Chapter Fifteen

Ken Soong got to his feet, accompanied by low cheers from his surrounding seatmates. His expression was confident; as he reached the front of the room, he nodded to Ms. Mousumi, who smiled in reply. Ken was active on the wrestling and swim teams, as well as in lunch-hour intramurals. Last year, he’d been a member of the Athletic Council.

He was popular, where Maddy went unnoticed. He liked an audience, where she shrank from one. A week ago, just glancing in his direction would have made Maddy feel as if she was going up in flames. Today, as Ken came to a halt and switched on his tablet, she felt shaky. Her breath shoved in and out; sweat broke out across her skin. When she forced herself to look directly at Ken, focus in on his grinning profile, her heart shouted in alarm and her body tensed, ready to flee. But she made herself stay with it – her gaze repeatedly jumping off but coming back, each time staying longer as her hands gripped the sides of her desktop, white-knuckled but helping her stay put. Because Maddy was here to listen – to hear every word, to watch every flicker in Ken’s expression. In spite of his overwhelming advantage, she knew something he did not: that whatever he said today, whatever new slur or attack he was about to launch on the pain eater’s already slaughtered reputation, she, Maddy Malone, would get the last word on it. And if she wanted to give her best last word, she knew she had to hear Ken’s every syllable today. Quiet, Maddy told the blood pounding in her ears. Shhhh, play stupid, play dead.

Fingers touched her right hand. “Are you all right?” whispered Kara.

Maddy tried not to flinch obviously. She nodded.

About to start, Ken sent his gaze roving across the class, stopping just short of Maddy’s desk. “We all know what kind of girl Farang is,” he began. “She steals. She sneaks around at night and spies on people. She parties and…” – he smirked – “gets around. In all this time, name me one good thing she’s done. She knows everyone’s secrets, but does she try to help anyone? Instead of sneaking around, stealing and wrecking things, why doesn’t she do something positive? But no, she hangs out with the partiers and gets pregnant. She had a choice. She didn’t have to steal and drink and get pregnant.

“The boy thinks about these things. It’s true he saw the priestesses almost drown Farang. And he felt sorry for her and brought her food. But then he keeps watching her. And he sees the way she really is.

“What he sees is that she asks for what she gets. She’s lazy. She just hangs around all day, waiting for her free food. And after she gets it, she goes off and works on her suntan. She doesn’t work in the fields and help with the harvest. She doesn’t help collect herbs for the village healer. She doesn’t help the old people. She could think about helping out and doing things for other people, but all she thinks about is herself. That, and getting drunk with the partiers. There’s only one reason a girl like Farang goes to a party. She knows what she’s getting into.

“So the boy gets to know Farang by watching her. And what he sees disgusts him. At first he felt sorry for Farang, but not anymore. No, Farang isn’t the type you feel sorry for. But he has to be sure. So one day, he breaks the rules and talks to Farang. He follows her into the woods, and when he’s sure no one else is near, he says, ‘Hello, Farang.’

“She sees him there. She knows they’re alone. What does she do? She comes on to him. The boy is shocked. He doesn’t want this. But Farang won’t stop. There’s only one thing on her mind, and she’s out to get it. ‘Stop!’ says the boy. ‘I just want to talk to you.’ But she won’t stop. She knows what she’s doing, all right. Soon the boy can’t stop himself, because that’s what boys are wired for. Besides, Farang made him do it. And so what happens? Farang gets pregnant again.

“So this is what I mean. Farang had a choice here. She could’ve talked to the boy and something could’ve come out of it. Maybe something big, maybe just a small thing. But something positive. The boy wanted to pull her out of the gutter, but she pulled him into the gutter instead. You’ve got to watch out for girls like Farang, keep yourself clean of them. The boy learned this the hard way. When the tribe found out what he’d done, they kicked him out. He was sent off into the woods to die. And it was all Farang’s fault. They didn’t kill her, because she was their pain eater and they needed her. They didn’t need the boy. No one needed the boy, except maybe himself. I wonder what he was thinking while he lay there in the forest, starving to death. All because he wanted to help Farang. He died for Farang in the end. And she didn’t even care. She was as bad as he was good. Too bad the boy didn’t notice until it was too late.”

