by K. Ryan
“Finn, you need to calm down.”
His steps stalled and he whipped around to face me. “I’ll calm down when that video is off the internet and every single one of those little bastards involved with it gets their asses suspended.”
“That’s not up to you to decide, Finn.”
Now, he stalked towards me until both his hands settled over my shoulders. “How are you not angry about this, Emma? I don’t understand why you’re not tearing this place apart right now.”
“Of course I’m angry,” I whispered. “How could I not be?”
It was just more complicated than that. Anger wouldn’t help me. Anger wouldn’t remove that video any faster. And anger wouldn’t erase the last year of my life.
“I don’t believe you,” Finn murmured and he gave my shoulders a little shake. “Get angry, Emma. You have to get angry. Goddammit, get angry!”
“I am angry.”
Clearly, neither of us were really convinced by that and Finn released my shoulders, taking a few steps back as his face twisted with pain and disbelief.
“I can’t understand how you can be so passive about this, Em.”
“And I don’t understand why you’re overreacting like this,” I shot back hotly, finally exhibiting some of that anger Finn wanted to see.
Finn’s hands swept up to his hair. “I think my reaction is completely appropriate given the situation. You’re the one who isn’t reacting the way you should.”
My breath whooshed out in one huff, but Finn just shook his head.
“You know what, Em? I think I do need to cool off. I’ll just...” he sighed and scrubbed his eyes. “I’ll call you later, okay?”
I watched, my feet rooted to the carpet, as Finn shot me a weak smile and walked out the door.
Once again, my life was crumbling over things I couldn’t control and now it was happening all over again...the devastation, the humiliation, the fear, the panic, the paranoia...it was never going to stop.
And here I was. Still helpless. Still powerless.
. . .
A few hours later, I sat on my couch with my computer on my lap and a half-empty glass of wine resting on the coffee table. In between keeping tears at bay, fielding text messages from my brother and sister-in-law making sure I was ‘okay’—as if I’d ever be—and checking my phone every two seconds to see if Finn had reached out like he’d said he would, my attempts at distraction and deflection were failing.
My fingers rested on the keys, but I just couldn’t conjure any words. Writing a blog post about which moisturizer to use for winter just seemed so trivial compared to the way my life had once again imploded because of my own actions seven years ago. It was so stupid—how could I possibly expect to write even one coherent sentence about something as irrelevant to my life as moisturizer right now?
So, in an effort to distract myself, all I’d done was make everything worse. Go figure—the story of my life, right?
Maybe I would just get drunk. That would at least numb everything that wasn’t already paralyzed with fear. With that thought, I snatched my wine glass from the coffee table and downed the rest of the contents.
My phone rang and my heart leapt at the sound, only to plummet back down to earth when I realized it wasn’t Finn calling, but Cristina. I figured voicemail could take care of that for me, but I guess I should’ve known Cris wouldn’t take being ignored lying down and my phone buzzed a second later with a new text from her.
Please call me back. It’s really important.
I blew out a breath and muttered, “Fine...you win. I guess.”
But as soon as Cris picked up, panic prickled up yet again that something else had gone very wrong.
“Em?” Cris answered, but her voice wasn’t distressed the way I thought it would be. Instead, her tone had a breathy liveliness that caught me off guard.
“What’s up, Cris?”
“Have you looked at the comments under that video Noah sent you?”
I frowned into my phone. “No. Why?”
“Just...just do it, okay? Read the comments.”
“Cris,” I sighed and rubbed my forehead. “I really don’t want to. What I want is for all this shit to be over.”
“I know, chica, I know. But do yourself a favor and read the comments, okay?”
I huffed out a sigh. “Fine.”
“You won’t be sorry. Just do it.”
“Whatever you say. Bye, Cris.”
After Cristina echoed my goodbye, my fingers swiped through my phone to find the link Noah had texted—and incidentally, Principal Denfield’s office number at school, too—and I opened the video, quickly clicking over to open the comments before the video could start playing again. I scrolled and scrolled, skimming through the various comments I’d already expected to see: I think we should start a petition to bring Ms. O back so we can make that a reality and Sexy striptease...fuck yeah! and I bet that really happened to! Everyone knows the senior skit always speaks the truth and Best. Skit. Ever. and Next year we should make Ms. O the principal. She could teach the whole school all her moves.
Then my eyes flicked to another comment: When is this video going to be taken down? Seriously. You guys are stupid.
My heart twisted a little and I shook my head.
“Oh, Luke,” I whispered to my screen. “Why do you even bother?”
Luke was one of the few students who’d actively spoken out against all the pictures, videos, memes, and comments and, it seemed, he was still doing it. He was always one of those students who made you actually like your job—happy, friendly, funny, smart, willing to participate in class, and an overall decent human being. I’d had him in class two years in a row and when his dad passed away last year right before the first round of pictures hit the internet, I’d made a point to attend the wake.
