Chapter 1

Friday, December 12, 2014, 9:24 p.m. Aaron’s disappearance left her dazed and disoriented. She was stupidly wasted on weed and half drunk. In an upstairs’ bedroom of some girl’s house that she didn’t know. She looked all around, wondering where he went.

She hadn’t wanted to fuck. She was okay making out with Aaron, liked him enough to French kiss with him and let him play with her boobs and grab her ass, but fucking was something else. Being forced to fuck was something else entirely.

She had blacked out, she guessed. Aaron had done her or had walked away disgusted and left her for someone else to do. Rebecca had no illusions about guys and a nearly-naked, comatose teen stumbled across in a darkened bedroom. Offsetting her anxiety somewhat was sensing that if she had been penetrated (Aaron was dead set on making her take it, after all) she hadn’t been done in the strictest sense of the word. Aaron was of modest size and if he’d taken her gently as he’d sworn, it was conceivable he’d entered her after she passed out without her knowing. She just didn’t know. What she did know was that she was stupid not knowing the girl’s name, where she lived, and for letting Aaron take her upstairs in the first place.

Flashing red and blue lights illuminated the bedroom window. Aaron hadn’t cared that cops were about to raid the party, detaining underage drinkers or anyone caught doing dope. He’d only cared about scoring a piece of ass. It behooved her now to get the hell dressed and away from the house as fast as she could before they arrested her.

She retrieved her panties and jeans from the floor, struggled them on while trying to remain erect and looked for her sneakers. They sat by the bedroom door, which was locked. Aaron had locked her in, then. Muddle-headedly grateful for that, she yanked out the swivel chair, sat down and donned her Chuck Taylor’s. Wait a minute ... were these even hers?

Music pounded downstairs, vibrating everything she touched. Struggling erect, she stumbled back to the bedroom door and fumbled it open. The higher decibel level in the hallway almost made her close it again. She felt nauseated. Holding her head, she moaned and leaned against the door jamb, fighting not to retch right there in the doorway. She was so messed up.

Had Aaron fed her something besides beer and weed, she wondered? She knew about date-rape drugs and how lots of older girls got fed them in drinks. But that was college-age girls, for God’s sake, not 10th graders. None of her friends had ever been roofied.

In the hallway, hand on the wall for support, Rebecca approached the stairs and gazed down, bleary-eyed. Be careful, she told herself, grabbing the handrail. Descending one step at a time, turning at the mid-floor landing, she made it to the bottom without stumbling. Looking around dumbly, she tried to make sense of the empty main floor, a party without participants. “Aaron?” she called unsteadily.

Before Aaron took her upstairs half an hour ago, there’d been no room to move, barely enough space to breathe. How everyone had fit in the house, Rebecca didn’t know. 200 teens had to be in attendance, as many as 300, maybe. Bottles of beer, empty cans, red, and blue plastic cups: all littered the floor and every available surface. Spilled contents soaked into the previously pristine beige carpeting and expensive furniture. Had everyone simultaneously opened his or her hands and just allowed their drinks to fall? Where the hell were they, anyway?

A voice in her head--quite drunk--advised that she get back upstairs to the bedroom, lock herself in, and get some sleep. People were fucking with her here, playing games, being common assholes. Gazing back up the stairs for a moment, she stepped off the bottom riser onto the main floor carpeting. Half a minute passed before she released the newel post and ventured away from the stairs.

“Aaron?” she called again, louder this time. “Amy? Stop playing games with me, guys! Where are you?”

Cowed, afraid to mess with the blaring stereo system, Rebecca treaded cautiously to the front door and checked through the windows at the top. By the curb sat a police cruiser, a black and white SUV with the Huntington Police Department logo on the side. Using her hand as a shield against the strobes, she’d swear no one occupied the car. The driver’s-side door stood half open. Craning to peer in all directions, Rebecca spotted no men or women in blue. “Fuck,” she muttered, dropping back to her heels. “Where Is everyone?”

She crossed the living room, headed down the hall and into the kitchen. Confused, she ogled a pair of wallets on the kitchen counter, and a trio of cell phones, something girls would never leave untended at a party. Wanting to investigate, but filled with trepidation at being caught, she instead crossed to the patio doors and gazed outside. A blue plastic tarp--as expected on a cold December night--safely protected the pool. Rebecca spotted no one in the back yard, hiding, or otherwise. Jesus, were those snowflakes?

