Her gaze darts around the circle, and I think I can see what she must be seeing: varying degrees of recognition. I have no idea what it’s all about. Everyone here has history, knows the in-jokes, understands the climate. But not me.
She continues, “I broke up with this guy, and he…well, you all know by now.” She hangs her head. “He posted that video of us. I couldn’t believe that he’d do that, and it’s just always out there. It doesn’t matter that you can’t see my face, it’s still—” She works her jaw, eyes growing wet. “It’s such a violation. Most mornings, I couldn’t even get out of bed, but when I did, I just wanted it all to end.” She adds in a rough whisper, “I tried to hang myself.”
Elana looks shocked and worried. “No one knew it was you.”
Georgia just shakes her head. “But I did. I still see it sometimes, you know. All you guys share it around like it’s this… fun thing,” she spits. “But every time I see it, I just hate myself.”
Emory must have seen this video, because he winces. Before anyone else can comment on it, Carlton cuts in.
“I sell drugs.” The camera swings to him and he shrugs. “It’s good money. Like…” He breathes out a laugh. “Fucking unreal money, you have no idea. Weed, uppers, codeine, oxy, Xanax, even some coke every now and then. I move a lot of weight, but I don’t do it one-on-one anymore. I’ve got a few Northridge kids who sling for me down there, some more at Thistle Cove, a few here, a few there. It’s not something I want to do long term,” he insists, palm held up defensively. “I just want enough to coast after college without depending on my dad. Getting a scholarship is a given at this point. And once I get my degree, I’m done with him.”
There’s only three of us left.
Ben speaks up before Vandy and I can. “I went to camp over the summer, for band. We had these lame-ass dorms that were two to a room. My roommate was pretty cool, though. We hung out together for most of it, just screwing around, drinking, chasing tail. The last night of camp, we were packing up and getting wasted off shitty vodka, and we…” He pauses, but I already know what he’s going to say, and it’s a physical battle not to laugh aloud. He mutters, “We ended up fooling around.”
Carlton obviously does not hav
e my restraint. “You’re always giving me grief for checking out guys’ asses, and you’re the one who’s gay?!”
“I’m not gay.” Ben glowers at him, but his face is beet red. “But I’m probably bi.”
Caroline rolls her eyes, while Afton outright laughs. “Oh my god, it’s the twenty-first century, who cares.”
“My parents would care.” His face just gets redder and redder. “I’m not getting sent to some fucking deprogramming camp just because I like a little dick.”
“Only the little ones?” Carlton looks like he might have a stroke with all the laughter he’s holding. “What a relief, mine is safe.”
Ben flips him off. “No one wants your crusty dick, Wade.”
It’s a much-needed moment of levity, all of that back-tightening tension sapped from the room, even if only temporarily. Because it’s just Vandy and me, now. I reluctantly turn to her, a question in my eyes.
You or me?
She meets my gaze. I’m not sure what she sees in mine, but hers is full of panic and No.
Suit yourself.
“Guess it’s me, then.” The camera turns to me and I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees. I can feel them all waiting just a touch more intensely than they had for the other confessions, but it’s no surprise, with all the gossip going around. The truth is probably a lot less interesting. Nevertheless, I keep my eyes trained to my linked fists as I begin, “Few years back, my buddy and I decided to steal a car.” Vandy is so still and silent beside me that it’s like a scream. I wonder if she’s surprised that this is my worst. “His kid sister busted us, though. So when the time came to do it, I talked her into—” I squint at my hands, because that doesn’t sound right. “No, I persuaded her to come with me, because…” I gesture to the room without looking anyone in the eye. “Well, if she’s an accomplice, then she won’t snitch on us. It was a really nice car, and it was dark, and we were on that old highway—the one down past the industrial park.”
Sebastian interrupts, “Straight road.”
I nod without looking at him. “Exactly, I wanted to get it up to speed, open it up. But I never got the chance. This fucking deer came running out into the road, and I didn’t even have both hands on the wheel. I tried to swerve around it, and then—”
There’s a soft, barely-there noise coming from my right—something small and strangled and pained—and I jerk my gaze to her. She’s got a hand pressed lightly to her throat and her blue eyes are trained unseeingly across the room, angled away from me.
I work my mouth around a clumsy reply that never emerges. I want to tell her not to listen. To press her fingers into her ears. To go stand outside the door for a couple minutes. What the hell was I thinking, doing this? Even being detached and relaying it as mechanically as possible, I can barely stand to say it. Why did I think she could bear to relive it?
“What happened?” Georgia gently asks, ripping me away from my thoughts.
I look at Emory, but he won’t meet my gaze, either. I continue, “It flipped. Four, maybe five times.”
“Six.” Vandy’s ragged voice makes the back of my neck prickle. “It flipped six times.”
I can tell a couple of them—Georgia and Sebastian, who must be out of the gossip loop—are just now putting all this together. I mutter, “Six times. Right. And she got,” I sweep a hand toward Vandy, eyes diverted, “hurt. A lot worse than I did.”
It’s a nice, tidy summary. It’s one I’m used to telling, back at Mountain Point, during those legally-mandated counseling sessions. Usually, I’d go on. I’d tell them how the road was so deserted that it took forever for anyone to pass by and see the fire. Rarely, but sometimes, I’d even go into how I kept walking, hoping to flag down the cops I’d called on my battered cell phone, but then always returning because I didn’t want to leave her there alone, broken and barely conscious, on the shoulder of the road. I never say the other stuff—how the pain was so intense that it made me vomit, or how I kept wishing that I’d just died there, in the driver’s seat, because it already felt like my life was over.
I never admit that I moved her.