Sometimes, you look at a student and their antics in class, whether it’s disrespect towards you or another student—it was always the boys that caused the most trouble in class, too—and you think to yourself, This kid is an asshole and he’s always going to be an asshole. Sometimes, you look at a student and you think to yourself, This kid is an asshole now, but maybe he’ll grow up and figure it out. And sometimes, you look at a student and you think to yourself, This is a good kid and he’s going to grow up to be an even better adult, and you feel like maybe your job isn’t so pointless after all.
Luke was one of those kids who made me feel like maybe there was still some hope for humanity left. Contrary to Finn’s belief, they weren’t all animals. Some of them were actually pretty great to be around; it was just too bad that by the end, the number of decent ones at that school seemed to be few and far between.
When I found yet another comment from Luke asking his peers to ‘grow up and take the video down because it wasn’t funny’, tears stung my eyes.
Defending me was just a wasted effort.
But when I read a comment just a few lines down from Luke’s most recent one, my eyes just about jumped out of their sockets.
Hey, Matt? You think it’s cool to make fun of a woman who’s been sexually assaulted? I feel really sorry for your girlfriend. She must be miserable.
The commenter, naturally, was Finn, who’d logged-in through Facebook, probably so everyone would see it was him.
The student, Matt, who Finn had directed his first comment to, responded with:STFU man. Who the hell are you anyway?
Finn: I’m the guy who actually knows how to treat a woman with respect.
Matt: Fuck off loser.
Finn: How am I the loser in this scenario? You know what? Maybe we should talk about this face to face. You’re at Jason’s house right now playing CoD, aren’t you? I’ll swing by.
Matt: How do you know that stalker
Finn posted a screenshot of Matt’s Twitter profile in response highlighting the tweet, Going to @jasonclearmen for a CoD war tonight. Gonna get an ace! Die crawlers die!
Finn: 127 Field Ct, Hickory, WI. Right? Doesn
’t feel so good knowing people can find out whatever they want to know about you, does it?
Matt: How do you know that?
Finn: Google.
Matt: What the hell is your problem?
Finn: My problem is dipshits like you who think you can do whatever you want because you can hide behind your smartphone and your computer when you do it. You shouldn’t be allowed to use it if you don’t know HOW to use it.
Then Finn moved on to his next target, the poster who’d commented about starting a petition.
Finn: Hey Brady?
Then he posted yet another screenshot from Twitter that featured Brady with his arm around a girl I recognized from one of my classes last year, both of them drinking out of a red solo cup, a cluster of empty beer bottles visible on a table to their left, and a crowd of kids behind them.
Finn: How much will you pay me to keep me from sending this to your athletic director at school? How about your football coach?
Brady: Who the hell is this guy?
Finn: You know what? Never mind the money. I’ll send it anyway just for fun.
Brady: Already deleted it asshole. Nice try.
Finn: Already saved the screenshot to my phone, dickhead. Nice try.
At that point, Finn was clearly ready to move on and he fired at his next target:
Hey Jesse? I see you’ve been accepted to UW-Madison. Congratulations. Do you think the admissions people would be interested in knowing you’ve participated in documented sexual harassment? Maybe I’ll email them a running doc of all your comments on this video and the sexually explicit pictures you posted last month of your teacher without her permission so we can find out.
He didn’t wait for Jesse to respond, instead moving on to Luke’s comment, and said:
It’s nice to see there’s at least one person at that school who’s a human being. I’d say I’d find you so I can shake your hand, but I respect your privacy too much. Stop by Matthews Brewing Co. when you turn 21 and I’ll buy you a beer.
I couldn’t believe this...what right did Finn have to pull this kind of shit? All he was doing was stirring up more trouble and causing more problems to an already shit-smeared mess. He’d gone too far, pushed the whole thing over the edge and I’d already snapped my laptop shut and was stalking out of my apartment before I could stop myself.
When I pounded furiously on Finn and Slinger’s front door, the wrong roommate answered. Slinger’s eyes widened almost instantaneously and he stepped aside as I blew right past him with just a muttered, “Hey, Slinger”, in greeting. I ignored Mara on the couch and marched right up to Finn’s bedroom door so I could pound on it too.
Finn flung the door open, his lips set in a firm line like he’d been expecting me, but I didn’t give him a chance to get the first word in.
“How could you do that?” I demanded as I stormed through the threshold, brushing past Finn’s shoulder on my way.
I obviously didn’t need to explain because Finn just shrugged and shoved his hands in his pockets.
“I’m not gonna apologize to you, Em. If anything, those stupid shits should be apologizing to you, but fat chance of that ever happening.”
I shook my head furiously at him and crossed my arms over my chest. “I can’t believe you did that. You just made everything worse!”
A slow, bitter smile spread across Finn’s handsome face. “It’s good to see you’re finally angry. It’s just too bad you’re angry at the wrong person.”
“I think I have every right to be angry at whoever I want to be angry at!”
Even as the words left my lips, I knew how ridiculous they sounded. I just didn’t care.
“You just made everything worse, Finn,” I told him. Now it was my turn to pace in front of him. “You shouldn’t have talked to them...used your real name...what was the point of doing any of that?”
