Fault Line Read online

  Kevin had seen her going down on another guy. Jesus. You’re definitely not with me. Ani’s venomous words scraped over me. I wasn’t. I wasn’t with her. I was part of her problem as far as I could tell.

  I drove back to school in time for the final bell. I pushed through swarms of kids trying to get out for the day. I scanned the halls looking for Ani but couldn’t find her. I texted Kevin and Kate to ask if they’d seen her. She’s meeting with Mr. Pinter, Kate texted back, and I ignored the tightening in my stomach.

  Instead, I practiced the words I would say to her in my head. If I wasn’t with her, then I could at least lay everything bare. Force her to get the help she needed.

  I hated that she was meeting with Mr. Pinter. Old, fat Mr. Pinter, who spent most of his days lecturing to girls’ chests. I’d heard sick rumors about him but never believed them. Why was Ani meeting him?

  I raced to his classroom, but his door was closed and locked. I heard voices inside and pressed my ear to the door, hoping no one would notice the crazy eavesdropper in the hall. Mr. Pinter’s low mumble was followed by Ani’s phony, tittering laugh.

  I banged on the door. No one answered, but the room suddenly got quiet. I banged on the door again. Nothing. What the fuck?

  My entire body started to sweat. I tore down the hall and out the exit. A half a dozen people called to me outside, but I ignored them all. I circled the building and ducked into the evergreen bushes alongside the windows of Mr. Pinter’s room. My heart thudded as I peered up into the first window. The shades were drawn. I inched farther down the outer wall and checked the second window. The shades were drawn there, too.

  Jesus. What was I doing? What the hell had become of me? My system was on autopilot. Determination and desperation mashed together in my gut. It was like the final lap of a relay and I was way behind, pulling out everything that I had.

  I stepped back from the wall and eyed the entire bank of windows. All of them had the shades drawn fully except for the last. About six inches of open window were left at the bottom. He must have left it open after third period, when the school always got overly hot.

  I sucked in a deep breath and made my way down to it. I sat beneath the window on the frozen ground and listened. A deep moan sounded from within and I closed my eyes and counted. Finally I stood up and stared into Mr. Pinter’s classroom.

  He sat at his desk chair with his pants pushed to his ankles, and Ani crouched between his legs. Her hands gripped his thighs, and he tugged on her head, pushing her deeper into his lap. She had on her winter coat still, part of it trapped underneath the wheel of his chair.

  “That’s it. Take it all,” he moaned, and my hands shook.

  It made me sick to watch, but I couldn’t turn away. I willed Ani to see me and suddenly she turned her head in my direction. At the same time, Mr. Pinter barked out a loud curse and grasped her ponytail tightly. Her wide, empty eyes watched me as he held her in place and pulsed into her mouth. Finally he sat back, pulled his pants up, and patted her on the shoulder.

  She stood up without breaking eye contact with me. She yanked at the coat and it tore at the bottom. She slowly wiped her mouth and waited to see what I would do. I snatched the knitted bee hat from my head and threw it on the ground. Her hands brushed away the dust on her knees. When I didn’t stop staring, she turned away, picked up her backpack, slid her hand along Mr. Pinter’s zipper without even looking at him, and walked out the door.

  I barfed on the frozen ground until there was nothing left inside of me. I was still dry heaving when Ani walked up, leaned over me, and picked up the hat.

  “You’ve wrecked us. Wrecked me,” I choked out.

  She played with a loose piece of yarn on the rim. “I know.”

  I wiped my mouth and crawled into a seated position. She dropped next to me.

  “Do you even care?”

  She handed me the hat. “Yes.”

  “Then why are you doing this? All of it?”

  Her fingers found the rip in her coat. “You have no idea what my life is like now, Bumble. I told you, this is who I am.”

  The bile still burned the back of my throat. “Fuck that. Enough with that. You made this choice.”

  She stood up and brushed the ice flakes from her coat. “You don’t move on from something like that party.”

  “Yes, people can. They have. It’s not—”

  “All that stuff about healing. It’s crap. You might forget sometimes. You might pretend you’re fine. But then one day, you’re outside and someone totally innocently asks to borrow a lighter. Or you see a girl drinking too much and you wonder if she’ll get home that night. It stays with you forever.”

  She took a step away from me and my insides tore open.

  “Why?” I shouted. “Why would you do that? With him? That sicko pervert?” I pointed to Mr. Pinter’s window. “It’s disgusting. How could you even consider it?”

  She blinked her eyes at me once. Twice. “Don’t you see? If I don’t hate myself, I don’t feel anything at all. At least disgust feels better than nothing.”

  She shuffled away, barely lifting her boots as she walked, not looking back. It was too much. I could never understand it. Not how she explained it. I sort of hated myself for even thinking I could help in the first place. What the hell did I know? I was basically just a kid with a messed-up girlfriend. Deluded into thinking I could do something to fix her.

  Snow started to fall as I sat unmoving on the ground. I didn’t feel the cold, didn’t feel anything but numbness and the absolute certainty that everything I’d done over the past few months hadn’t meant anything. Pieces of me and Ani were strewn all over, and there was no regluing us. Even the anger started to seep out of me. It took too much energy to maintain. I didn’t fucking care anymore and that was the worst part of all of it. Kevin was right. Somehow, I’d gotten just as lost as Ani. Clinging to bullshit hopes fueled by people I didn’t even really know. When the truth was, at the end of it all, there was just me and Ani. In a cage. Waiting to see who would leave first.

  My hands trembled as I pulled my cell out of my back pocket. Tears rolled down my face and landed on my hand, each cool drop slicing through another layer of me. I shut my eyes for a few seconds, released a deep breath, and called Gayle. The phone rang and Ani disappeared farther down the block. I was done. Undone. Ani wasn’t mine to patch up any longer. But even as Gayle’s voice cut through the line and I opened my mouth to speak, I wasn’t sure if I had escaped the cage or if Ani had.

  Resources

  The Voices and Faces Project

  www.voicesandfaces.org

  RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network)

  www.rainn.org

  1-800-656-HOPE

  Victim Rights Law Center

  www.victimrights.org

  CounterQuo

  www.counterquo.org

  Men Can Stop Rape

  www.mencanstoprape.org

  Rape Treatment Center

  www.911rape.org

  Rape Victim Advocates

  www.rapevictimadvocates.org

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people,

  or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are

  products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  SIMON PULSE

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  Text copyright © 2013 by Christa Desir

  Jacket design by Jessica Handelman

  Jacket photograph copyright © 2013 by Getty Images

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

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  Interior design by Hilary Zarycky

  The text of this book was set in New Caledonia.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Desir, Christa

  p. cm.

  Summary: After his girlfriend, Ani, is assaulted at a party, Ben must figure out

  how he can help her to heal, if he can help her at all.

  ISBN 978-1-4424-6072-0

  [1. Acquaintance rape—Fiction. 2. Rape—Fiction. 3. Dating (Social customs)—Fiction.

  4. Emotional problems—Fiction. 5. High schools—Fiction. 6. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.D4506Fau 2013

  [Fic]—dc23

  2012039167

  ISBN 978-1-4424-6074-4 (eBook)

  We hope you enjoyed reading this Simon Pulse eBook.

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