ON TUESDAY, I TOOK THE BUS INTO TOOMSBORO so that I could go to the public library. I told myself it was to check for new information on the case, but the truth was that talking to Gwennie had left me shaken. I wasn't ready to confront anyone else just yet. I wasn't ready for any more secrets.
The pants Gwennie threw in my face-"candypants," Tommy dubbed them-did come from the Sharing House. Patrick and I had taken this same bus to Toomsboro one afternoon near the end of eighth grade, when Patrick was still my best friend and I still thought life was a sugarcoated delight.
At the Sharing House, Patrick unearthed the pants with a cry of glee, and when I glanced over, I squealed, too. They were insane. They were awesome. We'd giggled trying to imagine who donated them in the first place, because in our neck of the woods, orangish red wasn't a color guys wore unless it was a vest for hunting season.
But the pants were meant for a man. They weren't ladies' slacks or anything, and when Patrick tried them on, they fit perfectly.
"Do I look sharp?" he asked, stepping out from the makeshift dressing room. He turned sideways and admired himself in the cracked mirror.
"So sharp," I told him.
"Like someone from L.A.?" He was always dreaming of L.A., where he could cruise around in a convertible and attend movie premieres.
"Totally." I put my finger to the corner of my mouth and acted confused. "Hold on a cotton-picking minute. Are you from L.A.?"
He asked the Sharing House lady to bag the pants up for him, and yes, Gwennie was right. I absolutely encouraged him.
Those pants had nothing to do with what happened to me a few weeks later, however. They were in no way connected to the cruelty I myself experienced at Tommy's hand, but in my mind they would be forever linked.
Patrick, the pants, Tommy. Patrick, Tommy, the pants. Me, sitting on the sofa, reading. Aunt Tildy in the kitchen, making blackberry jam.
Tommy found me alone and he messed with me. He knew I wanted him to stop. He didn't, and he was punished. Aunt Tildy made sure of that.
But guess what? I was punished, too. I punished myself every day of my thirteenth summer, slowly shutting down and putting up walls. I quit my chatterbox ways, and I changed the way I dressed, switching out halter tops for the shapeless T-shirts Aunt Tildy hated. And yes, I dodged Patrick's company, but I dodged everyone. It wasn't yet deliberate. It just… happened.
Patrick didn't understand. He thought I was avoiding him on purpose, because of something he did.
Not true. I just didn't know how to explain what was going on inside me. Finally, after I'd shrugged and toed the ground and made too many excuses for not doing this or that with him, he asked me flat-out what was up. He biked over one day in July and knocked on our door, and when I slipped out back to escape, he came around the house and found me.
"There you are," he said with a strained smile. He tried to act casual, but his muscles were jumpy. "Want to ride into town and get a milkshake?"
In town, there would be people. In town, I could run into Tommy. My mouth went dry, and I said, "Thanks… but nah."
"Why not?" He waggled his eyebrows to be funny. "It'd be my treat."
"It's too hot," I said. "It's too hot to even move."
"Ah, but that's where the milkshake comes in." He stepped closer, and I took a step backward. I didn't mean to. I would have done the same no matter who it was.
"Did I do something?" Patrick said. "Whatever I did, just tell me. And… I'm sorry, Cat. I swear."
"Please, just go," I whispered. I couldn't look at him. I couldn't bear it that he was apologizing just in case he'd accidentally hurt my feelings. "You didn't do anything. I'm just tired."
He stood there. He was a person, and my friend, yet what I saw from under my eyelashes was a dark shadow that only made me feel bad. I wanted that shadow gone.
"You're just tired," he repeated.
"Yes, I'm tired." Irritation crept in, or desperation. "Really tired, and I don't want to go on a bike ride. Okay?"
I succeeded in wounding him, but he wasn't one to act needy. That was never his style. "Yeah, whatever," he said, and he took off. I didn't see him again until the first day of ninth grade.
With nothing and no one left to distract me, I spent the rest of that miserable summer going from anger to humiliation to wondering if I had it all wrong. What if Tommy liked me, and he'd just been too much of a boy before I was enough of a girl to handle it? What if he ended up being my boyfriend once I learned the rules of how a girl was supposed to be?
I tried to convince myself that things would be better when school started. I'd be a freshman, taking the bus every day to Toomsboro High School. Tommy, as a junior, would never lower himself to taking the bus, not when he could ride his BMW. He called it his crotch rocket, which I thought was gross, but at least it meant I wouldn't be trapped with him for twenty minutes every morning.
I wouldn't be hanging with Patrick, either. Mama Sweetie liked driving him into town herself.
When the first day of school arrived at last, I was a wreck. I stepped off the bus at the high school-a thousand times bigger than Black Creek's combined elementary and middle schools-and focused on not getting lost, not falling on my butt, and not doing something randomly embarrassing that would identify me as a backwoods hick.
But Tommy was always in the back of my mind.
I saw him before he saw me. He was in the hall, shooting the breeze with a couple of his football buddies. The sight of his broad shoulders and easy slouch made it hard to breathe, and I thought, Well, and why not just head on to your first class now.
