Page 37 of Catch My Fall (Catch)

“I need to tell you some things about me,” I said hesitantly. “I’m afraid to tell you about this…but I need to. Just…don’t change the way that you see me, okay?”

He squeezed me as he shook his head emphatically. “There’s not a fucking thing you can tell me is going to change the way I feel. Even if you tell me that you clubbed baby seals and stole an old couple’s pension fund, I’d still feel the way I do now because Iknowthat even if you had ever done something that cruel, you’d fix it now. I believe in you, Mia. Don’t ever feel like I’ll judge you baby—Lord knows I’d be the last person to do that.”

“Thank you Stan, for knowing just what to say. I’m not going to tell you that I hurt people, stole money or was cruel to animals, but what I do have is a complicated life and I come with a lot of baggage. What I’m about to tell you is hard for me to talk about, and I need you to stay quiet until the very end, okay?”

Rubbing my back supportively he nodded his head. “Of course, baby, I’m right here and I won’t say a word until you tell me it’s okay.”

Twisting my hands together nervously in my lap, I tried to figure out how to start. Finally I chose to start at the beginning.

“My parents are divorced, have been for almost twelve years now. My father isn’t a nice man, far from it. He hated my mother for getting pregnant in high school and he resented me for not being a boy. His parents insisted that he marry my mother and he did. I have no doubt that had they not forced the issue, he never would have been in my life at all. I don’t know what happened with my father or what made him the way he is, because my grandparents were amazing and his brother Jesse is my hero. While my grandparents were alive he was pretty much forced into staying with my mother and putting on a show of being a family man. The year I turned seven my grandfather had a heart attack and a week later, my grandmother died in her sleep. A month later my father announced that he was leaving us and within three hours he was out. My grandparents were fairly well off. Not oil baron rich or anything, but more than comfortable. When my parents got married it was my grandmother who insisted on a pre-nuptial agreement that benefitted my mother and her child no matter what happened. My Uncle Jesse says that his parents were well aware of the fact that their son was a disaster, but they cared for my mother and wanted to make sure she was protected. When my father left us he had to abide by what had already been agreed upon, but that was it. He’s done everything that was signed off on but not one thing more. Visitation with me wasn’t included in the pre-nup and when the divorce was being worked out he made it clear that he only wanted to see me twice a year; at Christmas and Easter when his family holds family get-togethers. Honestly, he was so cruel to me and so dismissive that I was relieved that it was only those two days. My mom married Neil a few years later and between him and Uncle Jesse, I’ve got two of the best role models and supporters that I could ever have asked for.”

“About eight years ago, my father got married again. I wasn’t invited to the wedding and thus didn’t meet his new wife and her son until almost half a year later at Christmas. My father married up, big time. His wife is a twice-widowed millionaire, and for her, he’s the perfect husband. Her son is only a few weeks older than me, and he’s like a god in my hometown. He and my dad are closer than close and I think that both of them go out of their way to rub it in my face. I’ve never been allowed to call my father “Dad.” I can call him Father or John, but his stepson calls him Dad.”

That was always hard for me to think about, and I paused as I got my bearings. “The Christmas that I met his stepson Brady, it was very obvious he hated me on sight, just like his mother. When I went home that night I told my mom that the best thing she ever did was stand her ground with my father when he tried to force her to send me to private school, because if she had given in, I’d be in school with Brady. Even when I was just nine years old, I knew that something was wrong with him.”

Taking a breath, I prepared myself to tell him the toughest part of the story. He rubbed my back encouragingly until I was able to talk again.

“Almost nine months ago, I was with my best friend Macy at the mall and we ran into Brady and his best friend, Chad. The two of them were bad news, and I tried to steer clear of them but Brady saw me and came running over like I was his long-lost best friend. Instead of poking fun at me for having “buggy blue eyes,” he talked about how he wished I were around more often. Honestly, I was creeped the hell out and when the conversation was over, I was relieved. Other than being annoyed by his obvious bullshit, I wrote it off.

