My Dark Vanessa

by Kate Elizabeth Russell

“She’s a bit overdone,” Mr. Strane says. “But young women love her.”

Eye roll.

“I think we’re very similar, Nessa,” he whispers. “I can tell from the way you write that you’re a dark romantic like me. You like dark things.”

Ew.

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.

Girl, talk to your fucking therapist.

“You’re in charge here, Vanessa. You decide what we do.” 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.

I fucking hate him.

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.

When I first realized she wasn’t going to tell anyone, I was relieved, but now, it’s started to flatten out into something like disappointment. Because the deal seems to be, if you want me to keep this secret, then we have to pretend it never happened—and I can’t do that.

It’s my birthday in two days. I’ll be twenty-two. Seven years of my life defined by this. When I look back, I won’t see anything else.

There must be a point where you’re allowed to be defined by something other than what he did to you.

Ugh. 😩

I watch her walk away, not a rumor but a real person, a woman who used to be a girl. I’m real, too. Have I ever thought that about myself so plainly before? It’s such a small revelation.