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“I’m fine,” I say, blowing out a slow breath. “I’ll go,” I agree.
“Don’t worry about a thing. I got you a ticket,” he says. “I’ll text it to you. It’s going to be fun,” he says with a smile in his voice. “And don’t worry, no one on the team knows you’ll be coming to see me. I really want you to be there.”
He means Zack.
Zack will be there with the others. I need to stay hidden in the crowd. It shouldn’t be too hard. I’ll wear a black hoodie over my head and black pants.
“Okay.”
“Thank you. It means a lot to me that you’re there for my first game.”
After we say goodbye, I sit in the same spot on the sleeping bag after a cold shower. My hair is wet, cooling my flushed skin. I close my eyes, willing sleep to come. I try to think of anything but that night. It comes in and out. Like the air from my lungs. In and out, in and out. Just like my memories. It arrives in fragments. I don’t want to make out each voice, but I know I have to at some point.
They took turns.
It was five or six, maybe. I could have sworn I heard a female voice, but it could have been the drugs they slipped into my drink that night that distorted my hearing and vision. I blacked out at some point from the pain between my legs, and then everything went numb. It felt like I was on a rower, sliding up and down.
It felt wet, hot, and then cold. The smell of sweat and their sex. Musk. I heard a few names, maybe three. My head was fuzzy. Jacob, Sam, and Zack.
After it was over, I became a college statistic. The victim in a horror story is a girl attending a college party. Guys who drug a girl to take advantage of her.
But you let those things slide because you think there’s no way it can happen to you.
You graduated from high school. You’re an adult. You’re fearless. You have a big brother who goes to the same school. A sister who accepts and loves her sexuality and isn’t afraid to show the world that she is comfortable. You're smarter than they think you're capable of. You have overprotective parents, and you don’t think it’s fair that they don’t let you go out late because they are trying to keep you safe. You start to resent them because there is a boy who smiles the right way and tells you the things you want to hear. You don’t want to believe what they are capable of. What they can do when you don’t give them what they want.
I had a stable home with perfect siblings, but I wasn’t careful about exploring love, sex, and friendships. The guy I gave my virginity to absquatulated; he treated me like a cherry-pick, and I ended up being caught in a web of assholes who took advantage of me. Monsters of the worst kind. They ripped any notion I had about love and exploration of my sexuality from underneath my skin without a clear memory of how they did it.
I grab a pen and paper and begin to write.
Hopefully, I will have something to turn in tomorrow for class. It’s a good thing there is nothing to distract me. I don’t have a TV and need to charge my phone to wake up on time in the morning for class. I’m sure I’ll be swamped with homework for the next three days. Valen said I didn’t have to do it, but then the professor would know.
I don’t want special treatment or for everyone to think I fucked Valen. It would mean Zack and his friends were right.
My thoughts go to the bedroom where he took me. The two girls and the guy having sex in the room while a party was going on outside. The way he was hard when he was standing behind me showed me the sexual exigency his body felt. The smell of his cologne. The way his lips ghosted my skin. I wanted him at that moment more than anything I have ever wanted, and it clouded my judgment.
I remember the movement in photographic detail. His breath on my neck tickled my ear. The eroticism of his touch. The need for him to taste me the same way. To be his, but I knew being his would mean I would have to share him.
The other part of me screamed in warning. I wasn’t beautiful like those women he was hard for. I wasn’t blond or pretty. I didn’t wear makeup or have pretty tanned skin. I didn’t have a body like theirs either. I didn’t have confidence or self-esteem. Predators take what you can’t easily get back. Your life. The ability to trust someone again. Your sexual prowess.
I’m sitting in class next to the seat Melody was in on Monday. The guys sit on the same side, below me. They don’t say anything when I don’t sit with them because they know not to. They know I’m interested in her. But who isn’t?
I’m interested in her in a different kind of way. I want to fuck her, but not just once. I want something real. I want to be around someone for once who doesn’t look at me like I’m a sex-crazed freak who is only good for one thing. Sex and money. I want someone smart like me. A person who looks at things differently. I checked her school records. She was valedictorian, but what doesn’t make sense is that she almost didn’t graduate for missing school.
I watch people file in and take their seats. Girls I have slept with in the past give me a wink or a knowing smile that I don’t return. I fix my gaze on the door, observing each individual as they walk by.
Adriana spots me and walks up the aisle. She’s about to take the seat next to me when I announce, “This seat is taken.” She looks up in surprise. “I’m waiting for someone.”
“Come on, Valen,” she says coyly. “We can get something to eat after.”
Before Melody showed up, I would have taken her up on her offer, but I’m not interested. I’m hungry, but it’s not for her.
I wave my hand, shooing her away, when the door opens and Melody walks in. She looks gorgeous in ripped black jeans, a cropped sweater, and black combat boots. Her hair falls around her shoulders like silk.
I ignore Adriana and gesture for Melody to sit next to me.
She looks at Adriana’s stank face with uncertainty and resigns, taking the seat in front.
“Prey,” Adriana says, softly shaking her head in disbelief.
