Red

Ricky dragged his mouth from hers, and looked over his shoulder at his buddies. She saw the laughter in his eyes, the triumph, and fury exploded inside her. Enraged, she wrenched an arm free and swung at him, catching him off guard, nailing him in the side of his head. “You bastard! Get off of me!”

“Sonofabitch!” Ricky stumbled backward, then lunged for her again. “Cunt! Bitch!” He slammed her back against the tree, so hard she saw stars. “Tommy, Christ, give me a hand here!”

Tommy jumped forward and pinned her arms. She fought him as best she could, twisting, arching, trying to kick.

Ricky put his hands on her breasts, squeezing them, pinching at the nipples. “Hey, Tommy, these are some nice little titties. Have yourself a squeeze.”

“No!” She freed a foot and managed to jam it onto one of theirs, but without enough force to do anything but amuse them.

Tommy laughed and pulled at her breasts. “Ricky’s right. How’d we miss these, guys? All we’d need now is a paper bag. Come on and have a feel, Buddy.”

The other boy took a step back, shaking his head. “No way. This isn’t right.” He looked at Randy. “It’s not right.”

Tears streaming down her cheeks, Becky Lynn flailed her head back and forth as the two boys continued to paw at her. “Please,” she whispered, horrified beyond words by what they were doing to her, humiliated and ashamed. “Please… Randy…don’t…let them…”

She looked at her brother, begging him, and saw the fear and horror in his eyes. In that moment, she realized he cared more about being one of these boys’ friends than he did about her, his own flesh and blood.

“If her tits are good,” Ricky said, spittle collecting at the corners of his mouth, “maybe her pussy’ll be okay, too. What do you think, Tommy?”

“No!” She arched her back, straining against Tommy’s hands. “Leave me alone… Randy…don’t let them—”

Ricky shoved his hand between her legs, and she screamed, vaguely wondering why she hadn’t before. Tommy slammed his hand over her mouth, catching the sound. She bit down, heard Tommy’s oath and tasted blood. His blood.

“You wet yet, Becky Lynn?” Ricky asked, grinding his fingers against her. “Huh, baby?” He poked at her through the denim of her shorts, and she cried out in pain, the sound muffled by Tommy’s hand.

“Shit, guys,” Buddy said, stepping forward, looking as if he was going to puke. “This isn’t right. It’s Randy’s sister, for Christ’s sake.” He grabbed Ricky’s arm. “Come on, man. Leave her alone.”

Ricky jerked from the other boy’s grasp, fury tightening his features. “Get your own piece, asshole.”

Buddy looked at Randy. Becky Lynn could see that if Randy didn’t put up a fight, Buddy was going to back down, as well. And she would be lost.

Randy moved to stand beside Buddy. “Leave her alone,” he said, his voice shaking.

“What’s a matter, Madman? Afraid?”

Randy, bigger than all of them, curled fingers into fists. “Fuck you, Fischer. I’m not afraid of anything. You want to take me on? Just say the word.”

For long moments, the boys faced one another. Then Ricky and Tommy dropped their hands and stepped away from Becky Lynn. “Hey, man, we didn’t mean any harm. We were just havin’ a little fun. That’s all.”

Becky Lynn ran. Leaving her precious magazines, not bothering to straighten her T-shirt. She ran until sweat poured from her and each breath tore at her chest and side.

Fun. They were just having a little fun.

A sob wrenched from deep inside her. Dear Jesus, she’d wanted to die, and they’d just been having a little fun.

Becky Lynn didn’t slow even when she caught sight of her house. Limping, gasping for breath, she reached it. Her mother stood on the front porch, still wearing the floral housecoat. She stared blankly out at nothing, and her gaze flickered to her daughter as Becky Lynn climbed onto the porch. But she didn’t speak, didn’t comment. Becky Lynn knew that she didn’t even see her. Not really.

Becky Lynn pushed through the screen door. Her daddy sat in a stupor on the couch. She moved past him; he didn’t acknowledge her in any way. Thank God. She didn’t know what she would have done if he’d chosen that moment to lay into her. She only wanted to be alone. To be in her own bed. To never be touched again.

Becky Lynn slipped into her bedroom, crawled onto the mattress and pulled the blanket over her. She curled into a tight ball, trembling so violently her teeth chattered. So cold, she thought, curling herself tighter. She was so cold.

