Kill Switch

by Penelope Douglas

  She knew something was wrong. She wouldn’t run with me like this.

  And they were already here.

  Dropping my shit, I dug out a cigarette and lit it, staring at her with the sheet wrapped around her body and just wanting to dive into her hair and lips and the warmth of her bed just minutes ago.

  How did so much change in such a short time?

  She heard the lighter, smelled the smoke, a troubled look crossing her beautiful face. “You smoke?” she asked so quietly.

  I could hear the tires screech to a halt outside and the doors slam.

  I darted my eyes to hers. “Don’t let me go,” I told her, breathing hard. “No matter what you hear or what they say, don’t let me go.”

  She shook her head. “What do you mean?” And then she turned to where her phone sat again, flustered. “My phone’s going berserk. What’s happening? Please?”

  “Winter!” her father shouted from downstairs, suddenly in the house.

  And I dove in, brushing her lips with mine as he charged up the stairs.

  “Don’t let me go,” I whispered.

  But then her door was thrown open, her father entered with another man in tow, and he charged me.

  “Oh, you son of a bitch! Get away from her!”

  He threw a punch, and it was the first time in years I hadn’t been ready to fight back. I didn’t even want to. If I lost her, I didn’t even care.

  His fist landed across my jaw, and I fell into her nightstand, the lamp on it crashing to the floor with me.

  Winter started gasping. “What’s going on?”

  A kick shot into my stomach, and I grunted, wincing as he did it again.

  “Dad, stop!” she cried, climbing off the bed. “Leave him alone!”

  The other guy pulled her back, and I recognized him as Mr. Kincaid, my old dean. He gripped Winter by the arms as she struggled to free herself.

  “You sick little shit!” Ashby growled at me. “I threatened a restraining order and you do this? You’re going to fucking jail for this. How dare you!”

  He came down, landing another punch, and I clenched my teeth, holding my stomach.

  Winter.

  “Restraining order?” she repeated. “What?”

  Please no. Please don’t find out like this. Fuck.

  “How could you have sex with him, Winter?” her father shouted. “What were you thinking?”

  She held the sheet around her body, shaking her head. “How do you know that? What’s happening?”

  She doesn’t know anything. She doesn’t know about the video being leaked, me…

  “Call Doug Coulson,” Ashby told Mr. Kincaid. “Tell him we have Torrance here and to get his ass over here on his rounds picking up all the rest of the little shits.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, barely feeling him grip my hair as I waited for Winter to understand.

  It was over. She’d hate me.

  “Torrance,” she breathed out, hearing what her father had said. “Damon Torrance?”

  I looked at her as he pulled my hair, making my scalp burn. “Winter,” I begged.

  “What?” she said to herself, still processing.

  I tried to move toward her. “Winter.” But I didn’t know what to say. Instead, I shouted at Kincaid who just stood there with his hands all over a nearly naked girl. “Get her some fucking clothes!” I told him.

  Oh, Jesus. He was having me arrested.

  But I didn’t care about that as much as I worried that she wasn’t responding to me. Please don’t leave me.

  “Winter, listen to me,” I said. “It’s not what you think.”

  “It’s Damon Torrance?” she asked the other men.

  “You didn’t know?” her father asked. “You didn’t know who this was?” And then he glared at me, baring his teeth as the full measure of what had happened between us sunk in. “What did you do?”

  “Winter, listen to me,” I pleaded.

  But she started sobbing and covering her mouth with a hand. “Get out!” she screamed, backing up into Kincaid and as far away from me as she could. “Get him out! Get him out!”

  Ashby hauled me up, blood dripping from my lip.

  “Winter, please.” I begged.

  “No more!” she put her hands over her ears, backing up into the wall. “Just die and leave me alone!”

  She raged, and the backs of my eyes burned, but I watched as she buried herself in Kincaid’s chest, shielding herself from me like I was going to hurt her.

  Like I was a monster.

