Words fly like I never buried this notebook in my closet, never stopped screaming my rage at boys who take what they want and burn down the rest. Screaming my rage into a notebook in a coffee shop, no one’s going to try to silence me.
“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do.”
At first I don’t think anyone is talking to me. I’m sitting at Chocolati with Marguerite and the chai I’ve been nursing for an hour. I’m on one of the tall barstools at the counter reserved for loners who didn’t come here to gab with a writing group or interview a prospective doula or hash out their relationships for all the world to hear.
But suddenly someone is sitting on the stool next to me, facing me. Talking as though I look like someone who wants to socialize, as though I don’t have headphones on.
“My uncle is the crew coach. Well, assistant. But still he’s in the department, so I’m thinking he could ask the athletic director to make a statement. I don’t know, ‘Kyle Cameron’s decision to leave had been in the works for some time’ . . . Something that takes the heat off Nor.”
My head pops up. Jess Stevens drums black fingernails on the tabletop, waiting for me to catch up. “Are you following me?”
“What? No.” They pop up when the barista calls their name. I scowl at their back as they retrieve their drink and doctor it at the counter.
I don’t even want to know what they were talking about. I am so beyond caring what the Husky football coach does with his life.
“I came here to work,” I say when Jess returns. “Alone. No offense. I just . . . have a lot going on.”
“No shit. It’s so fucking awful. I thought you might need help brainstorming what to do next.”
I sigh, then start packing up my stuff. “Next? The judge made his ruling. There is no next.”
Jess waves their hand like I’m talking nonsense. “Yeah, yeah, that asshole. No, I mean Cameron moving to Michigan State, the hashtag?”
I passed Head Coach Kyle Cameron in the courthouse on one of the last days of the trial—I was coming out of the women’s bathroom as he went into the men’s next door. His massive shoulder knocked me into the wall.
“Whoa, little lady,” he boomed as he reached out to steady me by the elbow. “Watch yourself now.”
He looked me straight in the face with zero recognition, even though I’d been sitting next to Nor the entire trial. If he’d glanced her way at all, he would have known I was her sister.
I shrug. “Serves him right if U Dub fired him. I’m sure he’ll only fail up.”
“Um.” Jess scoots their stool closer to mine. “He wasn’t fired. He left for a better program. Because of ‘the distraction.’ The football zombies are pissed.”
Distraction: anything the people in power want to ignore.
“But that’s . . . that’s great! Isn’t it?” I fumble for my phone, pull up the hashtag #JusticeforNor.
I haven’t checked it for a few days. After the judge’s sentencing, everyone moved on to being outraged about something else.
“Wait, hang on—” Something in Jess’s voice makes me pause and meet their eyes. “I mean, sure, in the schadenfreude sense, it’s pleasant to watch the meatheads denied something they thought they were entitled to. It might even look like consequences of some form. But . . .”
“Jess, what?”
“Some assholes, like, they’re to be expected, right? You know it as well as I do. Maybe you didn’t before the whole trial and everything, but you must know now, because, like, I only followed the coverage some of the time, but you must have—”
I grab my things and leave the coffee shop.
“Wait!” Jess follows me out. “Wait, sorry. I ramble when I’m nervous. Here’s the thing: It’s bad for the football program to lose their head coach.”
I scan through the top search results for “Kyle Cameron” + “college football.”
MICHIGAN STATE SCORES UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON HEAD COACH
CAMERON DEPARTS UW AMID OFF-FIELD DISTRACTIONS
Under one of the headlines, I read “‘I want to focus on what matters,’ says Cameron. ‘And that’s football.’”
“I still don’t see why this is bad for Nor.” I scan through #JusticeforNor. Nothing.
“It’s bullshit, but like . . . football is life for some people.” Jess reaches out, takes my phone, and types something in the search bar. “Are you sure you want to see this?”
I grab the phone. #IgNorTheWhore. It isn’t only a few loser MRAs, either. This hashtag is constantly updating with new results. It’ll probably be trending soon, if it isn’t already.
