Chapter 4: Levi

“It’s okay,” I hear Daniel tell me as he looks down at his blue striped patterned pyjama bottoms in a long, awaited sigh. He pulls his hand through his dark hair, yet the lighting from the pool makes it come across more as a blondish brown than dark brown. I get where he comes from with Guinevere, I worry about her, yet I try not to show it. “You know I meant about earlier tonight right?” I asked him, clarifying what my apology was really for. “I know,” he tells me as he sits down on the concrete ground underneath him. There are times where I wonder how the basement underneath the pool works. It must be at least five to six feet underneath with all that piping, but it’s one of the many things my brain gets curious about. “I really am sorry. I actually wasn’t going to rip the computer off the desk. I was just angry,” I tell him before he walks off, remembering from earlier that night. It was the middle of the game, and I was playing with some friends of mine: Derek, Hudson, and Austin. I’ve known them ever since grade 7. In the game, one of them was able to drop the gun in my hand, causing me to be furious at the person. 

Anyway, I’m two years older than Guinevere, but due to some of my reckless behaviour within the past few years, I’ve been updating my schooling, so I go into the school every once in a while. However, my parents have been trying to help me get through my schoolwork, but I keep pissing them off, choosing to refuse to do schoolwork. I have had a tendency to do things at the last minute. But I know my sister doesn’t do things like that. She focuses on schoolwork first, and then leisure comes second. There are times where I have wished that I was more like her, but then again I don’t want to be in her exact shoes. I do worry about her, she’s my sister, I’m supposed to love her. Ever since she got the aquamarine hair, I’ve been wanting to talk to her more about what’s bothering her, but she won’t budge. I still remember the day that I came across her with her aquamarine hair. It was after I got home one day, and when I was going to my room to put my bag on my bed, I noticed Guinevere’s door opened. Daniel was with her, and he was helping her clean up a mess on the ground - sounding like something had broken and glass was everywhere. I tried not to worry too much about it at first, so I went into my room, placed my red school bag on my grey comforter (there are two entrances one either side of my bed, one leads to the bathroom, and the furthest one leads to my closet - my bedroom mirrors Guinevere’s), lied down on my bed and stared at the popcorn ceiling that held a light fixture of a blue rocket from the top. I was wearing a brown plaid shirt with my dark jeans on. I remember wanting to know what happened with Guinevere, but I wanted to wait until everything was cleaned up. Stepping in there with no shoes on when there could be glass on the floor is the last mess you need. 

Once the tinkling of glass had ended, I sat up from the edge of my bed and waited for Guinevere and Daniel to walk past. However, when I left my room, Guinevere was already gone. I remember Daniel coming up to me, holding a tray of broken glass in his right hand. “What happened?” I remember asking him, seeing those blue eyes of his dart across from one end of the hallway to the other, before focusing on me. “How long were you in your bedroom for?” I remember him asking me. He was wearing a blue buttoned shirt with light grey jeans on, and his hair needed a comb desperately. Strands of his hair were sticking out here and there like a sore thumb that needed protection, especially since they were dangling in front of his beardless face from the sides. “Where’s Guinevere?” I remember asking him, trying not to get thrown off by the hair. “She’s in her room. However, I wouldn’t go in there if I were you. She’s getting changed,” Daniel had told me, making me want to know more about what was going on. When Daniel left the hall, taking the broken glass towards the kitchen, I lightly tapped on Guinevere’s door. However, there was no answer. Maybe she was grabbing something and I couldn’t hear me? I tried knocking on the door again, but there was still no answer. 

Rather worried, I bursted through the door, only to find Guinevere in her closet, pulling something down from her top drawer. She was wearing a white see through shirt, yet her bra could be seen - white and knitted, along with wearing light blue jeans ripped at the knee. Her hair was aquamarine, yet it had a bit of turquoise in between a purplish hue and aquamarine at the bottom. “Guinevere?” I remember asking her, startled from the color. “Levi,” she let out rather startled when she saw me entering the closet. She was holding something in her hand that looked rather sharp and harmful. I didn’t know if it was a piece of glass or something else that would harm her. “Don’t come any closer,” I remember her telling me with her voice trembling as I walked closer to her. I couldn’t let her harm herself. Backing her up against the wall, I grabbed her closed hand, and opened it up, revealing a short knife that had a wooden handle in her hand, with the sharp edge pointing towards herself.

