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TWENTY-THREE

ATLANTA GEORGIA
8th April 1981

JAE

“We are going to be late.” Rowan yelled, pounding on the bathroom door like a maniac.

“Just one more slash of lipstick.” Jae yelled back.

“You said that three slashes ago. Keep that up, and you are going to look like a clown. You may as well put on oversized shoes and a red nose so that you complete the clown effect.” Rowan huffed. “Five minutes, then I’m breaking this door down.”

Men, Jae thought to herself, her eyes rolling in their sockets. They just didn’t get it. She’d tried to explain to Rowan the essence of being fashionably late, but he had failed to understand. She’d tried telling him that she was the star of Mr. Valencia’s movie and that stars always arrived late, that her outfit — a jade strapless dress with a plunging neckline that exhibited an ample chunk of cleavage and a slit so scandalous, it nearly split the dress in half— deserved to be oohed and aahed, that she needed her hourglass figure ogled and still he had not understood. Rowan thought she was being vain. And vain, she was not.

It was perfectly reasonable to want to be the center of attention for just one night, right?

To delay their arrival at the party, Jae had taken matters into her own hands. Jae had gone to the bathroom in order to “reapply her makeup” when, in fact, she was dawdling. Jae was in the girl’s bathroom, standing in front of the mirror, watching the seconds tick by until they were late enough to be fashionably late. How late was fashionably late? Ten minutes? Fifteen minutes? Twenty? Thirty?

“Five minutes have passed!” Rowan yelled, accompanying his words with a kick so powerful the hinges were all but screaming.

“I’m coming.” Groaning, Jae wrenched open the door, and Rowan, who had been leaning against the door, almost fell into the bathroom, suit, and all.

“You look nice.” Jae commented, kissing Rowan’s cheek. The compliment was also part of Jae’s plan to waste time. Not that Rowan didn’t look nice. He did. The navy blue tuxedo he wore was stunning. Jae particularly loved the little Jade Bow tie and the green Oxfords he’d added to match her outfit the most. It’s just that his outfit wouldn’t matter if they did not get the spotlight that came with being fashionably late.

Jae was starting to sound like a broken record with the whole “fashionably late” spiel.

Rowan did a little curtsy. “Gracias.”

“Now would be the perfect time to compliment me as well. That’s what good boyfriends do.”

“Guess, you picked a bad boyfriend.” Rowan joked.

Jae walked away from him. If her boyfriend did not appreciate her outfit, how was the entire party supposed to ogle her?

“Hey!” Rowan chased after her. “I was joking!” When he caught her, he pulled her in for a lingering kiss. “That kiss is my compliment. If I had to compliment you in words, I would have to write poetry. Shitloads of poetry.”

Jae blushed. Rowan was such a Gemini: caring, affectionate, responsible, passionate, and fun. What more did you need in a boyfriend? Jae had won the lottery with Rowan, and she thanked her stars(literally) for that. Her only regret is that she’d not started up something romantic with Rowan sooner. Look at what she’d been missing. With Rowan’s hand slung protectively around her waist, Jae took one deep breath and entered the cafeteria.

The flash of cameras was so blinding that they could not see more than a few feet. Rowan had to guide her across the red carpet lest she trip. Wouldn’t that be embarrassing? On the bright side, they were fashionably late. As it turned out, fifteen minutes counted as fashionably late. All eyes were on them. Jae couldn’t have been happier.

Maybe she was being vain.

Loise wandered over, a flowing peach mermaid dress hugging her curves, a light pink scarf that looked like a Christmas decoration draped around her elbows. Her auburn hair seemed extra shiny and voluptuous when piled on her left shoulder. She looked magnificent (not as magnificent as Jae. But magnificent all the same). Like a Disney princess. Which Disney princess has red hair? Oh, yes, she looked like Aerial.

Jae’s attention was drawn to the two cocktail glasses dangling from Loise’s dainty fingers and the pink-looking liquid in them.

“This is the complimentary non-alcoholic cocktail.” Loise said, smiling from ear to ear.

Jae hesitated. What if she’d spiked the drink? It was not beyond Loise to do such a thing. After all, Loise hated her. And for good reason. She’d sort of stolen her boyfriend. Okay, not exactly stolen. Anyway, the semantics of whether she stole Rowan or not didn’t matter. Loise seemed to think that Jae had stolen something from her. The person who made the saying, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, wasn’t stupid.

