Night, Forgotten: Draft 1

Chapter 8: Then

The morning after the Dolans' party, I woke up drenched in shame. As the fog of sleep lifted from my brain, it revealed sharp fragments of memory: The bath towel billowing down onto my body in the tub.

Marcus's knees in my vomit. The pity in his eyes.

I couldn't even understand how I'd forgotten most of the night in the first place; I was pretty sure I hadn't indulged in more than a couple of beers.

What if it was just a bad dream?

The flutter of hope was quickly extinguished by a quick glance in the long mirror propped in the corner of the bedroom. Sleep had not improved upon my look from the night before. Daisy, curled snugly in her bed at the foot of the mirror, gazed at me apathetically and flicked her tail.

Bile rose in my throat but I swallowed it back.

"Mmmph." I moaned involuntarily, rolling onto my side to face away from Owen. I felt like I'd been hit by a truck.

The mattress shifted and I cringed, sensing that Owen was waking. He scooted up behind me and kissed the back of my neck just below my ear. His gentle touch felt like sandpaper against my raw skin.

"Good morning," he murmured.

My voice came out coated in mud. "Morning. Someone's feeling better, huh?" I attempted a chuckle but it caught in my throat.

More bile. I swallowed hard.

Owen sighed contentedly. "Actually, yeah. Much better; staying in last night was a good decision." He was silent for a beat. I sensed him pull back from me; he was noticing for the first time the scrapes along my arms, the dampness of the sheets around my bruised body.

The question I was dreading came like a brick to the back of my head: "Julie... what happened to you?"

Here is what I wanted to do:

1) Tell Owen everything I could remember, cry in his arms, and let him comfort me.

2) Go over to the Dolans' house and demand that Marcus explain to both of us what he knew.

3) Report the crime with all the evidence we had.

4) Seek justice, making sure whoever did this to me could never hurt anyone else.

Here is what I did:

1) Told Owen that I had blacked out drunk, that I'd tried to walk home in the dark but had fallen down – "I told you those woods are dangerous at night, Babe!" – and that I'd taken a bath at our house before coming to bed.

2) Hated myself.

*

Walking Daisy on a wooded path near our house, I noticed a few remaining leaves still clinging to the otherwise barren trees. They trembled in the wind as it whistled past, stirring up the corpses of their fallen friends.

People came from all over to look at the foliage around here. But that season had ended over a month ago, now. So why hadn't these stubborn leaves let go? Didn't they know it was time to die?

A particularly long branch reached out over the path where we walked, dangling a cluster of yellow leaves from its fingertips. At least, the leaves appeared yellow to me. But ever since that forgotten night, I couldn't be sure. One thing I lost that night was the comfort of knowing that my yellow was the same as everyone else's yellow. I felt my reality had slipped behind a different, darker filter; a lens that hung between me and the rest of the world and tainted everything.