Chapter 10

I awoke a good few hours later in the same bed, with the same regrets, and the same junior spooning me. Despite everything bad I had done and every negative emotion I was feeling, I couldn't help but smile. I was really glad to have Nicole back in my life.

I looked past her to my alarm clock. 11:42am. It was a good thing it was a weekend - I needed the sleep. That said, my parents usually looked for me if I wasn't up by noon, and I was worried that today would be no exception.

"Nicole," I said softly, nudging Nicole's lifeless body.

"Mmm." She moaned into the pillow.

"Nicole, you have to get up now. It's almost 12." I said soothingly.

"No." She cutely mumbled into the pillow.

"Please?" I asked, my hand remaining on her shoulder.

"I don't wanna." She responded, not even bothering to remove her head from the pillow. I wonder how she managed to breathe with her head positioned like that.

"Nicoooooole..." I replied in a sing-song voice. Slowly, she raised her head. Her eyes were half-closed, clearly sleepy yet clearly unamused, her hair was a mess and her face, although I hadn't noticed last night, was clearly becoming paler due to the winter. Despite clearly looking less conventionally beautiful in the morning, I couldn't suppress a small smile as I saw her face.

"What?" She barked in a raspy voice.

"You need to get up now." I said in a soothing voice. "Your parents are going to be looking for you."

Nicole's eyes widened, her expression turning grave. "Are they here now?" She asked, looking scared.

"No, no!" I reassured her, rubbing her shoulder.

"Then fuggoff." She replied annoyedly, her expression changing from what I realized was mock fear to annoyed as her head hit the pillow again. She got me. She certainly knew how to act.

"You're not going to make this easy, are you?" I asked her as I removed the sheet from the bed and got up, moving towards the dresser.

"I like my sleep." Nicole lazily replied, grabbing the sheet and pulling it back over her naked body.

"You need to get dressed, Nicole." I said sternly as I turned away from her, grabbing a pair of pants from my dresser.

"Do I have to?" Nicole whined as I put my pants on.

"Yes." I said firmly, grabbing a shirt and pulling it over my head. When I turned back around, Nicole was on top of the bed, fully clothed, staring down at her phone.

"Fine." She said flatly.

"Stop ... doing that!" I said, a little freaked out. "You didn't even bring clothes here last night. How the heck did you do that?!"

"Graaaaade eleven." She replied nonchalantly as she continued playing with her phone. "So, what's the plan for today? Good to see you don't have a hangover."

"You knew about the party?" I asked her.

She looked up into my eyes. "I know everything." She assured me, getting up. "For example..." she started, looking around my room. " ... You have a pair of speakers in your room."

I looked at my desk. The pair of speakers, positioned on top of my desk in plain sight, wasn't exactly hard to find. "Very good, Sherlock." I replied sarcastically.

"And if you have a pair of speakers and nothing plugged into it, you probably have a music player." Nicole continued, ignoring me. She eyed my desk drawer and opened it, rifling through it without my permission. "Aha!" She declared triumphantly as she held up my old mp3 player, which I hadn't seen for a few years. She immediately plugged it in. "Do you have Toto or Soft Cell on this?"

"It won't have power, don't bother." I told her. "Besides, I just put rock music on that. Nothing really 80s."

As if on cue, Africa by Toto started filling the room as Nicole beamed at me triumphantly. I never even heard of Toto before that day, but at this point, I didn't even have the strength to be surprised. She started swaying to the music, the baggy hoodie she put on swaying with her. Soon, she began to dance, at which, of course, she was great. Not missing a beat, she began to move her body in time to the music, gesturing me to join.

I shook my head. "I don't really dance." I said.

Nicole smiled, still dancing. "You didn't really do karate before, either." She retaliated. "The two are closer than you think." At that, she suddenly stopped dancing, as if she had a thought. "Oh yeah! Speaking of, why'd you stop showing up? You only just started."

Suddenly, I couldn't keep eye contact with her. "I..." I slowly started.

Sensing my tension, Nicole stopped the music and sat me down on the side of my bed. "What? What's wrong?" She asked me.

I couldn't even look her in the eye as I responded. Breathing sharply before doing so, I quickly responded, "I thought you were mad at me so I couldn't deal with seeing you."

