When the second half starts, Ben sinks two threes early, and we keep a lead of six points for a while. The other team is ferocious. They have desperation on their side, and finally, with five minutes to go, LeRon fouls out. Four minutes later, it’s a tie ball game.
With twenty seconds winding down on the clock, Ben brings the ball down, passing out to Reggie, who tries to drive in for a layup but has to toss the ball back to Ben at the top of the key. Ben tries again, threading an expert pass to Kyle. Kyle can’t get clear either and passes back up to him.
Five, four, three . . .
As the whole arena thunders with a countdown, I see Ben square up and let fly with a jump shot that seems to sail in slow motion toward the basket, the thwfft of the net drowned out by the buzzer and the roar of twenty thousand people.
Almost single-handedly, my boyfriend wins the game.
As we leap from the bleachers and run onto the court, I see Adele spring forward into David Langman’s arms, smearing blue lipstick across the shoulder of his suit. Ben is nearly tackled by the entire team in the middle of the court, but he somehow stays upright and fights his way over to me.
“There you are,” he yells as he sweeps me up in the sweatiest, smelliest, most perfect embrace I have ever known. His lips find mine at center court, the strobes of a hundred photographers, flashing in purple bursts through my eyelids. Ben promises to text me as soon as he gets onto the bus, then is hustled toward the locker room on Kyle’s and Reggie’s shoulders.
The cameras are in full force outside the arena, too, but not all of the journalists are covering the game. As Mom and Adele push through the doors that lead into the parking lot, we are greeted by a tunnel of anchors, using a huge crowd behind them as a backdrop for live reports. Police are roping off a walkway in the middle of what is now a full-on media circus. The handful of protestors from the school parking lot has quintupled in size, their faces covered in pink masks, their voices raised in a chant:
Not a victory for the victim!
Not a victory for the victim!
Lindsey catches my eye. “Guess not everyone has forgotten,” she says.
Far from it.
Here in the parking lot, beneath the glare of the camera lights, Stacey Stallard is the main attraction.
thirty-nine
FRESH OUT OF the shower after the game, I open the bathroom door to air out the steam. I’m wrapping my wet hair in a towel when I hear the words drift down the hall.
“Get a roooooooom!”
I have heard those words from that voice before. I never wanted to hear them again.
Almost before I realize what’s happening, I’m throwing Will’s bedroom door wide-open.
“How the hell did you find that?”
He jumps and slams the cover of his laptop, spinning around. I swing his door closed behind me as quietly as I can. I don’t need Dad coming to investigate.
Will’s eyes are wide and looking anywhere but at me. “What? I don’t know! What are you talking about?”
I scramble across the piles on the floor of his room and flip the computer open again. There is the frozen image of the white couch, the blurred bodies of Dooney, Stacey, and the rest. My hand is trembling as I point to the screen.
“Where did you find this?”
He crosses his arms and sets his jaw. “I just . . . found it.”
I turn around and head toward the door. “Fine. You can tell Mom where—”
“Wait!” His whisper is a hurricane, angry with a silent plea at the center.
I pause, hands on my hips. Will growls quietly under his breath. “Fine,” he says. “Tyler sent it to me.”
“Where’d he get—”
“I don’t know. Jesus. He wouldn’t tell me.”
I shake my head, chewing on my front lip. “What site is it on?”
“It’s not on a site,” he says. “He emailed it to me.”
“Delete it,” I say. “Now.”
“What? No way. You saw it.”
I sputter, eyes wide. “What? How do you know that?”
“Oh, c’mon, I’m a freshman, not an idiot.”
“Debatable. Explain.”
“Everybody knows you were the one who went to Ms. Speck,” he says.
“And why the hell would everybody know that?”
“Kate, it’s not my fault that you were out in the parking lot talking to her and that reporter. The school has windows, you know—”
“Fine,” I say. “You want to watch it? Let’s watch it. The whole thing.”
He blinks at me, his cheeks flushed from the heat of my rage. Slowly, he turns around and taps the spacebar.
The video I never wanted to see again flickers to life once more. Will sits in his desk chair, and I sink down beside him on the corner of his bed.
Rape and pillage, babeeey.
Is she drunk or dead?
I got something that’ll wake her up!
Trashy.
This time I watch the corners of the screen instead of the horrible thing happening at the center, and I realize there are more people in the room than I initially noticed. The recessed lighting in the ceiling has a spotlight effect. There are a lot more people walking in and out of those bright bursts than I saw the first time. They’re laughing, drinking, making out, playing beer pong on the other side of the room.