Someone I Used to Know by Patty Blount

Author:Patty Blount [Blount, Patty]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781492632825
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Published: 2018-08-07T22:09:34+00:00

15

Ashley

I know football was canceled because of this. But it wasn’t canceled because of me. I never asked for that. Some of our neighbors, some of our friends won’t let their kids near me, pretend they don’t see us. Some even insult us to our faces. They blame me. They think the court should let the defendant play football because that matters more than some stupid little freshman girl who got what she asked for. I wanted a kiss, a boyfriend, just like every freshman girl. I never asked for this.

—Ashley E. Lawrence, victim impact statement

NOW

BELLFORD, OHIO

On the day before the homecoming game, the school gym is nothing but noise. Shoes squeak on the waxed floor, students shout and laugh, and the band plays the school song. Tara and I are sitting on the bleachers—first row—and I’m huddled into my hoodie, waiting for people to point and stare and whisper behind their hands the way they did when the word got out that Victor Patton had raped me under the football field’s bleachers two years ago.

Today, they mostly ignore me, pretend I’m not there so they don’t have to acknowledge me and they don’t have to face what happened. I try to convince myself I’m cool with that, but I’m not. I wish one person, just one person, would look at me and say, “Hey, it really sucks what happened to you.”

My heart keeps skipping beats, and inside my stomach, there must be an entire colony of butterflies. I felt so brave when I recorded all those videos. But now? This is a huge mistake that won’t have a prayer of changing anybody’s minds.

A hand touches my elbow and just about launches me into orbit. “Sebastian. Hey.”

He goes still and shoots both hands up in surrender. “Hey,” he replies, waiting. When I say nothing else, he asks, “Are you sure you want to go through with this?”

“Not one bit. But we’re gonna do it anyway.”

“Ashley—”

“No.” I put up a hand. “Let’s just do it. It’s stupid to pretend they’re not all talking, that everything’s fine. This way, they’ll get what actually happened.”

I walked into the girls’ bathroom one day last term and heard a few girls a grade behind me talking about my side of the story. As if there were teams they could cheer for. That seriously pissed me off. It was a crime. I was the victim. There are no teams, no sides to take.

So now, I never say “my story.” The videos I shot last night for Sebastian are my version of events because you can’t argue with events.

Sebastian smiles with tight lips, nods once, and disappears into the crowd.

At one end of the gym, beneath the scoreboard, there’s a portable projection screen erected on a large tripod stand. The noise level in the gym drops by decibels while Sebastian and another guy spend several minutes connecting a laptop and cables. The lights fade, and then my voice echoes around the huge room.

I’m, well, I used to be Ashley Lawrence.

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