what happened?”
She doesn’t say anything, just points to her phone, lying on her pillow. I can’t reach it the way we’re sitting, so I move Becca so she is sitting between my legs, with her back against my chest. I reach across the bed and pick up her phone. When I turn on the screen, it’s on Becca’s Facebook page. I look a little closer, and see that Trip posted on her wall. When I read what he wrote, I see red. “What the hell is going on, Becca? What is he talking about?”
She takes a deep breath and wipes the tears from her eyes with the heels of her hand, then slowly slips the phone away from me. She scrolls the screen down just a little farther, and I can now see a screen shot of my check-in from the candy store yesterday. I didn’t think about the fact that he might see the post, or that he would care for that matter. Am I friends with him on Facebook? If I am, it’s about damn time I removed him. “I am so sorry, Becca. This is my fault. I didn't think about the fact that he might see that post. But it doesn't matter, because nobody should ever talk to you like that. If I get my hands on him—“ Becca silences me by covering my mouth with her hand, while shaking her head no. She starts to turn around in my lap, pushing against my chest, so I scoot further across the bed, putting my back against the wall, with my legs straight in front of me. She puts a knee on either side of my thighs, so she’s still sitting on my lap, but facing me straight on.
“This is
not
your fault, Asher. I should have blocked him on Facebook when I broke up with him. Of course I immediately changed my relationship status, but I didn’t think to make it so he couldn’t see my stuff anymore. And I certainly haven’t seen any posts from him. Besides, I’ve hardly been on Facebook anyway, since I didn’t want anyone to ask questions. And if I had just been honest with my friends, especially you, that post he made last night probably wouldn’t have happened.”
“What do you mean? What haven’t you been honest with me about?”
Becca sighs, then says, “If I tell you this, you have to promise me that you will not talk to anyone else about this, that you won’t treat me any differently than you do now, and that you will
not
do anything about it. Only my parents know. Well, and Trip’s parents, I guess. Not even Livvie knows.”
“Becca, if he did something to you, I can’t—“
“Promise. Me. Or I won’t be able to talk to you about this.”
This is freaking me out. I’ve never seen Becca like this. I don’t know if I can keep this promise, because I have no idea what she is about to tell me, but I make it anyway: “Fine. I promise.”
She sets her phone back down on the bed, and I immediately notice that she’s shaking. I grab both of her hands in mine, and hold them to my chest. “What happened, Becca?”
She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and says, “I guess I’d better start at the beginning.” If she has to start at the beginning, that means things were bad a lot longer than I thought they were. “So, Trip started hinting that he liked me some time last September, I think. He seemed so far out of my reach that I didn’t believe him at first. Plus, I was super busy with volleyball and stuff. But he was persistent. He started leaving cute little notes in my locker, and coming to home volleyball games, and when he asked me out on a date a couple weeks later, I couldn’t help but say yes. As you know, once we started dating, officially, Trip asked me to stop hanging out with other guys. At first I thought it was kind of adorable that he was a little jealous, and I was happy that he wanted to spend so much time with me. It made me feel special.
“But that wasn’t all that he wanted me to stop. At first it was little things. Like he would ask me to play hooky from an activity at school to spend the day with him. I thought it was sweet, so sometimes I did. He also kept hinting that he thought my playing banjo was kind of stupid. So, I put it aside. I didn’t think it was that big of a deal at the time. I had plenty of other things to focus on anyway, and I really liked Trip, so I wanted to do what I could to make him happy.”
I already don’t like where this sounds like it’s going, but I don’t say anything as Becca continues. “At Christmas, which I spent with his family, he told me he loved me. And I believed him. He bought me one of the most thoughtful Christmas gifts I’ve ever received. And said all these other nice things about me. And told his family that I was a keeper…it was just all really nice.
“But shortly after that, things started to go wrong. I had already made plans to spend New Year’s Eve with the volleyball girls months before, because we had to buy tickets in advance for the House of Blues New Year’s Eve concert. He asked me multiple times to stay home and spend the evening with him and his friends. I told him I was sorry, but there was no way I was giving up that ticket. He still was mad at me, but he seemed like he was getting over it.
