Boy Toy

The 2007 novel Boy Toy by Barry Lyga tackles the difficult topic of predatory sexual grooming and molestation. Written for a young adult readership, the novel follows the healing process of a teenager whose teacher manipulated him into a sexual relationship in junior high. Five years later, still unable to fully process what happened, in deep denial about the reality of what was done to him, the young man suffers from bouts of unexplained violence and PTSD-like flashbacks to the abuse.

Josh Mendel is an eighteen-year-old senior in the small town of Brookdale. A baseball star and straight-A student, Josh is desperate to get to college where no one will have heard about his traumatic past.

When Josh was twelve years old, in eighth grade, his twenty-four-year-old history teacher Eve Sherman slowly groomed him into accepting being molested. Seizing her opportunity when Josh misses his bus one day, Eve drives him to her house, suggesting they work on research for a graduate school project she is working on. Flattered, Josh agrees and starts going to her house after school every day. Soon, the “research” ends, and Eve starts treating Josh more and more like an adult: offering him alcohol while drinking herself, having long talks about life, and eventually manipulating him into confessing that he finds her attractive. Using that as an excuse, Eve spends the next several weeks having sex with Josh – the novel is fairly graphic when describing the sex scenes, including oral sex, watching pornography, and other sex acts. Because of her expert predatory skills and his innocence and naiveté, Josh believes that he is in love with Mrs. Sherman.

A few weeks later, Josh is at his friend Rachel’s house during her birthday party, when the group decides to play spin the bottle. When Josh winds up in the closet with Rachel, he is so screwed up by what he has been experiencing at the hands of Eve, that he attacks Rachel. He rips off her underwear and is close to trying to rape her when she escapes from the closet, leaving Josh confused about what went wrong – he literally has no idea what is and isn’t normal behavior. Explaining to his mom what happened, Josh accidentally lets it slip that he and Eve are involved.

When the molestation is thus uncovered, Josh is still so enmeshed with Eve’s feelings that he refuses to talk to the police or his parents. In court, he is treated as a hostile witness. Eve is convicted and sentenced to nine years in prison. To add to Josh’s trauma, Eve’s husband calls him a “pervert” and beats him up – using the novel to explore the way rape victims are sometimes blamed for being attacked. Afterward, no matter how much Josh is told by his parents or his therapist that he is a victim, he doesn’t believe this. Instead, he thinks he had full agency in the relationship and that what happened with Eve is his fault.

Five years later, Josh does whatever he can to avoid thinking about his trauma, which is hard because he is convinced that everyone at school has read Eve’s detailed confession on the internet. His best friend Zik is on constant pins and needles to avoid the topic for fear of being cut out of Josh’s life. Josh has random violent mood swings and is plagued by intrusive mental images of his molestation. Moreover, ever since the birthday party, Josh has thought of himself as a monster, so he avoids girls entirely for fear of losing control again. In particular, he hasn’t spoken to Rachel in five years.

One day, Josh learns that Mrs. Sherman is being released from prison early. Angry and upset, he lashes out by punching his baseball coach and getting suspended from school, risking ruining his transcript and college chances. He is in a terrified, panicked state – what if he runs into Mrs. Sherman? He is not ready to face her, yet, also feels he must confront her to get some answers about what really happened when he was twelve.

That night, Josh accidentally runs into Rachel and they start talking. Suddenly, Josh finds himself telling her his whole story – partly as an apology, partly because she is the first person he has felt comfortable talking to in a long time. Oddly enough, Rachel not only excuses what Josh did to her at the party, but confesses that she was ready to do whatever he wanted to if only he hadn’t been so aggressive. A lot of readers find Rachel’s acceptance of being sexually assaulted weird and off-putting. Either way, the two clearly have romantic feelings for each other. But no matter how much Rachel tries to get Josh to put the past behind him, he is unable to without getting whatever information he needs out of Eve.

The novel’s climactic scene comes when Josh confronts his molesting teacher. Their conversation is a watershed moment for him. When Eve tells him that nothing that happened was his fault and that she really did manipulate him all along, Josh finally seems to believe it. The novel ends with Josh and Rachel now ready to pursue their romantic and sexual relationship further.