Because I Was There
a short story by Christina Hoag
“Because I Was There” is a poignant title for this story that, in effect, takes the “me too” movement and puts a twist on it. What if standing up for another woman put yourself at risk? Well, that might be a reality for too many women—or too many people in general—that has been relegated to the underside of the discussion.
Follow Jade through this short as she struggles with making the right choice.
Because I Was There
by Christina Hoag
—Teen Sexually Assaulted at Reserve—
My head cartwheels when I see the headline in the Monday edition of the Indian Valley Weekly News. It can’t be. No way. It has to be something else. Has to.
The din in the Burger-O-Rama dulls to a seashell roar in my ears as I read on, my eyes drawn to the black type like magnets.
A 19-year-old woman was sexually assaulted Friday night at a popular party hangout spot at the Indian Valley Mountain Reserve, police said.
The victim, whose identity is being withheld, was found by a park ranger in a dazed state as she wandered lost in the woods early Saturday morning. She reported that she had been sexually assaulted.
Indian Valley police said the investigation is ongoing and no further details were available. Anyone with any information is urged to contact police.
I feel socked in the gut. I can barely suck in any air. It’s not something else. It’s the same thing. And the fact is, I do have information.
Because I was there.
I look up at the sound of metal jangling. Morgan is sliding into the bench in front of me, bangles cascading on her wrists.
“What’s up with you, Jade? You look like your cat died or something.” She slurps her chocolate shake.
“I kind of feel sick all of a sudden.”
“Cramps?”
“Nah, must be something I ate.”
She glances at the newspaper lying on the table between us and stabs the story I’d just read with a forefinger. “You see that somebody got raped up at the reservation Friday night? Everybody’s talking about it.”
I manage a nod.
“I wonder who it was. We might even know them. Maybe Chloe knows. Looks like she wrote the story. I’ll ask her.”
Morgan whips out her cell phone before I have a chance to say anything. She thumbs in a message to our friend who’s doing an internship as a reporter at the Weekly News this summer. The message whooshes off. Morgan puts the phone down and frowns at me.
“You really don’t look so hot. You want a cup of water?”
“No. Well, maybe, yeah.”
“I’ll get it for you.” She sidles out of the booth. Her phone beeps, startling me. An incoming text. I pick it up. My hands feel flimsy, like cheap cardboard.
No other details. Cops don’t release names of rape victims. Heard it started @ carnival.
I drop the phone as if it’s scorched my palm. Morgan returns with the water and spots the flashing phone. “That was fast.”
I down the water as she reads the text out loud. She looks up, her eyes saucering. “The carnival! We were there Friday night. A lot of people were hanging out drinking later on. Remember? I’m really glad we left when we did.”
“Yeah.” A mouse could squeak louder.
This is my cue, to come out with it, the truth that I actually didn’t leave the carnival when Morgan did. I went back when she went home. But I can’t. It’s a boulder inside me, too big for my throat, my mouth. It’s stuck.
Morgan peers at me. “You’re sweating and it’s practically a meat locker in here. You should go home, Jadykins. Go lie down a while.”
I touch my forehead. She’s right. It’s clammy. “Yeah, I think I will. You won’t be mad?”
“Of course not. I’ll stop by Sindi’s. You okay to drive?”
Truthfully, I don’t know. My legs feel like overcooked spaghetti, and I wonder if I can even stand up. But I have to. I yank the unspooling threads of myself together, say goodbye to Morgan and get to my car.
I drive robotically down Indian Valley Road. I don’t feel like dealing with the yammering of home—my Mom, my dog, my little brother—so I pull into the park.
I stroll to the bank of the duck pond and plonk myself down, folding my legs under the embrace of my arms. Pain shoots through my knee, bruised from my hurried stumble down the stony mountain trail. It brings back Friday night in a rush.
The cloying scent of pot and beer-sweet breath. The chill rolling off the dank lake. The yell, followed by a sharp crack that made me freeze for a moment then double my pace down the slope. As I tripped down the hill, I told myself that it could be anything—a rock thrown, a branch snapped.
In the well of my belly, I knew something wasn’t right, but I chose to justify it, ignore it, forget about it. But I can’t do that now. The shout ricochets around my brain: “Get off me!” The slaps echoing off the rock.
I should have gone back. I should’ve called the police when I got the phone signal back at the road as I waited for the Uber. I shouldn’t have left her alone with that guy in the first place. But I didn’t do any of that.