“A few days later, Macy and I were getting ready to go to a party. While she was in the bathroom finishing her hair, I got a text from Brady. He went on and on about how he really thought we should “spent time together as a family” and he invited Macy and me over to his house for the night. I thought it was pathetic, and when I showed the text to Macy, I expected her to commiserate with me. Instead, she said we should go. We argued, for the first time in years, about going to his house. I took a stand and said no. She told me that she was going without me and if I were really her best friend, I’d go. She was gung-ho to go because Brady is the most popular guy in our town and she thought it would be a boost to her reputation to hang out with him. In the end I agreed to go because she wouldn’t drop it.

“That night at Brady’s is the first and last time that I’ve ever been in my father’s house and I’d give anything to go back to a time when I’d never set foot inside. Brady and his friend Chad were being overly friendly and I was trying to keep calm by telling myself that I’d be out of there in a few hours. They wanted us to drink and I declined. At first Brady tried to give me something with alcohol in it anyway, but I gave it back. He gave in and poured me a soda, and I thought I’d be fine because at least I’d have my wits about me. What I didn’t know was that he’d drugged my drink and Macy’s too. Everything after that is fuzzy, a bunch of disjointed and memories that I struggle to fit together. I saw flashes behind my eyes, heard Brady and Chad talking, felt myself being moved around and positioned… felt them in my mouth. When I came to, I was naked in the pool in the backyard next to a passed-out and also naked Macy.”

Feeling the tension in Tristan’s body, I stopped talking for a minute to see if he was going to interrupt me, but he stayed completely silent.

“Macy was raped by both of them but they didn’t rape me because I’m a virgin. Macy threw a fit and refused to go to the police, but when we compared notes we realized that in addition to drugging us, they’d also taken pictures. He sent me a few several days later, and they were bad. A few weeks later, we saw Brady at a party and he was being a pig to Macy and I freaked out and got a little physical with him to get away from her. A few days later, he put all of the pictures up online on Facebook and when Macy saw it, she had a nervous breakdown. Everything got really, really bad after that. I went to the police and reported the rape, but because of whom Brady’s mother is, a bunch of lawyers got involved and his mother threatened to pull her support of the police department. The police refused to press charges--instead saying that their investigation showed I was making a false claim. Macy’s father worked for one of my stepmother’s companies and they fired him by text while he was in the hospital trying to deal with what was happening to his daughter. My father turned on me like a rabid dog, too. He said I was nothing but a goddamn mistake that had ruined his life, and he accused me of making up the entire story. I’d just turned eighteen and he and his wife threatened to destroy my life and sue me for slander. He wasn’t kidding, either. I called my Uncle Jesse and told him everything, and it was Jesse that found a way to squash my father back like a bug.

“The night that everything happened at Brady’s, Macy and I both were only seventeen. Even though my father and stepmother wanted to pretend that wasn’t true where I was concerned, Macy was still seventeen when I called the police. Since Brady had turned eighteen a few weeks before, it was provable that he was an adult and we were both technically still minors. My Uncle threatened to have Brady charged with child pornography, and because he got a handle on it, the pictures were taken down and Brady was forced to delete every copy he had. Not that it really mattered—by then, the group had been up for almost twenty-four hours and enough people had saved the pictures on their hard drives and phones. But my Uncle got lawyers and investigators who spent months tracking down every single person that joined that Facebook group. He threatened everyone with child pornography charges, and I believe that he got the majority of them taken care of and deleted. I’m not stupid though, and I know that there are still copies out there. They may turn up someday, and if that happens, I’ll have to deal with it.

“In the meantime, Macy’s family was falling apart because without his job, her father wasn’t going to be able to afford the treatment that she needed. My Uncle and I met with my father and made a deal that I wouldn’t press any child pornography charges against Brady if my father would pay for all of Macy’s care, cover the cost of her family’s health insurance until her father has another job, pay off their mortgage and all their bills and pay her college tuition when she was able to go. He agreed without batting an eye, which tells me that he and his wife felt that they had a lot to lose if things went public, but it almost cost me my sanity to sit there with him and pretend that I would have pressed those charges. Thank God I did though, because it turned out that Macy needed a specialized kind of care that meant her family had to pick up and move about forty minutes away from here. She’s living at the Choices facility and her parents are renting a house just a few miles away. I haven’t seen her in almost six months but her mom says that Macy is finally ready to see everyone now. I wanted to tell you all of this because there’s always going to be a chance that those pictures will come out, and I’ll always worry about it. Do you understand?”