Cowardly Cameron’s dooming an entire football season on the word of one lying bitch. Good riddance. #IgNorTheWhore #PurpleReign
Just because that cunt Elinor Morales will lie down and take it doesn’t mean Huskies will. #IgNorTheWhore
News flash for Cameron: There are lying sluts at Michigan State too. #IgNorTheWhore #GoHuskies
Title Nine? More like TITLE WHINE! Take your feminazi friends and go back where you came from! #IgNorTheWhore
Maybe Elinor Morales is working for Wazzu—cry rape, destroy Lawrence, and maybe finally the Cougs can win some games. #IgNorTheWhore #PurpleReign
My vision goes blurry. It’s not tears. I’m way too enraged for tears. Jess’s hand steadies my arm.
“Hey, are you—”
Then I’m crumpled on the sidewalk, breathing fast, trying to suck in enough air, but something isn’t working right in my lungs or my brain or my—
“Marianne, should I call—”
This is my fault. The blaming, the look-what-she-wore, it was such bullshit when it was weaponized against her, but this time it really is my fault. If I hadn’t pushed my sister—
Jess dials their phone. My hand shoots out and knocks it away from their hands.
“Sorry!” I blurt, reaching blindly for the phone.
“I got it.”
“Don’t call anyone. I’m fine.”
“Okay.” They start to rub my back, tentative at first. “Is this okay?”
I nod. “Don’t go.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
We sit there. After a minute, a shadow falls over us as a stroller stops. I don’t look up.
“We’re having a moment,” Jess tells the person pushing the stroller. Or maybe the baby. When they’ve moved on, Jess says, “My therapist has me do this thing where I focus on two things I really like. She says two things that bring me joy, but whatever, two things I like. It can be anything. So it can be, like . . . hedgehogs and boba. Then I breathe in and out slowly, and when I breathe in, I think hedgehogs, and when I breathe out, I think boba. Just sort of say the words in my head. I don’t, like, ponder the existence of boba.”
Jess’s words washed over me. Something about boba. But their voice is soothing. I focus on their voice and the steadiness of their hand on my back. There’s somebody willing to sit on the sidewalk in Wallingford and not say awful things about my sister, and that helps a little.
“Can you think of two things you like? To do or eat or whatever?”
I process the words. I do. I even manage to reach through the flood of horrible words about my sister and try to wrap my fingers around something—anything—I like in this shitty, shitty world.
“Yeah,” Jess says after a while. “I get it. Sometimes there’s nothing to like.”
Papi has seen the new hashtag. The aroma of rising bread tells me before I even walk in the door. My father had so many emotions to process during the trial that he mastered every variety of pan dulce, and then moved on to macarons, croissants, and croquembouche.
He tries to plaster on a smile when I walk in. “Hola, canchita. ¿Cómo estás?”
“Well, I’ve been on the internet, if that answers your question.”
His face falls. “Your mother hasn’t seen it.”
He doesn’t say let’s call her. Or don’t tell her. Probably because he doesn’t know what to do, either. There’s no point upsetting her, but would it be worse if she finds out later that we kept it from her?
Besides which, Mom teaches college. Probably some of her students are following the hashtags. She might find out in the middle of a lecture on colonial slut-shaming.
I reach for my phone. I keep meaning to change the lock screen. That photo of me and Nor at Lake Atitlán looks like something from another life, the wind whipping our hair into a swirl of dark strands and light, our identical smiles the only clue of our shared blood.
Of course, Nor must have seen those vile posts. She did a pretty good job of staying away from social media before, but someone would have told her. One of her friends, whoever she’s talking to these days. Not me.
Maybe it doesn’t matter. After everything, what are hashtags?
But Nor still lives on campus. People who are enraged about potentially lost football games are obviously not the most rational people.
“She needs to come home.” I sink onto a stool. I hadn’t intended to talk to Papi about it. But things keep happening that I hadn’t intended.
“Mom?”
“No, Nor! What if they . . . do something?”
Papi sighs and drops his head into his hands, no bread challenging enough to process this. His elbows rest on the floury countertop. “¿Qué más hay?”
But there is more. There’s always more. The horrors never end.