“It’s my fault,” I said. “All of it. I should have been more careful at the party and never let you go off alone.”
“No, that’s not on you,” she said. “I dragged you there, I put you in that position.”
“I should have done more to stop them,” I said. “I should have tried harder. Do you remember anything about that night?”
She took a deep breath, and I could hear her on the other end. I could almost hear her thinking about what to say.
“Yeah,” she replied at last. “Enough. I’m sorry you had to see that.”
“Are you kidding me?” I exclaimed. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you!”
“I was angry at first,” she said. “I felt betrayed, like you had been so ashamed of me that you hid it from me. Like maybe you hanging out with Kingston made you turn your back on me. But after, well, I had a scare. I replied I was blaming you when I should have been blaming myself.”
I didn’t know how else to ask her, so I came right out with it. My voice was small and breathy when I asked, “Did you get an abortion?”
She paused, then laughed and said, “No, where did you hear that?”
“Somebody used my name at the clinic. The other side, not the birth control side, the abortion side.”
She knew what clinic I meant. We all knew about the clinic.
“God, no,” she replied. “I did use your name, though. Oh my god, I’m so sorry. I can’t believe somebody heard me there.”
“What were you there for?” I asked. With each passing moment, I felt the stress of my lies and deception fall away as our friendship returned to normal. I could ask her anything again. She was my friend.
“I thought I had an STI,” she said. “Oh god, it was so awful, I wish you could have come with me.”
“How did you get there?”
“I had to borrow my mom’s car and tell her I had research to do,” she said. “I was praying the entire time that I wouldn’t see anyone I knew and I thought I made it.”
“So did you?” I asked.
“No, thank god,” she said. “That’s the embarrassing part. It was just a yeast infection, nothing more than that. The doctor gave me some sample tubes of cream and it went away in a couple of days. Oh my god, Everly, I thought I was going to die. Seriously. It was so itchy down there I wanted to use a bottle brush as a tampon.”
“Oh god!” I said and winced at the image. Penny had always had a way with words. “Other than that, are you okay, though?”
“I am,” she said. “I mean, mentally I’m fucked up, and I can’t remember who did those things to me. I want to remember so I can do something about it.”
“Like tell the police? Could you report them all for rape?”
“No!” she cried out. “Could you imagine my parents? They would freak the fuck out, especially because it happened at a party. They would blame me and say it was all my fault. That’s how they are.”
“I hadn’t thought about that,” I replied. Her parents were so far into their weird church that they were practically cult members. Boys could do no wrong according to them, but girls had to remain pure and untouched. They were expected to dress and behave modestly so they didn’t attract boys, and drive them wild. If anything happened, sexually, the girl was always blamed. Last year Penny’s cousin had been touched by one of the youth pastors, and she had been forced to leave the church but the pastor had stayed on.
They’d transferred him to another town to show how much they cared about girl’s safety, but I could only imagine he was probably doing the same thing to new prey in another location.
It was all so backwards, but until now, it had never angered me this much.
“Yeah,” she said. “So there’s no way for me to figure it all out. Even if I knew, I couldn’t do a damned thing about it.”
“What if there was a video?” I blurted, before considering how she’d feel.
“Is there?” she asked.
“Uh, yeah,” I said. “Kingston took a phone off one of the guys there. He snuck it into the party and they were recording what they did.”
“I have to see it,” she said with an intensity that matched my own anger. “I have to fucking know.”