Taking the knife out of her hand, I remember her leaning into my shoulder and letting the tears fall against my shirt out of those dark blue eyes. Placing the knife on the ground, I grabbed her coral parka and white knitted hat from inside her closet, and gave her back the red glasses that she had worn the day before. Now, she wears her blue contacts because she got lasik surgery for her eyes. “Guinevere, here is what you’re going to do. You’re going to wear your parka, hat, and glasses, I’ll tell mom to find you outside the back of the school. You’re going to get through this, but you need to tell someone,” I remember telling her. She needed to open up about what was going on, and I knew that if she wasn’t going to tell me, she needed to open up to Charlotte. But now that I look back on that day, I don’t think she would’ve, and I don’t think she did.

In fact, as I look at the light blue of the pool, I get rather tired as I feel my body getting rather heavy from the water pulling me down. I need to get some sleep. Pulling myself out from the pool, I walk towards my bedroom as the water drips down my body and leaves behind a shadow of water as I walk up the main stairwell. In the bathroom of my bedroom, I’m not as wet as I was when I was walking toward my bedroom, but I’m still quite damp, so I grab my burgundy towel that was hanging up on the gold hook beside the shower. When I enter the bathroom, the tub is tucked in on one side that faces the sink and toilet, while the shower is against the middle wall, adjacent to the wall that has the tub, and the wall that has the toilet and sink. I dry myself off, only to realize the time: 11:45 pm. Okay, I stayed up late. Normally, around this time I would check on Guinevere for at least a second. However, before I leave the bedroom, I grab my white, simple, beer-stained at the neck pyjama top, with checkered yellow and orange pyjama pants, putting them on before leaving the room. 

Every night around 11:45, I always check on Guinevere. Slightly opening the door, I notice her tucked under the coral pink comforter she has, with her aquamarine head resting on her white pink jewelled pillowcase, facing the left side of the bed that no one slept in. “She’s drifted off to sleep,” I tell myself in my head. The reason why I check on her is because an incident happened a while back that I have not told her about. On one Saturday, Charlotte and Daniel invited Carter, Erica, Tyler, Shawn, Karen, Carson, Clyde, and Eliana over from church. I was with Tyler, Shawn, and Clyde, cause Carter and Karen had trusted me to watch over them while everyone else got drunk in the basement. I remember we converted the office space to a guest room, so that Karen and Carson had a place to stay for the night. Carter and Erica had stayed in the official guest room, and Eliana was staying in Guinevere’s room. This was a few weeks after Guinevere had dyed her hair aquamarine, and Carter and Guinevere were starting to show serious chemistry together. I never went down to the basement, I stayed in my room, where Tyler, Shawn, Clyde, and I played board games that I hid in my closet from my family. However, it was at night when this happened.

Around 11:45, I heard a rumbling coming from across the hall from Guinevere’s room. I snuck past Tyler, Shawn, and Clyde wearing their pyjamas in sleeping bags that I kept in my closet, only to find Guinevere’s bedroom door opened. Past a sleeping Eliana near the foot of the bed, Carter was on top of a sleeping Guinevere, with his pants undone and underwear at the knee. Running into the room, I grabbed onto him, and I pressed him against the wall nearest her closet, as I kept my hand covered over his mouth, staring at those sickening dark brown eyes of his. They seemed like he wanted to stop something from piercing him. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I remember angrily saying to him in a loud whisper - I couldn’t risk waking up Guinevere and Eliana. However at this point, Tyler and Shawn would’ve noticed that I wasn’t in the room. In fact, Tyler and Shawn had entered the room, Tyler wearing his yellow duck onesie, and Shawn wearing his black and white penguin onesie, with the hoodies on their heads. “What’s going on?” I remember Tyler asking me, reaching for my hand in a low whisper. “What’s going to happen is that the two of you are going to take Clyde out of my room and down to the basement without saying anything, because I need to speak with your father alone,” I remember telling them in a rather stern whisper. Without saying anything, they just walked off and did what I told them before staring back at Carter, with fury in my eyes. “What’s happening?” I remember Carter asking me in a quiet whisper, yet you could hear the tremble in his voice and see it in his eyes. “We’re going to go into my room, where you explain what you were doing to my sister,” I tell him, hearing the tone of my voice go sinister. Holding onto his wrist, I walked him out of Guinevere’s room as quietly as we could, before turning the light on in my room and letting go of him after closing the door, only to see him walk towards the other side of the bed. 

