A Harmless Little Game (Harmless #1)

 

I keep up the ruse, using a vocal inflection that makes me sound a little too much like Mr. Rogers, from that old kid’s television show. “I’ll be more careful in how I talk about my gang rape from now on. Would you like to approve the medical terminology I can use to describe how the surgeon reconstructed the wall between my vagina and anus? I believe my medical chart uses the words—”

 

Drew’s eyes are wide as saucers. Mom looks like she’s about to slap me again.

 

“Enough!” Daddy roars. “Everyone out. I want to speak with Lindsay alone.”

 

Numb. My entire body goes numb. No cold. No hot. No inbreath. No outbreath. I turn into a senseless, touchless, tasteless, sightless, soundless being who is frozen in place as I realize my mistake.

 

I am human. I have an opinion. I have a soul and feelings and I cannot handle having my integrity so deeply breached that people who are supposed to love and support me actually believe all these lies.

 

And have never, not once, even asked me if what’s been said about me is true.

 

Mom and Daddy and Drew remain after everyone else filters out. Daddy glares at Mom.

 

“You too, Monica.”

 

“No,” she says calmly, as if she expected to be evicted. “I’m staying.”

 

Daddy laces his fingers around my upper arm and gently guides me out of the room, calling back over his shoulder. “Fine. Have fun.”

 

I wish I could see Mom’s face.

 

“Are you hurt?” Daddy’s voice holds a lick of compassion in it, just enough that my shell starts to crack. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry, I beg myself. Please don’t cry. I can cry in my room in a few minutes. Being Strong Lindsay is more important than feeling.

 

“My lip is. I’m bleeding a little.” He pulls me into a tiny solarium, right off a small sliding door where Mom can’t see us. My vision spins for a second and I lean into him. Daddy’s a wall of rock, his arm around my shoulders, easing me into a chair.

 

“Lindsay, that was bad,” he says, exhaling with irritability. “You can’t do that again.”

 

“Do what? Defend myself?”

 

“That wasn’t a defense.”

 

“You never gave me a chance. You all convicted me four years ago and sent me away to serve a prison sentence. I was the one incarcerated instead of the guys who violated me.”

 

My skin feels an electrical charge that shouldn’t be in this warm, humid room. I close my eyes and lick the blood off my lip.

 

Drew. He’s right outside. I can feel him.

 

“Is that what you really think?” Daddy asks. I can tell he expects me to obey him. To say no. To lie.

 

“Yes.”

 

His eyelids close and he inhales slowly, holding the breath for four beats, then letting it out.

 

“Why didn’t anyone ever ask me to tell my story?” I ask before he can say anything.

 

“Because you were ruined before you ever got the chance.”

 

Ruined.

 

Daddy might as well have slapped me. That word hurts more than Mom’s blow.

 

“This isn’t about truth,” he says, his hoarse voice sending a creepy vibe up my back. “This is about a long, arduous marathon to the White House. Your truth is important to you, of course. It’s why we left you on the Island for so long, because you needed to sort everything out and come back whole. Strong. Ready.”

 

Bullshit.

 

I don’t say it, but Daddy looks at me as if I did.

 

“I am a person,” I say, the words slow in forming, like taffy stretched so far it becomes a thread. “I am here. I have been here all along. I’m not a case, or a scandal, or a folder or a strategy you have to contain or mitigate or—”

 

“I know that.” His voice is like a breath that, blown too hard, breaks the thread in half, unmooring the tethered line.

 

“Then act like it.” There is no conviction in my words. As I sit in silence, my nose fills. My hand reaches up to trace the thin scratch from Mom’s slap. I’ve said all I can.

 

There is no more to say.

 

If they do not hear me now, I can’t change that. I can change me, but I can’t change them. The clichéd platitude that Stacia used to stuff down our throats in group therapy turns out to be useful. Helpful.

 

Painfully true.

 

“Lindsay.”

 

I close my eyes and pretend he’s not there. Surprisingly, this is not an effective strategy.

 

“Lindsay.” His voice is firm. I open my eyes. Daddy has bent down at my eye level and his face is inches from mine. He reaches out and touches my chin with his hand, eventually cupping my jaw into his palm.

 

“We researched everything. Everything. When you’re the head of a major senate committee, you have access to the finest investigators in the world.”

 

He knows. He knows about Drew being there. Then why did he hire Drew to shadow me?

 

“We know the names of the men who did those barbaric—well, who did that to you. We know your friends turned on you and lied. We know you didn’t ask for it.” He looks up, over my shoulder, as if he’s worried someone will hear him.