Girl Not on Fire

Those were the days.

This is Emily Writes Back, a newsletter for brilliant people, by Emily Sanders Hopkins.

Girl Not on Fire

A short story

Her white car glowed. It was 4:30 in the morning and maybe the sun was changing the sky a bit, or maybe her eyes were just very well adjusted to the dark. She’d been up all night. Should she lock the car? The two men were standing on the walkway to the little house, looking back at her. Was she coming in, or not? She decided not to lock the car. There wasn’t anything in it to steal. A pine air-freshener tree hanging from the mirror. A sweatshirt balled up in the backseat. A water-warped copy of Flowers in the Attic.

Perhaps like every woman at some point in their lives, she knew that she might be raped. These were the two men she’d had fun with and laughed with hours earlier that night, when they’d ridden together in the bed of the pickup truck and lay on their backs as the truck drove slowly over the bumpy road, and they’d marveled at the big night sky and all those stars. “Whoa,” one of the men said. “Nice,” she said. Then, for some reason, they started singing television sitcom theme songs, as many as they could recall. They all knew the Jeffersons song, “Moving on Up.” They laughed and laughed. It was funny that, coincidentally, they all had excellent singing voices.

Then they’d grown quiet, listening only to the sound of the truck and the gravel crunching beneath it. It was a comfortable silence. They were high on drugs. Not pot, she didn’t think. She wasn’t amazed by the profundity of her thoughts. She didn’t know what she’d taken, what they’d shared with her. But it was something that made the starry sky simultaneously crystal clear and as familiar as a washing machine or a row of shoes. The drugs made it seem like she’d been up in space before and was no longer awed by stars. Whatever it was also made her heart beat very slowly. Her pulse reverberated in her eardrums like she was listening to a fetus through a stethoscope.

Since that pickup truck ride, she’d gone to another party without them. She had a vague memory of a very crowded, dark room filled with cigarette smoke. She’d left that party and driven aimlessly on a country road. She found a main road, luckily, and saw the lights of town. She’d gotten a bag of Fritos at the gas station on Main Street. That’s where she ran into the men again. The smirk on the tall one’s face when their eyes met by the coffee makers made her sad.

And they’d asked her for a ride back to the tall one’s cousin’s house.

There is a companionship, a knowing, between a woman and her would-be rapists on a night like this. Was it the same glamour vampire’s dates sensed before they were bitten? Something like that. She felt both dread and sympathy for herself and her own helplessness. Also, self-loathing. What a vulnerable, foolish creature you are!

She had been raped once, in high school at a party. There was no glamour to it. She’d felt so ashamed and dumb and dirty afterwards. She’d been totally unprepared, shocked. Ruined. She’d felt ruined.

And now she should turn around and get back into her unlocked white car, which was looking unrealistically clean and shiny in the darkness, and she should drive away.

The thing was, she had nowhere else to be. And maybe she didn’t much care what happened to her. The apartment she shared with three other girls was empty for Thanksgiving. Her roommates had all left to go help their mothers cook turkey in nearby towns. If she were at the apartment alone, she’d watch old episodes of Little House on the Prairie or drink bourbon out of a promotional plastic cup from the last Star Wars movie and turn the stereo up loud. She would smoke too many cigarettes and cry without knowing exactly what she was crying about. It would be dumb.

And maybe rape was not on the agenda. Maybe the possibility of violence and surprise would just hover there while they sat on the couch and watched TV, or while they sat on the three concrete steps out back and watched the sky slowly light up above the clotheslines and neighboring houses.

She followed them into the house.

“Want a beer?” the tall one asked from the kitchen. She said yes. The couch was covered in piles of fabric-softener-scented folded laundry, compelling them to choose the floor in front of the couch. They all lit cigarettes. I hope the cousin doesn’t mind cigarette smoke in her house, she thought. The cousin was spending the night, as she often did according to her cousin, at her boyfriend’s apartment, leaving her place empty for the taking.

She was in the middle, a guy at each shoulder. The guys were talking about car racing. Then they were talking about another guy they knew and his idea for a snow removal business, but he needed a better truck. She was fading in and out. Boredom, maybe hunger (she’d eaten only Fritos and a banana all day), the tail end of the drugs they’d taken, fatigue after working all day and then partying, surrender to whatever this pre-dawn hangout even was.