  Just die and leave me alone.

  “I hate you!” she growled. “You’re a horror, and you had to lie, because you knew I’d never want you! No one would ever love you! Get out!”

  Kincaid pulled her in, putting a blanket around her shaking body as she cried.

  “Don’t let him near me again,” she pleaded. “Please, don’t let him touch me.”

  I looked down at my hands as Ashby pushed me out of the room, away from her, and all the pain and loss spun like a cyclone in my brain.

  I would never want you. No one would ever love you.

  I’d defiled her, like I knew I would.

  She would never dance like an innocent again.

  She’d never have the wonder in her eyes she had when she was on that motorcycle.

  I’d changed her forever. I’d bent and twisted and broken everything that made her the most beautiful thing that ever happened to me.

  Winter

  Five Years Ago

  My hands shook as I navigated the VoiceOver Accessibility option on my phone, listening to us out there for everyone to see online.

  My kissing and our breathing. The moans and panting.

  I love… I hate you.

  Yeah, I hate you, too. I just want a hot piece of ass.

  Yeah?

  It was like I wasn’t even there, experiencing it like this now. Like I was on the outside, hearing a disgusting display of something meaningless and shallow when it hadn’t felt like that at all. My face cracked, splintering in pain as I sobbed, hearing his phone fall in the video, but not cut off, and the sounds, whimpers, and everything we did in the shower coming through, so there was no mistake what was happening.

  My mother called this morning, before jumping on a plane with my sister to come home, and assured me I was never naked in the video, both of us having moved out of sight when it fell to the floor, but it had clearly kept recording.

  My DMs were piling up, and I knew I shouldn’t open them, but I hadn’t been allowed out all day. The phone downstairs and my parents’ cells had been going crazy, and I knew it was bad, but I didn’t know how bad for me.

  I clicked, VoiceOver reading the first one:

  You look like a good time, and I could use one right now.

  I clenched my teeth, clicking another and holding it to my ear.

  So, Damon gives good D, huh? He has a thing for the blind, deaf, and dumb chicks. Close your eyes, plug your ears, and spread your legs, baby.

  God, why were they doing this? My head was splitting, and I cried harder. I didn’t know I was being recorded. It was private. It wasn’t like that.

  Nasty, skanky slut. How much dick do you have to blow to get anyone to love you? You should kill yourself.

  Most of it seemed to come from accounts I didn’t recognize, and the tears came so hard that no sound came out. I wanted to die. He used me. He did this all for a kick. He did this to me, because he got off on it?

  The whole time. The past two years. The dancing, the car, the motorcycle, the janitor’s closet, the theater, the fountain in the village square… All of it was Damon Fucking Torrance. I pictured those same black eyes from when we were kids, watching me in the ballroom.

  I let out a growl, throwing my phone down on the bed and putting my head in my hands. “I could kill you!”

  But then I heard someone barge into my room. “I told you to stay off the phone!” my father bellowed.

  I pulled my hands do
wn, still sobbing but feeling him take something off my bed.

  I reached for where I threw my phone, but it was gone. “I need my phone,” I argued.

  “Griffin—” my mother interrupted.

  But my father wasn’t listening to anyone today. “Enough!” he barked.

  “You knew I liked him,” I heard my sister say, somewhere around the doorway. “He was arrested, Winter!”

  “Good!” I yelled.

  “Everyone hates us now.”

  “Get out!” I shouted at her.

  How could she not be on my side? On this one thing?

  “You’re going back to Montreal day after tomorrow,” my father bit out, seething so hard I thought he might hit something. “We’ll bring you back if the police need you.”

  “You can’t press charges!” Ari told him.

  “Go!” he ordered. “Go to bed, and stay out of this.”

  I hung my head, and I couldn’t stop crying even if I tried. “I didn’t know it was him.”

