“Two police officers just disrupted our class, handcuffed Levi, and read him his Miranda Rights. And you can’t tell us what’s going on?”
“That’s correct. Where are we up to?” Sophie is tenacious. “Yes,” he says with a frustrated sigh.
“You can’t expect us to concentrate on work, when Levi was just handcuffed.”
“Miss . . .” He waits for her last name.
“Sophie Masters.”
“Ah, yes, Miss Masters. That’s exactly what I expect of you. To concentrate on your work.”
Sophie rolls her eyes and mumbles something under her breath. She looks at me and mouths, ‘What happened?’
“I don’t know,” I whisper in response.
The class goes by quickly, everyone itching to know what happened. By the time the bell sounds, the corridors are filled with people and the only thing anyone can talk about is how Levi got arrested. We head to the cafeteria and people are stopping Reece, Sophie, and me, asking us what we know.
When we head to our table, Sam and Taylor are already here, huddled together talking in a hushed tone. They see us approach and look straight at us. “What happened?” Sam pounces the moment we sit.
“No idea. Seriously, we were sitting there and the next thing two cops come in, grab Levi, handcuff him, and take him out. It happened so fast. Mr. C tried to ask them what was going on, but they had Levi so quick. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Reece says.
“Was it like those movies where they come in and extract someone and everyone’s left stunned?” Taylor asks Reece.
“That’s exactly how it was. Mr. Preston showed up and told Mr. C to go. Man, I have no idea what the hell happened,” Reece replies.
Sam leans over to me, Reece and Taylor leaning back, talking to each other. “Did anything weird happen in class?” she questions me.
“Nope. Did you see anything weird in class, Sophie?” I ask her.
“Nothing. We were half way through when they came in. They were huge, too.”
Lunch is spent not eating, but listening to what everyone’s saying. When the bell sounds, Reece and I walk to our lockers so we can get our English books out.
I feel a tap on my shoulder, and turn to see Lindsey who’s clearly been crying. “What happened, Dakota?” she asks through her tears.
I almost feel sorry for her. Her boyfriend’s been dragged out of class, and no one knows what’s going on. “I don’t know, Lindsey.”
“Did you do this?”
I frown at her and shake my head. “Me? People can’t be arrested for being assholes, or you’d be right there with him.”
Her shoulders slump and she looks down at her feet, embarrassed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to say that. I’m really upset because I can’t get any answers from anyone.”
“I’m sure whatever it is, it’ll be sorted out.”
She gives me the first hint of friendliness she has in a long time. She half smiles at me, her eyes soft with hurt. “Thank you. If you hear anything, will you let me know?”
“Um.” I bring my shoulders up in a shrug. “Sure.”
“Thank you.”
She walks away and Reece stares at me, completely surprised. “You could’ve told her to piss off.”
“I’m not like that.”
“I know, and I really love that about you.” He gives me a small kiss on the cheek.
He said love.
I smile. And do a little internal dance.
As we walk to English, Jordan, Aaron, and Mariah all stop us. They’re asking the same question as everyone else: do we know what happened. Our replies are the same, and by the time the end of the day gets here, Sophie, Reece, and I are glad we’re on our way home.
“God, I don’t think I can deal with any more surprises. That’s it! I declare this month to be ‘no more surprise’ month. I’m really not sure I can handle any more,” I say with a sigh.
“Come on, doll, I’ll take you home. Grab Sam and I’ll wait for you by the car. Need a lift Sophie?”
“No, Mom’s waiting. See you guys tomorrow.”
“See ya.”
I may have declared this month is surprise free, but something is telling me, there’s more to come.
Chapter 45
“It’s all anyone is talking about,” Sam says.
“I know, I can’t believe it myself. I wonder what happened,” Dad says. “Pass the potato salad please, Sam.” Sam hands him the bowl.
I look down at my plate and pick at my dinner. I lean an elbow on the table, not really concentrating on anything. My head’s fuzzy with the day’s events. “Are you okay, sweetheart?” Mom asks.