"So you didn't go to karate because you'd feel like shit if you saw me and saw I was still pissed at you?" Nicole asked me. I nodded. Her expression turned unimpressed as she smacked me upside the head. "You doorknob." She spat annoyedly. "I don't hate you or anything. What am I, 12?"

"You sided with Phil at the council." I countered with a small voice.

She sighed. "Yeah, I did, didn't I?" She asked me. "Sorry, squirt. I was really pissed at what you did, and honestly thought Phil wasn't like..."

"Jeff?" I asked her.

Something flickered in Nicole's eyes for just a second. I think it was rare for her to slip up, and even rarer for her to notice, but I think she just realized she said too much. However, she recovered quickly. "What, like the VP?" She asked with confusion in her voice.

I was done beating around the bush. I shook my head. "Jeff Love, your boyfriend last year."

Nicole's eyes narrowed. "How do you know about that?"

With a surge of confidence, I winked at her. "Grade 9." I answered playfully.

"Hilarious." Nicole replied sourly, getting up off the bed and walking to a corner of the room, arms akimbo, staring at the wall.

I found her actions a little unfair as I considered how she handled things when I was pissed about something. "What, so when I'm upset you can laugh things off and be all playful, but when I do the same I'm the bad guy?" I asked her, my tone shifting.

"It's not the same." Nicole said flatly, keeping her gaze fixed on the wall.

"Right." I replied, my anger building. "This time, it's you with the problem. Let's all laugh off Adam, the immature grade nine. His problems are small. But just because I'm older, my problems are somehow bigger." I paused, waiting for a response that never came. "Damn it, Nicole, at least tell me why."

"Why?" She repeated calmly, slowly turning around to face me. Her expression reflected an anger of its own, a very calm anger that was more effective than all of the shouting in the world. "Get ready to feel like shit, squirt."

Nicole, maintaining her calm composure, sat down next to me on the bed. "So, yeah, I was with Phil's brother last year." She began. "Great guy. Grade 12, popular type. I was an artistic sophomore nobody. A diligent yearbook worker who had a background in the gifted program." She chuckled softly. "I didn't stand a chance."

"So?" I asked her after a little pause.

She glared at me. "I'm not done, knucklehead." She snarled. "Anyway, he really uplifted me. Took me to parties, introduced me to his friends. Said he found me genuinely pretty. Really made me feel like I was worth something. Made me popular, taught me how to be cool. It was actually really cool ... I was being more social and everything. He made me really happy."

She coughed, mostly out of discomfort. "But he wanted something, and kept pushing. He wanted sex. I ... I just wasn't ready for it. Around the third time he asked me for it, it was just us in his basement. He asked me if I loved him. I ... was stupid. I said yes, and asked him. He said he wasn't sure, but if we could have sex, if we could 'share that bond... '" She held up her fingers as if they were quotes. " ... then he would be sure, that he'd ... wanna be with me forever. I wasn't moving, but I wasn't saying no. He just kept repeating these sweet nothings, tugging at my shirt or something. Next thing I know, he was forcing himself into me. I never did anything like that before, and my God, did it hurt."

She paused her story and looked at me with intent. "Oh, yeah, by the way, if you ever fuck a girl for the first time, it hurts like a bitch. I don't care what they say. Don't move for like the first five minutes." She looked back to the wall and resumed her story.

"I didn't really know what to do. It was a new experience, a new feeling, and plus, it really fucking hurt, so I just sorta lay there, not even comfortable with it all, and let him take me." She paused again, and this time I let her take her time. She seemed to have difficulty explaining the next part.

"After ... after he came, he may as well have thrown me away with the fucking condom. He laughed at me and said I was a 'terrible fuck.' And you know what? I accepted that, I accepted it like a fucking lady. After all, I didn't know what was going on, I just stayed there, I just figured, fair enough, you know?" At this point, she was getting really flustered, and she was looking straight down. I couldn't see her face amidst her hair, but I bet she was trying to hold back tears.

"So ... So I just sorta went with it. Told him I'd get better. Lied, saying it was good for me, even though the reality was it fucking hurt and he didn't even have my god damn fucking consent. He had the fucking balls to tell me he couldn't be with someone who was that bad in bed. Drove me home, didn't speak with me for a week. I didn't either. I mean, fuck, I couldn't even look at him, but I really wanted him to say something. Not even 'sorry.' 'Hi' or 'are you gonna fucking be okay' would do."

