Page 110 of Another Love, Another Time
“Why? Why would you attack me? I just don’t understand. Did she ask you to attack me, and you just did? Please, help me understand.”
“Again, I don’t want to make excuses. I own my actions. And if you want me to turn myself in after we talk, I will do that. I’ll do whatever you want me to. I at least owe you that. Basically, your cousin manipulated me and then held something over my head.”
“What? I need to understand how she did that. How could she make you do something so horrible?” I question.
“Six months before prom, I got assigned Melissa as a partner in one of my classes. We rotated, going back and forth from my house and then hers. I thought she was pretty cool, so we started hanging out after we did our work. She seemed easy to talk to, so I told her about the stresses of trying to keep my grades up, thepressures of football, and the demands of being the best from my parents.
“She told me she understood and that sometimes when she felt overwhelmed, she took pills to help calm down. She offered to give me a few to try. I declined her offer. I didn’t want to have to rely on anything to help with my stress. She seemed to be okay with that.
“But the next time we hung out at her house after we got done with our work, we started watching a movie. The next thing I knew, I was feeling funny. I told her I felt weird, and she told me that she put one of the pills in my drink. She wanted me to see how relaxed I felt.” He stops when the waitress comes back with our drinks. She takes our order, and then she leaves.
He continues, “I started to freak out on her. I didn’t want to take it, and she had tricked me. I wanted to go home right then, but she told me I was too impaired to drive, so I had to stay there. The pills did make me feel more relaxed, but I still freaked out, thinking she would give me more.
“As soon as I felt halfway normal, I got the hell out of there. I didn’t talk to her for almost two weeks. I asked the teacher if I could switch partners, but it wasn’t allowed. We were getting behind on our project, so I had to bite the bullet and hang out with her again to work on our project. She apologized and told me she was just trying to help. She said she took them all the time, and they helped. She told me if I changed my mind, she could always get me some. Her dad was a doctor and always brought home samples.
“She made it sound so normal, like it was nothing. Since we were behind on our project, we had to meet more often to finish on time. I was getting stressed, and she was always there with her offer. I don’t know why I started, especially looking back, but itjust seemed the stress started piling up, and I couldn’t manage it anymore. I told myself I would only take a few pills and only use them when I just felt overwhelmed.
“I had two offers for different schools. My dad wanted me to go to the college he graduated from, but I wanted to go to a different school. I had let one of my grades slip, and my mom was on me to get it back up. My coach was on my butt to do better on the field, and so the next time she offered, I took a few pills. I won’t go into detail, but all I know is that one day, I was managing the pills, and the next thing I knew, I was taking two to three of them to get through the day. I became totally reliant on them.
“It was about a week before prom when I went to Melissa to get more, and she told me she couldn’t get them. I started freaking out. I told her I would pay her for them. Up until then, she just gave them to me. All I could think about was, ‘How am I going to get more?’
“I needed them. I begged her to give me more. I told her I would do anything. And that’s when she told me what she wanted me to do for more pills. She told me that she would give me more if I roughed you up a little at prom. If I did that, she would give me all the pills I wanted.
“I couldn’t believe what she was asking me to do. I walked out on her. How could she ask me to do anything like that? But as I sat in my driveway that night, I started to justify what she was asking me. I started to reason with myself. I would just rough you up a little. I wouldn't hurt you too badly. I didn’t know you personally, only from seeing you with Auggie a couple of times.” This whole time, he has been looking down at the table, fiddling with his straw paper wrap.
“I know it sounds crazy,” he goes on. “Even now, sitting here, talking to you, I can’t believe I was able to justify it. I’d like totell you I held out until the next day, but it took me about thirty minutes before I called her and told her I would do it. I’m really sorry.” He looks up at me. “This is hard to talk about, and I know it has to be hard to hear.”
He’s right; it is hard to hear. Even now, I can’t believe she would do this, but I don’t think he’s lying. I feel that in my gut. But what he’s saying is still not adding up. He tried to rape me.
“So, if she only asked you to attack me, why did you try to rape me?”
He flinches as he looks at me, and I can see the shame in his eyes. “After I agreed to attack you, I thought she would go back to giving me more pills, but she didn’t. She told me she would get me more after prom. Once she knew I’d done what I said, I would get them.
“I tried to find them elsewhere, but I didn’t know who to reach out to. A few days before prom, I went to her again, begging her for one pill to get me through. She told me she would give me one, but I had to do something else for her. I told her I would do anything. I should have known after her last request not to agree before I knew what she was going to ask. That’s when she asked me to force myself on you. She told me you would like it, that Auggie and you liked to roleplay and fight, that it was like foreplay between you guys.
“I immediately told her ‘no.’ Roughing you up was one thing, but violating you was another, even if she said you’d like it. I just didn’t think I could do that. I started to walk out of the room when she stopped me. She told me that if I refused to force myself on you, that she would show my parents and the college I was going to go to proof that I was on drugs. She threatened to ruin my football career. She said she would give me until the end of the next day to decide.”
He’s looking right at me now. This is hard to hear. The lengths that she went to hurt me make me sick.
“I thought about it all night and through the next day,” he says. “I couldn’t focus on school. I couldn’t believe how far I had fallen. I was going to tell her ‘no,’ but when I got home, there was an envelope on my porch. My parents usually got home before I did because I had practice, but practice was cancelled in preparation for prom.
“The envelope was addressed to my parents, but it had no return address. In my gut, I knew it was from Melissa. I opened it up and found a USB drive. I pulled it out of the envelope and ran up to my room. I opened my laptop, stuck the drive in, and pulled up the single file, a video.
“I hit ‘play’ and immediately felt sick when I saw it was a video of me taking the pills and talking about how the pills made me feel. You could not see Melissa anywhere in the video. I freaked out. She was going to give this to my parents. This would have killed them. I knew then that if I refused to do what she asked, she would ruin my life.”
He stops and meets my gaze. “This is not me justifying what I did. I’m just trying to help you understand where my head was. It should not have mattered what she threatened. I should not have touched you. I should have just taken the consequences of my actions.” I nod, and he continues. “In my head, I thought I had worked way too hard for everything I had. I wasn’t going to let her ruin it.
“I immediately left to go to her house. She had clearly outsmarted me. That couldn’t have been the only video she took of me. I didn’t even remember her taking the video. I wasn’t sure what other crap she had on me, but I knew I had to getsomething on her too. Yes, I had text messages from her, but there was nothing about her asking me to attack you.
“I decided I would record our conversation. When I pulled up to the house, I turned on my video and put my phone in my pocket. I knocked on her door, she let me in, and we went up to her room. I told her I would agree to attack you and force myself on you, but she had to give me all the videos she had of me and delete all the messages.
“She agreed to everything I asked, saying she would no longer need them once I had done what I had agreed to do. She then went over the details of what would happen. She explained she would wait until Auggie and you left the ballroom. She would get Auggie by himself, leaving you alone. That’s when I was supposed to attack you.
“After we went over the details, she handed me a couple of pills. I could hardly stomach looking at them, but I grabbed them anyway. I knew I would probably need them to get through prom night. I left and got back in the car. It wasn’t until I was back in my room that I listened to the video. You could hear most of what we were saying, and I knew I had to save it just in case. I still have it if you would like it.”
“Yes,” I respond. “I would like to have that and any other proof that she was involved.”
He nods in agreement. “Just give me your email address or however you would like it sent, and I’ll send you what I have.” He pauses before he finishes his story. “The next day, I was a mess. As you know, Melissa was my date to prom. I didn't plan on taking the pills, but I was so worked up, I took all three of them. Then, the guys wanted to drink, and those two didn’t mesh well.