“Yeah, I’m good. I’ve never seen anything like that scene today. It literally happened in less than two minutes. But it felt like it was forever. I’ve never experienced anything like it.”
“And pray to God you never experience it again,” Dad says. “When I was a young man, probably about twenty or so, I had a job in a small convenience store to help put me through college. I had the night shift, working until about midnight, before the next guy came to replace me. Anyway, one particular night had been so busy, it was Christmas Eve. We were getting hammered. I had help until about nine, then the guy who was helping me had to leave as his mom had been involved in a car accident. So there I was, twenty years old, weighed maybe a hundred and twenty pounds and getting swamped with the volume of people coming in to stock up on things like milk and bread, that kind of stuff. Anyway, when it got to eleven, and the store finally slowed down. I had a lot of money in the till, but because it had been so busy, I hadn’t had a chance to deposit any in the safe.”
“I don’t like where this is going, Dad.” Sam’s stressed. She’s tapping her fingers on the table, while her eyes are wide as she leaning in listening to Dad.
“This guy came in, fired a shot over my head, made me open the till, and took all the money. Then he ran.”
“Oh.” I gasp, shocked and terrified at the same time. “What happened?” I ask.
“He was in and out in under thirty seconds. The store had surveillance and recorded him. It was under thirty seconds, but to me everything stopped. I was terrified. I had no idea what happened, my heart rate shot up through the ceiling, I swear I thought he was going to kill me.”
“You could’ve died, Dad,” Sam says, big fat tears forming in her eyes and spilling over.
“Aw, pumpkin, he didn’t want me dead, he just wanted whatever was in the till.” He stands and goes straight to Sam, comforting her.
“What do you think about that, Mom?” I ask.
“Your father told me that story soon after we met. He told me because I was working in a gas station and he told me he didn’t want me doing that anymore because of what happened to him. He told me he’d feel better if he knew the love of his life was doing something safer.”
“Did you really say that?” I ask Dad.
The tops of his ears are red, and the same color is spreading across his cheeks. “I may have said something similar. I don’t recall the exact words.” He tries to play it down.
“I remember, Owen. And those are the words you used.”
“Thank you, darling.” He leaves Sam who’s smiling now and goes back to his seat, giving Mom a chaste kiss on her lips.
“My point is . . .” A knock on the door interrupts him before we get find out what the point was. Dad looks around the table at us. “Is anyone expecting guests?” he asks us. We all shake our heads and peer toward the door. “Okay, stay here. I’ll see who it is.”
Dad goes to the door and we’re all quiet, trying to listen to his conversation, but we can’t hear anything clearly. Dad’s footsteps come into the family room and I hear at least two more sets of feet following him.
“Um, Dakota?” I turn around to see Tracey, Andrea, and Mr. C all standing in my living room.
“What’s he doing here?” I demand, pointing at Mr. C, suspicious and appalled that he has the audacity to come to my home. Ab
ruptly, I stand and move as far away as possible from him. With my back against the wall, I carefully watch him.
“Dakota, we need to talk to you,” Tracey says.
Dad comes to me, and protectively slings his arm around my shoulders. My eyes are focused on Mr. C. His beady eyes are watching me and I can’t help but bury myself into Dad’s side. I want to be brave, but I can’t when he’s in my home and I can’t avoid him.
“Come sit, Dakota,” Andrea says and pats the sofa beside her. I opt to stay opposite her, where I can keep an eye on my math teacher.
“Dad,” I whisper.
“I promise you, everything’s okay.”
We all sit, and I hold my breath waiting for the words Andrea or Tracey are going to speak, but I’m also cautious of Mr. C.
“We have some news to tell you,” Tracey starts. “This is Detective Gary Pearce. He’s been undercover at your school since last year.”
“You’re a cop?” I ask incredulously.
