Up until the very end, I’d always thought of Ted as one of the golden seniors at Belknap Country Day: broad, blond, captain of the soccer and lacrosse teams, keeper of a 3.7 GPA, and generally well-liked and admired. He drove a Range Rover handed down from his older brother, and his dress code button-downs came from Pink and Ralph Lauren. At first glance, you’d think he must be that same rich jock you’ve seen since Hollywood discovered the youth market and started making movies about high school. But he wasn’t. He was funny and generous and kind. He looked after his younger teammates and helped teachers rearrange their classrooms. In the movie of my life that used to play in my head at all times, where age and era were no object, Ted was played by Brad Pitt, circa Legends of the Fall. And at the end of our sophomore year, he’d dumped Elaine Winslow—lean, blond, blue-eyed, All-American gorgeous; nationally ranked golfer; widely recognized as the most beautiful girl in school, even by some of our teachers—to go out with me. So you knew he had taste.
From a distance, Ted and Elaine had seemed like a natural fit, with their matching coloring and the easy, modest way they each handled their athletic accomplishments. But the way Ted told it, when he and Elaine went to the school production of Othello and I emerged in my white accordion-pleated chiffon gown and began professing loyalty and duty to my husband and father, that was it for Ted. There could be no one else for him but me. If a boy ever tells you it was your Desdemona that got him, you should probably think long and hard about that before you start blushing and giggling, even if he does have broad shoulders and a smile like a spotlight. He showed up backstage after curtain call on the third and final night of the performance with a dozen of those red-tipped white roses, and I completely forgot whatever ideas I’d had about Paul Patterson, who played Othello and had put word out that he wanted to hook up with me at the cast party.
Ted had only broken up with Elaine the day before. Supposedly, she was devastated. She retreated from the crowd of friends she shared with Ted after that, hanging out mostly with her younger sister and acquiring a new boyfriend, Marshall Rye. He was on the ski team and part of no single clique, but he was friendly with everybody and so was a lock for the “Citizenship Award” at the end of the year, when we would all vote for who was basically the nicest person in our class. Even so, Elaine and I avoided each other, and on occasions when we couldn’t, we each caught the other giving the side-eye. We were both so different, it was impossible not to make comparisons. She was Grace Kelly and I was Sophia Loren.
But the role of Ted Parker’s paramour had been re-cast, and I’d gotten the part. He came to every single performance of all of my plays junior year. The unspoken trade-off was that I went to all his games and cheered like a good girlfriend. I could not have cared less about Belknap Country Day’s athletic record, but I did care about Ted. He took it hard when the team lost, which meant he’d be distracted and edgy until the next game. He was much more fun coming off a victory, clapping younger players on the back and accepting congratulations and compliments with a modest duck of his blond head and an adorable blush creeping up his perfect jaw. So out of my love for him, it was “go get ’em, BCD soccer!”
They beat Charles River Academy one Friday, late September of senior year. It was a blue and gold afternoon that, as Ted drove us to the victory party, was slipping into one of those crisp, starlit New England nights that I still miss, in spite of what happened on that particular one. The party was at Melissa Lewis’ house, which was in one of the newer developments in town, where the houses were large but lacking in character, and there were rules about holiday décor and yard maintenance. Belknap is on the border between metro Boston’s suburban sprawl and farm country. As a result, the town is an odd mishmash of strip malls and split-levels with quaint mom-and-pop shops and historic homes featuring plaques noting the pre-Revolution dates of construction. As far as setting a mood, Belknap posed a problem: were we in a John Hughes movie or a Thornton Wilder play? Granted, this was not a concern plaguing my friends as we gathered around the keg on Melissa’s deck, but I was an actress and film connoisseur; atmosphere was important to me. I never got to choose the soundtrack in Ted’s car, though—he drummed the wheel in time with John Mayer. Live.
“Coach thinks we have a good chance to make the state championships,” he said, putting his right arm up on my shoulder while he made a turn. “Some of this year’s rookies are seriously talented.”
“That’s great,” I said.
“And the Cornell recruiter is coming to the Middlesex game in two weeks.”
“You must be psyched,” I said. “You beat Middlesex last year, right?”
“Well, they have some seriously talented rooks, too. But the same scout saw me against St. Paul’s last year, when I scored three goals in a single half. So my prospects are good. At least, that’s what I’m told.” Ted was looking at me out of the corners of his eyes. College wasn’t a conversation we’d had yet, exactly.
“Well, I’m sure that’s a load off, with the college app frenzy coming up.”
“Listen, Court. It’s a four-hour drive from Ithaca to the city.”