As Ken paused, then shut off his tablet, Maddy felt the full weight of knowing descend upon her. So this was how he was presenting what had happened to other people. This was how he was describing the gang rape – as something she’d initiated, group sex she’d wanted because she was “that type of girl.” It was all something she was “asking for,” probably begging for. And the four boys? she wondered. Were the three rapists and their accomplice in his version all shocked innocents who ended up giving in to their “wiring”?

Her gaze darted over to David. Flushed, he was sitting with his eyes downcast, his face twitching. His lips twisted as if he was muttering aloud to himself, as if he was spitting out words. Not once did he glance up at Ken, and when Julie touched his arm and whispered to him, he jerked.

“Well, Ken,” said Ms. Mousumi, getting to her feet. “Thank you. You may sit down.” Her tone was cool, and she looked decidedly unimpressed. Ken got her drift. As he headed back to his seat, his grin had shrunk considerably.

“Any comments?” asked the teacher.

The class sat, musing. A hand went up. “I never thought about it – that she could’ve been doing something positive,” said Harvir. “If you want people to do good to you, you gotta do something good for them.”

“But she couldn’t talk to anyone!” protested Theresa.

“And they all spat on her!” added August. “Once a month. You’re complaining about her attitude?”

“Maybe,” said Brent. “But after a while, she would’ve gotten used to it. I think Ken’s right – she should’ve helped out somewhere. And when you think about what we all wrote, no matter whether you’re for her or against her, no one in this class has written about Farang doing a single good thing for anyone.

“Well,” he added uncomfortably, “maybe she saved the tribe from Zombiedom. But that was just to get a wish from the wizard, so it doesn’t really count.”

Again, the class fell silent. Ms. Mousumi waited them out, letting them think. Maddy sat as still as everyone else, her gaze darting hit-and-run-style across David. When Ken had sat down in his desk, David had leaned in the opposite direction, as if blown by a gale-force wind. Minutes passed, and he didn’t straighten up. Ken kept glancing at him, obviously uncomfortable.

Kara’s hand went up. “So maybe it did go like Ken said,” she commented briskly. “Maybe Farang did get pregnant on purpose a second time. But maybe she had a reason for it. A baby would be company. At least then she’d have someone to talk to all day.”

Without raising his hand, Ken shot back, “Why didn’t she talk to the boy, then? She had her chance there, and she didn’t use it.”

Eyebrows lifted at his tone. Kara smiled slightly. “Looks to me like she and the boy talked just fine,” she drawled in reply.

Snickers rippled across the class. “Okay,” said Ms. Mousumi. She looked as if she’d heard all of The Pain Eater she wanted to for a while. “I have a comment that I’d like to make here. I want to disagree with your comment, Ken, that ‘that’s what boys are wired for.’ Boys are not machines. They make choices with their minds, and their minds decide what their bodies will do – not the other way around. So they are responsible for all their choices, unlike a machine, which is not. I also think it’s disrespectful to boys to think of them as being machines. They are human beings and should be honored as such, as should each and every girl.”

The silence that followed Ms. Mousumi’s short speech vibrated with intensity. No one looked at anyone else. Again, Ms. Mousumi waited out the silence, letting students struggle with their individual thoughts. Then she added, “We’ll leave it there for today. Sheng, you’re up Monday.”

Seated at the center of the front row, Sheng Yoo nodded. Slowly, finger by finger, Maddy relaxed her death grip on her desktop. Her hands ached; her heart was performing martial arts; she had to keep swallowing the bile that surged up her throat. But she knew now. Through the tweets she’d received, comments from other students, and, finally, Ken’s chapter, the situation had become overwhelmingly clear – Maddy now understood what other kids, August excepted, thought and said to each other when they looked at her. Nothing Ms. Mousumi said could change that; nothing any adult said ever changed the jungle of teenagers’ thinking. Whether they were wired for it or not, once they got going they were all hunters looking for prey, and that was what she, Maddy Malone, was to them now – prey.