“Drink it. Everyone has one.” Loise insisted, her smile widening. Her cheeks had to be hurting with the way she was smiling. If she widened her smile a bit more, her face would tear right off.

Jae looked around. Everyone had the little pink non-alcoholic cocktails. Loise was telling the truth. Or so it seemed. Rowan was looking at her expectantly. Like she was wasting more time by standing here contemplating the safety of the cocktail. Jae picked the pink cocktail, raised it in a toast to Rowan, to a great night ahead, and took a sip.

And that was the last thing she remembered.

★★★

Jae jerked awake in the morning, her body spasming with the movement, a scream ripe in her parched throat, sweat flowing down her back. She was not in her bed. It was easy to tell because her bed was double the size of the one in which she was sleeping. This bed was clearly a one-person bed. It was so small that if you turned once in your sleep, you’d wake up on the floor. The blanket was also different. It was one of those worn quilts that looked like they were made during the Slave Trade.

Whose bed was this? She didn’t remember getting into this bed. Actually, she didn’t remember much of anything. The last thing she remembered was taking a sip of the pink cocktail that Loise had given her. She kept trying to remember more, but all she would get was Loise giving her the drink, her taking a sip, and then a fuzzy feed.

Panicked, she sat up and instantly regretted it. Her head felt like it was being hit by twenty hammers simultaneously. Her eyes burned. Her tongue felt like sandpaper in her mouth. There was nothing on her body that felt right. There was a wet, sticky soreness between her thighs. She felt dirty. Jae wanted nothing more than to run to a shower and scrub herself raw.

What happened last night?

The room in which she sat was a typical teenage boy’s room. A reading table piled high with worn books in one corner, dirty clothes surrounding a bucket that Jae assumed was supposed to serve as the laundry basket, a towel hanging on the hook by the door, a calendar with crosses where the dates had passed, and red circles to mark important dates, a bedside table next to the bed with a lamp that didn’t work and a cracked full-length mirror. The musty scent of sweaty clothes lingered in the air.

What drew Jae’s attention were the posters. There were posters of John Travolta, Clint Eastwood, Meryl Streep, Sylvester Stallone, and Morgan Freeman interspersed with pictures of the same quote, written in various fonts: All the world’s a stage.

Creepy.

Jae spied her dress lying on the floor next to her bed like a dejected toy. On picking it up, Jae realized that the dress was torn to shreds. Like someone had taken a knife and gone to town on her dress. Why was her dress lying torn in a teenage boy’s room? Had she been fully sober, she would have connected the dots sooner. Her brain was a little muddled at the moment.

This wasn’t Rowan’s room. That she knew for sure. Rowan’s room was huger than this. Even Rowan’s bed was huger. The walls of Rowan’s room were filled with pictures of his family —mostly his sister. Not famous actors of the 1970s. Also, Rowan’s room was way more organized than this one. And way less musty.

Jae gathered the strength to get out of bed, and she wobbled on her feet for about a minute before getting her bearings. She took a step and almost keeled over, catching herself on the worn bedside table. Jae felt sick. Like she would puke her guts out if she had the energy.

There was a blue beanie on the floor by the bedside table. It was the same beanie that Tyler wore when he’d come to her house in the middle of the night. This was Tyler’s room then. It made sense. Sort of. Not at all.

Why the fuck was she in Tyler’s room?

A wave of nausea made Jae dry heave. Her stomach was empty. She felt as empty as her stomach. The sun was streaming in through the open curtains, but Jae shivered. She put her arms around her body to warm herself in vain. She probably looked deranged in her bra and panties, her hair sticking out like tumbleweed. It seemed like such a long time ago when she’d been stealing her sister’s hair spray to make her hair shiny and pliable.

At the foot of the bed, lay a note. It was just as crumpled and worn as everything in this room. Jae picked it up, her hands shaking as she read.

You are mine.
Love Tyler.

Those three words. She’d heard them somewhere before. Right. Tyler had said those very same words to her two days ago before she’d slapped him.

Oh. . .

The truth hit her like a tonne of bricks. It all made sense. The too-wide smile on Loise’s face, Loise’s insistence for her to take the cocktail (Loise had not forced Rowan to take the drink), her dress, torn to shreds on the floor, her half nakedness, her sudden loss of memory, the wet sticky soreness between her legs. Everything fit.

She’d been raped. Raped by Tyler. And Loise had helped him.

★★★

Thoughts?

Four more chapters to the end of Part Two. (One Jae chapter, Two Daisy chapters, and one Emilia chapter.)

Part Three is coming in hot.








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