“I know, Ted,” I said. “But you won’t exactly have your weekends free, with two varsity sports. And I haven’t gotten into Tisch yet.” I sighed. I loved Ted—I mean, I certainly thought I did then. But I had three older siblings; I had been schooled in long-distance relationships, and what happened to high school sweethearts who tried to keep it going in college.
“They’d have to be crazy not to take you. You’re a star.” He pulled up in front of Melissa’s house and pulled me into his big arms, burying his face in my black curls. “I’m not going to let a few miles get in our way. We’ll work it out.” He brushed my hair behind my ear.
“Okay,” I said, turning my face up for a kiss. “I trust you.” We climbed out of the car, and he went around back to his boys and the keg, while I went upstairs to find Melissa and Hilary.
Mel and Hil. To be honest, that day at Melissa’s house I thought we’d all go to off to college and I’d never talk to either of them again, but now that I know I really never will, I miss them a little. They were together so much you could be forgiven for thinking they were conjoined twins, although they didn’t look anything alike: Melissa was long and lean, with a year-round tan and cropped blonde highlights that never showed a hint of her dark roots, while Hilary had an unruly carrot top she was forever ironing flat and swishing over her shoulders and bad skin peeking through expertly applied make up. In my mental movie, they were played by two mediocre up-and-comers with pretty faces, great headshots, and resumes full of small parts in bad horror movies and those sad TV shows networks run in the summer when no one’s watching. Outside of high school, I might not have chosen Melissa or Hilary as friends. But they fluttered around Ted and his friends like the proverbial moths around a candle, so we’d naturally fallen in together when I started going out with Ted sophomore year. Besides, Melissa, at least, was fun sometimes.
They were upstairs in Melissa’s parents’ bedroom, taking shots of vodka and observing the party through the open French doors of the balcony that overlooked the deck and backyard. Melissa’s mother and stepfather were at Canyon Ranch in the Berkshires for the weekend.
“Hi, bitch,” Melissa said, and poured me a shot. She was sitting on the floor, still wearing her field hockey uniform, though she’d taken off her shin guards.
“Hi,” I said, and took the shot. “How was your game?”
“Oh, whatever, the stupid junior on goal blew it. Not that anyone cares about field hockey.”
“True,” I said, pouring myself another shot. “How about you, Hil? Still trying to do away with urban blight?” If you didn’t play a sport at Belknap Country Day, you were required to do some other after-school activity. It guaranteed you would be a well-rounded college applicant. Hilary did community service at a soup kitchen and women’s shelter in Roxbury.
Hilary was lying on Melissa’s parents’ bed, aiming a remote at their flat screen, flipping channels with the sound off. “Ugh. I am so over it. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Lucy’s Lunches does really important work. But if we don’t cut every piece of pie exactly the same size, or someone gets a single extra grape, those bitches totally freak out,” said Hilary. “Plus, the smell of that place is starting to make me gag.”
“Your generosity of spirit is inspiring,” I told her. I wandered over to Melissa’s mother’s vanity table and opened her jewelry box, holding different earrings up to my lobes in the lighted mirror.
“Did you have rehearsal?” asked Melissa. She shed her knee socks and scratched at the red welts the ribbing left behind.
“Doesn’t start till next week.” I picked up a tube of mascara from the vanity and marveled at the idea of my own mother with purple eyelashes. Then I leaned into the mirror and put some on.
We were performing The Crucible and I, as Country Day’s perennial star of the stage, had been cast as Abigail Williams. I was pleased: great play, great part, great opportunity to show off my chops for my application to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. An alumnus would attend the opening performance, which would serve as my admissions audition. As far as I was concerned, it was the only college worth attending in the entire world.
I would have liked to attend college, even for a semester.
As if reading my mind, Melissa said, “Don’t worry, Court. You’re a shoo-in for Tisch.” She wandered into her mother’s walk-in closet and shed her field hockey skirt and jersey, dropping them on the floor. She came out again wearing a sleeveless shift of camel suede with a lot of black fringe on the short skirt.
“What do you think about this for Revelry?” she asked. The Rivalry Revelry was our version of Homecoming: two days of matches against Green Hill Prep, capped off by a semi-formal dance.
“It’s hot,” said Hilary.
“It’s Phillip Lim,” said Melissa.
“That dress is wearing you,” I said. “It should be the other way around.” This was my mother’s phrase for clothes that were trendy but didn’t fit well.
“What does that even mean?” Melissa rolled her eyes and walked out onto the balcony.