  “Who did you think it was?” Ari charged. “You were warned they liked to play pranks! They get off on it! Like a regular guy would actually date you? That’s what you thought?” And then she mumbled, “Fucking stupid.”

  Stop. Please stop.

  I thought…

  I thought it was real. I thought he…

  The feel of him on top of me in the shower crawled over my skin, and I covered my face with my hands.

  I loved him.

  This morning I loved him, and tonight I hoped he suffered unimaginably.

  “That is enough, Ari,” my mother gritted out. “Go to your room now!”

  After a moment, I heard her footsteps head down the hall, and I wondered what Damon was doing right now. Was he sitting in a cell? Or in a room being questioned with the rest of his buddies who also got nicked for other uploads.

  But then it occurred to me. None of them would’ve purposely done this to themselves. This was bad for Damon, too.

  He didn’t upload the video himself. Why did he take it at all? I told him to take a picture.

  But no, he wanted to brag to his buddies.

  I tried to find comfort in knowing he might not have intended for the whole world to see it, but it was short-lived. He stole from me.

  “You’re not to leave this house,” my father instructed. “You don’t use the phone. You don’t answer the door.”

  “Yes, she knows,” my mother told him. “Leave us alone.”

  I heard my father sigh, and then he said, “I need to go talk to Doug Coulson. I’ll be back late.”

  He left and slammed my bedroom door, making me jump. He hadn’t asked if I was okay. Not once today. He hadn’t hugged me or…or acted, at all, like none of this was my fault. He was treating me like I was partially responsible.

  Ari was having sex. They knew it. And long before she was sixteen, too.

  But I’d been willing with someone in that video, and it didn’t matter with who. My father thought anyone who wanted me was obviously victimizing me.

  And look at that. He was right.

  I was the idiot for not knowing better. For thinking a “regular” guy wanted me.

  I felt the bed sink as my mother sat down. “Did he hurt you?”

  Every muscle on my face trembled. How do you mean? Bruises? Is that what counts?

  “Yes, I know he lied.” She touched my face, trying to comfort me. “But did he force himself on you? We need to know every detail, Winter. The court will need to know.”

  I sucked in a breath. Court. God, this town would massacre me.

  “He lied,” I said. “He made me think I was with someone else.”

  “Who?” Mom asked. “Who did you think he was?”

  I opened my mouth to try to explain, but it wouldn’t make sense. I’m not even sure it did to me anymore.

  He never said he wasn’t Damon Torrance. I had sex with him, knowing I didn’t know who he was. Not his name, his family, his school…

  No one was going to believe me.

  There were probably other girls he’d hurt, and they may want to back me up, but his family was too wealthy and he was popular. They might hate him, but they were also afraid not to love him in public.

  And the guys. They idolized him. He’d scored with a sixteen-year-old girl, and hey, it was just a technicality. I was legal in thirty-three states. Just not ours, right?

  Oh, Christ. How was I so stupid?

  “Did he make you do anything you didn’t want to do?” my mother asked, clarifying her question.

  But I just dropped my head, shaking it, because I didn’t know how to answer. No, he didn’t make me do something I didn’t want to do, but he made me do something I would never have done with Damon Torrance.

  She wrapped her arms around my neck, bringing my head into her chest. “It’s okay. Shhh. I’m going to fix it,” she told me. “We’re going to fix it.”

  She rubbed my back and held me for a long time, calming me down and letting me hide a little. I was kind of glad my dad took my phone, though. Listening to that shit was screwing its way into my head, and I wanted everyone to understand, but I knew it would be pointless. The world loved to hate, and for now, my bubble was the safest place.

  She laid me down and pulled my blanket over me, my clothes still on, but I was too drained to change.

  “I left a glass of water on the bed stand,” she said, “and there’s a Xanax next to it if you feel like you need it.”

  I nodded, knowing I wouldn’t. My eyes were heavy, and I’d be asleep soon enough, waking up tomorrow to face the nightmare all over again.

