“Fucking sadist,” Yvette spits. “Okay, so you go in there, and I bust you out. Right?”
“Subtlety.”
“What does that mean?” She wrinkles her nose.
“It means instead of busting down his door and alerting him to the fact I’ve planned this and am messing with his shit, you gotta make a distraction.”
“Who’s making a distraction?” Diana asks as she walks in. “And can I help?”
“You’re hired,” I point at her. Yvette fills her in as I dig in my closet for an appropriate battle outfit. Something cute, but not too cute. I want to remind him of what he ruined, distract him with his own ‘triumphs’ long enough to blind him a bit. I pick dark skinny jeans and a tight shirt, even though it makes me sick to my stomach to think of baring any of my curves in front of him. This is for Jack. This is so he doesn’t end up in jail.
“We could pull the fire alarm,” Diana says. “The boy’s dorm will empty fairly quickly, and I doubt even someone like this guy will want to stick around with that siren in his ear.”
“Perfect. God, you’re a genius. My girlfriend is a genius,” Yvette kisses her on the cheek. Diana blushes.
“Oh, stop.”
Yvette goes over to the window and opens it, yelling.
“MY GIRLFRIEND IS A GENIUS!”
My mouth is a happy open ‘o’ as I look at Diana, whose blush is now frozen on her shocked face. It’s a bold move full of courage and love, and it’s so different from the Yvette I know, who whispered her secret to me from over a pillow months ago. Diana gets up and they start kissing, and I clear my throat only when I see bits of tongue.
“Ahem! Payback Brigade, attention!”
They both laugh, trying to separate and turn towards me in a salute all at once, but they bump noses and legs and then we’re all laughing on the floor, and I know without a shred of doubt I’ll be alright.
No matter what happens after tonight, I’ll be okay.
Yvette and Diana agree to pull the fire alarm exactly seven minutes after I go into the dorm. That gives me two minutes to get up the stairs, and five minutes to chat Will up enough to distract him and plant the keylog. But if I fuck up –
I shake my head. No fucking up! Not on the menu. Not now, now ever. Never was. Fucking up is the fish sticks of the Life Options restaurant menu – nobody orders it, and nobody likes it. And if you do order it, it was an accident and you regret ever living.
I rush up the stairs and forcefully catch my breath outside Will’s room. I smooth my hair and try to look like I didn’t just run straight up three flights. My hands are shaking. I feel like I’m going to puke.
And then my cellphone goes off.
I scrabble to answer it before it alerts Will.
“Hello?” I whisper, moving away from the door.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Jack snarls, sounding as though he’s walking very quickly. “Get out of there, right now.”
“Don’t come here,” I demand. “I’m serious, Jack. Stay away. How did you even -”
“Charlie told me you were acting strange. Isis, you can’t go in there with him. You need to stay the hell out of this. It’s my job! Not yours! You could get hurt!”
“It’s worth it,” I say. “If I do this, you’ll be okay. So. Just let me do it. Please.”
“No! No, I’m coming to get you –”
“Jack,” I hiss with all the force I can muster. “You ran away after Sophia’s funeral because you needed to. I need to go in there now. Alone. It’s the same.”
Jack’s silent, then lets out a feral snarl of frustration. “No.”
“Yes.”
“No, Isis, please no.”
“He won’t hurt me this time.”
“You don’t know that!”
“I don’t. You’re right. I don’t know anything. I don’t know if the sun will rise tomorrow, or if I’ll contract some horrible disease or get hit by a car, or if Will might hurt me. I don’t know where I’ll be in three years, and I sure as hell dunno where I’ll be in ten. I don’t know if Game of Thrones will ever be finished! I don’t know if anyone I love will die soon, and I don’t know if a meteor is gonna come down and smite us all into ash. I don’t know if the world will spin off its axis and hurl into space and we’ll slowly freeze. I don’t know if I’ll have eggs tomorrow for breakfast or not.” I laugh. “But I do know I love you. That’s….that’s really the only thing I do know.”
“Isis –”
“Please, Jack. Let me do this. I’ll come back in one piece. I promise.”
“You promise,” he says, his voice hopeless and small and steely.
“I promise, idiot.”
“I love you,” He says. “God, I fucking love you.”
Jack hangs up first. I hang up last, and face the door at the very last. Except there’s no door. There’s only the chest of Will Cavanaugh in front of my face. I back up quickly, and he chuckles.
“Isis! So good of you to come. I heard your voice and was concerned, so I came out to check, and lo and behold, here you are! What a pleasant surprise.”