I followed with the vodka bottle, and Hilary dropped the remote on the yellow satin comforter and joined us. The three of us leaned on our elbows against the railing and observed the party below. I set up the shot glasses and poured.
In the backyard, Marian Hayward and Selena Mitchell, whom everyone called the Glitter Girls because of the stupid sparkly makeup they both wore, were playing badminton. Benji Andrews, a junior who was on the soccer team with Ted, and Jake Hobart, who was Belknap’s number one skier, were sharing a joint in a pair of lawn chairs, watching. Benji’s girlfriend Lindsay Stevens lay in the grass with her bare feet propped up in his lap. A few guys were kicking at the brush beneath the trees at the edge of the yard, looking for kindling for the fire pit, which they’d light after dark. On the deck, Hogan Riley, whom everyone called Horse, was setting up Melissa’s stepfather’s poker table, and Hugh Marsden, Ted’s best friend, was manning the keg and talking to a gaggle of sophomore and junior girls whom Hilary, Melissa, and I hated on general principle—that general principle being that these girls were a lot like we were and were competition for the attention of our guy friends. Melissa hawked up a substantial loogie and managed to land it in a sophomore’s hair. None of her friends noticed, but Hugh did, and he looked up and winked at us as he refilled the girl’s cup.
Hugh motherfucking Marsden. That was how I would come to think of him, but that day on the balcony, with the sun slicing through the trees on its way down and Hugh grinning up at us, he was just another member of our crew. Hugh was a year older than we were because he’d been recruited for the BCD hockey team and made to repeat ninth grade when he moved down from Ontario. There were rumors he’d go pro after graduation instead of going to college. He was also quite the Romeo, which had always baffled me. He had that thick-necked build that’s borderline fat, and his dust-brown hairline was already receding in two points over his temples, which he tried to disguise by keeping his hair military short. I’d heard girls claim it was his personality that made him attractive, but that didn’t make much sense to me either at the time, and it sure as hell doesn’t now. In the movie in my head, Hugh was played by Ben Affleck, an actor whose appeal I understood on an intellectual level but didn’t personally feel in my gut. Hugh was kind of crude and often drank too much, but neither of these qualities made him stand out in our crowd. He wasn’t stupid, exactly, just lazy—except when it came to hockey. He was like somebody’s cut-up older brother. He was one of us.
“Whores,” Hilary said, glaring at the girls at the keg.
“Never mind them,” said Melissa. “Did you hear about Marian? She got caught fooling around with Lexi Rosenthal in the old dark room.”
“Sexy Lexi?” Hilary asked.
“The one and only,” said Melissa.
“People only call her that because she’s got big boobs,” I said lazily. I could relate, although Lexi had at least a cup size on me. I watched Marian and Selena wave their racquets around. Periodically, Jake Hobart would yell out “Shuttlecock!” and then chuckle.
“Well,” said Melissa. “Apparently Marian started hanging out in the dark room, because she can smoke pot there without getting busted. There’s a ventilation fan for chemicals or something. Sexy Lexi’s the only other person who’s ever in there. She still uses actual film.”
I would come to know Lexi Rosenthal rather well, but back then she was just this weird junior who didn’t have a lot of friends. She was pretty, with those round cheeks and sparkling eyes that make you think of a doll’s face, but people mostly called her Sexy Lexi because it rhymed, and then made up a reputation for her that fit the rhyme. In addition to being the last film photography hold-out in the digital age—our photo classes had been held in the computer lab for years—she was the editor of Belknap Country Day’s arts magazine, Bards and Muses, and the only orphan in our school. She lived with her grandfather.
“Poor Farah,” snorted Hilary. “If Lexi dumps her, she’ll only have her computers for company.”
Lexi Rosenthal’s best, and maybe only, friend was a girl named Farah Zarin. She was the lead student administrator for the Belknet, the intranet that was home to school-designated email accounts, online tools for classes, student club web pages, and special interest message boards. This got her a certain level of respect—we had to go to her when we forgot our passwords—but nobody thought it was very cool, except for the World of Warcraft geeks who spent all their free periods in the computer lab. Farah was totally their queen. She had mad programming skills, punk-rock patches on her messenger bag, and the spiky black hair, enormous brown eyes, and pointed elfin face of an anime character. Supposedly, she and Lexi were more than friends, although to my knowledge this was one of those rumors that had no evidentiary basis and people idly embroidered upon when they were bored.
“Well, if they were ever together, I doubt they are now,” said Melissa. “Because Sexy Lexi, like, seduced Marian. Plus, Hugh said he ran into her at Echo Bridge a few weeks ago, and she practically fell to her knees and undid his pants with her teeth. She’s a total nympho.”
