I shake my head, grabbing my iced coffee and taking a sip. “Like I said, it was just a hypothetical. A situation from a book I’m reading, not about me. I just like to dig in and think about what I’m reading, you know?”
Grace doesn’t know, because if it’s not assigned by a teacher, about Jesus, or a devotional in her journal, Grace isn’t reading it. That’s why it’s the right excuse though. She immediately loses interest, nodding at my silly reading hobby and jumping topics, telling me all about these new canvas paintings she’s thinking about buying to hang up in her bedroom.
After I get home and changed into some comfy pajamas, I do maybe the least productive thing I could do—I quietly stalk Carter Mahoney’s social media.
It starts out as mild curiosity, the thought that maybe I could find out more about what kind of person he actually is by looking at what he takes pictures of and shares with the world, but it’s just more bullshit. From the looks of Carter’s profile, he’s a typical golden boy. I almost choke on some of the bullshit captions, envisioning him choking on laughter as he types them out.
“Such a privilege to have the governor show up for my team tonight. #GoLonghorns #Longhornlife #blessed”
“Oh, my God, you are so full of it,” I say to no one, shaking my head. I’m lying tummy down on my bed with my feet in the air, perusing this stream of lies.
A picture of him eating fries with Jake, Shayne, Erika, and some other girl whose name I can’t recall is captioned “Good food, good friends, good times.”
“How long did it take you to come up with that one, Kerouac?” I mutter.
His latest post is a shaky ten second video of the football field, then he turns it around and flashes it his practiced troublemaking grin. Despite being posted only an hour ago, it already has nearly two hundred loves and 42 comments from lovesick girls who go to our school. Like me a few weeks ago, Carter probably knows none of their names.
Before that picture, he posted a moody black and white shot of him on the field in his letter jacket, just his back and stony profile visible. That one looks the most real, like maybe someone caught him off guard and he wasn’t performing for his audience when the shot was taken.
Why are you always performing, Carter Mahoney?
I hate that question, because it has to have an answer. Even if it’s a shitty answer, there must be one.
Unless he really is just a monster. I suppose some people are born broken, with brains that work differently, with impaired empathy and a literal inability to function the way most of us do without even thinking about it.
I remember a saying I heard once, some trite, throwaway phrase: Hurt people hurt people. Did someone hurt Carter Mahoney? What is his home life actually like? I suppose I don’t know. He has one of those families where everyone knows of them, but who actually knows them? Do the people in Carter’s life see beneath the bullshit façade he puts out in the world, or does he keep that side of himself hidden even from those closest to him?
Perhaps most curiously, why show it to me? If he doesn’t have a trail of victims behind him, why make me his first? Was it just an opportunity he couldn’t pass up? I’d like to believe the situation spun out of control and he just got carried away, but I know that isn’t true. I think that’s exactly what happened to Jake, but not Carter. Carter knew exactly what he was doing, and he didn’t so much as hesitate. He struck me down without consideration, without care, and I have to wonder why?
Normal, healthy people don’t have impulses like that, do they?
Rather than listen to the echo chamber in my mind, I steer away from Carter’s pictures and open up my Internet app, attempting to ferret out answers that way. I get lost down a rabbit hole, researching fantasies common to both men and women, speculation as to why some people have such fantasies, conjecture that perhaps it’s related to a wider sexual repertoire—more sexually open-minded people may be more inclined toward a greater variety of fantasies. History of abuse, gender roles, luck of the draw—lots of theories, but no solid explanations.
None of these are helpful in understanding what he did though, they’re mostly about rape fantasy. A common fantasy, apparently. Huh.
This isn’t the way I saw my Friday night going, but hell, I like to learn new things.
I research outright rape next. The reasons people might do it. There are a lot of stances and theories. Could he, in some way, for some reason, be “getting back” at women? That seems unlikely, given that he’s popular and girls love him, but I don’t know about his home life. He’s far from the ugly guy in the back of class, watching the other guys clean up and feeling left out. The power motive seems feasible. Carter admitted he liked having me vulnerable and afraid, begging him. I don’t know if he’s ever committed that crime, though. I know he forced himself on me in the classroom, but has he hurt other girls? If not, why now? I try to research that, too, but it’s murky and difficult to wade through all the information, then pick out relevant pieces without even knowing much about him.