Salt Pillars

Chapter 4 (Monday)

Adriana

The entire morning had felt like a dream, in fact, so had the entire weekend that preceded it. Adriana was essential drifting by in a haze ever since that terrible party on Friday. She remembered waking up the following day in a strange bed completely nude with her clothes tangled and strewn about the room. Her head throbbed with the worst pain of her life and other parts of her anatomy ached as well. The night came back to her in flashes of broken memories that didn't fit together, like a mess of puzzle-pieces from different puzzles all mixed up. What had she done, or worse—what had been done to her? She was sticky and a terrible taste resided in her dry mouth. The memories were drowned too deep in the throbbing pain in her head.

After she gathered up her belongings, she made her way downstairs. The house seemed familiar. It was that guy's house, Tony, Chris's friend, but were they friends... and where was Chris?

She could hear the sounds of the television in the next room and the voices of some boys talking but she didn't want to go in. Instead, she left the house.

That's where she found Chris, lying face down in the grass asleep. She knelt beside him and watched his chest rise and fall with his breath. He also seemed miserable and in pain.

Something inside her couldn't face him, maybe it was shame or resentment; she was still too messed up to understand the feeling. So she left him there to sleep, and she walked away on her own.

The road away from Tony's house was long and winding as though it stretched on forever; the dehydration from alcohol tore at her insides. Her head pounded and nausea wretched at her stomach, but it was too empty to give anything away.

Suddenly, a flash came back to her like an image pulled from the sky—the smiling faces of the boys on top of her. Oh god! She cried out and fell over holding her stomach as it clenched up, trying to puke. She dry heaved but only small amounts of burning foam came up.

The memories came back in clusters like that over the next couple of days, each memory like an unwelcome guest in her mind, filling her with anger and humiliation that bore into her until she was numb. She drifted from one day to the next in this weird limbo state, detached and indifferent.

Her parents noticed the change in her, but they didn't know how to talk to her, so they left it alone. 'She'll tell us when she is ready' is how they rationalized their lack of action, and the silence in the house grew heavier, driving everyone to their prospective hiding placing. They had their hands full with her two-year old little brother, Owen, anyway.

The prospect of class had leered on the horizon like a dark storm, threatening her with impending doom. She was certain that everybody would be staring at her and whispering behind her back. "There's that girl," they would sneer with their judging eyes. But when the day actually came, everything appeared to be fairly routine. She fell into the sea of faces that were all too self-involved to notice her. At least that's how it went until third period algebra class.