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We’ve only got thirty seconds left before Frankie’s back at the door, but they’re sweet.
So sweet.
By the time I get off the phone with the senator’s aide, I’m smiling. This is the third time I’ve talked to him this week and the first call when I felt like I was making solid progress.
“How are my toes coming along?” I ask Frankie.
“I’m doing the second clear coat.”
“Sweet.”
She concentrates on the motions of the little black nail-polish brush. I look up at the kitchen ceiling, walking back through the conversation.
I forgot to talk to him about fraud. All those sites that take customers’ money with the promise of wiping their reputations online—someone needs to stop that. I lost a bucketload of West’s money to one of them. And I need to see if—
“Who’s Jane Doe?” Frankie asks.
“Hmm?”
“Who’s Jane Doe?”
It takes a minute for my attention to settle on the question. “It depends. It’s a name the government uses when they don’t know who someone is. Like, if you find a dead body and can’t identify it, if it’s a man, it’s John Doe, and if it’s a woman, you call her Jane Doe. But in legal cases, you use those names for when the victim wants to keep her identity a secret.”
“You told that man on the phone not to use the word victim.”
“I did. I like the word target better. But usually when we talk about crime, we talk about perpetrators and victims.”
Carefully, she brushes polish over my big toe. “So you were a victim, but you don’t want anyone to know?”
“Well, not exactly.”
“But you’re Jane Doe. That’s what West said.”
“For me it’s just a strategy,” I tell her. “It’s a way of keeping the records of the case sealed.”
Frankie puts the brush back into the bottle and twists the cap closed. “I wish I could do that.”
“Do what?”
“Make it so no one knows about Clint.”
“Is he still bothering you?”
“No, he stays away from me now. He has to. But when Mr. Gorham came to our class to talk about bullying, I think it was kind of like Jane Doe? Because he didn’t use my name or anything, only everyone knew he was talking about me anyway. I wish I could just … I don’t know. Erase what happened. Start over.”
“I know how you feel.” So much of last year, I wanted to erase what happened to me. “But you know,” I say carefully, “when bad stuff like that happens, sometimes it can be good, too. Like, last year, this guy I used to care about, he wanted me to feel like I didn’t matter—like I was a bad person, and I deserved bad things to happen to me. So he did something to embarrass me online. And it worked. I felt awful. But then I figured out that he was wrong about me, and that he was the one who had a problem, not me. And it made me stronger.”
“How?”
“It’s hard to explain. I guess it’s that I don’t think anyone’s ever going to be able to do to me again what that guy did. I’m sure I’ll get hurt other ways, but not that way.”
I don’t realize until after the words are out of my mouth that I’m not just talking about Nate. I’m talking about West, too.
If it weren’t for Nate’s attack, I wouldn’t have been able to deal with what West did to me in Silt. But I can deal with it. Because I’m stronger.
I’m different.
And I’m glad for it.
