“This is too much,” Rosina finally says. “I can’t do this.”
“What are you talking about?” Grace says. “This is our chance to finally get those bastards. We finally have proof.”
“This girl isn’t proof,” Rosina says. “She’s a person. A person who just got fucking raped. What if she doesn’t want anything to do with us? We can’t force her to talk to the cops. We don’t even know her. What if she doesn’t even want our help?”
“But what if she does?” Erin says softly from the backseat. “Maybe she’s all alone right now. Maybe she’s scared and thinks there’s no one to help her. Maybe she’s waiting for us.”
The car is quiet. After a moment Rosina turns around to face Erin in the backseat. Grace can’t see what is happening between them, but she can feel it.
Finally Erin speaks again: “We have to at least let her know we’re here, that we believe her. We have to let her know someone’s on her side. Then she can decide what she wants to do.”
ERIN.
It takes exactly forty-two minutes to drive from Prescott High School to Cheyenne’s town of Fir City, which is approximately half the size of Prescott. “We’re in the country now, boy,” Rosina says with her fake redneck accent. Erin hates it when she does that.
The sky is gray and low with clouds. Erin remembers something she read about how the Willamette Valley is one of the worst places in the world for people with chronic migraines because of something to do with its unique barometric-pressure system. Erin wishes she knew more about barometric pressure. She wonders if, had she grown up here instead of by the beach, meteorology would have been her interest instead of marine biology.
Rosina tells them they’re entering white supremacist country. “This is where all the survivalist crazies live,” she warns. “And they have machine guns.”
“I’m sure not everyone out here’s like that,” Grace says. “That’s like saying everyone from the south is racist.”
During the drive, Erin quizzes Rosina and Grace on the instructions she prepared about how best to talk to a rape victim. She’s moderately confident that they have the most important things down—don’t push her to share anything she’s not comfortable with, don’t criticize or judge her, don’t get too emotional, don’t touch her, don’t try to fix her, don’t make it about you and your experiences, don’t tell her what to do, don’t pressure her to report it if she doesn’t want to.
“What if we forget one?” Rosina says. “Is that going to screw her up forever? Is the fact that we have no idea what the hell we’re doing going to add to her trauma? What if we make things worse?” She shakes her head. “You guys, I don’t think I can do this.”
“Of course you can,” Grace says.
“Aren’t you supposed to be the brave one?” Erin says. Rosina is always the brave one. She’s always the one who knows exactly what to do.
“But I’m not,” Rosina says. “It’s just an act. It’s always been an act.”
Erin wonders what’s gotten into Rosina, why she’s acting so un-Rosina-like. All this Nowhere Girls business has turned everything upside down, has turned each of them into their opposites—Rosina’s scared, Grace is brave, and Erin is skipping class to do something spontaneous and possibly dangerous, and she’s not even all that anxious. She hasn’t had to count backward at all today.
“But that’s exactly what being brave means,” Grace says. “Doing something even when you’re scared.”
“You make it sound so easy,” Rosina says. “You do know that people out here are just waiting to shoot people like me, right? Hello? I’m brown and gay.”
“We’re almost there.” Grace turns into a cul-de-sac of small ranch-style homes. “It should be on the left,” she says. “There. The white one.” She pulls up in front and turns off the engine. No one moves.
“What the fuck do we do now?” Rosina finally says.
“She’s probably not even home from school yet,” Grace says. “Should we just wait out here until we see her?”
“That feels creepy,” Rosina says. “Like we’re stalking her or something.”
“I think we’ve already crossed that line,” Erin says.
Rosina turns around and glares at Erin in the backseat. “Why the hell are you so calm?”
Erin shrugs. “We should go up there now,” she says. “In case Cheyenne’s already home.”
“What are we going to say?” Rosina says.
“My old OT said you should usually start with ‘Hello,’?” says Erin.
“Are you trying to be funny, Erin? Now is really not the time.”
“I think Grace should speak first,” Erin says. “Since she’s the nicest and most normal-looking.”
“Okay,” says Grace, and she opens her door. “Let’s go.”
“What?” Rosina says. “Now? We don’t have a plan. Grace, what are you going to say?”
“We’ve prepared as much as we can,” Grace says. “Now we just have to trust that the right words will come.”
“Is that one of your God things?” Rosina says. “Because I really don’t think I can handle that right now.”
Without answering, Grace steps out of the car and shuts the door behind her. Definitive. Decisive. Erin decides she likes this new Grace better than the old one.
The three girls converge on the front porch and, without speaking, stand facing one another.
“Did you know the triangle is the strongest geometric shape in nature?” Erin says.
They meet one another’s eyes, one by one by one. They breathe. They swallow. They turn toward the door. Grace presses the button of the doorbell. They hold their breath and wait.
The sound of footsteps. Locks unlocking. The door creaking open to a tiny crack, just enough to reveal a girl’s face.
“Can I help you?” the girl says. Her voice quivers. She is already afraid.
“Cheyenne?” Grace says gently.
“Yeah?”
“Hi, I’m Grace. I’m here with my friends Erin and Rosina. We go to Prescott High.”
The door opens a little more. Cheyenne sticks her head out—pale skin with freckles; long strawberry-blond, curly hair. Her blue eyes are red rimmed. Haunted. She takes a long look at each of the girls.
“I don’t really know how to say this,” Grace says. “We’re here because . . . Well . . .”
“We thought you might need our help,” Rosina says, stepping forward.
A wave of recognition passes through Cheyenne’s eyes, then a tremor of surprise. She opens the door a little more.
“A friend of ours overheard a couple of guys talking,” Grace says. “Guys we already know have done bad things to girls. They mentioned your name. They were talking about something they did. Something horrible.”
Erin is trying to hide behind Rosina. She is no longer calm. All of a sudden she wants to run back to the car. She wants to curl up in the backseat, where she felt safe just moments ago, lock the door, and wait for this all to be over.
Cheyenne’s eyes dart between the girls. Erin knows that look. Erin knows that panic.
“We’re so sorry about what happened,” Grace says. “We want to help. We want to support you in any way you need.”