“That night, he wouldn’t stop texting me. At first it was things like
I miss you,
or
I wish you were here with me
. But then they kept coming, and got more aggressive. And the girls told me I should just turn my phone off. That I deserved a girls’ night out. I hadn’t spent any time with them at all since I had started dating Trip, and I agreed with them. So I sent him a message saying I’d talk to him tomorrow, and shut my phone off. But I guess that wasn’t okay with him, because when I got home, at 2 o’clock in the morning, he was sitting on my front steps waiting for me.”
He was treating her like this all the way back in
January
, and she didn’t break up with him until
April
? What could possibly have possessed her—?
“He started yelling at me, asking me where the hell I had been, why I wasn’t answering his messages. I reminded him that he knew exactly where I was, and told him I had shut my phone off to save the battery in case I needed it on my way home. Of course that wasn’t exactly the truth, but that’s not the point. He told me—“ She stops to take a deep breath, and she still doesn’t open her eyes. "He told me it was complete and utter bullshit that I would rather spend New Year’s Eve with my bitchy girlfriends when I could have been spending it with him. That’s when I started yelling. I told him if that’s the way he felt, then he could take a flying leap and find a new girlfriend.
“He immediately sat down on my front step and started crying. And the idiot that I am, I walked up and sat down next to him on the step. I asked him why he was crying, and he said that if I was breaking up with him, that he might as well go jump off a bridge. I asked him why on earth he would do that, and he said that he loved me, and if he couldn’t have me, then he might as well just end it all. I didn’t really know what to say to that, so I just stayed silent. Then he turned to me and said he was sorry for freaking out, but that he loved me, and when I didn’t answer his texts, or later his calls, he was terrified that something had happened to me, and that if I had just stayed home with him, whatever had happened wouldn’t have happened.”
Wow. I knew Trip was a piece of work. But this? He’s like a freaking con artist.
“So you tried to break up with him
four months
before you actually did?”
She puts a finger up to my lips to shush me. “Please, just let me finish, or I might not be able to get through telling this.”
That sentence shuts me up even more than her finger on my lips. Because although I’m not sure I want to know all of this, I
need
to hear it.
“I fell for it. Hook, line, and sinker. He looked so heartbroken. And I wanted to believe him. And of course I didn’t want him to hurt himself. So I did what I thought was best for the moment: I apologized for saying I wanted to break up with him. That I was just angry that he was mad at me. He hugged me so hard, it almost hurt. Then he kissed me, and went home.”
I almost interrupt her, to ask if that was the last time he did anything like that, but I don’t want her to stop telling me what happened, so I keep my mouth shut.
“I spent as much time as I could with him, hoping that would be enough to keep him happy. But the way he was treating me…I constantly felt like I needed to ask him permission about things, like whether or not it was ok to spend time with my friends, and even my family sometimes. And he constantly told me, not only with his words, but with his actions, that his plans and activities were more important than mine, and that the things I wanted were stupid, or never going to happen. When he got his acceptance letter to UW, for their pre-med program, he kept pushing me to apply there once I got my ACT scores back. I told him I didn’t really want to go to UW, because they didn’t have a very good music education program, and I couldn’t get a track scholarship from them because they’re a division three school. He said I didn’t need a scholarship for track, and that I shouldn’t play college sports anyway, because we go to college to get a degree, not play games. Then he told me going to school to be a music teacher would be a waste of time, because it didn’t pay diddly squat, and I could do so much better than being a teacher, saying that stupid freaking cliché ‘Those who can’t do, teach.’ He made me question everything I had ever wanted. I thought maybe he was right.”
What kind of jerk, who says he loves a girl, tells that same girl that her dreams and aspirations are stupid?! I take a deep breath, to help me keep my tongue from spewing out my thoughts.
“You remember in March, when Mr. West assigned you and me that duet for contest?”