“Amy?” she shouted, really alarmed now. Amy was her closest friend, her BFF with a vengeance, whom Rebecca had accompanied to the party. With only the vaguest notion where she was in relation to her house on Wiltshire Boulevard, how would she get home? Was this snow for real? How deep would it get?

Swaying awkwardly, Rebecca reentered the living room with a fresh eye, observing abandoned cell phones, wallets, and purses everywhere. Her sense of decorum objected to the plethora of spilled bottles and cups on the floor. Fuming, she snatched up a bottle at her feet, stumbling forward in the process, catching herself at the last moment on a chair arm. Carefully forcing the bottle onto a nearby lamp table--it required shoving other bottles aside to make room--she grabbed a plastic cup from atop the seat cushion and dropped it over the bottle.

Iggy Azalea’s ‘Black Widow’ screamed from the four tall speakers. “That has to go,” she whispered, advancing on the stereo. She whipped the volume knob to the left and the resulting silence triggered a third bout of nausea. Trembling, she bent and grabbed her knees. Was she gonna puke? Please don’t let me puke on this expensive carpeting, she thought.

The nausea, if not her light-headedness, finally eased. Standing erect and filling her lungs with air, she slowly blew it out and inhaled another lungful, holding it this time. The trembling refused to ease, but at least she could maintain an erect posture.

“This is not funny, guys!” she hollered. “Where are you?” Stomping downstairs to find out, she discovered the same weirdly empty tableau as upstairs. Yanking open the bathroom door she discovered no one inside, or in the combination laundry-work room to her left.

The sliding glass door to the side patio she found unlocked. Pushing it roughly aside, she stomped outside and looked about, hands on her hips. Come on, she thought, finding no giggling partygoers crouched behind bushes or trees. No cops with flashlights, either. At least the snow had stopped falling. A dusting covered the patio flagstones, and the surrounding grass, and a thick overcast threatened more. Head home, she thought, the sooner the better.

Climbing the hill to her left, she approached the tall wooden fence and checked the gate, finding it unlocked as well. Throwing it open, she searched the entire back yard, checking those places not visible through the rear patio door. She was truly alone on the property, and truly scared now.

Back inside, she slammed the door closed and dashed upstairs to the main level. She was nauseous again. Leaning against a doorjamb, she dug out her iPhone and brought up the messaging app. She opened Amy’s text stream. “Where the fuck are you!!!!!” she demanded.

Fuming, she crossed to the stairs and dropped onto the 3rd step up. Anxiety made her chest ache, and her bowels feel watery. She shifted uneasily, worrying she might need to dash to the downstairs bathroom. She’d peed there earlier tonight; Amy’d been with her.

“Feeling a little trippy there, girl?” Applying eye shadow and grinning as Rebecca went pee, Amy eyed her in the mirror. Rebecca shook her head and dodged the taunt.

“Gary looks hot tonight.”

“Gary’s hot every night,” Amy countered. “It’s not Gary paying attention, though, is it? Aaron, now...” Her grin widened. “You slutty little ho’!”

Rebecca laughed unwontedly and foolishly grinned. Aaron shared her history and trig classes, but they rarely interacted—certainly, not like tonight. Her hormones were all in a tizzy over Aaron.

“Better slow down on the booze, girl,” Amy cautioned. “And the dope.”

Rebecca had shared a joint earlier with Aaron and two of his friends, claiming a corner of the back yard to light up. She’d returned to the same corner half an hour later with Aaron alone, making out with him while they enjoyed a second joint of fine cannabis. He’d gotten a first feel of her boobs then, and her bottom. Amy was warning her off now. She hadn’t listened, of course, to the expected results.

“Where are you?” she typed again. “You can’t leave me here alone! This place is completely empty! I don’t even know where I am, DAMMIT!”

She realized that was a problem easily solved. Opening Google Maps, she spotted her blue dot flashing atop a big house on Honeysuckle Lane and sighed in relief. She was not that far from home according to Google: 2.4 miles, an 8-minute drive by car. She didn’t have a car, though; she’d come with Amy tonight.

