You seriously think Imogen’s problems are my fault?” Tilda spat, shattering the moment.
“You didn’t believe her,” said Beck.
“I wasn’t even there! I was barely nineteen, not exactly the most experienced or reasonable age a person—”
“If that’s your reasoning, then you understood—or understand now—that your reaction was a problem. And that’s exactly why we’re doing this.”
“I didn’t come here for this.” Tilda got to her feet.
Beck bolted up, blocking her retreat. Imogen shook out her cramping hands. Her whole body was a knot but she didn’t know what to do. It was horrifying and thrilling at once to see Beck fighting for her. Truly, was Beck right? Imogen had thought she’d stuffed everything away so neatly, clamped the suitcase shut and put it on such an impossibly high shelf that she’d never have to look at its contents again.
“I don’t think I’m ready for this either.” Imogen grabbed the now-vacated mattress pad and dragged it toward her, desperate to lie down and shut her eyes. Maybe they’ll all disappear. But the drama kept unfolding and she couldn’t look away.
“You can’t force an intervention,” Tilda said to Beck with a sneer.
“Do you really think I’m wrong?”
Imogen realized she’d chosen an unfortunate moment to curl into the fetal position when Beck gestured to her as Exhibit A.
“This isn’t my fault. She wasn’t even sure if she’d been raped.”
Imogen sprang into a sitting position. “No, you weren’t sure if I’d been raped. I was always pretty clear—”
Tilda emitted a sarcastic snort, brutal enough to stop Imogen in her tracks. “I think you’re rewriting history. You only said a thousand times that you weren’t sure what happened.”
This was Imogen’s battle too, and she stood up to claim her ground. Beck moved to form a barrier between them. “You’re the one who’s rewriting history. Yes, I was very unsure about why it happened. I was insecure that I’d done something stupid—I knew Rob, felt comfortable with him, because he was your boyfriend. You were the one who didn’t want to accept that your boyfriend raped me, because it was more important to you to stick by him than to believe me.”
“Look, it wasn’t a great time for me either,” Tilda said, yelling over Beck’s shoulder. “My boyfriend cheated on me with my best friend, you think I was happy about that? But at least he admitted—”
“Oh my fucking God!” Imogen brought her exasperated hands to her cheeks. “You’re still taking his side.”
“I loved him! What he did hurt me.”
“Me too.”
In the heavy pause, the Canyon sounds returned. Wind. A bird trill. The rocks were eavesdropping and Imogen felt the flush of shame, as if they’d seen her naked.
“Tilda.” Beck was back to her calm self, determined to mend a festering laceration. “Don’t you think that if Rob—who claimed to love you—could be shitty enough to cheat on you, he might also have been shitty enough to force himself on someone? And deny it? And lie about it?”
Tilda spun away, burying her face in the crook of her arm. It was a posture of embarrassment, of guilt. “Things were different then.”
“You mean people didn’t believe victims then.” Now Imogen felt the full weight of her own sadness. It was true; Imogen had spent half of her life in her own grave, buried alive. She trudged away from them a few paces and dropped into a sitting position, half facing the river. Beck gently tugged on Tilda’s arm and guided her to the mattress pad, where they both sat down.
“I’m sorry,” Beck said to Imogen. “I wish we’d told someone, Mom or Dad, someone.”
“I’m glad I never told. It would’ve made it worse.” At the time, it hadn’t occurred to Imogen that she wouldn’t be believed; she’d feared her politician mother would make a case of it, use the Terrible Act perpetrated against her daughter as a public ploy. She’d never trusted her mother with truly sensitive matters. Something occurred to her, and she snorted. “Remember that photo op Mom did with the drag queens?”
Tilda burst out laughing. “That was priceless.”
Beck winced. Their mom really had used her sexual orientation to earn bonus points with voters. “Still. I’m sorry we didn’t take you more seriously. Do more.”
“You tried.” Imogen remembered Beck and her girlfriend, Jenna, comforting her the next day. Taking her to Planned Parenthood for emergency contraception and an STD screening. It was a lot to handle, and they did what many teenagers do who don’t have an adult they trust: they circled the wagons. They made a place in the circle when Tilda got back from Mexico, but she didn’t want it. The gaping wound of her absence had been there ever since.
How would they make this okay? Okay enough to not leave them with a ruined trip—days of awkward interactions—and a friendship in irredeemable tatters. Imogen watched the Colorado rushing past. It could wash her away. Carry her into oblivion. Her bones could become silt and in another million years maybe a creature would come to rest at this very spot, unaware of a girl called Imogen who was now a sliver of the rock tapestry.
“I’ve thought…,” Tilda began. Imogen glanced at her tentatively, but Tilda had softened. “I’ve thought about it over the years. You might not believe me, but I have. There were so many things I struggled with, that didn’t make sense, that didn’t seem fair. I thought Rob was a good one. I’d had boyfriends since I was thirteen, since like the second my mom died. Rob seemed by far the best. Someone I liked, who liked me just as much. He was funny, generous, always there for me. You know how important it was to me to feel like someone considered me their number one priority—it’s not my dad’s fault, I know he was trying, but it was really hard after my mom died. For both of us—it took me a long time to really understand, so many things in our lives were never the same. But for years I missed feeling…important to someone. Doted on.”