She squeezed her eyes shut, and her head filled with the suffocating smell of Ricky’s breath, hot against her skin, filled with the feel of Ricky’s tongue poking in her mouth, with the sensation of being trapped, overpowered.

She shoved a fist into her mouth to keep from crying out. Why had Ricky and Tommy done that to her? What had she done to deserve such cruelty? Such loathing?

Why her? Why always her?

Tears, hot against her cold flesh, slipped from the corners of her eyes and rolled down her cheeks, pooling at the corners of her mouth. She’d been trapped. Like an animal. Unable to free herself, unable to escape.

A sob caught in her throat. She’d fought them. But they’d been stronger; they’d held her down. The sob forced its way past her lips, ripping through the quiet room. They’d put their hands on her; she hadn’t been able to make them stop, hadn’t been able to escape.

She’d wanted to, more than anything in the world. She still did. Escape Tommy and Ricky. Her father.

Escape her life.

Hopelessness overwhelmed her, and she pressed her face into the sagging mattress, tears of shame and despair choking her. As she cried, the nightmare of the last hours began to dim, being replaced by those magic moments with her mother earlier. You’re special, Becky Lynn…You could make something of yourself… You could move away from here.

Becky Lynn curled her fingers into the rough, frayed blanket, holding on to those words, their warmth licking at the cold. Somebody thought she was special. One person in this world believed in her. That meant something. It was important.

If nothing else, it would get her through another day.

4

Fear became Becky Lynn’s constant companion. At school and Miss Opal’s. At the bus stop in the mornings, walking home from work in the evenings.

Razor sharp, the fear left her every sense heightened, her every nerve twitching. Waiting. For the worst to happen. Waiting for the moment when she would come face-to-face with Ricky and Tommy, for the moment when they would find her alone and completely vulnerable.

Oddly, the same fear that heightened her senses also numbed them, creating a wall between her and the world, a barrier that kept her from experiencing anything but her fear.

So she lived with it. She ate it and slept with it, it accompanied her to school and work. She awoke in the night, breathing hard, bathed in sweat, feeling suffocated by the emotion. Sometimes she awakened to the smell of Ricky’s foul breath, to the sensation of his hands on her breasts, between her legs, and she would hold the pillow to her face to muffle her cry of terror. Of revulsion. Those nights she would be unable to sleep again. She huddled under the blanket, watching light touch the sky, praying for sleep yet praying more that it wouldn’t come.

She had lost weight. Her eyes had become shadowed. Already quiet, she had stopped talking at all. No one had noticed. Not her mother or a sibling, not a teacher or Miss Opal.

But then, she hadn’t expected that anyone would. Just as she hadn’t considered telling anyone what had happened. She knew, in her heart and gut, that telling would only make her situation worse.

Becky Lynn retrieved the broom and dustpan from the back of the beauty shop and began cleaning up. Miss Opal had just finished her last appointment of the day and Fayrene and Dixie had left more than an hour ago. It had been slow, even for a Wednesday.

She tucked a hank of her hair behind her ear, moving the broom over the shiny floor, making sure she found every corner and cranny, wanting to do a good job for Miss Opal. The woman had gone to the high school principle and convinced him to give Becky Lynn special dispensation to miss last period study hall so she could work afternoons at the Cut ‘n Curl.

Becky Lynn bent to maneuver the broom under Fayrene’s workstation. She had needed the money, and she was only too happy to get away from school early. She drew her eyebrows together in thought. She had feared the first day of school, feared seeing Ricky and Tommy, so much she’d been physically ill. Yet that day and the ones following had slipped by until a month had passed without incident. The boys hadn’t approached her again. They hadn’t touched her, hadn’t exposed themselves or teased her much at school. In fact, they had been distant. Almost polite.

She had told herself that she was safe. She had told herself they had forgotten her, that they were busy now with football, their girlfriends and school functions.

Yet, no matter how often she reassured herself, something about their distance unsettled her. And her sense of being threatened grew with every day.

She frowned and swept the last of Mrs. Peachtree’s gunmetal gray hair into the dustpan. In the delta, the quieter, the more still and heavy the air, the worse the coming storm was going to be. That’s the way the air had felt to her every day since the river. Heavy, ripe with waiting and so still she could hear her own heart pump.

Maybe they had scared themselves, she thought, shuddering. Maybe Buddy Wills’s words had sunk into their thick skulls.