I was starting to piece things together. "So asking me not to be an asshole to May ... Always making sure I comfort a girl when she's upset ... getting angry with me for not talking to Megan after I upset her..." I trailed off.

She looked up into my eyes. Her own eyes were red, but she successfully suppressed the tears. She nodded.

Then it hit me. Jeff said she was terrible in bed. "And that's why you were ... I mean, that's why you're a..." My cheeks burned as I trailed off again.

She read my mind and chuckled. "A slut? Yup. I wanted to show that fucker I knew what I was doing. So I got me a few practice boys. I was popular at that point, and Jeff was SUCH a fucking gentleman that he didn't tell the whole school I was a bad fuck, so it was easy." She giggled to herself. "Hell, half the school knows for a fact I'm not a bad fuck now..."

"Half?!" I asked in disbelief.

She donned a sarcastic smile and punched me in the gut. "Figure of speech, dumbass." She said, half angry, half playfully.

Silence filled the room. I'm not quite sure for how long. Out of nothing, Nicole spoke up again, her voice more shaky this time. "I felt like shit, y'know. I felt like I was worth something for just about the second time in my life. Jeff fucking destroyed that. So I ran to the one person I could, the one person who would listen."

I thought about it for a while. "Who?"

She looked into my eyes with a deep sadness, a sadness I saw only once before. That once was last December, when she was in my room explaining what happened. Explaining what happened to Mitch.

She sensed I understood who. "I actually didn't even run to him. He caught me blowing a dude. He chased the guy out, but when it came time to deal with me, he ... he didn't preach. He didn't talk down to me. He held me, he stroked my hair ... He told me how beautiful he found me, how lucky he was to have a talented little sister..." Her attempts to hold back tears were beginning to weaken. "He asked me why I had to have sex to feel valued. And when I told him, he didn't stop me from doing it. He didn't just look after me, he understood me. He accepted me." She looked at me again. "He loved me, God dammit!"

After spitting that last sentence out at me, Nicole latched onto me in a tight hug, burying her face in my chest. She wasn't crying, but she didn't dare move either.

After about a minute, she pulled away. "Sorry." She mumbled.

"It's okay. You're upset." I tried to comfort her.

"Yeah, but that's no reason to throw all of my problems at you and latch on to you like the world's neediest koala every time I remember Mitch or something." She countered, her casual attitude quickly returning. She attempted to straighten her mess of hair and smiled at me. "So, feel like shit yet?" She asked, more warmly than one would expect.

I returned the smile. "A little." I admitted. "Sorry."

She waved me off. "It's totally fine." She said, her voice returning to normal. "It's nice to talk about this with someone who isn't ... y'know ... dead."

"Didn't you say you have two brothers?" I asked her.

She shrugged. "Spencer and I never really got along. And that's all for the better anyway. I think he's in Chicago these days."

"Chicago, huh?" I asked, trying to keep up conversation.

Nicole nodded again, looking down at the floor then slowly into my eyes. Her gaze gathered intent until she suddenly launched forward, locking her lips onto mine. Her hands grasped around my head desperately as she kissed me with a passion I wasn't used to. Half of me was trying to pull back, and half of me was trying to keep up with her.

As quickly as it started, it ended as Nicole pulled back, her face flushed.

"You are..." She said sheepishly as she looked away, thinking to herself, pointing at me absentmindedly. "In a ... you ... Megan. Right."

I didn't say anything. I just looked at her, a look of what I was sure was curiosity and confusion on my face.

Nicole tried to read me and shrugged. "I missed you." she said casually, trying to play what happened off as if it were nothing. "It's your fault for not talking to me for God knows how long. If you'd just showed up to karate that wouldn't have happened."

"I'm in a relationship..." I said slowly and meaningfully.

"Well, I mean, kinda." Nicole shot back at me. "You said yourself, it ain't gonna last long. So really, you're not cheating since you know you aren't really together, y'know?"

"Not really." I said forcefully. "I don't."

She was silent for a second. "Huh." She finally said, her calm composure weakening somewhat. However, in an instant she built it back up again. "Well, I don't expect you to understand. You're young, hotshot. Call me when you're in grade 11. We'll have a nice chat then." She winked at me then looked at her watch. "Anyway, you're right. I should probably get going." She opened the window and waved at me, unintentionally making it obvious she didn't even want a response. "Later!"