“Yes, Dakota, I am.” He holds his badge out for me to look at.
“I don’t get it. Why were you at our school?” I look to Sam, and her mouth is wide open, her eyes popping out of her head. I’m fairly certain she’s as stunned by this as I am. “But you’re creepy. You’d always show up where we were, checking us out.”
“It’s my job.”
“This doesn’t make sense. None of it does.”
“About eighteen months ago, three girls came into the police station and reported they’d had their drinks spiked and had subsequently been raped. All separate occasions, all within a few weeks of each other, all in exactly the same circumstances.”
“Okay,” I skeptically say.
“We built a task force to try and find who this person was. With all the information we had, we were able to narrow it down to one of three schools. We put an undercover police officer in each of the schools, posing as a teacher to keep an eye on what was happening.”
“Then you knew what was happening to me on the night of the prom.”
“I suspected, and when you disappeared I tried to find you, I even drove around looking for you. I pulled cars off their beats to search for you, but no one could find you. With what happened to you, we pinpointed the abuser to be someone at your school.”
“But when I woke up, I was out by the bleachers, you couldn’t have looked too hard if you didn’t find me there.”
“We did look there. But when we searched it, you weren’t there. You were taken away from the school, then brought back and dumped there.”
“Shit,” Mom whispers. “Sorry.” She quickly retracts it and slaps her hand over her mouth.
“Now that we knew the school, we just had to figure who the students were. It could’ve been anyone. The night of the prom, I didn’t know who to look at, so I had to keep an eye on everyone. But all three schools had their proms on the same night. We were stretched and had to monitor all three. The moment I saw you, I called in back-up and we started searching for you.”
“What?” Disbelief floods me. From what he’s said, and what I’m understanding, he’s basically saying the police knew someone was going to be assaulted on the night of my prom.
“A few of the boys disappeared, about fifty of them, and I had no idea where they got to. I noted down their names, and we started investigating them all one by one.”
“Oh.” Words elude me. I’m stunned at the revelations Mr. C is making.
“Then the social media pictures started, and although at first they’d been deleted quickly, we finally were able to get an IP address.”
“An IP address? You mean they were all sent from the same computer?” Dad asks, confused.
“Yes, he was extremely brazen, or stupid. Either way, it worked in our favor. But thanks to you, Dakota, the dress you provided, and your recollection of what happened to you, we have an ironclad case. We’ve got the person carrying out these assaults.”
“Who?” I ask.
Mr. C looks remorseful, as if he doesn’t want to tell me.
It hits me before he even opens his mouth.
Oh my God.
Levi raped me. “It was Levi,” I gasp.
“Yes,” he confirms. “Today in class, we had the warrant ready to arrest him. All the officers needed was confirmation from me he was in class.”
A movie plays back in my head. I’m standing at the back of the class, watching everything from the moment I stepped into class. And I catch it. The small smile Mr. C gives his phone when he sends that ‘important’ text message. He was telling them, Levi was in class. “They came in quick, and got him out fast before anyone knew anything,” I say.
“At the same time, there was a raid happening at his house. It had to be synchronized, and we had to make sure he was in my class so no other teacher was suspicious or put in the middle of it.”
I sit quietly on the sofa. The bottom of my world has just fallen out from beneath me. To say I’m devastated is only the tip of the iceberg. Betrayed, hurt, humiliated. All of that and so much more.
“I just . . . I need a drink,” I say as I stand on wobbly legs and head into the kitchen.
Mom follows me in. “Dakota,” she sighs sympathetically. I shake my head as I reach for a glass, I don’t want to hear anything, I just want something to drink. Pouring some water from the faucet, I take a few minutes to process everything they’ve said.
I don’t want to believe Mr. C, but deep down inside I know it’s the truth. I count to ten in my head, breathing deep to settle my frazzled nerves and rapidly beating heart. I drink the water and place the glass in the sink, pull my shoulders back and return to the family room.
