Educated

direction. People crane to see what the commotion is. Immediately I begin to
laugh—a wild, hysterical cackle that despite all my efforts still sounds a little
like a scream.
“You’re going in,” Shawn says, and I feel the bone in my wrist crack.
I go with him into the bright lights. I laugh as we pass through aisle after
aisle, gathering the things he wants to buy. I laugh at every word he says,
trying to convince anyone who might have been in the parking lot that it was
all a joke. I’m walking on a sprained ankle, but the pain barely registers.
We do not see Charles.
The drive back to the site is silent. It’s only five miles but it feels like fifty.
We arrive and I limp toward the shop. Dad and Richard are inside. I’d been
limping before because of my toe, so my new hobble isn’t so noticeable. Still,
Richard takes one look at my face, streaked with grease and tears, and knows
something is wrong; Dad sees nothing.
I pick up my screw gun and drive screws with my left hand, but the
pressure is uneven, and with my weight gathered on one foot, my balance is
poor. The screws bounce off the painted tin, leaving long, twisting marks like
curled ribbons. Dad sends me home after I ruin two sheets.
That night, with a heavily wrapped wrist, I scratch out a journal entry. I ask
myself questions. Why didn’t he stop when I begged him? It was like getting
beaten by a zombie, I write. Like he couldn’t hear me.
Shawn knocks. I slide my journal under the pillow. His shoulders are
rounded when he enters. He speaks quietly. It was a game, he says. He had no
idea he’d hurt me until he saw me cradling my arm at the site. He checks the
bones in my wrist, examines my ankle. He brings me ice wrapped in a dish
towel and says that next time we’re having fun, I should tell him if something
is wrong. He leaves. I return to my journal. Was it really fun and games? I
write. Could he not tell he was hurting me? I don’t know. I just don’t know.
I begin to reason with myself, to doubt whether I had spoken clearly: what
had I whispered and what had I screamed? I decide that if I had asked
differently, been more calm, he would have stopped. I write this until I
believe it, which doesn’t take long because I want to believe it. It’s
comforting to think the defect is mine, because that means it is under my
power.
I put away my journal and lie in bed, reciting this narrative as if it is a
poem I’ve decided to learn by heart. I’ve nearly committed it to memory
when the recitation is interrupted. Images invade my mind—of me, pinned,