With that, she jumped out of the window, down two flipping stories, as casually as one would walk out of the door. Naturally, I ran to the window to see if she was okay. I was met with the sight of her rolling as she hit the ground, as if she were Bruce Lee or something. She ended up with snow all over her, and I could hear her muttering, "Oh, fucking hell," as she attempted to shake the snow off of herself.

I returned my attention back from the window and sighed to myself. Some popular assholes, like those stereotypical movie jocks, may have been proud to have three nubile, clearly messed up vulnerable girls in their life. They may have even been proud that they managed to cheat on their girlfriend with two different girls. I could tell though, I was not one of those jocks. First things first, I needed to tell Carson the truth.

"And that would be time, class." Mr. Carrozza's articulate, strange voice filled the classroom. "Those of you that are done, please turn in your papers. Those who aren't quite finished, I can give you thirty more minutes."

I was damn lucky I happened to be good at science. Otherwise, with everything on my mind I wouldn't have been able to complete my exam. I was too much of a coward to go through with it. On paper, it seemed great to go to Carson and tell him the truth, but when I saw his face, I just ... Nope. Nothing. For a whole week, I just couldn't. I hung out with him, but every time it felt right to bring it up, I just sort of froze. It was too difficult for me to do. I feared for my own safety at the hands of his muscular arms. I feared for his feelings. I feared for May's reaction, Megan's reaction. I felt like I was on fire when I was near him. A cold fire. It hurt not telling him, but it seemed my subconscious was willing to settle for that hurt, rather than rolling the dice and possibly experiencing a greater hurt with telling him.

I got up and trudged over to Mr. Carrozza's desk, handing in my examination. "Thank you very much, Adam." Mr. Carrozza told me, staring up at me with his bug eyes. He was whispering so as to not disturb the rest of the class. "You were an absolute pleasure to teach this semester. I hope you pursue the sciences at an academic level in your grade ten year."

"Thanks." I said, trying to make it seem like I was paying attention to him. "Have a good day." He went back to his papers, and I exited the classroom. As soon as I did, my back hit the wall and I sighed to myself.

This whole thing seemed so unnecessarily complicated. Like everything blew up, yet it didn't have to. Like I was making a soap opera out of a little problem. And not telling Carson was just going to make it worse, and make it last longer.

My mind was made up. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my cell phone, texting Nicole, asking her if she could give me a ride later today. I had to tell Carson. I just had to.

I wasn't quite used to walking anywhere after school. Back when school was close to home, I still had a bus. When I got to high school, home was too far away to even consider walking, and quite frankly, I had no friends. So even though I could walk to Carson's house unannounced after the exam, it still felt weird.

Although, 'weird' was the best the situation could get, so swallowing my pride, I trudged through the snow for three blocks to Carson's place. It felt awkward coming unannounced, but I knew that leaving this whole thing behind me was definitely going to be worth it.

Shivering in the cold late winter air, I rang the doorbell, then waited. No answer. I rang again and waited, my body shifting erratically to cope with the harsh conditions.

The door opened slightly to reveal a conservatively dressed, brown-haired, stern-faced eleventh grade girl.

"Hello, Jenna!" I politely yet nervously began. "Is Carson home?"

"No, he's not." She flatly said. "I think he's still writing his exam. What do you need?"

"I wanted to see him about something. It's very important." I replied.

"Very important?" Jenna asked me, still keeping the doorway partially shut.

"Yes. Very important." I replied with a little more force. I was a little upset about how she was just keeping me outside in the cold, interrogating me, not even being polite enough to open the door more than a crack.

Jenna just stared at me for a bit before sighing. "Tell you what," She said, as if she was doing me a huge favor. "I guess you can wait in the living room until he comes home." She opened the door fully and let me in.

'Was that so hard?' I thought in my head, although all that left my mouth was "Thanks," as I entered the house and took off my boots and coat. I walked into the living room, sat down on the couch and immediately covered myself up with a blanket. Jenna followed me inside, sitting herself down on a couch chair with a hot beverage in her hand.

"So what's this very important thing?" Jenna asked me, sipping her beverage.

"A long story." I replied, looking down. "That's what it is."

