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My dad makes an impatient sound. He doesn’t approve of homegrown lawyering.
“—and whatever else I could think of to get them off-line. And then, when that wasn’t working, I hired a service to help me scrub my reputation. On the Internet, I mean. They do the searching for you, get photos wiped, try to push the legit results up on the search pages …”
And I haven’t heard from them in weeks. The reports they did send me were late, sketchy, and incomplete. It’s possible they’re frauds or just crap at what they do.
It’s possible I threw away fifteen hundred dollars of West’s money on a pipe dream.
How many hours of his effort, his sweat, did I waste so I could cower in my dorm room, wishing life were fair?
On the list of my regrets, that loan is way up near the top.
“But this latest attack was launched from an online bulletin board,” I continue. “Presumably by Nate. A number of others participated in it with him. I don’t know their identities. What I do know is that the pictures have spread so far and wide, it’s probably a wasted effort trying to get them removed. I’d like to focus my energy at this point on—”
“A wasted effort? Do you have any idea what’s going to happen to you if you don’t remove the pictures?”
“I have a good idea, yes. ”
“You’ll have trouble getting into law school. Recommendations will be difficult, but even assuming you can present a good application—admissions committees search the Internet. Internship applications, scholarships, job applications. There’s no chance at the Rhodes Scholarship, the Marshall. Getting the pictures off-line will have to be your top priority. You should have brought me in from the beginning, Caroline. So much damage has already been done. ”
So much damage.
But to what? To whom?
“I’m not damaged. ”
“That’s not what I meant. ”
“It is, though. You’re talking about this—about my future—as though it’s this white, pure thing that I’ve gotten dirty. Like you sent me out to play in a white dress, and why wasn’t I more careful with it?”
He frowns.
“I’m not a white dress, Dad. And I didn’t take those pictures. I didn’t share them. I didn’t say all that stuff about me. Nate did. ”
“You don’t know that for sure. ”
“Fine. Someone did. The important thing is, that someone wasn’t me. ”
He grunts and looks out the window at our yard. Our house is in the nicest part of Ankeny, with a big shaded lot and an acre of lawn that I had to mow in high school if I expected to be allowed to go out on the weekends. Today it’s overcast, patchy snow still on the ground, spring weeks away.
It’s not my yard anymore.
This isn’t my house.
I’m not a child.
“Did you report this incident to the college?” he asks. “Or to the police?”
“No. But I intend to. ”
“You say you suppose Nate posted these photos in the first place because he was upset. Does he have any reason to continue to be upset with you? Something that prompted this second attack?”
It’s West, of course. West and me, together. Out in public, around campus, so obviously a couple, so obviously into each other.
What did Nate tell me that night at the party, when he blocked me from leaving the room? That he was worried about me. That we were friends, we’d always be friends.
What did he want that night when he came to West’s apartment with Josh and offered to buy weed? To stake some kind of claim over me? To prove he was better than the guy I ended up with?
“I think he might still have feelings for me. ”