“He belongs in jail. Tell me the evidence you have is enough to send him there.” My tone is eerily controlled; I’m not emotional or weepy. I’m furious. Goosebumps sweep my entire body as ice settles inside my veins.
“He’s going to jail for a long time. His brother is, too.”
“His brother? Levi doesn’t have a brother,” I say. “He told me he’s an only child. I’ve been to his house many times, and there was never any mention of his brother.” No photos, no name . . . nothing.
“Yes, he has an older brother, Robert. He dropped out of school and started running drugs for some low-level drug dealer. Then Robert started selling them on his own.”
Every new piece of information I’m getting is filling in the overall puzzle. Everything fits. Finally everything is coming together. “He was getting the drugs from his brother,” I say, realizing how intricate the web he’d spun was. “What other evidence have you got?”
“There was sperm on your dress.”
I shiver, and cringe. Vomit wants to come up, but I push it down, I refuse to let my weakness show. “Is that all? If it is, is that enough? He can say we had consensual sex and that’s how his sperm got on my dress.”
“You’re a smart young lady, Dakota. Don’t ever let that go.” Mr. C points to me. “But yes, there’s more.”
My jaw clenches as I move my neck from side to side to loosen the tension in my muscles. “What else?” I ask.
“We found his collection of trophies.”
“Underwear, right?” He nods his head. “How many?” I hold my breath, because I know there are more than just mine.
“Including you, eight in total.”
I expel the breath I’ve been holding. “Is Sophie one of them?”
“We can’t tell you that. But it’s best if you call her.” That’s all the confirmation I need. Sweat coats the palms of my hands as I ball them into fists.
“Why the pictures on social media? Why did he do it? Do you know? Did he say?”
“Levi became very forthcoming when we confronted him and his lawyer with what evidence we had. Our investigation is tight. There’s no way he’ll get out of going to jail.”
“But why did he continue to humiliate me on social media?” I ask in a pained tone.
“His answer was that you deserved it for being a prick te
ase.”
And there it is. My life was flushed down the toilet because he thought I was a ‘prick tease.’ Because he thought he was entitled to something from me, he altered the way I’ll be for the rest of my life because I refused him sex.
I collapse to the sofa and suddenly I don’t feel so strong. I have no energy left inside me to fight. I was nothing to him.
“I can’t deal with any more tonight,” I say to all three police officers.
“Dakota, I just want to say, your strength throughout all this has been amazing. It’s because of you we were able to find him, and it’s because of you, we’ll be able to put him away. He won’t be hurting anyone else,” Andrea says.
“I’m proud of you, Dakota,” Mr. C adds.
Mom and Dad talk to them for some time as they show them out, while Sam and I sit numbly on the sofa.
Neither of us is talking, because neither of us knows what to say. When Mom and Dad come back, they sit on the sofa, quiet too.
My world has collapsed. It’s fallen apart and I’m not sure I know how to deal with this. It’s bigger than I ever thought.
The man I trusted ended up betraying me.
The man I mistrusted ended up playing a key role in seeking justice on my behalf.
I come to the very real conclusion, that I’m lost. I’m broken. Emotionless. And I can’t get out of this.
“I need to see Tara,” I say. “I’ve been betrayed, humiliated, and raped. And I don’t know what to do now.”
Mom and Dad both look at me, and nod.
I need to learn how to become a survivor; I can’t stay a victim any longer.
Chapter 46
It’s been over a week since the police came to my house and hit me with all the truths I didn’t want to know. I haven’t returned to school yet. Instead, I’ve being seeing Tara daily and she’s been helping me deal with this clusterfuck.
Sophie’s come over today. Both of us are having difficulty adjusting to the knowledge my ex-boyfriend raped us both. “Do you want a drink?” I ask her as she comes into my house.
“Yeah, I think I do. Got a scotch?” she chuckles. I know she doesn’t mean it, but with the information overload we’ve gotten, we’ve thankfully found strength in each other.
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