bleu, and danced several times. During one of the slow dances, I gently kissed Rebecca on the side of her head. She pulled me in closer to her, and I thought about that foil-wrapped condom hidden behind my driver’s license in my wallet.
It wasn’t until about twenty minutes before the end of the prom that everything fell apart. I’d gone to the bathroom, and when I returned, Rebecca was no longer at our table. I spotted her on the far side of the ballroom, leaning up against the wall and talking to a junior I recognized as Bill Johnson, a linebacker on the school football team. I stopped in my tracks, my limbs turning cold and my throat tightening. Instead of crossing the endless yardage of the room to confront them, I went back to my table, and it was from there that I watched Rebecca and Bill hug, then kiss, then leave the prom together.
I saw Rebecca in the hallway of the high school on Monday afternoon. I thought she might apologize, but I watched as her eyes skidded over me, and she turned away. I learned that week that she and Bill were definitely an item. I don’t know if it was easier or harder that very few of my fellow students seemed aware that I had been humiliated on prom night. I do know that if Rebecca had at least attempted to apologize to me, things might have turned out differently.
I plotted my revenge for over a year. It made sense that if I was going to do something to Rebecca, I should wait for some time to pass. Otherwise, I’d be a natural suspect. I devoted my senior year to getting the best grades I could, keeping my head down, and not allowing myself to get into any more potentially humiliating situations. I was accepted at Harvard, surprising even my guidance counselor, and while this acceptance felt like one kind of revenge, I still wanted to pay Rebecca back. Ideally, I would find a way to humiliate her in the way she had humiliated me, but I couldn’t figure out a way to do that. I opted for my second choice—I would scare her very, very badly.
A week before graduation I parked my Ford Escort at the back parking lot of Arnie’s Liquors on a sunless afternoon, then walked through a brief stretch of state forest that led to the back of the Rasts’ house. If anyone saw me, they would have seen a kid wearing a denim jacket and a baseball cap pulled low, something I would normally have never worn. But no one saw me. I had brought a crowbar in my backpack to break through the back door, but it was already open. I knew that no one would be home, that Mr. Rast had left months ago, and that Mrs. Rast worked day shifts at the CVS. And I knew, I hoped, that Rebecca would be coming home alone after school let out at three o’clock. I hid in her bedroom closet and waited.
Thinking back on it now, I remember the terror and excitement I felt in the small, dark space, Rebecca Rast’s clothes rustling up against me, the ski mask on my face starting to make me sweat. I had the closet door cracked a little and was able to hear Rebecca’s car pull into the driveway, to hear her enter the house and walk slowly up the stairs. She went to the bathroom first for what seemed a long time, then the toilet flushed, and she entered her bedroom, humming tunelessly to herself. My heart was thudding so loudly in my chest that I wondered how she hadn’t heard it. I had planned on leaping out of the closet in my ski mask, but I didn’t need to. She came straight to the closet door and slid it open along its tracks. I stepped toward her, scissors in one hand, duct tape in another. She opened her mouth to scream but nothing came out. I watched all the color drain from her face, and I was sure that she was about to faint, but instead she turned to run. I tackled her from behind, realizing as I did it that she had stripped to just her underwear. I held her down and managed to wrap duct tape first around her face and mouth, and then around her hands and ankles. It wasn’t easy; I got kicked several times but refrained