Sam.
Seven death threats. Why would someone send a death threat to a fifteen-year-old girl?
Lord. And she read through all of those so she could categorize and tally them? Sam must have guts of steel. How does a girl who wanted so badly to be part of the in-crowd just a few months ago handle this kind of abuse?
Harper doesn’t reply right away. Those last few lines keep making her pause.
Maybe this would be interesting for your next article.
She’s so casual—almost eager. Everything about how Sam has behaved since Harper called her father has been . . . strange. That day at the Juice Bar, it felt like Sam wasn’t even really mad about Harper going over her head—just pretending to be mad.
If it had been Harper on the receiving end, she’d be furious. They’d have never talked again.
What did it mean? Harper turns it over in her mind. Clearly Sam had wanted this story. She’d swallowed a lot of tough pills to make it happen. But then, why had she fought Harper so bitterly at first about coming forward, when that was the last barrier to making it a reality?
Harper pulls up the digital version of the article. The linchpin of the piece? Where Sam’s parents find out what’s happened to their daughter, and demand that she go to the police despite her fears. It paints a picture of a girl who was victimized twice over, first by her rapist, then by the school’s oppressive honor code.
Harper chokes on her coffee.
This was what Sam wanted all along. She pulled Harper in, got her invested, made her realize this was a big story. Forced her to act and go to the father.
Harper got played. Pretty smooth move for a teenager.
She opens up a new document on her computer and starts writing the lede of her next article.
Abandon any expectations you might have had that “coming forward” is all women need to do to be believed. This is the fallout in our society of reporting your own rape.
-----------------------
SAM
We get a short break after Philly Weekend, which is really just more time for me to skim my hate mail and flinch whenever the phone rings.
The new semester starts Wednesday. The drive back to Edwards on Tuesday night is long, and I spend the entire time imagining my reception back at school.
Whatever it is—I will endure it. I just have to get through the next few months. Eventually, people will forget about me. Some other drama will stir them all up and the spotlight will move on.
I’ll pull through. I’ll show everyone.
Taking my seat inside the massive stone cathedral, I plan to doodle in my sketchbook until Morning Prayer starts. But some girls in front of me keep sneaking peeks, giggling, whispering to each other. I focus on my sketch of Huge Condescending Jesus in Stained Glass, but all the snickering makes it hard to keep my eyes down. The rattle gets inside me.
Can’t look up. Can’t let them know they get to me.
I put my bag on Gracie’s seat and imagine her sitting next to me. They’ve just bought into it. It’s like The Matrix. Once you’re outside it, everyone still inside seems stupid. That’s what she’d say.
In Hamilton Hall, I’ve got a full tray of food in my hands when I find our usual table’s empty. Bex is laughing at another table, way on the other side of the cafeteria. That table is full—no room for me.
Whatever. I sit in the same spot by myself and eat my breakfast. I can feel eyes everywhere, burning holes in my clothes, but I ignore them.
Probably the only person who isn’t looking at me is Scully. Joking about something, he and Cal get up early and leave. Even if I can’t escape seeing him, at least that No Contact order’s working.
When I’m done, I dump my tray like usual and leave. As I’m pushing open the heavy door out of Hamilton, pain explodes across my shoulder blade.
What the fuck?
Lying on the floor is a half-smashed apple. Nobody has moved, and everyone turns away as I look around for whoever threw it.
On my way out, I rub the spot where it hit me, and my skin screams. There will be a bruise.
Should I text Melissa and tell her?
No. That would just give Mom more reason to pull me out of Edwards.
-----------------------
But everywhere I go on campus that day, it feels like there’s a target painted on my back.
Every turn I take, there’s Scully’s mop of blond hair, or his stupid friend Cal. It was hard enough getting to class on time before I had to take all these U-turns to avoid them. I feel like a rabbit navigating a maze full of foxes.
In American Government, Mr. Jordan assigns us to groups to debate prayer in schools. Every time I try to talk, someone interrupts me.
“Considering that schools are government institutions—” I begin.
“Not all schools,” one of the guys who used to invite me to his study group says. “Only public ones.”
“Right, but—”
“And students can opt out,” someone else jumps in. “It’s not required, so it’s not a violation.”
I close my mouth and stop talking. The debate goes on without me.
Tennis is just as bad. After Gracie left, Bex or Eliza or Lilian would pick me as a partner for doubles out of pity. Now nobody will take me. I’m forced to play with Coach, until she gets fed up and starts assigning me teammates. The first time, my new teammate stands on the edge of the court and simply watches as green tennis balls fly by. I spend the entire practice running across the court just so we don’t lose every single game, and by the end, my lungs and calves are shredded meat.
At least in Drawing Club, we don’t have to talk—but people stare. I skip it whenever Scully comes in to model.
I don’t know how much longer I can do this. The coal of anger inside me grows hotter and redder every day. I could breathe smoke.
-----------------------
HARPER
“Can we do that lunch?” Sam asks when she calls.
Harper hadn’t expected to hear from her so soon. “Sure. How do I check you out of school?”
