Something Happened to Ali Greenleaf Read online

  Author’s Note on Content:

  This book contains intense scenes depicting sexual assault and drug abuse.

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  First published in the United States of America by Razorbill,

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2020

  Copyright © 2020 by Hayley Krischer

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture.

  Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Razorbill & colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us online at penguinrandomhouse.com.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Krischer, Hayley, author.

  Title: Something happened to Ali Greenleaf / Hayley Krischer. Description: New York : Razorbill, 2020. | Audience: Ages 14+. | Summary: Told from two viewpoints, Blythe promises to fix things after her best friend rapes naive Ali at a party, drawing her into the ruthless popular crowd while Ali is still reeling. Includes a list of resources for victims of assault. Identifiers: LCCN 2020020354 | ISBN 9780593114117 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593114124 (ebook)

  Subjects: CYAC: Rape—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | High schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. Classification: LCC PZ7.1.K748 Som 2020 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020020354

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any

  responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  pid_prh_5.6.0_c0_r0

  To Jake and Elke

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Author’s Note on Content

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Resources

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  If there was somebody who would’ve said, listen, I don’t know what’s going on, but this thing happened to me. And if you are experiencing it, you’re not alone. You’re not nasty. You’re not bad, and it’s not your fault. If there was somebody who would’ve just interjected that, I think it would’ve changed the trajectory of my life.

  1

  BLYTHE

  Some nights it seems like the world has its arms wide open, that the future sizzles with possibility. White streetlights glare in your eyes like disco balls as you whiz down the road. Stars glitter in the black sky. Your favorite song bursts out, and the bass shimmies the car under you as you and your friends chant along.

  This is not one of those nights.

  We get to Sophie Miller’s house and right away my boyfriend, Devon, and his best friend, Sean, leave me alone inside so they can smoke cigars with the rest of the soccer team. “Cigars are for old men,” I say to Dev as he kisses me.

  “I promise to chew some gum before we make out,” he says. Another kiss and he’s off.

  Sean, the beatific Sean Nessel, is the reason we’re here. Sean has a thing for a junior girl—Ali Greenleaf. She’s tonight’s focus. “She stares at me a lot,” he said earlier, back at Dev’s house. “Who doesn’t stare at you a lot, Nessel?” I wanted to say, but it would have come out awkward.

  Sean and Dev are still close—I hear them and the other guys roaring about their win yesterday. State Champs, all because of Sean’s winning goal. In the school paper since day one. Front page every day. Like they don’t get enough attention since the football team disbanded last year. Now the football moms and the entire town have put all their attention on the soccer boys. Their groveling attention. Outside, the guys are chanting a primal call. DE-FEAT. DE-FEAT. It makes me uncomfortable, all that male animalistic bonding with their claps and their stomps. Everyone at the party is tuned in to it; you can tell by their heads turned toward the windows where the sounds are coming from. Even when they’re not in the room, the boys’ growls take over.

  My crew of girls—we’re known as the Core Four: me, Donnie Alperstein, Suki Fields, and Cate Sandoval—should be here by now, but they’re not. People aren’t used to seeing me alone. I bury my head in my phone and text Cate.

  Where are you

  Be there in 2

  “Oh my God, Blythe Jensen!” A girl I don’t know hops in front of me. This happens a lot. When people get drunk, they introduce themselves to me. I nod politely.

  “We’re in chemistry together,” she says.

  “Where’s the keg?”

  She stumbles over directions. She’s actually describing to me where the keg is. So I stop her before it gets too irritating.

  “You would be so useful if you could just find the keg and get me a beer,” I say.

  “Oh! Sure!”

  Ali Greenleaf, the girl Sean wants to hook up with tonight, walks in the door about a minute later. She’s with Cherie Mizner, Raj Patel, and another girl, who I think is Cherie’s sister. Ali is a scrawny chicken. A goose neck. A pasty-faced pumpkin. Full lips. Like a baby. Her hair with a loose curl. Bangs, which aren’t easy to pull off. She has nice hair. Some cute freckles. Wearing a bunch of bracelets up her arm. I like the bracelets. I’ll give her that.

  Chemistry Girl is standing right in front of me again, twitching. She says “thank you” when she hands me the beer.