The tall one squeezed her thigh and then just left his hand resting there. She didn’t remember him leaving, but the other boy was gone now. The tall one kissed her neck. She felt a little like throwing up, but mostly she felt like sleeping. He smelled nice, like peppermint gum. His face was warm on her neck. She turned her head to accept a kiss. This would keep things from getting rough. The kiss was like a snake, though: unexpectedly hard, dry, and undulating. She tried her best to kiss back. Wouldn’t want to be thought of as a lousy kisser. Her mouth was also dry, though. This is a terrible kiss, she thought. She wondered: Can half of me sleep while the other half kisses expertly under less-than-ideal conditions?

When she woke up, sun blasted in through the light curtains. She was lying on a narrow strip of couch, with laundry behind her. Dust floated on the air. Stale cigarette smell. A gray cat turned the corner and stared at her, then sprinted back down the hallway, his butt bouncing up in the air. Sometimes cats really run from you and sometimes they taunt you as they bound away. The tall guy whom she’d kissed was asleep on the floor, on his back like a corpse, hands folded, but snoring softly. He was shirtless. He was using his shirt as a pillow, balled up. He’d pulled the fuzzy blue throw from the back of the couch onto himself and it lay diagonally like a toga, exposing one smooth shoulder. She felt a little sorry for him.

She looked down and saw that she was still fully dressed. Not only that, but her party purse—the little green purse with a long strap—was still on her shoulder. Funny. She was ready to walk the mean streets of nearby Pittsburgh.

The front door swung open and the shorter guy came into the house with a plastic bag of groceries hanging from each hand.

“Food,” he said.

“Breakfast!” she said back brightly. Unexpectedly, her body filled with intense joy. These were her brothers now. She jumped up, dropped her purse to the floor, and followed him into the kitchen.

“What’s your name again?” she asked him.

“Tre,” he said, offended. “Dude, I went to school with your brother Dan.”

“You did?”

Dan, wasn’t really her brother. He was her step-brother, her mother’s third husband’s only son. Two years ahead in school. But they had lived in the same house for the last two years of high school. The night she was raped, in junior year, Dan had been awake when she got home. She could see him sitting at his desk, all the lights in his second-floor room on, his curtains open.

She’d knocked on his door softly. He’d opened it and said, “What’s up?”

“Some guy hit me and choked me,” she said, not really meaning to share it.

“What? Who?” Dan had asked, his eyes wide.

“I don’t know his name,” she said.

“You should tell your mom,” Dan said.

“Yeah, OK,” she’d said. “Night.”

“Night. I hope you’re OK,” Dan said as he closed the door slowly.

She watched Tre open the bacon, always a tricky maneuver. Why don’t they make better packaging for bacon? she thought for the hundredth time. He laid eight strips out onto a Teflon frying pan.

“Can I help?” she said automatically. It had been ingrained in her from birth, to help out in the kitchen.

“Nah,” he said.

She felt that this man, this grocery shopper, this chef, was like a prince, a knight from a fairy tale. She must look totally messed up. Her mascara was probably smeared down her eyes onto her cheeks by now. She hadn’t looked in the mirror since yesterday morning. He probably wished she would leave soon. It had been nice of him to let her stay the night at his cousin’s house. When she’d woken up, she’d noticed that she’d knocked over some of the piles of folded towels off the back of the sofa onto the floor. She’d been on the couch with her shoes on.

But she wouldn’t beat herself up. No, this was going to be a good day. Maybe she was a guy’s girl now, the kind of woman who might play softball, who might drive a truck and have a big dog. The kind of girl guys didn’t dare mess with.

“Hey,” she told him as he rummaged in the cabinets for a pancake pan, “I’m heading out. Cool hang, thanks.”

“Yeah, sure!” he said without turning around.

In the small living room, the shirtless boy was waking up. He sat up and the blanket fell onto his lap.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey, “ she said back. “I’m taking off. Nice hanging out last night.” She watched his face carefully to see what it would reveal. It revealed no crime. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of both hands. He then looked at her squarely, unashamed, a little interested.

“Can I get your number?” he asked her.

“Sure,” she said, and then she recited it quickly. Maybe he had a really good memory, because he nodded and thanked her.

The sun hurt her eyes on the drive home. She was going to take the longest shower of her life. Maybe she should move out west and try to get into the movies. That could feel dangerous. It was a hard life, being an aspiring actor, she’d heard. People treated you like an expendable commodity. But you gritted your teeth and put your head down, like a bull. You could become as indestructible as a flatworm and as strong as a mule. Then, one day, you get cast in an ongoing television series as an interesting villain, the main character’s nemesis. The camera loves the deep sadness in your eyes, the hard glint, your implacable face. And then everything that has happened or not happened before seems worth it.