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As soon as I sat up, pain rippled through my body. A half memory rushed back, and I gasped. I heard snippets of loud music from the night before. I tasted the beer on the roof of my mouth. And then pain rocketed through me. I clutched my throat, remembering someone pressing his weight on me. Remembering screaming, fighting. The rest of the evening rolled back in vomitus, disjointed pieces. Except it couldn’t have happened to me. There was no way.
The hallway of the frat house was eerily silent. The living room was trashed with empty cups and bottles, cigarette butts, and an inflatable dildo sticking out of a lampshade. People were snoring on couches and chairs and even the sticky, grimy floor—was Ollie one of them? He must have been.
I wanted to throw up again at the sight of them. Had they all known what had happened to me? Did they just not give a shit?
A kid on the couch opened one eye. “Hey.” Then he sat up straighter. “Oh.Hey.”
He had broad shoulders and squinty eyes. The day before, I might have found him somewhat hot... but now, he repulsed me. I didn’t think this was the guy who had hurt me the night before, but what if he’d watched? Because suddenly, I had the distinct feeling that other people were in the room as witnesses. Cheering. Laughing.
“Sleep okay?” The guy walked around the couch toward me. He was at least six three. His biceps were gigantic. There was something predatory about his smile. “Want some coffee? Hair of the dog?”
Get away from me,I wanted to scream. But I felt dizzy, like I might pass out. Fight or flight—I’d learned about it in health class.Please don’t faint,I willed.
The guy must have sensed my fear because he stopped. “Hey now. You’re okay, aren’t you?” When I didn’t answer, he frowned. “There’s cool-girl code about what goes on here, you know.” His smile morphed. “You’re a cool girl, right? You certainlyseemcool.”
“Y-Yes.” By this time, I’d backed up to the door. There was amenacing smirk on the guy’s face, like he found all of this entertaining.
Stop thinking about it,I scream at my brain now, but it’s like Ollie hit a switch. Here are all the thoughts that have been crowding my mind for years, suddenly running free.
“I didn’t think much about you until recently, though,” Ollie tells me, dragging me back to the present. “After the hack broke, when President Manning gave all those speeches. I remembered what those guys did to President Manning’s daughter. And then I realized nothing had ever come of that. It seemed even more poignant after those rape stories surfaced.”
I shut my eyes.
“AndthenI saw you at Manning’s funeral—and I was like,Holy shit. I remember her. You’ve barely aged—good for you. And you seemed uncomfortable being back here, almost like you were so afraid it was going to happen to you again. Am I right?”
My lips part, but it’s like my voice box has been slashed. I need out of here.
“Why didn’t you go to your father about it? Bigwig at the school, you’d think he would have been able to help.”
Rage fills me. “Why didn’tyousay anything? You were there, too. If you thought it was so disgusting, you should have turned them in.”
“I wish I could have, but I didn’t see it happen. Besides, those guys would have lawyered up and made me look like a fool. I wouldn’t have had a leg to stand on.” He leans in. “Is that what your father said to you, too? That the frat has a lot of political pull within the school, and you shouldn’t cross them? Lotta big donors within those ranks. Lotta old-boy money.”
“No.” I wrench my head away. “It wasn’t like that.”
I’d thought about saying something to my father, afterward. Iwantedto. In an ideal world, my mother would still be alive, and I could have gone to her first... but unfortunately, I didn’t have thatluxury. It wasn’t that I was afraid of confronting my father... but no matter how eloquent my monologue, I couldn’t blurt it out. It gave my dad such pride when I brought home stellar grades, high SAT scores—and despite my cynicism about a lot of things, that still mattered to me. I didn’t want to cause him complications or strife; I dreaded to think how this might affect his brand-new position if we prosecuted. For all I knew, the guy who raped me had parents whose donations to the school had built the new science building last year. I wasn’t stupid. I knew political connections were everything at Aldrich. I also knew how much my father relished his job, how hard he’d fought to become president. It was his saving grace now that my mother was gone. To threaten his position seemed cruel.
But even more than that, I didn’t want to be the girl in the news. I’d read enough about girls who cry rape—the shame people put on them, how people seem to circle the wagons around the guys, saving them. My face and body, every choice I made, every guy I’d hooked up with in the past, every beer I’d drunk and dumb thing I’d done—people would dig up all of it. I’d be under a microscope, each damning fact compounding toward a verdict that this was my fault, not the guy’s. I’d led him on, I’d wanted it, I shouldn’t have gone to the party in the first place. I didn’t want to go to trial. I didn’t want this bullshit to follow me around. I didn’t want to be marked as the girl who was stupid enough to be raped in the first place.
And so I said nothing. I didn’t tell anyone. I drew further and further into myself, blaming myself, even hating myself. It was only last year, when I was reporting on a story of a young woman who’d been raped at another prestigious university, that I got involved in the online forum. I’d been astonished when women also having attended Aldrich parties came forward, too. Some of them were closer to my age, and some of them were younger, but it was always the same frat—Chi Omega. Some of them had tried to complain, but it had gone nowhere. That was what scared me the most. That even if I’d tried, I would have been silenced.
“I don’t blame you for wanting vengeance,” Ollie says, and he sounds almost empathetic, like he’s on my side. “You snapped, didn’t you? That’s why you did what you did.”
I wrench away and make a break for the door, but Ollie quickly runs for it, once again blocking the exit. His body is rank with Axe spray. “You’re not just back in town to fight for your sister’s innocence, are you? You want to witness the downfall of Aldrich firsthand. The school that ruined you—you want it to go down.”
I stare at him, not sure what he’s talking about. Ollie smiles. “Please. You initiated the hack, and you know it. Your boy? Blue Parker? We traced it to him. The whole shebang.”
I blink hard. The words don’t even make sense at first. “Wait.Wait.” My thoughts are whirling.Blue? MyBlue? But that makes no sense. Except then it hits me. There’s a file about me on the desk. There’s evidence in those pages. A trail I didn’t even realize I’d created.
“He said someone encouraged him to look into Aldrich,” Ollie went on. “It’ll lessen his sentence if he tells us who kicked this all off. I did some digging about what the guy was all about, where he’s from. And guess what I found. California. Not far from you, as a matter of fact. Even more interesting? Your number is in his cell phone.”
“I-I don’t know anyone named Blue,” I stammer.
“Sure you do! I got records from your editor. Richard, is it? You wrote a piece on hacks last year, but he killed the article before it published. That’s the saying, isn’t it?”
My jaw falls open. Ollie spoke toRichard?
“You got to know some hackers. Got to know how evasive they could be, how they could infiltrate a system without a footprint. And you still had this old wound, an old crime gone unsolved—hell, you wanted to punish people, right?Iwould.” He crosses his arms over his chest. “Well, you certainly punished alotof people.Four wholeuniversities’ worth! Guess you figured you might as well expose everyone’s sins, huh?”