The question was where things were headed from here.

. . .

She made it out of the school building by shutting down inside, hunching in between her shoulders and keeping her eyes on her feet. If anyone spoke to her, she did her best not to notice. On one side of her locker, Tim Bing protected her from comments; he was the kind of guy who was immune to scum – just walked around handing out his cheerful smile to anyone and everyone. If he’d heard anything, he didn’t let on, but Maddy wasn’t in a grateful mood. Grabbing what she needed from her locker, she headed for the nearest exit. Once outside, she bolted down the sidewalk, skirting loiterers, but she wasn’t fast enough to block out one last, shouted comment: “Maddy! Hey, Maddy! Let me be the father of your child!”

Four blocks from school, she was swarmed. It happened while she was crossing a small park – three boys jumped up from a bench where they were having a smoke and surrounded her, their voices jeering, their hands reaching. All three were in grade nine; Maddy didn’t know any of their names. “No!” she cried, crossing her arms over her chest, and the boys’ hands shifted, going low. She doubled over to protect her groin, and they began pinching her butt, then punching it.

“What, you don’t want us?” they leered. “But you like anyone you can get – that’s what we heard.”

Maddy was on her knees now, her arms over her head, the boys circling as if waiting. She felt it – that they were waiting for something – but what that something was, and whether they expected it to come from her or from them, she didn’t know.

Abruptly, there came the sound of pounding feet and a shout, and then a figure launched itself at the circling boys. “You shits!” Maddy heard someone cry. “I’m not letting this happen again! Leave her alone! Get out of here!”

A few protests, some insults in reply, and the three boys scattered, disappearing into the late afternoon. Still, Maddy hunched, her arms over her head. Her heart kickboxed her chest; she sucked and sucked and sucked for air.

“Are you okay?” asked a voice. It was familiar. Lowering her arms, Maddy glanced up into David Janklow’s face.

He reached out a hand. She took it, and he helped her rise. Hugging herself, Maddy continued to suck air.

“Let’s sit down,” said David. She followed him over to the bench. They sat as he waited for her to steady her breathing.

“How did you know?” she asked finally.

He was silent a moment. “I’ve been watching you for a while,” he admitted. “I wanted to talk, but not at school. I didn’t know if you’d…” His voice trailed off.

“What about?” she asked, her eyes on the ground.

He swallowed so intensely, she could hear it. “I’m sorry!” he exploded. “I’m just so goddamn sorry!”

“You didn’t do it,” said Maddy.

“No,” David said bitterly. “I didn’t do anything, did I?”

Maddy sat, silent. The moment was huge, too big to hold on to. She didn’t know what to do with it.

“I couldn’t believe what was happening,” David continued, faltering. “It wasn’t planned, nothing like that. We were just walking home from the play, and we saw you ahead. And then…they just all took off in a group. At first I didn’t know what they were after. I ran after them. When I saw…I, like, froze. It was like I turned into concrete. I couldn’t move.” He was crying; Maddy could hear the gasp in his voice. But she couldn’t look at him or respond in any way. Inside herself, the memory was starting to take shape. It was rising, about to come at her. Fighting – Maddy was fighting to keep it under control, to beat it back down, to kill it.

“My brother,” said David, his voice breaking. “Keith. I couldn’t believe Keith.”

“D’you have a cigarette?” asked Maddy.

“I don’t smoke,” said David.

Maddy panicked. The memory was looming large – larger than David’s words, the park, anything she could fix on. When it got this big, only burning would keep it at bay, and she didn’t have that here. Sliding off the bench, she landed on her hands and knees. There was the ground – she could feel it, warmed by the afternoon sun. Maddy pressed her palms against it and the ground pressed back, solid, bigger than herself, bigger than anything that had happened or could ever happen. Sudden rage erupted in her. Lifting her hands, she began pounding them against the grass.

“Maddy?” said David.

