Chapter 35

I waited, but Gina didn’t answer me. Not only didn’t she speak, she was no longer looking at me as she sat lifelessly on the side of my bed still wearing the heavy jacket she had worn when dumped out of the red Bel Air. A blankness filled her eyes. That look scared me. It was like she was in a world of her own and didn’t hear me.

I walked up to Gina and removed her jacket one arm at a time. She lifted her arms like a child would when a parent undressed them. Not helping, but not hindering. I inspected the jacket. It was soiled but not torn. I was glad. Gina had been so happy when she bought it. She really loved that jacket. Unlike my jacket which I had tossed onto the floor, I folded hers neatly and laid in over the back of my bedroom chair.

I noticed for the first time the scratches on one of her knees. Probably from when she was thrown out of the car. Gina was thrown out of a car! Why would they have done that? What was she even doing in that car? I looked at Gina more closely. Her hair was tangled and the buttons on the front of her blouse weren’t in the correct buttonholes. They were off by one. And a shirttail hung out the front of her skirt.

Gina still hadn’t spoken. She had stopped crying, but she sat there like a zombie, lost in her own world. I knew she was suffering. I didn’t believe in hell, but I thought wherever Gina was, it was some kind of hell.

“Gina, did you hear me?” I asked. “My mother said you can stay for dinner.”

I waited, but she didn’t respond. She didn’t even look at me. Did she even know I was there? Did she know where she was? Her eyes were fixated somewhere in the middle of the bedroom. I sat next to her and again draped an arm over her shoulders. Gina tilted her head to the side, laying it on my shoulder. We sat like that for a few minutes in complete silence. Then, with the fingers of my free hand pinching her chin, I turned Gina’s head to face me. I held her like that until her eyes focused on mine.

“Gina, say something,” I said.

“I’m sorry.”

She spoke! Finally! Maybe she was coming back from wherever she had been.

“For what?” I asked. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I did everything wrong.” A fresh tear rolled down her left cheek, but only that one. “I’m so stupid.”

“You’re not stupid.”

For the first time, Gina’s eyes showed some life. “Then why did I let them do this to me?”

She yanked the front of her skirt up to her chest and spread her legs a little. The crotch of her panties was soaked through and semen was smeared on the inside of her thighs. I had seen enough semen to know what it was. I pulled her skirt back down.

“Were you raped?” I asked.

Gina looked at me. The despair in her eyes broke my heart. She hung her head and shook it.

“You let someone do that to you?” I asked, incredulously.

Gina nodded.

“Why?”

Gina looked up. “I can’t tell you. It’s too awful. You’ll hate me.”

“I will never hate you. You’re my best friend. I love you. I want to help. Please tell me.”

Another tear rolled down the same cheek. “If I tell you, you can’t tell anyone. You have to promise.”

“I promise.”

“Even Debbie. No one. Do you swear?”

“I swear. Cross my heart and hope to die.” I crossed my heart with my finger like we used to do when we were kids. That seemed like a different life. “Now tell me.”

“Remember when I went to the car by the school the first time?” Gina asked.

“The red convertible?”

“Yeah, when they called me over.”

“Debbie and I didn’t know why you went.”

“Because they were interested in me. Me! You and Debbie were dating but not me. Those boys were interested in me. They said I was pretty.”

“You are pretty.”

“But no boy ever told me that. I liked hearing it. So I met them again and it was great. I had so much fun and I loved them telling me I was pretty. And then I really liked one boy and we kissed. Not like that stupid Seven Minutes in Heaven game, but a real kiss. I never wanted it to stop. I thought I loved him so we went way past kissing. He ended up doing it to me.”

“You mean you went all the way?”

Gina’s eyes darted away from mine and she nodded.

“So you were going steady with him?” I asked.

Gina looked at me again. Her eyes watered.

“I thought so and I couldn’t be happier,” she said. “But then he told me I would enjoy it more if I were high. We started smoking pot together and it was better. It made me feel good. So when he told me he could make me feel even better, I let him put a needle in my arm. I didn’t know it was heroin.”

I gasped. “That day in Macy’s! Your arm!”

Gina nodded. “Once I was hooked I found out he didn’t love me. And then he made me do things I didn’t want to do.”

“How did he make you?”

“I needed to get high. I tried to fight it, but I was hooked. He had the drugs so I did what he told me to do.”

“To continue having sex with him?” I asked.

Gina’s eyes watered and then the tears overflowed. This time down both cheeks, long wet lines that dripped off her jaw. Her bottom lip quivered. She sniffled a few times before answering.

“And with his friends,” Gina said.

My hand flew to my open mouth. “Oh god!”

“And with other men. He said he needed money to buy the drugs so I had to help pay for it. He made me a whore. I had to have sex with men for money. It was awful. They were so old.” Gina shuddered. “They made me do all kinds of stuff. It was disgusting. Some even spanked me and called me a bad little girl. More than one had me call them Daddy. Especially when they were fucking me. I had to shout stuff like, ‘Oh, Daddy, fuck me’ or ‘Oh, Daddy, make me come’ or ‘Oh, Daddy, you’re so big and I have such a little cunt.’ Sick stuff like that. And I had to use those dirty words.” She looked at me with pleading eyes. “You won’t tell anyone, right? You promised.”