Tristan was like stone beneath me, his face so white that it was scary, and he hadn’t said a word the entire time I’d been talking, just like I asked him. I stared at him for a minute as I waited for him to say something.

When he finally did speak, I wasn’t at all prepared for what he said.

“Mia. I need you to get up.Now.”

I scrambled off his lap in shock, my mouth agape as he stood up and ran out the front door, slamming it behind him. As the door closed, I knew that something was horribly wrong. I was expecting any number of reactions, but I hadn’t expected him to jump up and leave me. Going back over everything I said to him during the last half hour, I realize that I was midway through the story when he had stopped rubbing my back and had turned to stone beneath me. I don’t want to think that he was repulsed by me, but why else would he have run out? Tristan teaches women self-defense. Did he blame me for getting into a situation that I couldn’t get out of?

Running across the room I flung open the living room door and ran out onto the street. Looking around, I saw nothing. I yelled his name a few times and when I got no reply, I screamed it. Seconds later Trace and Darby came running out the front door in a panic, wondering why I was screaming. Dropping onto the curb, I sat with my knees pulled up to my chin and opened myself up all over again as I told them a very abbreviated version of what had happened. Just as I finished, I heard my phone buzz. Pulling it out of my pocket with shaking hands, I saw that I had a text message from Tristan. Swiping my thumb across the screen, I read his text as my heart broke into a million tiny pieces.

Tristan: You need to know that I didn’t run because of you. You’re special, Mia. So fucking special and so fucking beautiful, and you deserve better than what I am. We can’t be together anymore. I know that you’re going to hate me for running out, and I don’t blame you. In fact, it’s probably for the best. I’m sorry… I’m just so fucking sorry. Go home with Darby and don’t ever look back.

My body shook as sobs overtook me and Darby got down on the ground next to me to hold me in her arms. Looking up at Trace she said, “I’m going to take her away from this. Go find him. Hurry… you know he can’t handle this.”

Chapter Nineteen

I don’t even know how Darby got us both into the car and back to the dorm. I hadn’t stopped crying since the moment I opened that horrible text message so God knows I certainly wasn’t any help to her. After settling me on my bed, she disappeared for a minute before returning with a cold washcloth and a box of tissues.

“Mia, we need to talk. You need to understand why Tristan just freaked out. I wish I had just told you this before so you knew what you were dealing with but I’ve been so wrapped up in my own shit…I’m sorry I let you and Tristan both down. I suspected that you’d been sexually assaulted and there’s no excuse for not warning you.”

Sniffling as I wiped at my face with the washcloth I whimpered, “Warning me about what?”

Sitting down next to me on the bed, she sat with her back against the wall and began to talk.

“My parents moved here when I was in preschool and Austin met the Chamberlain twins on our first day on the street. They were such uptight and odd little boys, but Austin took to them right away and so did I. My mother just loved those boys and she pulled them into our family. They lived with their grandmother, and back then I thought my mom had them over so often because the grandmother was so old and she couldn’t handle them. Years later I realized that my mom knew that something wasn’t right with that old bitch so she did everything that she could to keep the boys at our house as much as possible. By the time they were ten, they all but lived at our house full-time. They spent most nights at their house, but from breakfast to bedtime they were at my house.”

“As their grandmother got older, she gave up more and more control to my mother. The old bitch hated everyone, but because my mother was the church secretary, Mrs. Chamberlain let her take over. There was only one thing that made Mrs. Chamberlain happy, and that was church. She was there every single day, for hours at a time, praying. Before the boys were allowed to start spending time at our house, they used to spend all of their free time at church with the grandmother praying for God to take away their evil. Trace has told me that he thinks he spent thousands of hours as a child on his knees in the church and at home admitting to sins and praying for forgiveness, even when he didn’t understand what the words meant.”

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