Chapter One
Sam
“We do not have to visit a madhouse
to find disordered minds;
our planet is the mental
institution of the universe.”
-Goethe
* * *
The past never leaves us.
The past is a part of who we are, as much as our skin and bone and the lies we’ve told that we can never take back.
The choices we’ve made and the things we’ve suffered take every step with us, always present though not always seen.
* * *
My dad is a geologist by profession, but an all-around science nerd for the love of a good mystery. When I was little, our family would spend our weekends exploring hidden island beaches, hiking up mist-shrouded mountains, or pawing through the volcanic soil atop Maui’s dormant volcano.
On every trip, Dad’s voice was the soundtrack for adventure. Before the divorce, Mom used to joke that she felt like she was living in a nature documentary. I could tell Dad’s constant chatter annoyed her sometimes, but to me the stories he told were reason for wonder. It made me realize the world was full of mystery.
Every plant or animal we passed on a trail had a secret story to tell, an entire hidden world waiting to unfold to those who took the time to stop, observe, and ask the right questions.
It was Dad who taught me that palm trees aren’t really trees at all. They’re more closely related to the grass family and don’t generate new cells the way trees do. Cut through an oak’s bark and you’ll see growth rings that tell the story of each year of the tree’s life. Cut into a palm’s trunk and you’ll just leave a gash in the thick, spongy material of the plant.
And unlike the oak, whose yearly ring growth will eventually heal over the cut, protecting the plant from disease, the palm tree will bear an open wound for the rest of its life. Every insect and dangerous bacteria that floats by on an island breeze will be able to burrow straight into the heart of the palm and start devouring the plant from the inside out.
As I grew up, I started to think that people were a lot like both plants.
Sometimes, we’re like an oak, growing past an old hurt, burying it under layers of new growth, moving forward and getting stronger despite the scar buried beneath the healthy outer shell. But sometimes, our wounds refuse to heal. Sometimes, they stay open and ugly, reminding us every time we look in the mirror that we will never be the same.
The hurt was too big, the cut too deep.
We will never move past it.
From this day, until our last day, the wound will make us an easy target, a weakened animal falling behind the rest of the herd, waiting for another predator to step in and finish the job the first one started.
* * *
As I stumble down the courthouse steps, clinging to my dad’s arm with my head tucked to my chin, ignoring the questions the reporters shout from either side of me as we press through the crowd, I wonder what the cameras see.
Do they see the hardened, selfish, sexually deviant monster the defense attorney made me out to be? Or do they see the stinging, screaming gash four boys cut through the middle of my heart?
Not guilty.
They were all found not guilty.
At the end of the day, the jury believed that I invited four boys to take turns with me, not that I fought and bled and cried. They believed that I spread rumors about Deidre to keep news of my sexual adventures from my boyfriend, not because I was traumatized after being raped.
As far as the law and the world at large are now concerned, Todd, Jeremy, J.D., and Scott are innocent and the rape never happened.
But it did.
It did and now I don’t know what to do. How do I move on when I’ve been told the reason for my grief doesn’t exist, and that my voice, my truth, means less than nothing?
Someone shouts my name.
I flinch and look up before I remember that I’m supposed to keep my gaze down until I get to the car waiting by the curb.
“How did you feel when you heard the verdict, Samantha?” The man in the suit shoving a microphone in my face has sweat beading on his upper lip. I stare at it for a moment, feeling ill, while my father springs to my defense.
“No comment,” he growls, his arm tightening around me.
Sweaty Upper Lip says something else, but I can’t make sense of it. My focus has shifted, homing in on Todd and his father, standing in the shade of the coral trees planted along the sidewalk.
Once I’ve spotted them, I can’t seem to pull my gaze away.
Todd’s father is shaking hands with a pretty, stick-thin reporter and smiling. Todd is nodding earnestly, his blue eyes wide with gratitude and his shaggy blond hair waving in the gentle breeze. He is the picture of innocence, proving he’s a far better actor than his B-list celebrity father. If I didn’t know he was a liar and a monster, I might be tempted to believe him, too.