She was grunting, snarling. And the sound wouldn’t let up. Wordless, it kept heaving out of Maddy’s mouth – sounds she’d never made before, sounds she’d never heard anyone make. Her fists pounded; her mouth snarled and spat; in her mind, she reached for the memory, and grabbed and tore and shredded it. As she did, the memory began to retreat. Gradually, the voices in her mind quieted; the grabbing hands shrank, then slid back down to wherever they lived when they weren’t destroying her life.

Exhausted, Maddy lay down and let nothingness pour through her. No, not nothingness, she realized – relief. And then, slowly, triumph. She’d done it. She’d taken that monster memory into her own hands and defeated it.

“Maddy?” said David.

“You still here?” asked Maddy.

“Yeah,” said David.

“Why?” asked Maddy.

David hesitated. “I’m not them,” he said. “Not everyone’s like them.”

Maddy breathed a while. “What are you like, then?” she asked.

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” said David. “I didn’t have the guts then. Do I now?”

Maddy sat up. “You got rid of those guys just now,” she said.

“That’s nuthin’,” David muttered. “Nuthin’ compared to ratting on my brother.”

Maddy’s mouth twisted. She gave him a sideways glance. “I don’t know about you and your brother,” she said. “I don’t give a shit about your goddamn brother. That’s your problem, and I’m not eating your pain.”

Clambering to her feet, she headed across the park, a silent David behind her.

. . .

Saturday night, Maddy sat, chin on knees, observing the mural. It was finished. She knew this with a completeness of heart, a quietly enormous feeling of satisfaction that lapped at her like an inner ocean. She had brought the monster out of herself and trapped it in all its terrifying detail on the tree house wall. Which meant that in some way it was gone from her – gone from where it had lived inside her skin, inside her spirit. She wasn’t free of the fact that it had happened – she would never be free of that – but it would no longer be happening inside herself, over and over. It was in the past now, and she was in the present.

The figures of the three remaining boys had been filled in. One of them, David’s older brother Keith, stood with his head back, howling. Robbie held the central figure – herself – down by the shoulders, while Ken raped her. Pete prowled. At the edge of the clearing, David stood, frozen with shock.

The boys’ masks hung, five pale leers, from the bare branches of trees. The mural didn’t display the boys’ individual features clearly, but still Maddy had decided to unmask them, to tear off their plastic grins and throw them to the skies. Above all five, dangling from the highest branch, hung a single weeping mask, its truth. It was the last thing she’d drawn, the last detail she’d needed to add to the scene.

She couldn’t believe she was done. The mural felt like a long black sickness that had lifted out of her; she’d thought it would be never-ending, and now it had ended. It was an enemy, and at the same time it had been part of her – part of her strength, her fierce seeking to overcome. And so, contradictory as it might seem, the mural had finally become a friend.

A sound outside the tree house alerted her. “Maddy,” called a voice.

It wasn’t Leanne – Trucker was at an out-of-town weekend volleyball tournament. Maddy crawled to the entrance. “C’mon up,” she said.

Feet clambered up the ladder, and August’s beaming face poked over the threshold, followed by Kara’s. “Cool digs!” said August, clambering into the tree house. “This thing is stable, right? We’re not all gonna keel over and tumble to the ground? Whaaaa—?”

Her eyes hit the mural and she fell silent. Beside her, Kara came to a halt, also stock-still as she studied the image. Wordless, Maddy knelt, watching Kara’s face. She respected August – knew how her own energy and self-esteem doubled in the other girl’s presence – but here before the mural, it was Kara’s reaction she was waiting for, hoping for, seeking.

“This happened to you,” said Kara. Her voice was hoarse, guttural. She spoke without looking at Maddy, her gaze riveted.

“Yes,” said Maddy.

Kara continued to crouch, motionless. “It’s like a scream,” she said. “A black scream.”

“Yes,” whispered Maddy.

“I wish,” said Kara, blinking rapidly, “my brother could’ve screamed like this.”

Maddy remained silent; there was nothing to say to something like that.

“What’s that?” asked August, pointing to the cream-gold sphere Maddy had drawn midair. “It’s not the moon – that’s over there.”

“I don’t know exactly what it is,” said Maddy. “I drew it after the background, but before anything else. It just had to be there.”