“Dammit,” she muttered.

According to her phone, it was 9:52 p.m.; her curfew was 11 p.m. She was half-drunk and wasted on weed; her mom would ground her for a whole fucking year and almost certainly confiscate her new iPhone. Bitch, she thought angrily. I am so screwed!

She tried Jamie, next, another classmate and good friend. While awaiting a reply, she pushed off the top step, descended to the main level to pace up and down before the stairs. When Jamie failed to answer, she tried Jen Howard, home on Friday night like a good girl. Jen blew her off, also, however, and Rebecca halted her pacing and stared at the display, teeth clenched. God, she had such a headache coming on.

She jabbed the phone icon at the bottom and selected Amy’s number from her Favorites list. It rang 5 times, before going to voicemail.

“What the fuck are you doing!” she demanded. “I’m here alone! The cops are outside, but the car is empty! No one answers their fucking texts, Amy! You know I hate using the damned phone! Call me as soon as you get this voice-mail, dammit!”

Lightheaded and nauseous again, she dropped onto the third step up and rested her forehead against the heel of her hands. She breathed deeply through her open mouth, trembling violently, the iPhone unfelt against her forehead. “God damn it,” she muttered, repeatedly.

Would she have to walk home?

She did.

Jessica 1

Friday, December 12, 2014, 9:23 p.m. At 9:23 p.m., Jessica brandished the knife she’d stabbed Howard in the neck with only moments ago. She’d severed the carotid artery, getting doused in hot blood as Howard staggered away, gurgling.

“What the fuck did you do?” Dennis screamed, lunging forward. He swore violently as Jessica caught his forearm with a wild slash of the blade, opening a wound that immediately gushed blood. He staggered back, clamped his hand over the wound, and stared at his writhing fellow rapist.

“You cut his fucking throat; you bitch!”

“Good!” Jessica screamed, terrified regardless. Dennis was 2 years older, 8” taller, and outweighed her by 60 pounds. He was starting center on the Patriots varsity football team.

“You fucking cunt! Get outta my way before I cut your fucking tits off with that thing!”

Traumatized by the multiple rapes and sodomies, Jessica burst into tears. “Don’t come near me!” she screamed. “I’ll cut you like I cut him!”

She swung the knife recklessly sideways and back, banging her wrist on a wooden post. She grimaced, reflexively pulling it against her stomach; Dennis missed the opportunity to charge and wrestle the knife away from her. Then the lights went out.

Jessica screeched and instinctively dropped to her knees. She bobbled the knife for a moment as her right hand struck the floorboards, but clutching it in both hands, extended it defensively in the dark. She panted wildly, afraid to move, afraid what Dennis would do to her in the dark without the knife. She also feared that Howard would die.

“Fuck!” she huffed, then berated herself for giving away her defensive position. Dennis would attempt to circle around behind her now. He had a phone; he had only to pull it out and turn it on. Her iPhone was in the back pocket of her cords, wherever they were.

“You stay away from me!” she panted shrilly. The sound of her suddenly lower-pitched voice made her choke “What?” in response and thrust out the knife. What was wrong with her voice?

She turned her head listening intently. The shed was perfectly still. The heaters had failed with the power, and already she felt the creep of cold air between her bare thighs. She wore only a torn T-shirt and her sneakers. It felt wrong, even before she touched herself.

“What?” she shrieked, falling back on her tail. She’d touched something having no business between her legs. Bug-eyed, she slapped unconsciously at her chest and finding nothing where something should be shrilled “What?” again.

The blood! Where was the blood? Dennis had made good on his threat to cut off her breasts, but a wound like this, even unfelt, should be gushing blood like Howard’s neck. And how did she have a scrotum and penis where her cleft should be?

She felt again and squealed as her fingertips again encountered a boy’s penis and scrotum instead of moist lips and the roughly circular mouth of her vagina. She jumped to her feet, shrieking again, and dropping the knife. It clattered to the floor, and she clumsily kicked it away.

“No!” she shrilled jarringly. She was confused, hallucinating. The assholes had put LSD in her beer. She’d stupidly let them get her alone and had accepted a cold Heineken from Howard. She’d even more stupidly let them get her alone in the shed behind Howard’s house on the pretext of smoking a bowl, gotten high with the two seniors, and then drank another beer. While making jokes about her ‘masculinity’, Howard made it clear he expected a blowjob from the little cunt-licker. Things quickly degenerated into rape.