I was skeptical of that story even at the time. “I don’t know why you would believe anything Hugh says,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Have you heard his hockey hazing stories? That crap can’t be true.”
“Well, I know for a fact it’s true what he said about making Chip Horowitz eat an Oreo they all jerked it on.” Melissa shrugged and we tossed back a round of vodka. “Uh oh, Court. Looks like Ted’s about to lose his shirt.” Ted was sitting down at the poker table with Horse, his friend Will McKinley, and a junior named Sayre Matthews.
“I hate when they play cards,” pouted Hilary. “It pulls the whole focus of the party. We’re here to socialize,” she said, drawing out the word and slurring it a bit, “not to watch Horse take everyone’s money and have them get all pissy and sad about it.”
This did happen on occasion. Horse loved cards, and though I knew nothing about poker, the word was he was very good unless he was very drunk. It was hard to tell if he was drunk already from our spot on the balcony, but as he began to shuffle the cards, I realized that I was a bit drunk: the fun kind, when you’re all swagger and confidence, which lasts about five minutes before you wind up either sloppy or sober, depending on whether you have another drink or not.
“I’ll put a stop to that,” I said, and took one more shot and wiggled my hips to make the girls laugh. Then I went downstairs and climbed into Ted’s lap.
“Babe,” said Ted, unhooking my arms from around his neck. “It’s not a good time, see?” He tried to show me the two cards he had facedown in front of him, but I was not interested. In my vodka haze, and with Melissa and Hilary in the peanut gallery above, it suddenly seemed extremely important that I win over poker and break up the game by distracting Ted.
“Come on,” I whispered in his ear. His stubble tickled my lips, and I put a little breathy Marilyn in my voice. “Wouldn’t you rather come upstairs and play with me?”
“Later, Courtney,” he said, laughing. “We’ve got all night.” And he put his hands on my waist and lifted me off his lap. Which would have been no big deal, except that vodka makes my ego rather fragile, and it seemed utterly preposterous that my boyfriend, who had gleefully dispatched my virginity many months before, might find Horse Riley’s pocket money more interesting than me, his girlfriend, star of the BCD stage and just then wearing silk stockings and a garter belt under my black wool dress. So I squeezed his arm. “Ted,” I said. “I need to talk to you.” It was a little desperate, and like I said, I was a little drunk.
Ted cupped my face with one hand and kept the other on his cards. “You need a glass of water and a nap,” he said. “You go lie down in the guest room. I’ll come find you in a little while.” He patted my cheek and looked over my shoulder. “Hugh, get Court a soda or something.”
So I went upstairs to the guest room to pout until Ted came looking for me or I passed out, whichever happened first. Perhaps now is when you’re yelling at the screen, telling the starlet not to go into the basement. You aren’t wrong, but let me remind you: This was my best friend’s house, filled with people I’d known for years. If there was anywhere I thought I could let my guard down, this was it.
I was in the bathroom when I heard someone in the adjacent guest room.
“Ted?” I called through the door. I wasn’t on the toilet, only fixing my hair and trying to wipe away the mascara that inevitably smudged under my eyes after a few beers.
The bathroom door opened and there was Hugh with a can of Diet Coke. Hugh’s gray eyes were almost as pale as his white skin, which I’d always found a little startling.
“Hi, Hugh,” I said, reaching for the can. “Thanks for the DC.”
“You’re welcome,” he said, and he caught me by the wrist and shoved me up against the sink. His lips mashed against mine. The can of soda dropped and hit my left foot, hard, before bouncing into a corner.
I twisted my face away, but he was squeezing my arms against my sides, and his legs pressed my own against the cabinet below the sink. My knees buckled.
“What the hell are you doing?” I said.
“Come on, C. I know your whole bombshell act,” he said. His breath was hot and beery on my neck. He slid one finger along what was, yes, a low-cut neckline, but not an open invitation. “I just saw you practically begging Ted for it.”
“Ted is my boyfriend,” I said. I tried not to breathe. I thought that if he got the impression I wasn’t going to fight him, he’d ease off a bit, and I’d be able to get to the door. I had to get downstairs, back to the crowd, back to Ted.
“And he’s my best friend. And I’m your friend. So really, what’s the difference, Courtney? Come on. Don’t be a tease.”