“I just have to tell Jean I’m leaving for something court-related and she doesn’t even bother.”
Once they sit down for lunch at the place Sam picked out, not far from campus, she doesn’t stop talking.
“The DA offered him a plea bargain with a smaller sentence if he pleaded guilty,” Sam says. Harper has seen her experience a lot of emotions, but never has she been this righteously riled up. “The bargain was for a year in jail! That’s it. Just a year for what he did. But his lawyers laughed at her. They think they’ll win without even trying.”
“When does the trial start?” Harper asks.
“They won’t know for at least another month.” Sam sighs. “And who knows how long it’ll last. I could be a grandma by the time there’s a verdict, if Scully’s lawyers drag it out.”
One of the gifts of the privileged.
“What about the school’s investigation?”
“They’re doing it now, or so they say,” Sam says. “They have to share whatever they find with the police.”
“I don’t want to scare you,” Harper says, but this is half a lie, because Sam would do well to exercise some caution. “But once the trial starts, you’ll be under the microscope. I’m sure the DA has told you this, too, but I want to be real with you so you can be prepared for what’s next.”
“After these last few weeks, nothing’s too real,” Sam says.
As if. Sometimes Sam seems almost like an adult, then reverts back to being fifteen.
“Once you go to court and we publish another story, all that hate you’ve gotten from your classmates will go wide.”
“Good.”
This is not the same Sam that sat across from Harper a month ago, giving her interview as quietly as she could, hoping that no one nearby would overhear.
This Sam has vengeance written into her skin. She wants to act.
“What if . . .” Sam begins, and Harper feels a shudder run
across her, like the feeling she gets when a storm is coming. “What if that’s okay? I mean, if I’m going to get all the publicity anyway, like you said—what if I could do something with it?”
A nauseating discomfort settles in Harper’s stomach. “Do what?” she asks.
“I mean, if they’re going to take me apart in the media anyway—maybe I could use it.”
Sam runs her hand over the long edge of the menu, thinking. “The news coverage, the death threats. If I’m already being publicized . . . what if I told them what to publicize, instead of letting them dig around?”
“I suppose,” Harper says carefully. “I know you feel powerless right now, waiting for the trial to start—”
“I could seize the narrative, like you said.”
“You have a right to free speech,” Harper hedges. “There’s nothing stopping you from using your voice.” Should they even be talking about something like this, just the two of them? This is more than Harper signed up for.
“I could take the hate public. The way they’re treating me at school. People are always like, Why didn’t you come forward sooner? Well, here’s why. Death threats. People calling my parents at all hours.”
“Would that mess up the court case?” Harper asks. But she has to admit, she likes where Sam’s going with this.
This is what got her into this job in the first place—why she decided to get her master’s in journalism. Because people should know the truth. Sam wants the same thing.
“I don’t know,” Sam says, sipping her drink. “Melissa probably wouldn’t like it.” She looks up. “If I did do this—would it be in your next article?”
Harper gives a quick nod. “It would make an excellent story.” A powerful story.
Then their lunch arrives and they don’t talk for the ten minutes it takes for Sam to devour her sandwich and fries.
“Are you coming with me?” Sam asks suddenly, wiping barbecue sauce from her mouth.
“Where?”
“To court. You’re going to be there, right?”
Harper couldn’t have hoped for a better, more straightforward in.
“If you want me there,” Harper says, “I’ll be there.”
-----------------------
SAM
Melissa calls my folks that week. We have a court date—almost three months away. I can’t believe I have to wait that long. While I’ve got her, I ask what the downsides are to my idea—to going public.
“You lose your anonymity,” she says, point blank. “Anonymity that everyone has worked hard to protect.”
“I’m not anonymous at school,” I say. “Where I live 24/7.”
“Of course you can do what you like, Sam—you’re entitled to say what you want. But remember what I said about factual admissions.”
I know that line. Anything you say or do could be used against you in a court of law.
“The reporter thinks it could help the case,” I say. “To take control of my own narrative. My own story.”
“That’s happened,” Melissa says. “Having such a negative story out there about Scully forces his lawyers onto the defensive. It could work for or against you. I can’t really help you with decisions like this.”
But the way she says it, it’s clear what she thinks: I should stay quiet and let the court take care of things.
As if staying quiet has worked out all that well for me up to now.
I have to take back my power. People should know.
So I browse all my new hate mail, looking for the worst-best nuggets. I’ve learned how to read with just part of my brain—it’s the only way I can keep it from getting inside me. Read, don’t absorb. Let my eyes glide over the words but don’t distill their meanings.
One message has a weird subject line.
TO: Samantha Barker ([email protected])
FROM: Mallory Raven ([email protected])
SUBJECT: I’m a coward
Sam,
I’m not sure if you remember me, but I’m the one who brought that whiskey at the Mixer.
I just want to tell you . . . I believe you.
He did it to my roommate when we were First Years. She left.
I’ve never said anything. For fuck’s sake, I still hang out with him.
I hope you get some kind of justice.
Mallory
Mallory.
The girl with her family’s coat of arms engraved on a silver flask. She’d seemed nice—I guess she actually is.
