My Dark Vanessa

by Kate Elizabeth Russell

That seems the likely ending to this love story: me dropping everything and doing anything, devoted as a dog, as he takes and takes and takes.

Mom says dwelling in your feelings is no way to live, that there will always be something to be upset about and the secret to a happy life is not to let yourself be dragged down into negativity. She doesn’t understand how satisfying sadness can be; hours spent rocking in the hammock with Fiona Apple in my ears make me feel better than happy.

It’s both creepy and out of my control, this ability I have to notice so much about other people when I’m positive no one notices anything at all about me.

The nine other students pack up their things and leave the classroom to carry on with their lives, to practices and rehearsals and club meetings. I leave the room, too, but I’m not part of them. They’re the same, but I’m changed. I’m unhuman now. Untethered. While they walk across campus, earthbound and ordinary, I soar, trailing a maple-red comet tail. I’m no longer myself; I am no one. I’m a red balloon caught in the boughs of a tree. I’m nothing at all.

Sometimes it feels like that’s all I’m doing every time I reach out—trying to haunt, to drag him back in time, asking him to tell me again what happened. Make me understand it once and for all. Because I’m still stuck here. I can’t move on.

“People will risk everything for a little bit of something beautiful,”

I wonder if he really believes that. He touched me first, said he wanted to kiss me, told me he loved me. Every first step was taken by him. I don’t feel forced, and I know I have the power to say no, but that isn’t the same as being in charge. But maybe he has to believe that. Maybe there’s a whole list of things he has to believe.

“That’s surprising,” I say. “He and I are pretty close.” I watch the suspicion bloom on her face, a sense of something amiss.

as an experiment, stare at every single man, even the ugly ones, especially the ugly ones. Who knows how long it’s been since a girl last looked at them this way. I feel sorry for them, how desperate they must be, how lonely and sad.

“Is that what you think I am?” he asks. “A pedophile?”

yeah thats what you are

It’s strange to know that whenever I remember myself at fifteen, I’ll think of this.

She scans the lobby for help, a thin smile plastered on her face, her eyes resting for a moment on me as I take the mouse, move the cursor to “send,” and click.

please help her

He grimaces as Babe jumps on him, her pink tongue flopping out the side of her mouth. I tell him to say no and she’ll stop, but instead he shoves her too hard and she falls onto her back, the whites of her eyes flashing as she sulks away from him into her kennel. For a moment, I hate him.

WTF THAT POOR DOG

He says there’s no reasoning with me when I get like this, when I act like a child.

but she is a child..

When she does, something falls, slides across the floor between us: the Polaroid of Strane and me on the village pier.

Im taking a break from this...

I open my mouth to let it all in and swallow it whole, where deep in my belly it turns into blame.

I can hear the news playing in the background of the phone call: a pundit’s voice, then Trump’s. Mom groans and the background noise is gone. “I mute him whenever he comes on.” “I don’t understand how you can watch that all day.”

REAL

“But they’re just girls.” My voice cracks, a sob chokes out, and it feels like observing someone else cry, a woman playing the role of me.

Jacob Strane, 59, of Norumbega, a longtime teacher at the Browick School, died early Saturday morning.

he took the easy way out. coward.

The host of a men’s rights podcast devotes an entire episode to the story, calls Strane a victim of the tyranny of feminism, and his listeners go after Taylor.

assholes

They get her phone number, her home and work addresses. Taylor posts on Facebook screenshots of emails and texts from anonymous men threatening to rape her, to kill her and cut up her body. Then, a few hours later, she vanishes. Her profile goes on lockdown, all the public content gone. It happens so fast.

this poor girl.

Somehow I sensed what was coming for me even then. Really, though, what girl doesn’t? It looms over you, that threat of violence. They drill the danger into your head until it starts to feel inevitable. You grow up wondering when it’s finally going to happen.

To be groomed is to be loved and handled like a precious, delicate thing.

Charley says that men are shit, but really she means boys.

“You know, sometimes I’m ashamed that you’re my kid,” she says.

I don’t have her address or new phone number. Even later, with Facebook and Twitter, I’ll never be able to find her.

A thought shoots through me—is this rape? Is he raping me?

“Vanessa,” she says gently, “you didn’t ask for that. You were just trying to go to school.”

“I was raped by a teacher there,” I say. “I was fifteen.” I’m shocked at how smoothly the lie comes out of me, though I don’t know if I’m lying or just not telling the truth.

I close my eyes as he strokes my hair and calls her terrible names: a liar, a little bitch, an emotionally troubled girl.

“I just really need it to be a love story. You know? I really, really need it to be that.” “I know,” she says. “Because if it isn’t a love story, then what is it?” I look to her glassy eyes, her face of wide-open empathy. “It’s my life,” I say. “This has been my whole life.”