He held my wrists together with one hand. I had always wished I were taller, and the sensation of my wrist bones grinding together in Hugh’s fist reminded me of this. It seemed incredibly unfair that anyone should have such a physical advantage over anyone else. He pulled up my skirt and pushed my legs apart with one of his knees. “Please, Hugh,” I said, and I hated how weak and wavering my voice sounded. Like I had already given up. “Please don’t.” The hand that wasn’t holding my wrists was on me now, in me. Already I wanted to die. I was begging. “Please don’t do this. You’re hurting me.”
“I like that word, ‘please,’” Hugh whispered. “But, please, Courtney. Shut up.”
I tried, then, to wrench my hands out of his grip. He spun me around easily, like we were dancing, and pinned my arms behind my back. Now I was really helpless, my hips pinned between Hugh’s bulk and the marble countertop, my arms bent so my hands were at my shoulder blades. Not happening not happening not happening this is not happening to me. Hugh had one arm between us, reaching down to unzip his pants.
That was when I started screaming. It was a last-ditch attempt to get out of there, but even caught in the rising tide of panic, I knew no one could hear me. There were too many rooms between us and the party, too many people talking and laughing downstairs, too many songs cued up on Melissa’s iPod in a speaker dock loud enough to fill the whole first floor with music. In the mirror, Hugh rolled his eyes and covered my mouth with one meaty hand. He squeezed my jaw so tight I couldn’t even bite him.
Then it was happening, really happening, and he was watching, he was actually smiling in the mirror. I closed my eyes. This is a role, I told myself. It’s next year and I’m already at Tisch and this is someone’s stupid student film. This is happening to the girl in the movie. I’m just playing her.
When he was done, his grip relaxed. His weight went slack against my body, and then he stepped away and zipped up his pants. I backed away from him, my arms aching from the way he’d been holding them, trying to maintain a defensive posture and straighten my clothes at the same time. I had started to cry somewhere in the middle of it, and for some reason this made everything so much worse. I might have been stoic and unflinching, and slammed Hugh’s head into the mirror in his post-coital moment. I might have been Charlize Theron in Monster. Instead, I was puffy and red, sniveling and cowering by a toilet.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I whispered.
“Don’t be like that,” he said. He reached out and held my shoulders. “Half the people out there have messed around with each other. This is what we do.”
“I said no.”
“C,” said Hugh. His grip tightened. “Drop it. No one can hear us. You don’t have to worry; it’s our secret.”
“What are you talking about?” My legs were shaking so hard I wasn’t sure I’d stay standing if he let go of me. I couldn’t imagine which was worse: Hugh having this secret hold over me, or everyone knowing. I felt dizzy.
“I won’t tell anyone. About how you dragged me up here after Ted blew you off in front of everyone at the poker table.”
I stared at him. Then I bent over and threw up in the toilet. Hugh left, and I locked the door and sat down against it. I wanted to shed my skin like a snake, leave behind everything that Hugh had touched, like I could shed the bruises and the shadows and be a whole new person.
During the winter of my junior year, I had been cast as a rape victim in a play. A senior named Lila Horton (aggressively emo; head of our Amnesty International chapter) had been doing an independent study in directing, and she’d chosen Pinter’s One for the Road. It’s a play about the trauma of political prisoners, and it was a controversial choice—Headmaster Farnsworth was not thrilled and tried to force Lila to pick something different. The theater teacher, Mr. Gillison, went to bat for her, and a compromise was reached: we would do the play, but the flyers and programs would carry an “explicit material” advisory. Lila was thrilled—she was Making a Statement. I was Gila, my dress torn, my body covered in grease paint bruises, flinching under every gesture made by my interrogator, local warlord Nicolas (Rodney Fairchild, who fancied himself a ladies’ man and who was playing John Proctor opposite me in The Crucible). As I sat in the Lewis’ guest bathroom, black marble tile and plush towels closing in on all sides, the only thing I could think about was how wrong I had played Gila. I pressed my forehead against my knees. My Gila had been so reactive, so twitchy and jumpy. This, I now knew, was wrong: Gila would have been stone-still, her self buried so deeply that whatever might happen to her body didn’t matter anymore.
I didn’t have a tiny room where I could lock my soul away from my body, but I was in a tiny room where I could lock out Hugh, my friends, Ted, and the entire party. I didn’t know what face to put on that would hide what Hugh had done to me. I spent the night under a towel in the bathtub. When Ted and Hilary came looking for me, I refused to open the door, and they assumed I was still drunk and angry with Ted for brushing me off. Eventually they got tired of knocking and went away. I didn’t unlock the door until morning, when the clamor in the backyard had finally ceased and the gray light of dawn spilled over the windowsill. Then I crept out, through the sleeping bodies filling Melissa’s house, and walked all the way home.