Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 82883 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82883 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 332(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
“Because I turned him down, he wants everyone to think I’m a slut,” she says, softer now, the word like a curse. “He wants everyone to see me like that. He wants to take away everything good. Because I said no to him. Because I didn’t want him.”
I want to say something, to put my hand on her shoulder or tell her she’s wrong, that none of this matters, but there’s no point. She knows exactly what she’s saying. The world is built to amplify men like Clay Newell, and to make girls like her into rumors and punchlines. The rage in my throat is so thick I have to swallow it twice.
Mary Kate tries to hold it together, but her hands are trembling so bad she can’t keep them folded. She brings her hands to her face, covering her blotchy features, and lets out one thin, unsteady whimper.
I close the distance. Not a hug, not right away, but I anchor a hand at the back of her head, fingers twined in her wild, wind-burned hair, and pull her forward so her face is in my shoulder. She doesn’t sob. She just shudders, once, and then softens a bit before collapsing against my chest. My other hand rests on her spine, holding her together.
We stay like that a long time, her face hidden in my shirt, my palm at the nape of her neck. My eyes are open, fixed on the opposite wall, but all I see is the looped replay of those videos, the way her face was made into a costume for someone else’s violence.
I think of Clay Newell, the douche I rescued her from. I think of the party, the smell of sweat and chlorine and spilled beer, the way he tried to drag her into his room like she was an extra in his own fucked-up movie. I think of my fist meeting his jaw, the sound it made, the look in his eyes. That wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.
After a long minute, the shaking stops. Her breathing goes regular. Her sob subsides a bit, the heaving of her back going still.
When she pulls away, she doesn’t look at me. She picks up the phone, stares at it like she could will the pixels back into their original, innocent order, and then sets it down again, very gentle.
“Do you think it’ll go away?” she asks, voice raw. “Or do I just have to wait for everyone to get bored of it?”
I want to lie. I want to tell her that nothing lasts, that the internet will churn through this and move on to the next scandal in a week. But the truth is, shit on the internet never really disappears these days. There’s always someone archiving, someone watching, someone ready to drag it out in a year or a decade, just to see if it still hurts.
“It doesn’t matter what they see,” I say, my voice grim. “It only matters that I know who you are, and that you know who you are.”
She blinks, and for the first time since she came in, the mascara smudge under her eye actually looks like a bruise, not just a smear.
I put both hands on her shoulders, steady as I can.
“We’ll handle it,” I say. “But you don’t have to do anything right now. You don’t have to be okay. You can fall apart. I’ll catch you.”
She lets out a shaky breath, nods, and slumps into my arms.
For a long time, neither of us says a thing.
But inside my chest, behind the practiced calm, something is already snapping the world into order: a checklist, a plan, a promise.
And at the top of the list, in letters too bright to look at, is a name.
But it doesn’t belong to Clay.
We stay locked together at the bottom of the stairs, her head tucked under my chin, the hollow of her body fitting into mine like a secret. My pulse is a hammer against her temple. I count her breaths, waiting for the cadence to slow, but it never gets all the way down. The engine in her chest is stuck on redline.
When she pulls away, I let her go without resistance. She steps back, not far, just enough to see me full in the face, the tear-streaks gone but the eyes raw and glassy. She looks smaller than usual. She looks like she’s bracing for an impact that never stops coming.
I take the phone from the table, thumb it awake. The videos are still queued up in the Snap story—her classmates have already downloaded and saved them a hundred times over, but the original poster isn’t even trying to hide their work. Amateurs.
I tap the first one, mute it, and slow it down. It’s not habit, but something close: the way I’d review a scan for micro-calcifications, the way I’d replay a cystoscopy in reverse to catch the tell-tale shimmer of an early lesion. My blue eyes adjust to the little backlit rectangle, the floaters and scars in the periphery vanishing as I zero in.