She’d thought eating at Watertown Pizza would feel like a victory, some reclaiming of what was hers. But when she walked in with Isaac that blustery December evening, the place was half empty, just a couple of families distracted by little kids.
They grabbed a cozy booth, and she enjoyed negotiating with Isaac over the toppings: mushrooms and spinach for him, salami and sausage for her. As they waited for their dinner, Isaac sought her advice on getting his students engaged. He listened intently as she spoke, leaning forward to hear over the screeching of kids, asking questions here and there. He wanted her ideas, and that surprised Evangeline. Being listened to was a lot better than being noticed at the door. And when the pizza arrived, everything about it was delicious and right.
What she hadn’t calculated was this: how the ordinary pleasantness of it would do her in, force her to realize how little of this she’d had in her life. The contrast between what she now knew was possible and what her life had been until this point drained every ounce of energy from her body. She could hardly walk by the time they got home.
Yet she struggled to fall asleep. Shadows snaked across the ceiling, twisting like those branches on a warm September evening. And even as she lay in Daniel’s house, she was back in those woods, Daniel luring her along with pizza like the silly, feral thing she was.
The trail had grown so narrow she thought they’d get caught in a thicket, but the woods opened and she could breathe again. Several trees had been cut down, replaced by a rattan love seat that rose from the ground like strange flora. Ferns and mosses crawled up rotting legs and spiraling vines laced its back, tearing away, dismantling it one tiny joint at a time. A striped seat cushion—filthy and sunken but otherwise intact—remained miraculously in place.
Daniel took the lantern and set it on a broad, low stump along with the pizza, then tossed the blanket over the dirty cushion. “You find furniture on the trails sometimes,” he said, “chairs, torn mattresses. Saw a big desk once. Most of the time, it’s just people dumping old junk, but this place seems different. Like someone set it up as a room.”
The lantern created a circle of light, cast the woods in darkness. The night’s warm breeze carried a trace of mint, and Evangeline had only to lift her eyes to see a sky full of stars and an almost-full moon. As they nestled on the love seat, a small animal moved through the underbrush nearby, a bird or a rat or maybe a coyote. Whatever it was, its territory was the darkness and the two of them were in the light.
“This is nice,” she said, because it was.
Without another word, she dove ravenously into the greasy slices. She managed to polish off half the large pizza. They’d both reached for the last piece at the same time, and he’d given it to her. “For a not very big girl, you sure can eat,” Daniel said. When Evangeline glanced up, she saw how his eyes, though focused on her, were seeing something else.
“Yup,” she said, and burped, loud and on purpose, hoping to reestablish herself. But he laughed, grabbed and kissed her as if swept up on impulse. Everything about it was false, and she pushed away.
He pressed closer, jamming her against the arm of the love seat, an arm so decayed she thought it might break, hoped it might, so they would tumble into the undergrowth and she could scramble away. Daniel cupped her cheek, an obvious lie of affection, and while he whispered she was beautiful, he took her hand and pulled it to his crotch.
She resisted, tugging against him. This went on a moment, both acting as if it weren’t—a ridiculous social nicety, like ignoring a wayward fart. He pulled harder, until she thought the skin on her wrist might tear, her thin bones might snap. She twisted her face away and managed to shove back.
“I see how it is,” she said, hoping he heard her bitterness.
“That you’re beautiful?” Even now, he tried to confuse her with false tenderness. She wondered if he knew what she was. Could you become something forever by doing it once? And what if that one time was only because the car door opened and the man looked safe enough, because every house you’d tried in the past week had been locked up tight, because you didn’t have the luxury of being a virgin, and besides, worse things had happened to you, because you stupidly thought it wouldn’t matter that much—because you were hungry, so terribly, terribly hungry? Did one time stain you forever? Did it bury itself under your skin, fester there, emit an odor that made you fair game?
It seemed it had, in her own mind if not his, because though Evangeline believed in negotiations up front rather than after the fact, she figured if he thought he was owed a hand job for the pizza, it wasn’t such a bad deal. But once his cock was out, she realized he wanted more, pressing her head down on it. When she resisted, he pushed with enough force that something popped in her neck, sent a sharp pain racing down her arm.
