The movie is about a girl getting revenge on her parents’ murderer. Of course, it ends with her falling in love with some estranged boy. I watch it with only a bare sense of consciousness. My thoughts move from what is happening on the screen to what Lianna is doing beside me.
We lie down at the foot of her bed. Her laptop is propped on the box that holds her array collection of albums. There might be something said about that. She uses it as a prop, nothing more than an item she can use. If this is how she treats her most prized possession, I wonder what she does with the people she cares about.
Those things can’t really be compared. That’s what I tell myself. I want to believe I and all the other people in her life are an exception.
I don’t know when I became included in these people that she somehow tolerates. I don’t think I can really include myself in with her mom. That’s too much of a step to take when we’ve only known each other for around two weeks.
But these weeks are starting to feel more like years. They make me feel older, wiser, more in tune with the rest of the world. This might be what Lianna feels like. She makes me feel as if I know more than I do. Or that I’ve lived more lifetimes than I can possibly imagine.
I fall asleep near the end. The lull of the voices, though there is action sprinkled in, ease me into a peaceful dream about walking the halls of the gym. The voices I hear aren’t what I expect to find.
That’s when I know I’m in a dream.
There is self-doubt as I walk toward the doors of the locker rooms. The soft moans of a man trick me into think someone is hurt. The dream makes it hard to see. The edges of my sight are masked by a dark haze. Like smoke eating the edges of a page, I can’t see what is happening around me. I stumble down a dark lite corridor to the locker room doors. The hall and the doors look different then the ones in the school. Dreams always turn reality into something different. This dream is no different.
I step through the first door. The locker room is as dark as the hall, but through a small window in the next door, light streams through. I can make out the lockers, the tiles on the floor, and the shadows of two or more figures moving in the next room.
My heart races as I take a step into the room.
The window draws nearer. I stand before it.
The sounds are so loud that it feels as if there is a speaker right beside my ear. The figures are black shapes moving around on one another.
The moans…they were…
I open my eyes. My body jolts forward as I’m propelled from my strange dream.
At first, I don’t know what I’m looking at.
I’d fallen asleep at the edge of Lianna’s bed with my legs curled up to my chest. My hand is numb from using it as a pillow and my face feels like I’ve drooled all over my cheek. I move just an inch before I hear the sounds from my dream.
It takes a second for me to realize what it is.
Porn.
My heart skips a beat. My mouth is dry and my body is being overtaken by a heat I can’t place. I want to run from this room, forget about what she might think or what might happen from this point on. All I want is to be out of this room while the most inappropriate and most embarrassing thing is happening right beside me.
It feels almost unreal for a second. I can’t breathe when I think about what she’s doing. In the same room as me.
I don’t get a choice.
Her foot nudges my ankle. I jolt.
“I know you’re awake.”
If it wasn’t already obvious, it is now. I almost jumped out of my skin.
Her toes are cold on my skin. They’re ice.
I turn on my side.
My mouth is dry. What am I supposed to say? What is there to say when I’ve caught her watching porn?
I decide to sit up. My eyes are dry and they burn from waking up. I feel like throwing up.
She’s pressed against the wall. She’s holding her phone in one hand while the other one is behind her head. She looks at me with a dull stare.
“Come here.”
She says it like she’s asking me to look at a picture on instagram. It’s so distant from reality that it feels like a trick question.
Or a trap.
I should run away. She’s the instigator, the bad person I’m supposed to be scared of. She’s going to destroy me if I don’t get away.
But it’s too late. Sleep deprived me doesn’t want to work on escaping. I want the problems to unwork themselves.
That’s the excuse I use as I crawl to the opposite side of the bed.
“What time is it?” I mumble.
“Two.”
The video comes into focus.
Vomit pushes at the back of my throat. I swallow it down.
A man is holding a woman down, resting between her spread thighs.
I glance away from the screen.
Lianna laughs. “His moans are ridiculous.”
Her face is illuminated by the screen. The figures dance across the bridge of her nose and the slopes of her cheeks. I watch them sway back and forth, rocking in the motion born into them. Animals know how to do it too.
I don’t see these things the same way she does. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to.
She looks away from her phone. “What’s wrong?”
Tears cloud my vision. I try to blink them away.
I look down at the blanket and pull it closer to me. The soft fabric brushes my chin. The warmth makes me feel only a tad better.
I try to think of something else. I’m being transported from this bed and back to a time when this very room wasn’t as safe.
He’d been here. I see him sometimes when I close my eyes. I see him sometimes when I’m wide awake.
A flash of lightning strikes far off in the distance. Thunder rolls through the sky, shaking the house and making the one window in the room shiver. Rain follows after. Each drop is a bullet raining down on the roof.
Or fingers tapping on the inside of my skull.
Lianna wraps her arm around my shoulder. I still at her touch.
“Is this okay?” She pulls me toward her slightly.
I bite the inside of my cheek. My stomach jumps when her fingers press into my arm.