“What the fuck is going on?” she keened. She’d felt movement between her legs earlier but had ignored it in her terror. Now she groped beneath her ripped T-shirt in futile search of her breasts and again for her vagina. Her voice was different too, lower even when heard in a hoarse whisper. She was fucking hallucinating, all right. She had to be.

“Dennis ... what did you do to me?” she croaked. Putting aside the impossible for a moment, she crept toward the shed door, knowing that once the power returned, she was dead if Dennis caught her defenseless. Howard was dead, either way. No one could survive catastrophic blood loss like that. She’d murdered her rapist.

“Bullshit,” she muttered under her breath. “He deserved to die.” Or spend the next 30 years in jail for rape and sodomy. Fat chance of that ever happening, she thought numbly: my word against theirs, and Howard and Dennis would say I begged for it.

She inched toward the door. Why hadn’t Dennis pulled out his phone and activated the flashlight app? Why was it so quiet in here? Howard had thrashed wildly right to the instant the lights went out in the shed; since then, not a sound. Had he really died that quickly?

“Dennis? Can I please just leave?” She remained still, confused at her voice, and her stupidity at using it. Did she want to die? Why not just offer her neck for slashing?

“Dennis wouldn’t use a knife,” she muttered silently. “He’d beat me to death with his fists.” After raping me again, she didn’t articulate.

She couldn’t flee the shed half-naked. Not with this new male body of hers. If she really was male. She cautiously fingered her penis and scrotum again, and then her absence of breasts, thinking this couldn’t be real, a girl didn’t switch sex at the flip of a switch. Not that anyone had cut the power to the overhead lights. They went out by themselves, just like that. Just like she’d changed to a boy.

With her eyes adjusting, enough light snuck in around the edges of the door to make it visible in the darkness. She listened hard, waiting for her eyes to better adjust. She ought to examine the shed’s interior before she made a move. Impossible as it seemed, she thought that she was alone.

When her eyes adjusted sufficiently to discern the corner that Howard had blundered into trying to escape his blood, she looked around, unable to spot Howard or Dennis anywhere. The door hadn’t opened, of that, she was certain. Where were her clothes?

She located her underwear and cords on the floor at the end of the work bench. Howard had anally raped her there, while Dennis forced her to perform oral. She forced back tears, intent on finding her brassiere. Activating her flashlight app, she discovered it beneath the bench. Howard had cut it off her with the knife; it was useless now.

Flashing the light around, she spotted a blue and red flannel shirt hung from a vice handle. She yanked it free and struggled it on, and then struggled into her underwear and cords, leaving the flannel shirt unbuttoned. Dennis, or Howard, she didn’t know which, had ripped her T-shirt up the front all the way to the neck baring her brassiere, and then her small breasts when Howard gave it the knife treatment moments later. She was lucky he hadn’t done the same to her underwear and cords. Tucking in the flannel shirt, she thought how her mother had ragged on her tonight about dressing like a boy. She doubted that her boyish attire made any difference in her being raped.

The shed door was unlocked. She pushed it open and then let it close again. Reactivating the flashlight app, she shown the beam all around, looking behind and under benches and into each corner. A tremendous amount of blood identified where Howard had fallen and died. No body lay in the blood, however. No sign of Dennis, either. What the fuck happened here? How was she a fucking boy?

Howard’s house was dark, so were the few others in sight on Pratt Drive. Jessica could detect no lights in any direction, not even near the interstate to the west. The power failure looked extensive. “Hello?” whispered, listening to her voice in the cold air.

It was 9:34 p.m. She should run, she thought. Get from here just as fast as possible and call her mom. It was insane to hang around with Howard presumably dead, and Dennis on the loose. Whomever contacted the police first stood the best chance of being believed about this. She’d been raped. She’d killed her attacker, a fellow student, in self-defense. She’d need to prove the assault, prove that she’d been taken anally twice in addition to being violated orally. That meant the hospital and a physical exam, having a rape kit done. “Fuck,” she moaned, just wanting to go home.