Bullies and Counselors: Part 5
"I can't believe he said that." Haley's voice crackled over the cellphone and I could hear someone shouting that they were getting low on plates.
"I'm going to move someplace I can hear better," she said.
Scraping noises followed. Then a door shut.
The next time she spoke, I could hear her perfectly.
"I went outside."
"Hope you've got your coat."
"I'm not stupid."
I sat at my desk in my room, looking out the side window toward the street. Against the light of the streetlight, I could see snow falling.
"I didn't say you were. It just looks cold out there."
"It's not as bad as it was."
Haley didn't say anything for a little while. I began to wonder if we'd lost the connection.
"Haley?"
"He's such a jerk. He's such an... asshole."
She stopped talking again. This time I waited.
"It didn't go like he said it did. We were making out, and he might have been thinking about sex, but I wasn't. I don't even know if the pill would work for me. All I knew was that he was pushing me further than I wanted to go."
"Are you saying he was trying to rape you?"
"I didn't think so then. Right now... I don't know. It might have been going that way. He wouldn't listen to me and I got nervous and I started to feel the change begin. So I stabbed him with the dewclaw and I called my parents."
"Wow."
"The worst part was that it didn't end there. His dad knew someone at the police department, and the police wanted to know how a neurotoxin got into his blood. It just went on and on. Eventually they gave up, but not before everyone had hired lawyers. It was awful."
"I never heard about any of that."
"By the time you and Daniel and Cassie started having DVD nights, it was over and I wasn't going to bring it up."
"There wasn't even a hint, though."
"I didn't want to think about it any more," she said.
I heard the sound of a door opening and a voice in the background.
In a slightly annoyed voice she said, "I have to work. Talk to you later."