A Harmless Little Game (Harmless #1)

 

“I should never have come home,” I groan. My purse shuffles against my hip and I remember my pills. I remember Stacia’s call earlier. Maybe I’m really not ready for all this. The island looks so much better. More appealing. Life was so simple there. I knew what was expected, even if I couldn’t always manage to do exactly what they wanted.

 

Out here, in real life, the complexities are so much more convoluted.

 

“Don’t say that, Lindsay. You have every right to be home. You’ve suffered enough.”

 

“Define ‘enough,’” I moan, sucking on a piece of ice.

 

She makes a snort-laugh. “I think there’s a picture of you in the dictionary next to the word ‘suffering,’ Lindsay.”

 

Jane wasn’t this sharp four years ago. While I always liked Jane, I’m coming to admire her now.

 

“Huh.” I make a sound that’s half laugh, half recognition of the truth in her words.

 

“Look. You have a lot to face. Mom and I wish your parents had brought you home a long time ago—”

 

“You and Anya talk about me?” I ask, surprised by the thought.

 

“Of course we do.”

 

“Oh! Because of the..because you found me that night.”

 

“No. Because we like you. We care about you. We hate what happened and wish we could change it. And Mom’s been telling your dad for two years now that it was past time for you to come home. He said the people at that place you were in were telling him you weren’t ready.”

 

“I’ve been ready for a long time.”

 

“How long?”

 

I pause. I think. “About two years.”

 

“What the hell did they have you do there for four years?”

 

“I knit 126 sweaters in knitting therapy.”

 

She laughs. It’s a guilty sound, like she’s not supposed to find that funny.

 

“I’m serious! They were insistent on knitting therapy. I finally started to ‘show progress’ when I suggested we knit penguin sweaters for environmentalists to put on penguins under oil slick conditions.”

 

“That’s a thing?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Penguin sweaters?” Her voice takes on a slightly hysterical tone.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Like, with little holes for the—the—the flippers?”

 

“Yeah.” I can’t stop laughing now. We sound like hyenas.

 

Someone knocks on the door.

 

“Lindsay? Jane? You okay in there?” It’s Drew.

 

“Penguin sweaters!” Jane screeches.

 

“What?” Drew calls back.

 

“Flipper holes!” I shout.

 

“They’re not making any sense,” he mutters through the door.

 

“I observed them drink only one and a half alcoholic drinks, sir,” Silas says back.

 

“I observed them drink only one and a half alcoholic drinks, sir,” Jane mimics, her voice going high and loud with the effort.

 

I can’t stop laughing. My sides hurt. This is worse than throwing up. I’m sitting on the floor of a bar bathroom with my face pressed against the scraped bathroom door, the metal cool and rough, and I’m laughing about knitting penguin sweaters as part of my therapy in a mental institution where I lived for four years after being gang raped on live, streaming television.

 

I double up and laugh some more.

 

Because, really, what else can I do?

 

The outer door opens and Jane screams.

 

“OUT! This is the women’s room.”

 

“And I’m head of Lindsay’s security detail and need to make sure she’s okay.”

 

“What’s she going to do in here, Drew?” Jane challenges him. “Hang herself on a tampon string?”

 

Now I really can’t stop laughing. I hear Silas in the background, coughing to hide a chuckle.

 

“Fine.” I hear Drew leave and the door close.

 

“He’s really insistent, isn’t he?” she asks, slowly opening my door. I roll onto the ground and stare up at her.

 

“He’s my security detail.”

 

“Yeah, but he doesn’t have to be an asshole about it.”

 

“I heard that!” Drew calls through the door.

 

“Good!” Jane and I shout back in unison.

 

“I shouldn’t be mean to him,” I say, standing slowly. “He did get rid of Mandy for me.”

 

“Yeah.” Jane thinks for a minute. “But he hates her guts, too. So I think he got plenty of personal satisfaction out of that one.”

 

“Why does he hate her?” I wash my hands in the sink as Jane leans against the wall and talks.

 

“Why do you think? For what she did to you.”

 

“Why would Drew care?”

 

“Because he—ooooooohhhhhhh.” Jane’s voice winds down like a toy running out of batteries. “Shit. Was he really the fourth guy in the video?” I can tell she doesn’t want to believe it. I can’t blame her. I don’t want to believe it.

 

I’ve spent four years wishing it weren’t true.

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 20

 

 

 

 

 

“Yeah. He was.” I’ve never, ever admitted that to anyone. Not Stacia. Not the secondary therapists. Not Daddy or Mom or...anyone.

 

“Fuck,” she says under her breath.

 

“Right.”

 

“So he just sat there on the couch and did...nothing?”

 

Jane gets it. Instantly.

 

“Right.”

 

“That doesn’t make sense.”