She calculated the cost of the pizza—once again proving her thesis—and thought, fine, pizza for a blow job. But even that wasn’t enough. After a few minutes, he began tugging at her shorts, trying to pull them off without bothering to unzip. She wrestled with him, finally saying she didn’t want to. At least that’s what she thought she said. But whatever words came out, it was too late. She’d gone along with so much already, and he’d disappeared into that zone guys go where the only words that enter are the ones they want to hear.
He kept saying, “You want me. You want me”—an odd choking sound in his throat.
The shorts got hung up on her hips, and she clutched at them thinking he might let her be, but with one massive yank he had them off, her skin left raw from the rough seams. She had a choice. She wouldn’t deny that. They were speaking different languages, and she could resort to one he knew. She could scream or knee him in the groin or gouge at his eyes. He’d likely understand that. She could see how that would go—out there, alone in the woods. He probably didn’t mean to rape her. Probably didn’t.
She pushed back and caught sight of his face, a muddle of anger and sadness and longing. This scared her even more, because what could it mean? She decided not to risk it. You go along to get along, right? Her foster dad had taught her that. Besides, she’d already established what she was.
She said to at least use a condom. Not that it mattered, nothing did, but she needed to take some element of control. Only he didn’t have one and said he’d pull out in time. She tried to ignore what happened after that, but with each thrust a broken piece of rattan stabbed at her scalp, deeper and deeper until it seemed to be hitting bone. When his thighs and buttocks tensed and his back went rigid, she shouted, “Pull out!”
Maybe he tried, but he didn’t quite make it in time.
A few minutes later, they were back on the trail, Daniel striding ahead, letting her fend off branches herself. Evangeline gingerly touched her scalp, her fingertips returning bright with blood.
When they reached the car, he turned toward her, but he was looking down and away, anywhere but at her.
“I don’t know where you live. Is it close?” he said.
“Half mile max.”
For a second, she thought he might leave her there, but he straightened like he’d decided something. “Hop in,” he said.
Except for directions, they didn’t talk on the short ride. When they arrived at her brush-clogged drive, she told him to stop there.
“Thanks for the pizza,” she said, wanting him to hear her bitterness.
His eyes darted at her, then to his lap. “I hope I didn’t . . . I mean, I thought . . .”
She waited, but he said nothing more.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, like she couldn’t care less. At least that’s how she hoped it sounded.
She hopped out, her legs trembling as she walked, barely holding her weight.
IT WAS WHAT SHE HAD DONE when he was still collapsed on top of her that caused her the most shame. Panting, he’d said, “God, you are so hot.” And ridiculously, it had felt good to be admired. She’d felt so dirty and foul those past weeks, like she wasn’t even a girl, just a rodent scrabbling.
So when he said it again—“I mean it. You are so hot”—she had said, “Thanks.”
Her eyes were open now, in Daniel’s house, staring at the ceiling, picturing how he’d stood, zipped his pants, said, “It’s getting late.”
And even then, she’d continued to delude herself. As she searched in vain for her panties, as she gave up and pulled on shorts freighted with twigs and dirt and tiny things crawling, she told herself that the only thing that had happened, really, was that a handsome boy had been overcome with desire for her, a boy who couldn’t get over how sexy she was, a boy she’d perhaps confused with her mixed signals and who—if she decided to give him another chance, which of course she wouldn’t, but if she did—would understand what she wanted next time, might even take her out in public.
She’d spent years contorting the facts of her life into new shapes so as to cause herself less pain. Years denying what was true. But she wasn’t in the woods anymore. She was safe in this house with a man who wanted to hear what she had to say. That was the truth of her life now.
She tried to relax into this new safety, but a body doesn’t easily forget hard lessons long learned. Her heart kept stabbing at her ribs in rhythmic bursts of pain, and she knew she’d struggle to fall asleep.
Rufus, who’d been lying by the door, stood and lumbered over. He hesitated a moment, then jumped onto the bed. He stood over Evangeline breathing heavily, then pressed his cold nose into her warm neck, snuffling and licking, until she said, “Ahh, Rufus, Rufus,” pulled him down, and curled against his back.