“Okay,” said August. “What are those?” She pointed to the masks.

“Comedy masks,” said Maddy. “From Our Town, when they gave them out to the audience. Were you there?”

“No,” said August, “but I heard about it. Is that when it happened?”

Maddy hesitated. Even after the mural’s completion, even after inviting both girls over specifically to show it to them, she felt shaky. “After,” she blurted out. “Coming home. They jumped me in a bunch of trees. They were wearing the masks.”

“Do you know who they were?” asked Kara.

“Yes,” said Maddy. “I figured it out. One I knew then, the rest later.”

“Who?” asked Kara and August, their voices overlapping.

Maddy stared into their eyes, the shocked intensity of their gaze. The necessary words felt enormous, like tombstones leaving her mouth. They would change everything; she knew this. Nothing would be the same ever again.

“Ken Soong,” she said. “Pete Gwirtzman. Keith Janklow.”

August let out a whoosh of air. “David!” she said. “That’s why!”

“He was there,” said Maddy. “He didn’t do anything. He’s the one at the edge of the trees.”

“He didn’t help?” demanded Kara.

“He told me he froze,” said Maddy. “We talked yesterday. I don’t think he could’ve stopped them anyway.”

“That’s not an excuse!” protested August. “He should’ve done something!”

“Something like that happened to me once,” said Maddy. “A teacher was picking on one of my friends.” She described the incidents with Mr. Zarro and Jennifer Ebinger, then added, “I froze then too. I was right there and I could’ve said something, but I didn’t. Not because I didn’t want to. It was like something invisible was holding me back.”

“It’s not the same,” said August, shaking her head.

“Nothing’s the same,” said Maddy. “But I know what David meant. It’s something that just happens to you.”

Silence swallowed the tree house. The three girls crouched staring at the mural, the only sound their hoarse breathing. Maddy didn’t know what to say next, what the soul words were. She’d called these girls on her phone earlier that afternoon, told them how to find the tree house, and invited them over for eight p.m. Now she was at their mercy. She waited.

“Who’s the guy holding you down?” asked August.

“Robbie Nabigon,” said Maddy. “That’s all he did. He didn’t actually…rape me.”

“Have you told anyone?” asked Kara. “Your parents?”

“Not yet,” said Maddy. “I wanted to finish this first. I had to.”

“Yeah,” said August. “If I had something like that hanging around my gut, I’d want to get it out too. It’s like the end of the world.”

“And the beginning,” said Maddy.

For the first time since entering the tree house, Kara looked directly at Maddy. She was crying slightly; the smile she gave Maddy was lopsided. “Maddy,” she said, “you’re a fucking incredible artist.”

Maddy gave her a lopsided smile back. “So you believe me?” she asked, her voice cracking.

“Believe you!” exploded August. “We heard Ken’s chapter! And David’s.”

Maddy sagged like a collapsed balloon. “Okay,” she whispered, the word barely audible. “Okay.”

“Did you think we wouldn’t?” August asked incredulously. “After all the rumors going around school? What’re we – blind and stupid?”

“I didn’t mean that!” protested Maddy.

“Maddy,” said August, crawling close and poking her face directly into Maddy’s, “I believe you. Absolutely. Period.”

Maddy stared into the dark eyes inches from her own. Tears slid down her face. “I didn’t know,” she quavered, “how you’d be. This is the first time this has happened to me.”

“I believe you too,” Kara blurted, touching her arm. “All those times with your hands in class. Now I know why.”

Maddy rubbed her sleeve across her eyes. “Sorry I’m crying,” she mumbled. “I’ll try and stop.”

“You cry as long as you want,” said August. “It’s a free country.”

And so the three of them sat quietly while Maddy sobbed out her relief. It had been so long – the aloneness, the silence – and now it was over. She’d guessed, she’d taken a risk, and she’d chosen wisely. These were two friends who would stick by her.

“Want to go into the house for ice cream?” she asked. “But don’t say anything to my parents – about the mural, or what happened. I’ll tell them soon. It’s just – this is enough for tonight.”

They climbed down the ladder and went into the house.