  But I want to watch Ali. I want to see what Sean sees in her. She turns to her friend, her face glo
wing in that innocent way a face does. She’s the kind of girl who doesn’t realize how pretty she is. I can see it in her eyes. That scared look. One more oblivious girl who has no idea what’s coming to her. Because I’ve been through this many times with Sean. Ali will come crying to me, wanting to know what happened between them. I know you thought he liked you so much, and he does like you, sweetie, except Sean just isn’t the commitment type. It’ll happen a few days from now. A week from now. This is textbook Sean. And these stupid girls, forever thinking they’re the one he’s going to be different with.

  I text Dev: Nessel’s girl is here. Better come back in.

  Cate marches in with Suki and Donnie following. She pushes through the crowd to get to me, and the other girls follow. No one says a word about being pushed by them. They just step out of the way.

  “So, so, so sorry it took us so long to get here. My mother was giving me a hard time,” Cate says.

  “Oh, mothers,” I say, my words dripping.

  Cate’s mother is originally from Puerto Rico. She still makes Cate’s lunch every morning. Feeds us when we eat at her house. Pours us wine. Wants to fatten us up.

  My mother is not this way. I wish I didn’t have to help my mother sort her pills or deal with fielding my father’s phone calls because he’s so worried about her, but that is how it is at my house.

  “Plus it took Donnie forever to leave,” Suki says to Donnie, who is wobbling a little already. She’s been stealing her sister’s Vicodin lately, left over from a running injury. And maybe she took too much. She’s wearing an oversize army jacket with a short white shirt showing off her brown belly and black skinny jeans. Her tight black curls are wild tonight—the bottom half is a washed-out blue.

  Donnie twists around and trips over her foot. I catch her elbow.

  “You gonna be okay, Don?”

  “B, I’m sooo good.” She licks her lips, wiping her hair away from her eyes. She pulls a blue strand out of her mouth.

  ALI

  Sammi, Raj, and I sit in a little circle drinking beer and smoking Raj’s Lucky Strike cigarettes, which are destroying the back of my throat. These Lucky Strikes are Raj’s grandfather’s. The old man has emphysema and Lucky Strikes aren’t easy to find, so he has Raj Google tobacco shops where they sell them. The two of them make a monthly pilgrimage, his grandfather with his portable oxygen tank. His grandpa stockpiles them. As long as Raj keeps it a secret, he’ll throw Raj a pack or two.

  Raj has been on varsity soccer since he was a sophomore. Which means he’s friends with Sean Nessel, which means he’s often in close proximity to Sean Nessel.

  We play the Who Has Had Sex? game and focus on Blythe Jensen. Sometimes I wonder what it’s like to be her. In the hallway at school, she’s always staring straight ahead, like there’s a light at the end of the hall, or a camera, or something else, much further away and superior. As if she’s looking anywhere other than here.

  “I don’t think it’s a question of if Blythe Jensen’s had sex,” I say. “She’s been going out with Devon Strong forever. It’s how much sex.”

  “Actually, the discussion is whether she’s got a whip and handcuffs,” Sammi says. “She looks like a punisher.”

  “Okay, Raj, your turn. What about him?” I point to a super-thin hockey player whose shoulders are bigger than his feet.

  “I don’t even know why we play this game,” Raj says. “Half of this room has had sex.”

  Raj has wavy brown hair; it’s soft and puffy and kind of hangs over one eye. All that softness, plus those brilliant green eyes and his skin, a mellow brown from his father’s side, whose family is from India, goes against this intense glare, his eyes squinty, even behind his black-rimmed glasses, like he’s angry, or thinking too much. “I’m just perpetually skeptical,” he told me once when I asked him about it.

  Then Sean Nessel glides past a window. Sean Nessel and his silky blond hair to his shoulders. I’m just going to say it: Everything in my life revolves around Sean Nessel. This is no secret. Raj and Sammi understand the full weight of my Sean Nessel obsession.

  Even this stupid game. It’s just a diversion. We’re here at this party for a reason. The three of us, waiting here for something to happen. Because Sean Nessel came up to me and Raj on Friday in the hallway.

  To

  My

  Locker.

  It’s why Cherie, Sammi’s older sister, who is home from college for the weekend, helped us sneak out. It’s why we lied to their mom and dad. And Sammi never lies to her parents. It’s why I told my father I’d be sleeping at Sammi’s and wouldn’t be going anywhere. It’s why we’re at this party. Because Sean Nessel told us to come to this party. He told me. Well, actually, first he told Raj. And then he turned to me, his voice radiating in my brain. And his finger strayed, so that he pointed right at my face.

  You should go.

  Sean Nessel said this to me. To my face. You should go.

  In the collages I make, Sean Nessel is my little doll. I turn his pupils into heart eyes in a blip. I wash him in a hazy pink. I meld him with rainbows and hearts.

