“That weekend, Autumn’s mom called the house and told my mom that she found her daughter hanging from the rod in the closet. Autumn committed suicide. She didn’t leave a note, so I was the only person that knew why. I went to the funeral, I watched her parents sob as they lowered her into the ground, and all I could think was, once again, I had done nothing. I hadn’t told anyone. Maybe if I had, she would still be here to tell her story. For a minute, I even thought that it should be me in the ground, but I knew there was no way I could ever do that to my parents. I made them suffer enough because I spent every single waking hour trying to.” She shrugged helplessly. “I guess I was trying to even the score. I went from being a girl that liked a party and a good time, to being a girl that was on the verge of destruction. I purposely found boys that were no good, instead of stumbling onto them like I had before. I started drinking a lot more, dabbled in drugs here and there, but quickly found out that wasn’t something I enjoyed. I wanted to hurt, to feel the pain I knew Autumn went through, and drugs made me numb and made me forget. I stopped pretending to even kind of try in school, and stopped trying with my mom. Before that night I was wild, after that night I was out of control. I wanted to hurt in all the ways I could hurt, but it was never enough. I could never make up for what happened to her, what she lost. Eventually, I went to her parents and told them what happened. I told them about the party and the attack. I told them about the baby.”
She lifted a hand to her face and pressed tightly into her temples. “I thought it would help them find closure, that they would have some solace in understanding that Autumn felt trapped.” A tear leaked, finally escaped whatever invisible force field that had been holding them back as she spoke. It clung to her dark lashes and then dropped, falling silently, until it disappeared under the curve of her chin. “They told me what I had known from the night it happened. Her mom told me that it was my fault, that it should have been me. Their daughter was a good girl, a sweet kid, until she hooked up with me. I ruined her and then I killed her. They told me I was the one that should be dead, not their daughter. I deserved to suffer every ounce of pain that was filling me up for putting Autumn in that situation in the first place. I couldn’t even bring myself to tell my parents what had really happened. They knew Autumn was gone, knew that I felt responsible, but they were already so disappointed in the choices I was making, choices that were so much worse than the ones I had been making before. I couldn’t bear the thought of them looking at me like Autumn’s parents did. If they blamed me as well, how could I live with myself? I was used to their disappointment but I knew I couldn’t survive their disgust.”
She swiped at the damp trail the tear had left on her face and returned her tortured gaze to mine. “So I did nothing and it killed my best friend. That’s my story and her story, the entire ugly truth of it, Counselor.” Her breath shuddered out of her and her watery eyes locked on mine. “Do you still like what you see and what you get when it comes to me, Quaid?”
Her self-loathing was evident, and so was the guilt and responsibility over the tragic event that was hanging around her neck like a leaden anchor.
I walked towards her until I had her backed into the door once again. I put my hands on either side of her face and tilted her head back so that she was looking up at me with wide eyes and an open mouth.
“I’ve been a defense attorney for a few years now, and if there is one thing that all my clients, whether they’re innocent or guilty, have in common it’s blame. It’s always someone else’s fault and it’s always someone else’s responsibility that they’re in the situation they’re in. No one wants to be accountable for the choices they made that led to them needing a defense in the first place. All of my clients are like that, except for you, Avett. You own your choices, you take the responsibility, and you don’t make excuses for your behavior. What happened to your friend is horrific, and no young woman should ever have to go through that, especially alone, but she made the choice to go with you. She made the choice to take that drink. She made the choice to not say anything to people that could help. Did you force her to go with you that night?” She slowly shook her head in between my hands. “Did you tell her that your friendship was over if she didn’t go with you?” Again with a negative response. “Did you do anything different that night than you did any other night the two of you went somewhere you probably shouldn’t have been?”
This time she breathed out a soft, “No.”
“Then you need to realize that what happened wasn’t your fault. Was it awful and avoidable, yes, but the only people to blame are the men that attacked your friend. I don’t care if both of you walked into that house naked and ready to party. Consent has to be given and those boys took the option to say yes or no away from her. They are at fault. Not you and certainly not her.” I narrowed my eyes as I thought about how devastating that conversation with the other girl’s parents must have been for her. “Her parents were looking for someone to hand the blame off onto because they were hurting and looking for a target to land that pain on. No parent wants to think they failed their child, that they may have missed the clues that their kid was hurting and in trouble and that they may have been able to do something to help them. It makes them feel inadequate as well as heartbroken. I see it every day in court when parents are in disbelief that their baby is capable of hurting someone else or themselves so they look for any other reasonable explanation as to how things could go so horribly wrong. It’s gotta be someone else’s fault. You painted a bright red bull’s-eye on yourself and they fired at will.”