She must really hate me now. Still, if she hadn’t started making out with that guy, I probably would’ve stayed. The other dude, Quint, who was obviously meant for me to pair up with, had passed out on the rock. I was cold, bored, tired so I left. Was I totally to blame? That girl wasn’t really my friend anyway. I’d just met her.
My phone chirps. It’s a text from Mom. I need the car to go to my book club.
A gush of irritability swells in me as I get to my feet. Now you need the car. If you’d needed the car Friday night, then I would’ve driven with Morgan and I would’ve left the carnival when she did and this mess never would have happened. I check myself as I limp to the parking lot, my knee screaming. I’m being totally irrational. It’s not my mom’s fault. It’s mine.
The underlying truth of the whole thing sears me as I start the car: If I tell what happened, I’ll be blamed for it. People will think I’m as bad as the rapist.
I turn into my street, half expecting a police car to be in my driveway, but there’s just the neighbor kid’s tricycle lying on its side. I resist the urge to run it over as I pull in, and walk into the kitchen, depositing the keys on the counter. “Here you go, Mom.”
“Thanks, sweetie. By the way, there was a sexual assault up at the Reserve last weekend. It was probably at that big boulder next to the lake.”
My heart clutches. How does she always nail this stuff?
“It’s a shame. It’s a nice place, but it’s always been a hangout for the rough crowd, even back in my day. They should just fence the whole place off. I hope you and your friends don’t go there. You have to be really careful.”
“We don’t hang out there, Mom.” That, at least, is true enough. I slink out of the kitchen under the weight of my untold lies before they crush me right there on the tile floor.
I fling myself on my bed. Caitlin, her name was Caitlin, and she had greasy hair but a smile that made her face blossom. I watched her win at the duck shooting game three times in a row at the carnival. “Hey, you’re good,” I said.
We started talking, then two guys came over. She introduced them to me so I figured they were her friends. The tall guy with a beard was Corky, and a shorter stockier sidekick, Quint. They were all older than me so when Keith invited us to hang out and drink some beers, and Caitlin hooked me with her eyes, I felt flattered.
There’s a rap at my door. “Hey Jade, it’s me.”
Morgan. I unpeel myself from the bed and open up. “I just wanted to see how you were, plus I have an update.” She walks in.
I figure Sindi wasn’t home so lacking anything better to do, she decided to drop in on me. I flop back on the bed. “I think I’m worse, tell you the truth.”
“I just got a text from Chloe. They caught the rapist.”
I bolt upright. “They did?”
Morgan’s busy with her phone. “There’s a story on the website. Look.” She hands me her phone.
Arrest Made in Attack on Woman
A 21-year-old Crystal Lake man has been arrested in connection with an alleged sexual assault that occurred over the weekend at the Indian Valley Mountain Reserve.
Keith Laird was taken into custody at his home late Sunday night and is being held for questioning in connection with the alleged attack on a 19-year-old woman, police said.
Police said they are seeking another man in connection with the alleged assault, as well as a female witness identified only as ‘Jane.’
My stomach does that rollercoaster thing. I hope I’m not going to be sick.
“You know any Janes?” Morgan asks when I hand back her phone.
I shake my head as my heart pounds my ribs like it’s going to leap out.
But I know a Jade.
“Me neither.” She scrunches her face like she’s going through the yearbook in her head.
I lie back on the bed. Should I tell her? If I do, she’ll be mad at me for lying to her and pretending to leave the carnival. She’ll yell at me for being so dumb to go off drinking with strangers. She’ll think I’m a real asshole for leaving Caitlin, for not going back. Maybe she won’t even want to be my friend anymore. And even if I swear her to secrecy, who am I kidding? She’ll tell other people. It’ll be all over the school in minutes.
Then I realize something. I don’t have to tell anyone. No one knows who I am. They think my name is Jane. I’m safe! Wait, did I tell her anything else about me? I remember telling her my friends and I come to the carnival opening night every year, and that my friend left early and I didn’t feel like going home.
I’m pretty sure I didn’t tell her anything factual that could trace me, like that I’m seventeen, going to be a senior at Indian Valley High and that I work at the library, especially not that. It’s a nerdy job if ever there was one. We just talked about the carnival then the guys showed up.
I instantly feel about a hundred pounds lighter. I smash a pillow over my face to stifle a bubble of laughter.
“What are you doing?”
I uncover my face to see Morgan giving me a weird look. “Nada. I’m feeling a little better.”
“That’s good. Well, I better get going. I have to work the early shift tomorrow.”
