Angela\u2019s shaky recorded voice fought the drunken whoops and chatter of the surrounding college party as I listened to her message on my phone: \u201cYou can tell how upset I am by the fact I\u2019m calling you.\u201d Things had fizzled between us after I slept with the boy she liked. I’d liked him too; I just hadn\u2019t talked about it as loudly or as often as she had, and I’m the one he picked. At least that night\u2014the next day he wouldn\u2019t even meet my eyes. It didn\u2019t matter; she never forgave me.<\/p>\n
After listening to Angela\u2019s message, I told the others at the party what she\u2019d said, because I had to. I told them, “My friend said her friend was raped and murdered outside a nightclub.\u201d They just gazed at me silently, like they hadn’t even heard, like I hadn\u2019t torn through the skin of the world and revealed its festering innards. It was as if I didn\u2019t exist, and did they think I was just trying to get attention? I have no idea what they thought, because they didn\u2019t say anything, they just stared at me with bullets for eyes.<\/p>\n
So, I left and went to my dorm room, and I sat on my single bed’s faded quilt, I examined the dust whirls on my un-vacuumed floor, and then I called Angela back. She told me the whole story. I tried to listen, tried to do what I could, which was nothing, and even though I didn\u2019t know the dead woman the story unfolded in my imagination, and I pictured it moment by moment and it was unbearable. Even though I hated Angela, I wished I could do something. But I couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Angela said: \u201cThey drove around in her car afterwards and they went to a party and bragged about it and laughed at her last words, and do you want me to tell you what they were?\u201d<\/p>\n
And I said no. Because I knew if I heard them, I’d hear them forever and they\u2019d become a part of who I was. But not knowing made me imagine what the girl had said, lying there in a trash-stained alley behind a nightclub, her body torn and throbbing, getting the same message I got third hand mainlined into her veins for the last few seconds before they shot her in the head. Did she beg? She must have begged. Could she have been defiant, maybe got off a zinger that lodged in one of their minds and maybe it multiplied like a cancer and made him see who he really was and want to die as well?<\/p>\n
Angela told me she put a bottle of Ouzo in her friend\u2019s grave because her friend had loved it when she was alive. And she just wished her death hadn\u2019t been someone else\u2019s choice. And the people who did it were caught and were going to trial. I never found out if they went to jail.<\/p>\n
You can make any plans you like. You can have a life overflowing with friends and family who love you, but still men can grab you outside a nightclub where you\u2019ve gone to have a cigarette and rape you in the back seat of your car and then shoot you and leave your body there and that\u2019s how your story ends.<\/p>\n
Two weeks after Angela\u2019s phone call I was walking with a friend at night, kicking puddles and warping the streetlights’ reflections, feeling skinless in the dark, a bit insane for daring to go outside. A group of boys drove by and yelled something out the car window, a blur of twisted silly-putty faces. I spat at them, and that helped, somehow, for a little while. That helped.<\/p>\n
Twenty years later I watched a music video and saw a girl flop into the back seat of a car and her legs dangled out the door and the whole thing came back and repeated in my head over and over for hours like the return of a chronic infection, like a burning, corrosive rash.<\/p>\n
I wonder what she said to them. Her final words fall like poetry magnets in my mind, forming sentences, breaking apart, coming together again. What could she have said?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Twenty years later I watched a music video and saw a girl flop into the back seat of a car and her legs dangled out the door and the whole thing came back and repeated in my head over and over for hours like the return of a chronic infection, like a burning, corrosive rash.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":23627,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[760],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-creative-nonfiction","writer-ilana-lindsey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22556"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23628,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22556\/revisions\/23628"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}