But I didn't, due to a distraction at the end of the hall. It was Patrick, strolling into the fancy townie high school in his orangish red pants. Surrounded by jeans, jeans, and more jeans, his orange pants were a beacon signifying disaster.
Did he wear those pants on the first day of school for a reason? He must have, because pants like that were a statement. He knew they'd draw attention.
Was it his brazen, goofy way of saying, "Yep, this is me! Hellooooo, high school!" Or was he possibly-oh, it hurt-trying to reach out to me? To remind me that we were friends,as in, Remember how much fun we'd had that day at the Sharing House?
"Holy Mother of Jesus," Tommy said when he found his voice. His teammates laughed, and he laughed along with them. It was then that he must have felt my stare, or maybe he saw Patrick light up at the sight of me, because he turned, and his eyes met mine, and for a second his cockiness wavered. For a second, my ribs loosened and a small seed of hope took root.
"Cat! Hi!" Patrick said, loping over. The pants were brighter than the flames of a popping, crackling fire. They could have been on fire, they were so bright. Had they been this bright at the Sharing House?
"Patrick," I said weakly. I sensed Tommy approaching, and in my head I said, Go away, Tommy. There's nothing here to see. Nothing for you to mess with. I thought of Mama Sweetie, who claimed there was goodness in everything and everyone, and I prayed that was true, because Tommy seemed to be teetering on a taut, slender line, capable of falling in either direction.
Patrick struck a pose, throwing his chin high and flaring his hands out from his body. He was being silly.
"Do I look fabulous?" he asked.
My throat closed. Tommy was right behind him.
"You look like a bonbon," Tommy drawled, making Patrick jump. "Isn't that what those candies are called? The ones that come in all different colors and you suck on 'em?"
Patrick blushed, no doubt from being startled, but also from being caught in a moment of play. Then he recovered, grinning as if Tommy meant no harm. Years of practice had made him a pro at laughing along with the kids who laughed at him.
"Not exactly what I was going for," Patrick said. "But all right. I can work with that." He turned to me. "What do you think, Cat? Bonbon?"
I stayed mute, because Patrick and I both knew that a bonbon was a chocolate, and not a sour ball or whatever candy Tommy was thinking of. Patrick had turned the joke around, so that the two of us could make fun of Tommy without Tommy realizing it.
My gaze skittered to Tommy. His pupils widened, then contracted, and my stomach dropped.
He knew. Oh God, he knew. Not about the bonbon, but that I was Patrick's and not his, regardless of how he'd marked me that day in my living room.
If he had been teetering between good and evil, well, he wasn't anymore.
"Yeah, Cat, what do you think?" Tommy said. His voice chilled me with its river stone smoothness. He leaned closer. "And don't worry. I won't tell."
"Won't tell what?" Patrick said.
I swayed, and in a flash, Patrick closed ranks, placing his hands firmly on my shoulders. He dropped his everything's cool posture.
"Cat, what's Tommy talking about?" he said.
I gave the tiniest shake of my head.
Tommy chuckled. He sauntered back to his buddies, and when he reached them, he said something that made them laugh. Then he glanced back at Patrick and called, "That's all right, Candypants. You'll get your turn one day."
There was mud in my gut, thick and suffocating, and I pulled away from Patrick before he could ask any more questions.
All morning long, Tommy and his butt-faced football friends had fun with Patrick's new nickname. "Outta the way, Candypants," they said. And "Stay back, Candypants. My lollipop ain't yours to suck." And "Lose the fag pants, Candypants."
Whenever I was within spitting distance of the hilarity, I caught Tommy watching for my reaction. Maybe he expected me to laugh and worship his cleverness, or at least pretend to. But I couldn't. Fear did that to a person.
So Tommy raised the stakes. He was going to force a response from me no matter what, that was what I now thought. Tommy waited until I was at my locker, which was near the water fountain and the bathrooms, and then he and his friends escorted a protesting Patrick into the boys' room. Too many minutes later, Tommy and his goons emerged, hooting and triumphant. Patrick was no longer with them, but those pants were.
I never learned exactly what happened in the bathroom, but I knew it was awful. How could it not be, having three guys grunt and struggle as they pulled your pants off? But I never heard the details, because that was the day Patrick and me pretty much stopped being friends.
The candy-colored pants ended up in a Dumpster, way down. That I did know, because I was the one who put them there. In the hall, Tommy tossed Patrick's pants to me with a wink, and I panicked. I didn't push through the crowd and return them to Patrick, and I didn't seek out Beef or Christian, who would have done it for me. Instead, I turned from Patrick's pain. I fled.
Patrick hid half-naked in the boys' room for half an hour until a teacher got wind of it and rustled up a pair of gym shorts. He went home early, but he was back the next day. If he knew I'd thrown those pants away, he never said. In fact, he did his best to act as if everything was fine between us, even though it clearly wasn't.
Now Patrick was in a coma, and I was partly to blame, because by turning a blind eye in high school, I'd said, Go on and hurt him. I don't care. And by doing that, I'd opened the door to more hurt, because when a person did something wrong and got away with it, he tended to do it again. He upped the stakes. He pushed harder and further, until finally, if no one stopped him…
I felt sucker-punched. It wasn't God's fault Patrick had been treated worse than dirt, as I'd let myself believe. It was mine.