I lay back next to her. We’re closer now. My head is leaning against the crook of her arm. The screen of the phone is too bright to look at, but it’s getting better.
She hits play.
The moans, I think, could be bearable. I’m dead wrong.
He’s a large muscular man, taller than Lianna and older than the both of us. The way he looks down at the woman is empty. There’s no connection between the two of them.
He holds her down on the floor.
My eyes eat it up. My eyes trail over the slopes of their entwined bodies and down to where they’re connected. There isn’t an inch of the screen I could get enough of. I want to bring it all in so that I can understand what I’m seeing.
I want to slap the phone out of her hand. I can’t stand to look at it or hear it. Even the thought of it is like nails on chalk board.
But I’m frozen. She can do whatever she wants. I’m not the boss of her. And if I do what I want, who is going to stop her from getting angry with me? What is there to stop her from cutting me off like everyone else does?
The video ends. It feels like we’ve been watching it forever.
“What did you think?”
I turn to her. “What should I think?”
Even in the dark, I can make out the curve of her mouth. It’s pulled to one side.
She leans down and whispers in my ear. “I’ll give you a little secret.”
I jolt back as if I’ve been hit. “I don’t care.”
She looks at me, shocked. “What?”
I twist around in the bed, turning on my side. I draw the covers over my head.
“I said I don’t care.”
She lets out a stressed sound. It’s so over the top that I don’t believe it at first. I cover my mouth. The giggles rise in my chest. It’s getting hard to breathe.
A hand smacks my head. “Are you laughing at me?”
It’s too much to handle. I roll over, flinging the covers off me, and let out the rising laughs. I can’t stop them once they’re out and by the look on Lianna’s face, she’s not even remotely amused.
It doesn’t nothing to stop the tear wrenching cackles that come from my mouth. The tears roll down my cheeks and I think there might be signs of snot running down my nose.
Nothing matters. All I want to do is laugh it out until it doesn’t hurt anymore.
It takes a whole three minutes for me to come back down from whatever place I went.
Lianna stares down at me. Her eyes are wide.
“Don’t look at me,” I say while wiping my nose.
She takes my hand and holds it in the air. I look at her.
I remember the feeling of her lips on mine. The soft peck in the kitchen and then the day she stormed into the bathroom stall. Those moments flash before me. But this is so different that I can’t place it into any category. I thought I could stay away from her.
I was so wrong.
“Why did you watching that?” It’s a simple question.
She blinks. “Do you even know what that was?”
“Porn,” I say.
She shakes her head. “That wasn’t just porn, Maya.”
There’s a sad tone in her voice. She lets my hand fall away and moves back to her side of the bed.
“You remember what you saw in the gym?”
I can’t forget it.
“Yeah.”
“There’s more that goes on there. Like this.”
She flicks through her phone. Images of unspeakable things flash across the small screen.
I cover my mouth, shoving the phone out of my face.
“Don’t…”
She pulls the phone away, but the damage has already been done. The things I saw in those photos can’t be described without admitting the awful behind it all. This is so past the point of wrong that I feel like I’m responsible somehow.
“Why?” My voice breaks. I choke back a sob, but if she’s listening closely, she already knows how broken I am.
Her eyes flicker from the screen and then to the empty side of the room. She opens her mouth and she mouths the words. I watch her lips, trying to decipher what message she wants to send me, but I don’t know what she’s trying to get across.
It’s the first time I’ve seen her overtaken by fear.
She shuts her phone off and rests it on her chest face down.
We stare at the ceiling.
“It hurts.” Her voice sounds strange. “I thought you could help.”
She turns away and falls asleep.
***
I snuck away after Lianna was asleep. Her even breaths shook her body. I wanted to stand and watch her. Her slight movements were interesting and I wanted to burn them into my memory. But I left her alone to find the bed empty.
It was as it should be.
The kiss and the photos as well as the small talk before and after were with me as I walked to my bedroom. As I lie in my bed, I put the tips of my fingers to my lips.
The house is quiet. There is just the sound of fluttering bugs outside.
I reach for my phone and pull up the only porn site I know.
The page slowly loads. The thumbnails appear and I stare at them with a strange aw. I want to throw up. As I scroll down, flickering over the images, I push down my fear.
I click the next video I see.
Loud moans erupt from the speaker. I slam my hand over it. Before I can turn the volume down, the girl in the video lets out a drawn out squeal.
My face burns and tears well up as I slam the volume down. The sounds cuts off.
I stare at the door as if someone is going to bust in and punish me for watching this. When that doesn’t happen, I look down at my phone.
The video is obviously staged. A porno. Even without ever watching one before, I know what it is. I know these are paid actors and that this is sold to get people off. It doesn’t look right. Their movements, the kissing, and the thrusting feel like a sham. It is, but it feels like it’s more than that.
The tears fall down my cheeks. I can’t stop the sobs that wrack my chest.
The video isn’t even halfway through when I exit.
I wrap my arms around my chest and shove my face into my pillow.
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