Tilda cast them a slightly guilt-ridden look. “I mean, I had you guys, obviously. But I wanted…” The light had shifted away, but she slipped her sunglasses back on. “When you told me…well, I felt ambushed, honestly. It seemed like an attack, on me—you, Jenna, Beck—like you’d all just been waiting for me to come home, like it was my fault because Rob was my boyfriend.
“I’ve thought about that night I found out. And how quickly I put my walls up. And with the walls up it was easier to believe that it wasn’t like you said it was. I wanted to think Rob was lonely and drunk and I was on vacation, and that in some stupid way it was about me, him missing me. I know it’s fucking asinine—yes, the years have given me clarity on that.”
Imogen recalled a line from a Leonard Cohen song and something within her cracked a little, willing to let the light in. But Tilda wasn’t finished; something inside her had opened too.
“After that I didn’t trust my judgment at all. If Rob was the good boyfriend, the boyfriend I loved, what did that say about me and my shitty taste? I had hoped that if maybe you were wrong—a little wrong about what actually happened—then maybe I was only a little wrong too. I mean, how was I supposed to tell? What’s a good man, a nice man? Rob was good to me, nice to me. But if he wasn’t, in the end, good or nice…So I’ve wondered ever since then with practically every man I’ve dated: What might he do? Or what has he done in the past? You can’t have that constantly in the back of your mind and have a healthy relationship with someone.”
“I know,” Imogen said, trying to give Tilda a pointed look.
Tilda nodded, but with the dark lenses on Imogen couldn’t tell if she was looking at her. Imogen hadn’t expected this to flip around and become about Tilda’s insecurities, but Beck was apparently right about The Thing affecting her life too. Imogen had never contemplated Tilda’s attraction to assholes or why she needed so much attention, so much approval. In recent years Tilda had matured, and from everything Imogen knew about him Jalal was a genuinely decent human. Yet Imogen heard, in the multiple times that Tilda had insisted it wasn’t her fault, that on some level she’d always felt like it was.
It wasn’t an apology, but it was better than nothing. Now that they were so close to it, she realized an apology might be something she needed. And she understood another important thing, something that Tilda might need.
“It wasn’t your fault. What Rob did was never your fault.”
“We never even considered that,” said Beck.
Tilda let out a slow, measured breath, as if she were doing yoga.
Suddenly it felt like they’d been sitting there all day. Imogen’s butt was sore and she needed to walk. As she stood, the others did too. They gathered up their things and started back along the creek, the mood heavy but not oppressive. Imogen wondered if, once they were moving, Tilda’s missing I’m sorry might joggle loose. But apparently the talking was finished.
“Cook up some dinners when we get back? I could use a real meal.” As the one who’d blown up their lazy day, Beck tried now to reestablish a lighter mood.
If someone had told Imogen that this confrontation was the trip’s true agenda, the day’s true plan, she wouldn’t have come. Of course Beck had known that. Dr. Beck—Little Miss Smarty-Pants—was right about more things than Imogen was ready to admit.
“Sure,” she said, trying to sound chipper. The last thing she wanted was to give them any more reasons to think she might fall apart.
“Do we have anything other than chicken?” Tilda asked. “Not that I don’t love all your chicken dishes, but we’re a little skimpy on the veggies.”
Imogen sensed they were all trying to play it light, reassure each other that it didn’t have to be weird. That was probably a good sign, though who knew what would happen once Imogen and Tilda had real time to ponder Beck’s secret hand grenade.
“Toldja you shoulda brought the seaweed—veggie with protein,” said Beck, mock-reprimanding.
“I know,” Tilda whined. “I just can’t, unless it’s wrapped around some sushi.”
Food talk put everyone in a better mood. The blue bag, now slung across Tilda’s back, held all their choices, chicken and otherwise, but they discussed their options as if there were a restaurant waiting for them back at camp.
Their chatter sputtered to silence as they arrived.
The camp had been ransacked.
Their backpacks.
Their personal belongings.
The vital necessities they’d so carefully packed. Strewn everywhere.
It was impossible to tell at first glance what all was missing, though Beck’s sleeping bag wasn’t with the other two, weighted down with rocks.
“Oh fuck. Holy fuck.” Terror made rapids of Imogen’s blood and she clutched her chest where the roiling converged. She’d been right, about everything—the robber was here. How could she, after all she was supposed to have learned, not have trusted her intuition? “I told you—I fucking told you!”
She wanted to explode. Why hadn’t she put more effort into the debate? Little Miss Smarty-Pants wasn’t always right, after all. Being angry felt safer than being scared, but Imogen couldn’t keep it up for long. The minute she looked at her sister she was overcome by something even worse than fear.