  Sean Nessel. With the cheekbones and the blond hair swept to the side. The shoulders. Biceps coming out from under his T-shirt. And how does a guy have such perfect skin?

  I shake my head, coming out of my cloud as Sean Nessel walks through the front door like a magical freaking unicorn.

  BLYTHE

  Sean and Dev stroll through the door, laughing after their cigar smoke-out. Hoot. Hoot. Hoot. The whole place shoots up two decibels. I sip my drink and give Suki a side-eye.

  Behind the noise I hear Sophie Miller crying, “You guys, you guys.” Whining.

  “What did you think was going to happen when you invite the school to your house, honey?” Donnie says, slurring.

  “You think we’d take it easy? Nooooo,” I say.

  No one takes it easy on anyone.

  ALI

  People are hooting. They all want Sean Nessel’s attention. I take a big gulp of my beer. Stare at him until my eyes water.

  I’m going to hypnotize you, Sean Nessel. I stare at him. Stare at him, stare at him. Until my powers get him to stare back at me. His hands. His arms. His faded turquoise T-shirt tight over his chest. His flushed cheeks, like a sunset. He’s a sunset. And I’m the beach. I stare away because I’m feeling so hot and I can hardly breathe. I duck my head into Sammi’s shoulder.

  “You’re shaking,” she says.

  I’m shaking. I have to lift my head back up. Just look one more time. Didn’t he want me here? He wanted me here. So I’m here. I did so much to get here! Look at me, Sean Nessel. Look at me.

  And then it happens. Sean Nessel looks back at me. Once. Twice. It’s like a stream between us, a narrow and sweaty tunnel of love where everyone else in the room floats away.

  Deep breath. If I can breathe. I can hardly breathe.

  I’m going to be sick.

  Sammi pinches me on the side of my leg, and I swat her.

  With his eyes still on me, Sean nods his head to the left, over in the direction of a side door. An abundance of Jedi mind tricks have preceded this night. I am the girl you’ve been looking for.

  BLYTHE

  I watch Sean talking to Ali. Stupid girl. She’s so predictable, like the other girls. It’ll start innocently. He’ll go jogging with someone. Or he’ll get the hall pass with someone. Or he’ll hook up with some girl from another team at a soccer match like he did the first night of State Champs just a few weeks ago. But I think back to the Nationals in South Carolina last year, when Sean told Dev that after the game he went back to the hotel room with two girls. Two girls? Sounds like a porn, I told Dev. But then I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and every time I thought about it, there was that rush of heat between my thighs.

  Dev’s nothing like Sean. Dev’s concerned when I talk about my mothe
r. Dev actually listens. The way he treats everything I say like it’s the weight of the world.

  If Dev is a Golden Retriever, Sean is a Siberian Husky, fierce and maybe on the edge of the wild.

  Cate is trying to show me a picture of herself in a dress she wants to wear to the dance, which is two months away. It’s a washed-out lavender dress. Halter top with cutouts in the middle and back and a high-waist cigarette skirt. The skirt part is so tight that you’d have to peel it off her. I’m thinking about my own thighs and how I have some cellulite and how my mother called me out on it at the pool this summer. My mother is going to want to go dress shopping with me for the dance too. It’s our thing together. I say thing lightly.

  “So what do you think about the dress, B?”

  Donnie jumps in: “I think there’s entirely too much cleavage. It’s messy.”

  Donnie’s the only person I don’t mind being less pretty than.

  I pull the phone from Cate’s hand. The dress is awful. And I hate her for bringing it up and making me think about my mom, who I’m going to have to eventually go dress shopping with.

  “I can’t help that I have boobs,” Cate says to Donnie, looking down at her chest. Her breasts have been that way since she was ten. It’s a sore spot.

  “I thought you were going to try that leotard? To flatten you out?” Suki says, rubbing her hands across her chest. Suki is practically a pencil with her black leggings and big T-shirts. She calls herself a proud Jewish Chinese American. Celebrates the New Year three times: Rosh Hashanah, the Chinese New Year, and with the rest of the idiots on December 31st.

  “You don’t flatten out a dress like that.”

  “Go back on that no-carb diet. Last time you were on that, your boobs totally shrank,” I say.

  “Or maybe she should try eating cotton balls filled with orange juice again,” Donnie says. Her quips are designed to kill.

  “Wait, you really ate those cotton balls with the orange juice? I thought that was a joke. I thought you were just watching those girls on YouTube?” I say.