  “Mom?” I called, hearing the music drift up from downstairs as I sat up in bed.

  It was so clear.

  My door was open. I thought she closed it.

  Reaching over, I hit the button on the clock, hearing it read, “Twelve-fourteen a.m.”

  I patted around for my phone, remembering my father took it, but felt the water my mom left and gulped down a hefty drink.

  The night was still so clear, like I hadn’t been asleep at all, but I was still too tired to muster more tears just yet.

  “Mom, are you there?” I shouted.

  Nausea rolled through my stomach, and I needed something. I didn’t know what. I hadn’t eaten all day. That was probably it.

  Yawning, I swung my legs over the side of the bed and rubbed my eyes, just wanting some soup and crackers or something and then maybe I’d take that Xanax and sleep forever.

  Patting my way out of my room, I trailed down the bannister, hearing the faint, haunting tune of “Sleep Walk” by Santo and Johnny playing from somewhere downstairs. Any other time, I might smile at the gesture. My mom knew I liked oldies when I wanted to feel better.

  But it was no use playing it while I was asleep.

  I made my way into the foyer, still wearing a pair of jeans and a tank top from earlier, but before I swung around to head for the kitchen, I heard the beep of the answering machine near the door. Yawning again, I walked toward it.

  It could’ve been a prank call. I was sure lots of those came in today.

  But I didn’t have my cell, so just in case Dad called…

  Finding the button, I pressed it, my head spinning and my heart hammering as soon as I heard my mom’s voice.

  “Hey, sweetie,” she chirped. “Didn’t want to wake you. Your sister snuck out, so I left to go find her. Doors are locked. Don’t leave. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  The music drifted from the ballroom, and I breathed so hard, I was gasping.

  Who was in the ballroom?

  “Mom?” I screamed.

  It was her. The message was from earlier tonight. She came back.

  “Mom!” I cried out again.

  And a creak split the floor to my left, and I stopped, my face scrunching up and my eyes squeezing shut as the nightmare loomed even though I was no longer asleep.

  But I refused to cry. I locked my jaw, fisted my hands, and turned
toward him.

  “Damon,” I said to my ghost who now had a name. “Perks of being rich, huh? You can make bail in record time.”

  I shook my head.

  He was going to get off. Nothing was going to happen to him. Guys like him never paid.

  “Your friends were arrested, too, I hear,” I said. “The town is in chaos tonight.”

  I didn’t hear him move, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t. Reaching behind me, I grabbed a gold figurine on the table, with a nice, pointy part on it.

  “And you’re here.” I listened carefully for footsteps. “Why are you here?”

  He didn’t say a word, and for a moment it felt like the very first time he broke in and terrified me. This time, though, I wouldn’t be waking up safe. He’d had his fun, and now he was here to have more.

  “You want to shut me up?” I pressed. “Hurt me? Or do you want to see how much you already hurt me?”

  Was he here to keep me quiet, or because he just couldn’t resist his sick, perverted kink? To survey the damage he’d done on the girl who had been ready to run away with him this morning. Dreaming of waking up in his arms, in a warm bed with a fire roaring in the cold mountains.

  It meant nothing to him.

  “The best I’ve ever felt in seven years were the nights with you,” I told him, tears springing up. “So just soak it up, because you win. I fucking fell for it. I want to eat my goddamn heart, because it wouldn’t hurt as much as what you did to it this morning. I hate you.”

  My legs started to buckle underneath me as I cried, and my head started to swim.

  “I hate you,” I said, a sob thick in my throat, “and I’ll hate you forever, so do what you’re going to do, because I’m dead. I’m dead already.”

  I would never trust another man again. I’d have to leave my school and my home to escape the gossip.

  I was the one paying for his lie, not him, but so help me God, I would drag him down with me. I would make sure he remembered me and know how enormously he failed at being the worst thing to ever happen to me, because he wasn’t that important. He was nothing.

  I didn’t love him. I didn’t even understand him.