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I feel as she shakes her head against me. “C-can’t. You’re going to hate me.”
“I could never hate you. Not ever. But I need to know what’s going on, and I can’t until you calm down, so you have to breathe.”
Hayes and I share a nervous look, and I run my hand through Mali’s hair. It takes a few minutes, but she finally manages to control her breathing—with the exception of a few hiccups. I sit her on the bed and bend down in front of her, wiping the tears and the makeup from under her eyes.
“What happened?” I ask.
She looks over at Cam and then back to me. “I, uh…I went to a party. Heather was throwing a small one for her boyfriend’s birthday, and it sounded like a good idea. And it was, at first. Everyone was drinking and having a good time, but then they started playing beer pong and I didn’t have a partner, so Isaac offered to join me.”
The moment his name comes out of her mouth, I have a better idea where this is going, and I can’t say I like it. But I need to know what would make Cam snap the way he must have to need an icepack on his hand.
“He was fine in the beginning,” she continues. “A little flirty, but that’s how he is. It was obvious he was hoping to hook up. He kept trying to put his arm around me and hold my hand. But I figured he was just drunk and gently shrugged him off or pretended like I needed my hand for something else.”
Cam’s knee starts to bounce as he listens to her. Whatever he did to Isaac didn’t get even half his rage out. And as Mali opens her mouth to keep going, Hayes stops her.
“Hang on a second,” he says, pulling his air pods and his phone out of his pocket, then handing them to Cam. “Put these in.”
Cam shakes his head. “No, I’m okay.”
“I wasn’t asking,” he shoots back.
It’s obvious that Cam doesn’t want to. He wants to hear every word she says, down to every last detail of what happened. But his probation makes this a more fragile situation than it would usually be.
“Cam,” Mali says, and I watch my brother’s eyes soften as he looks at her. “It’s okay. Put in the earbuds.”
That manages to get through to him, and I could chalk it up to him being just as protective of her as he is of me, but I don’t think I’m naive enough to believe that. Still, that’s a topic for another time. Right now, my best friend needs me.
Hayes gives me the go-ahead once he presses play and Cam’s ears fill with music.
“Okay,” I tell Mali. “So, he kept trying and you were rejecting him as gently as you could…”
She nods. “It got to the point where it was uncomfortable, and I told him I was feeling a little lightheaded. That I needed to go sit down. I walked away from him and sat on the couch in her back room for a minute, and that’s when I tried calling and texting you, but then he came over with a drink and handed it to me. He said that he was worried about me and said I just need to relax.”
The further she gets into the story, the more upset she gets. Tears begin flowing down her cheeks, and her bottom lip quivers. It breaks my heart seeing the strongest person I know be brought down to this.
“I wouldn’t drink from the cup he gave me,” she confesses, and I feel slightly relieved. “I’m smarter than that. I mean, everyone has always taught us that you don’t take a drink fromanyoneat a party. And the more he kept pushing me to drink it, the more convinced I was he had put something in it. I don’t know what, but there was definitely some type of drug in it.”
Hayes’s jaw clenches. “I’m going to fucking kill him.”
“Youare going to stay right where you are,” I demand and then turn my attention to Cam, who has his eyes closed but his knee is still bouncing. “Besides, we’re not even sure Cam didn’t do that himself.”
Mali cries harder. “I’m sorry. If I had known that Cam was going to go after him, I never would have—”
“Hey, hey,” I tell her, shaking my head. “No. You have nothing to apologize for here. You hear me? Not a single thing.”
“But if he gets caught, he’ll go to prison,” she argues. “He’ll get arrested for violating his probation, and it’s all my fault.”
I’m not going to sit here and let her take the blame for this. “No, Mal. This was Isaac’s fault. He should have gotten the hint the moment you first pushed him away. And if I had gotten your call and wasn’t close enough to get to you fast enough, I would’ve sent Cam myself anyway. Okay? You did nothing wrong.” She swallows harshly as she nods. “He didn’t…”
I can’t even manage to get the words to come out of my mouth. They’re too much. Too heartbreaking. And if she tells me he did, Cam is the last person any of us will have to worry about because I’ll be on trial for murdering everyone at the party for not stopping it.
Defendant: Laiken Blanchard.
Crime: Mass Homicide.
Plea: Guilty and not at all sorry.
But thankfully, Mali shakes her head. “He didn’t get that far, but he kept trying. I had pretended to take a sip so he would stop harping on me to drink, and I guess he thought it was only a matter of time before it kicked in.” She pauses to take a deep breath, exhaling shakily. “H-he started kissing my neck and I tried to push him away, but he’s so much bigger than I am. I couldn’t get him to move. And when I said no—that I didn’t want to do anything with him—he told me I just needed to calm down. That he’d make me feel good. And his hand kept sliding up my leg. I pressed my thighs together, but that didn’t stop him.