I see her to the front door. When I return to my room, I jam my headphones on, crank up the volume and happy dance to Beyoncé until I can’t catch my breath.
I wake up that night with the weight of a dumbbell pressing on my chest. My lungs scrape for air. I try to call for Mom, but my voice strangles in my throat. Somehow, she hears me and bursts into my room. Sitting by my side, she rubs my back until the attack subsides.
“It’s just a bad dream,” she says. “A nightmare. It’s not real.”
But it is. It is realer than real.
In the morning Mom gives me a worried look as I sit at the kitchen table and grab the cornflakes box. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” I say as I pour the cereal into the bowl. “Just a bad dream.”
“I noticed an odd Uber charge on the bank statement. Twenty-two dollars from just after midnight Friday. I thought you were at the carnival with Morgan that night.”
I trot out the story I’ve prepared, knowing she’d notice the charge. I’m supposed to use Uber only in emergencies. That night certainly qualified, though I can’t tell her exactly how.
“We went to Sindi’s house after the carnival in Morgan’s car. When we went to go home, her car wouldn’t start. I finally had to take Uber back to my car in the carnival parking lot.”
“Twenty-two bucks for such a short distance?”
“It was surge pricing because it was the carnival opening night. Everybody was Ubering.”
“You never told me any of that.”
“I guess I forgot.”
I bury my head in my cornflakes, feeling a pang of guilt over my glibness and for so easily getting away with the fib. She believes me because I always tell her the truth, almost always anyway. I just want that night to go away so I don’t have to tell any more lies. Then I remember, the cops got the guy. It’s over with. I can slam the door on this and forget it ever happened. I sprinkle more sugar on my cornflakes.
Morgan and I are floating on noodles in Sindi’s pool two days later. The water is warm as syrup.
“So, did you see? They let that guy go, the Reserve rape guy,” Sindi says from her inflatable lounger.
I perk up my head from the cradle of my arms on the noodle. “How could they let him go?”
“They had no evidence that it was rape,” she says. “That’s what story says.”
The sun dazzles my eyes as it flashes across my mind what must’ve happened. There was no evidence because “Jane” was the only witness who could have said it was rape. And they never found “Jane.” She never came forward.
“I still wonder who the girl was,” Morgan says.
Anger pops inside me. “What does it matter who she was? It could have been you, me, any of us.”
“Well, it wasn’t,” Morgan says.
“They shouldn’t have let him go. He was guilty,” I blurt. The force of my tone takes me aback.
Morgan studies me over the rim of her sunglasses. I can feel the drill of her stare, wondering why I’m so revved up about this case. I close my eyes.
“How can you be so sure? Maybe she made it up, some kind of revenge thing,” Sindi says, waving off a mosquito divebombing her face. “It happens.”
“Rape happens, too,” Morgan says.
Then I know. I know what I should have done from the get-go because Morgan is right. Rape does happen. It can happen to anyone. It could’ve happened to me that night. I could’ve been the one who needed a witness. I could’ve have been the one who needed to be believed.
“I am sure,” I say. “Because I was there.”
If you’re like me, you debated the pros and cons of doing the right thing along with Jade. As a reader, I’m glad she chose to help Caitlyn, who for all intents and purposes was a stranger to her, and despite many imaginings about the consequences she will face herself. Could I make the same decision? I think we could all ask ourselves that.
And while it can be easy to get lost in the political trappings associated with terms like “me too” and “believe all women,” the underlying truth remains that too many women have these stories, and too many women are dismissed out-of-hand. Take them both for what they are at their purest: “me too” shows the true gravitas and pandemic nature of these sexual crimes, while “believe all women” means, to me, to meet them where they are, to believe them enough to hear them and get to the bottom of it, to provide support and justice rather than outright dismissal and backlash. —Luke
Meet the author:
Christina Hoag is the author of novels Law of the Jungle (Better than Starbucks Press), Girl on the Brink and Skin of Tattoos (both from Onward Press.) Her short stories and essays have appeared in literary reviews including Lunch Ticket, Toasted Cheese and Shooter, and have won several awards. For more information, visit https://christinahoag.com
Christina’s tale from the Underside: Rejections pouring in from literary agents on my novel manuscript, Night Blind. Well, not quite pouring, but a steady dribble. It’s massively discouraging and disheartening, yet I soldier on because I love to write, although this is increasingly turning into a masochistic endeavor. But how else would I fill my time? Hey nonny, nonny no.