“What the hell were you doing?” I asked him, trying not to yell out that I woke up everyone. “What did you think that I was doing?” I remember him asking me, trying to find his words. He clearly had a lot to drink. “Carter, are you drunk?” I had asked him, my curious brain wanting to know the truth. “Maybe,” I remember him telling me with a slight giggle as he stepped back and forth with his right foot guiding him. “So you didn’t rape my sister?” I asked him, wanting a straight-forward answer. No one hurts my sister, and I don’t let anyone hurt my sister. “Why would I hurt your sister when I love her?” He asked me, just making me feel rather dumbfounded with this. “I don’t believe you,” I told him, keeping a straight face and crossing my arms. “Why?” He asked me, looking straight past me with a flustered look on his face. “Well if you didn’t rape her, then why are your pants undone?” I asked him, causing him to look down at what he had done: his pants undone with his underwear at his knee, featuring his medium-sized dangling penis, where you could see that the right testicle was bigger than the other. “I forgot I did that,” he told me after realizing that his pants were undone this entire time, only to let out a small laugh. However, the laughter did not last. He began to look flustered again, and the look wasn’t going away. I was not proud of what he had done, because he ran into my closet, grabbed a small bin near the front, took the lid off of it, and threw up right in it, smelling like fermented herring mixed in with beans and barley. There are times where I’ve been meaning to clean it, but the smell just reeks, so I covered it up and hid it in the back of my closet where no one would dare to look. 

After checking on Guinevere, and remembering the horrific stench of Carter’s puke, I silently walk back into my room and turn on the light. Stepping into my closet, I grab the bin of puke from the back, only to take the lid off, revealing what looked like corn chowder past its due date with expired beer mixed in with it. I needed to clean this up - and admit what Carter did to her, and if anyone needs to know what he did to her, it needed to be Anthony. Taking the bin to the bathroom, I turned on the shower tap, placed the grey puke-filled bin on the bottom and watched it get filled up with water, getting rid of the stench one second at a time. I thought I’d wait for it to be filled up, get rid of the water by drowning it into the shower pipe, and take a febreze bottle to the bathroom, closing the bathroom door behind me. There was a febreze bottle on the shelf inside the mirror, and leaving the bin in the shower with the door closed and the shower tap off, I turned the bathroom light off before getting under my comforter and drifted off to sleep.

At first I couldn’t sleep - thinking about Guinevere and the night that Carter allegedly raped her was all I was thinking about. There are some days where I wondered what would have happened if I believed him. But then what was he doing in Guinevere’s bedroom? Did he use the bathroom and forget to pull up his pants from the toilet? I know from experience that only a drunk man would do that. I just hope that he forgot that night, because he slept in my room that night, holding onto the bin that held his puke. In the morning from that incident I remember helping him recover - I was the one that drove Carter, Erica, Tyler, and Shawn home. I know Carter and Erica were both drunk, but Carter had it worse: he was the only one that had a hangover out of everyone who was at the soiree. 

…

2 months later, and I still can’t get it out of my head.

I wake up in the morning to my alarm clock: 7:30. Why? I have to go into school today to talk to a teacher that I don’t like, Ms. Pearl Bailey. After putting on my light blue jeans and a clean blue top that was finally ironed the day before, I headed down to the kitchen, where the smell of coffee was brewing and pancakes were being made on the stove. Daniel was sitting at the island nearest the glass door of a closet, with a cup of coffee in one hand, plate of chocolate chip pancakes with very little syrup, newspaper in hand, and wearing his burgundy v-shaped shirt and dark black jeans. Charlotte was facing the stove, wearing a white dress that had a black ribbon around the waist, yet there were red, pink, and light purple flowers at the bottom of the dress and around the waist. “Who wants pancakes?” Charlotte asks, turning around, revealing a v-shaped neckline of the dress and short sleeves that stopped at the shoulders. “Hey mom. I’ll have some,” I tell her as I pull up a wooden stool and I sit at the granite countertop of an island, where Charlotte had put a plate of chocolate chip pancakes in front of me, with silverware in one hand, and syrup in the other, placing it in front of me. As I watched my pancakes start to drown from the syrup, I noticed Guinevere walk into the kitchen, wearing an elegant emerald green dress with her coral sweater hanging over her shoulders, as she walked towards the coffee maker, grabbing her ocean wave mug that I got for her birthday last year, filling it up to the brim with steaming hot coffee. Daniel, Charlotte, and I were all worried about her, that we ended up giving her an unpleasant look. “What?” Guinevere had snapped, placing her mug on the island when she saw us all staring at her with fear in our eyes. “Guinevere, we’re worried about you,” I let out, trying to come across as the protective brother that I’ve tried to be for her. “So?” She asked, raising her voice towards me, almost ready to start an argument, like I did that night when talking to Carter about her. 