Jenna lowered one eyebrow at me. "It's not like there's anyone around. You're in my house. I think I have a right to know."

"I just don't want to tell anyone. I'm telling Carson because he's involved, and that's it." I said firmly.

"I'm Carson's family." She argued. "What happened? Did he screw you over?"

"No, nothing like that." I quickly replied, defending him. "He didn't do anything wrong."

"So you did." Jenna flatly stated. I shifted around in my seat and said nothing.

"So he's pissed, and you came over to clear the air?" Jenna asked. "That may not be a good idea. When Carson's pissed, you should just leave him alone."

"No, he's not pissed. He doesn't even know about it." I replied, saying more than I should have.

"Oh, so you did something that would piss him off if he knew about it, huh?" She asked, thinking out loud. "Well, it doesn't sound like a prank or a rumor you started or something. What did you do?"

"It doesn't matter." I held my ground.

"Something that would actually affect him. You know he doesn't give a shit about anything, yet you're really scared." She continued.

"Please stop." I said, my voice getting quieter. "You're making me uncomfortable."

"And how uncomfortable did you make May?" Jenna asked me. I looked up to her face, the color no doubt leaving mine. There was no malice on her face, though - She just wore her eyebrows high on her face in what looked like a condescending half-smile.

"I don't know what you mean." I badly lied.

"You're a bad liar." She told me. "It's not too hard to figure out what you did. You had your way with Carson's girlfriend against her will."

"Now, hold on a sec." I said, suddenly finding more energy in my voice, like an adrenaline pipe had been opened. "That's not what happened at all."

"Maybe not from your perspective, but you're a guy." Replied Jenna, with a tone that let me know she was sure in what she was saying. "Your perception is warped. You did things to her against her will. Maybe she said she was okay with it, but that's just you taking advantage of her hormones. You took advantage of her."

"You don't even know what happened! She took advantage of me!" I protested. "She was drunk at a party and-"

"So you came on to her while she was drunk." Jenna interrupted. "The evidence is just piling up. I know you don't understand it yet, but that's pure misogyny. When you're older you'll see-"

"Shut up!!" I yelled at her with enough to make her eyes get a little wider, if only for a second. "This is exactly why I don't want to tell anyone else! And now you forced it out of me, so since you're going to hear the god damn story, you're going to hear the whole thing, without interrupting me. Got that?!"

She shrugged. "Fine, whatever."

And so, I proceeded to tell her everything, from the first time Nicole gave me a ride all the way up to the party. Her face mostly remained unchanged throughout the whole story.

"And then after that whole thing happened," I concluded, "she said no one could know about it, so she threatened me. She told me if I told anyone, she'd lie that I raped her."

Jenna sat in attentive silence for a few seconds. "Is that all, can I speak now?" She finally asked.

"Yeah, I'm done." I exhaled. "I just can't believe it. I need to tell Carson anyway, but she threatened to tell people that I raped her. That is just so wrong."

"It's because you did rape her. Just saying." Jenna said, sipping at her drink again.

"How?!" I protested. "She came on to me. I refused. I told her I was uncomfortable. She persuaded me to do things I didn't want to do, then threatened me afterwards when I wanted to do the right thing."

"That's just how you're seeing things after the fact to justify yourself." Jenna explained with the tone of a Harvard professor. "You've twisted the truth to the point where you're lying even to yourself."

"I didn't rape her!" I yelled at her, not knowing what to say. "Hell, she came closer to raping me."

"Girls can't rape." Jenna explained to me. "Only men can assert sexual dominance. Girls lack the moral inability, especially since men are used to oppressing women in our society. You see, rape has to do with power, not just sex. It's a systemic attack men innately use because of their inner misogynistic desire to 'put women in their place.' Of course you think rape is just non-consensual sex - you're going by the dictionary definition of rape, the one that was created by a man."

I thought about how I would reply to that, trying to use her situation to reason with her why she was wrong. However, as I began to realize something a laugh began to form in my throat.

"What's so funny?" Jenna asked me, caught a little off guard.

"Of course you would see guys that way." I explained to her with a smile. "You live with Carson, and have to experience the Carter family. From what I've heard ... They're not the best example of guys." I regained my serious composure. "But that doesn't mean you can paint all guys with the same brush. If I was a girl and was telling you the same story, you would totally be on my side. That's a little sexist, don't you think?"