I don’t reply, but I forward it to Melissa in case she wants to follow up. After a few minutes, I also forward it to Gracie.
“Look,” I write. “Some people believe. Always a couple roses among the thorns.”
Gracie doesn’t reply.
-----------------------
Mallory’s email sticks with me. I can’t stop thinking about her roommate, the girl who dropped out of school. Who is she? What if she testified in court? If someone could corroborate that Scully’s a serial rapist, there’s no way the judge could just gloss over it.
That night, I call up Mom.
“I want to go shopping downtown on Sunday. Can you take me?”
“Shopping? What for?”
“I want to replace that outfit. The one I threw away.”
“Oh god, Sam, why?”
“I’ll tell you about it when you pick me up.”
When I get in the car with her on Sunday, I tell her about my idea—how I could use what’s happening to me to turn the tide against Scully. How one girl already reached out to me, and if I revealed myself and came forward, maybe more girls would do the same.
“I don’t know,” she says as we park outside the mall. “Couldn’t his lawyers use it against you, too? ‘She’s a loose cannon,’ they could say.”
“Sure, they could. But it might not matter if other girls step forward and testify. They can rule out just one girl as a ‘loose cannon,’ but not two or more.”
“Fine,” she says, giving a resigned sigh. “If this is what you want to do.” And we head to H&M, where I bought the first blue skirt that ended up in the dumpster out behind Isabel House.
Leafing through clothes is comforting in a way I didn’t expect. There are so many styles and colors, textures and fabrics. It’s like a game, searching for just the right thing. When I find that same blue skirt, now on clearance, it shocks me with static. In the dressing room, I slide it on with the leggings and a similar black shirt and peer at myself in the mirror. I look the same as that night. I can almost see the rip in the side even though when I touch the skirt, it’s whole. I swallow back some bile, remembering Scully’s hand worming its way up underneath it.
We buy the outfit and Mom drives me back to school. There’s no way people on campus will be able to ignore this, brush me under the rug, keep me quiet. I’m going to fill the world with the sound of my voice.
The next morning I tear off the tags and put the clothes on, then scribble my message onto white foam board with sharpie. On my way to class I prop my phone on a ledge and set the photo timer, capturing the iconic Edwards clock tower in the background behind me and my sign. People stare as they walk by.
Fine. Look. Stare.
That night after Twilight Study, I upload the photo I took to Instagram and start writing a post.
This is the outfit I was raped in.
I go through my hate mail on my laptop and copy them into the post.
wanna go again? I won’t be as nice to you
Hope u get herpes, slut
Why don’t you do us all a favor and just die. I can come help. You’ll be better off that way.
The last line of the post is the same text that I wrote on my sign:
I will not stop wearing these clothes until there is #JusticeatEdwards.
My hands are shaking as I touch SHARE. It’s up. It’s out there. My hands are tingling.
I send the link to everyone whom I can still call a friend: Mom, Dad, Harper, my friends from middle schoo
l. Dr. Winegard. Melissa. Mallory.
Gracie.
I turn off my phone before I can regret it, and pull out a textbook. Maybe my post will get a couple of likes by morning. If even one other girl like Mallory sees this, it’ll be worth it.
Chapter Twenty
SAM
First, only friends and family comment on my post. My uncle in Vermont shares it on Facebook. Some other reporters who must be friends of Harper’s pick it up on Twitter.
Seven shares.
By morning, my old middle school friends have rallied and shared it.
This is my friend, and she doesn’t deserve this!!
Sam is not a liar. What happened to her is horrible. Justice for Sam. #JusticeatEdwards!!
Fifteen shares.
Wow, I feel like an asshole for how I treated them over Home Weekend. Turns out they’re still better friends than Bex and her troupe ever were.
I focus on my feet as I walk to class, keep my eyes on my notebook as I work, and pay close attention as my teachers lecture. It’s all I can do not to think about what my post is doing, where it’s going, and who’s reading it while I’m here.
But everywhere I go on campus, wearing the same clothes as yesterday, an undercurrent travels with me. It’s like electricity that runs through the whole school.
By lunch, Edwards kids have filled the Instagram post with comments. They share it everywhere.
haha look at this attention whore. so desperate
The bitch was bitter that nobody would climb on her pity wagon, so now she’s begging!
Dragging Scully wasn’t good enough? You’re pathetic and so is this stunt.
Twenty shares. Forty shares.
After lunch, every person I pass on my way to class turns to stare at me. I want to avoid them, skip school, but I can’t. I put myself out there. I took their hate into my hands and formed it into something new, better, fiercer. I have to carry it around in my arms or I shouldn’t have made it at all.
The lake near Isabel House is frozen over and dark. I sit on one of the grimy, wet benches, looking down at it. Beneath the surface lie the silent, immobile bodies of koi. Hibernating for better weather.
I will not hibernate.
I pull out my old sketchbook. In December, I ripped out and destroyed all my sketches of Scully and stopped using this book at all. But I remember the Drawing Club instructor complimenting my doodle of Gracie’s fake smile, so I flip to that page.
Honor Code Page 19