Without saying anything, she placed the mug on the counter as if her rage was coming out through it, grabbed her black leather school bag that was on the sofa, and headed straight out the door, closing it in a fit of rage. “What are we going to do Daniel?” Charlotte asks him after taking a deep breath, placing her hands on either side of her plate as she stands, deep in thought. “I don’t know,” I hear Daniel tell her in a sigh after placing his fork and knife on both sides of his plate. I knew I needed to tell someone about Carter, but I couldn’t tell Daniel and Charlotte. There was only one person who I could think of that needed to know the truth. “I need to get to school,” I tell them after finishing my pancakes, leaving the plate on the island. My school bag was on the other side of the sofa where Guinevere’s was. “Have fun,” Charlotte tells me as I grab my red bag from the sectional behind me and head for the door. 

I entered just soon after Guinevere, and after seeing her walk straight up the stairs that were across from the main office, Clyde came up to me. “Hey Clyde,” I mutter out at him. Clyde’s four years younger than me, but recently he's had a big growth spurt that he looks like he should be older than me. “Hey are you okay?” Clyde asks as he walks towards me, wearing that same grin in his face that he’s known for wearing. “I don’t want to talk about it,” I tell him before trying to walk away. I didn’t want to bother him with what happened that morning in the kitchen. It’s not his place to know. However, he pulled me back before turning into the cafeteria with his left arm. Staring back at him, he’s seen wearing a long light grey shirt and blue jeans that seem to match his dark brown eyes and hair that were three inches above from me. “Does it have to do with Guinevere?” Clyde asks as he leans in towards me as if Guinevere changing her entire outlook on life was a complete secret that no one knew of. “Why do you always have to know what’s going on in her life? Don’t you have a crush on Lydia?” I lash out at him, trying to get him to back off as much as he can. I already had enough of Carter allegedly raping Guinevere, I didn’t want to have anyone else come in and mess everything up for her. “I just thought I’d ask,” Clyde stated rather calmly, taking his left arm away from me as if he was backing away. “But have you seen Lydia? I want to talk to her,” Clyde finally asked. He’s had a crush on Lydia, Guinevere’s friend, for the past little while now. “Man you’re obsessed with her,” I quietly let out with a calm voice, silently hoping that he didn’t hear me. “Well not to a full extent,” Clyde had let out while gazing off in the distance, right hand being pulled back in his short hair. 

“Just don’t go full-on raping her in a hot tub causing you to be the reason why she kills herself kind of crazy,” I eventually let out, even though he would probably never do that to her. “I’d never hurt her. Why would you say such a thing like that?” Clyde asks me rather rudely before scoffing in my face and walking away because I clearly didn’t want to answer that. There are some days where he acts like he respects women, but others he seems like the rapist that you didn’t know of because he was at the top of the social class and could get whatever he wanted at whatever time he wanted it. Before I can turn into the cafeteria, I see Ms. Pearl Bailey walking towards me, wearing her long dark brown hair in a high ponytail, featuring her highlights at the bottom of her hair strand and silver earrings, yet she’s wearing a burgundy blouse and dark blue jeans. “Ms. Bailey?” I ask her, causing her to look straight up from her pager that she was on. “Levi,” she exclaimed when she looked up and grabbed onto her clipboard that was tucked into her right armpit. “Can you give something to Mr. Maddox? I can’t seem to find him,” I ask her as I grab my bag and open it up, grabbing the homework that I did at the last minute for band class. “Yeah sure. He’s sick, so he’s not in today, but I can for sure give it to him tomorrow or if I see him sooner,” Pearl tells me with those gentle dark brown eyes of hers before taking the sheet of paper from me and walking away.

Turning into the cafeteria, I eventually find Anthony sitting at a table near a garbage can, staring at his pager, while tears started to collect in those blue eyes of his. Grabbing a chair, I sat beside him. “Hey Anthony,” I tell him, grabbing his attention away from his pager. He is currently wearing a light coral pink shirt with navy blue jeans, yet his blonde hair is dangling in front of his blue eyes. “Hey Levi,” Anthony lets out, his voice breaking as the tears start falling down his face. “Is everything all right?” I asked him, resting my left hand on his right shoulder as comfort. “It has to do with your sister,” he tells me. I don’t want to know if my former friend has hurt my sister as well. “What about her?” I ask, trying to calm him as he continues crying. “She told me that she needs time to rethink our relationship,” he tells me as his words come out stuttering, leaving my jaw dropped with the news. Clearly something is going on with Guinevere, and I personally think it has to do with Carter. “There might be a reason why,” I start telling him. Anthony has every right to know that Guinevere could’ve been raped. “Why?” He asks as he dries his tears with his pale hand. Getting the courage to finally tell him the truth, I take a deep breath before saying anything, and even after a long sigh after resting my elbows on the table and lowering my hands so I was focused on him and only him, I finally gather my strength and tell him: 

“I think Guinevere was raped”