“The point is that someone needs to teach those pricks that the stupid shit they post online follows them around just like it does everybody else. They’re not immune and they can’t do whatever the hell they feel like doing just because they feel like it.”
I huffed out a deep breath and squeezed my eyes shut. “Why can’t you just let this go?”
Finn’s face twisted. “Let this go? Are you kidding me?”
“In a few years, everyone will forget all about it and they’ll have moved on to the next scandal. It’ll run it’s course and then it’ll be over.”
Now, his face contorted into barely-bridled fury. “Let it run it’s course? Do you hear yourself, Emma? Did you really hear what you just said?”
“Yeah, I did and you wanna know something else? Now you’re no better than the rest of them. You’re just like them...hiding behind your smartphone and your computer, right?”
Finn barked out a bitter laugh. “Yeah, well, if I got out from behind my computer and hunted them down, things wouldn’t end so well for any of us.”
My mind flashed to an image of Noah sitting in lock-up with his knuckles bloodied and torn and the exact same unapologetically murderous expression on his face that I saw mirrored on Finn right now.
“Please promise me you won’t do anything else. You called the school, you called out some kids...can you please just leave it at that before you make things even worse?”
His eyes darkened. “Right, so I’m the problem now? I’m the one who’s really making this worse? You know what? You’re the one with the problem. You being passive like this, Emma? You just letting people fucking walk all over you? That’s the problem. Not me.”
“You know what?” I flung my hands in the air. “I’m done with this right now. I’m leaving.”
“Fine,” he snapped. “I’ll walk you out.”
“I’m pretty sure I can find my way out on my own,” I retorted as I yanked Finn’s door open only to find Slinger and Mara camped out just a few feet away and gaping at me.
I froze mid-step, jerking forward when Finn all but crashed into my back. His hands slipped to my waist to steady me, but I pushed him away.
Slinger tilted his head to the side, his green eyes still wide with bewilderment and disbelief. “Wha…?”
“Leave it alone, Sling,” Finn grunted roughly from over my shoulder.
“No, seriously,” Slinger shook his head and held out a hand towards us. “What the hell is goin’ on here?”
I opened my mouth, but then snapped it shut just as quickly. The words were right there, but I couldn’t do it. There was no way I could handle the look I’d see in both Slinger and Mara’s eyes the second the words left my lips.
Slinger turned his impatient gaze to his best friend. “Finn? You gonna tell me what’s goin’ on?”
My head whipped around to face him and my heart just about leapt into my thick throat, searching his eyes wildly and silently pleading with him to keep my secret.
“I’m not gonna say anything, Em,” Finn told me, his eyes soft with remorse and defeat. “I’d never hurt you like that.”
“Not gonna say what?” Slinger demanded again, but both of us ignored him.
“Thank you,” I whispered to Finn and he shot me a weak smile in response.
His fingertips ghosted down my forearm even as I moved back to step around both Slinger and Mara, who still stared at me like I’d suddenly sprouted a peg leg or something.
Even as I walked through the doorway, I could still hear Finn telling Slinger, “I can’t tell you, Sling. Stop asking.”
I almost turned around, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. We both needed some time to cool off and calm down. This was just the worst timing ever—the Bluestone Lounge rollout was tomorrow and I was supposed to be Finn’s date. Go figure...when life decided to give you lemons, it pelted those lemons right at your face.
And now, for the first time in nearly three weeks, as I closed my apartment door behind me and felt Oliver rubbing up against my legs, I was almost grateful to be alone again.
Almost.
CHAPTER TWENTY
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The Bluestone Lounge was exactly what I’d expected: covered in blue stone and a lounge. Go figure, right? It was, however, way swankier and more upscale than I thought it would be...dim blue lights, granite bar tops, large pane glass windows facing Water Street with unobstructed views of Milwaukee’s downtown scene, navy blue leather couches lining the walls, contemporary decor, elegant, and pretty damn high-brow all the way around.
When I stepped inside the lounge, it took my eyes a few moments to really drink everything in. This was the complete opposite of the dive bars I was used to both when I was in college and living back in Hickory. I’m sure it had something to do with the fact that when I was in college at UW-La Crosse, I didn’t want to spend the money—if I even had it in the first place—on fancy cocktails because I was all about quantity over quality. After I graduated and moved back from college, I had a little more money—emphasis on a little—but Hickory only had bars sporting names like The Country Bar and Jim’s Place. Original names for an original town, right?
Music played in the background, but it wasn’t overpowering and just mellow enough to keep the mood up but maintain the ‘chill’ atmosphere. From what Finn had told me, the Bluestone Lounge was more of a cocktail bar, so the fact that they’d agreed to partner with the brewery was a huge get for Matthews Brewing Co. and signaled a shift in business for the lounge, too. Overall, everyone here had something to celebrate tonight.
I just wished I was in the mood to celebrate.
I might as well walk in and introduce myself saying, Hey, everyone. My name’s Debbie Downer. I’d ask yours, but I really don’t care.