I set my expression, trying to make it unreadable.
“I want to talk to you. In private.”
“Of course you do.” He smirks. “Let’s go. My roommate’s out getting dinner.”
He leads me to his room, and shuts the door behind me.
“Don’t lock it,” I say, feigning a hint of terror in my voice. But he does anyway, double checks the lock, and smiles.
“Can’t have you running off now, can we? We have important things to discuss!”
Will claps his hands and sits on the bed, and motions for me to sit on his chair near his desk. And his computer. Bingo.
“So!” He says. “Should you start, or should I? Or will you just sit there struck dumb like you always do and let me walk all over you?”
“That would be nice for you, wouldn’t it?” I snarl. He makes an ‘oooh’ noise.
“So you’ve got some spark back in you, huh? And here I thought I’d gotten rid of it all. Such a shame.”
“You’re not worth the breath it would take to speak to you,” I say. “But I’m going to do it anyway, because this was something I should’ve said a long time ago to you.”
“Oh, let me guess! Is it one of your resounding ‘fuck you’s? I love those so much. I miss those, you know. Hearing them from a fat, nasty blob like you was truly entertaining.”
“Is that all you care about? ‘Entertaining’?”
He taps his chin thoughtfully, then nods. “Yes! Fun things are the only important things in the world. If you can’t have any fun with it, then it’s useless and should be discarded promptly. That’s only fair.”
Will gets up, circles me, then grabs my hand. I pull away, panic making my muscles strong, but he rips my fingers open and grabs the keylog from it.
“Well now, what’s this?” He laughs. The hope punches out of me in a single hard burst.
“It’s n-nothing,” I scrabble. “Just a piece of dirt –”
“It’s a keylog. Did you really think I didn’t know? I saw you and that disgusting creep walking around, kissing and making stupid fucking faces at each other, and I knew he was getting you in on this. He’s after me, and his fucking partner’s after me, and now you’re after me. But it won’t work, because –” He snaps the keylog in two, grin wide. “I’m just that much smarter than you.”
I stare at the fracture remnants of my hope as Will flops on the bed again and sighs.
“I could never be as entertaining as you though, piggy.”
“Is that all….is that all I was to you?” I choke. “Entertaining? Nothing about us – not one single time was because you liked me?”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong. I liked you very much.” He smiles. “I thought you knew that.”
“But you – you can’t like someone and call them names. You can’t like someone and –”
“Yesss?” He leads. “Go on. Say it
.”
I take a breath, the deepest breath. I fill my lungs with strength, with Jack’s smell and memories of his laughter and his hands, of Diana and Yvette’s laugh, of Kayla’s teary smile. I look Will in the dark eyes and hold my gaze there.
“You can’t like someone and rape them.”
“But you can,” He protests. “It’s really too bad you thought about it as rape! I was trying to have sex with you! That’s how much I liked you!”
My instinct is to squeeze my eyes shut, to block out the memories, but I force myself to unblinkingly stare at him, through him.
“I told you to stop. I said it clearly many times.”
“It’s true. You did. But girls don’t really know how good it is, so they say stop. But they don’t really mean it. That’s why I got mad. That’s why I had to do it – because you kept saying stop. Because you were a stupid little girl who kept changing her mind and didn’t know what she wanted.”
His words turn to a hiss, his anger refreshing. This is the real him, the one he hides behind the boisterous laughter and genial good-boy front and fake grins.
“I wasn’t stupid,” I say slowly. “I just didn’t want you.”
He stands all at once, tall and exploding from the bed.
“You did.”
“No,” I smile. “I didn’t.”
Will has no control over himself. He just puts a silk screen over his ugly face and hopes people won’t look or pry too hard. But I’ve pried the hardest. I’ve stabbed him where it hurts, deep in his ego, and his handsome faces twists into an ugly mockery - a gargoyle, a vampire of old.
“You fucking bitch!” He slams his hands on his desk. The computer rattles. “You were a fat, fucking ugly bitch! You were lucky I even let you hang around! You were so fucking lucky I even wanted to touch your fat, stinking carcass! No one else did. No one else does. Not even that fucking pretty boy. He’s just fucking you because he pities you. He sees how pathetic and ugly you are, and he’s taking pity on your piggy ass!”
I sit still, transfixing my eyes on his face, not away from it. I always used to look away, too afraid that his face, his every finger, or his eyes would bring up memories. Will puts his red, furious face in mine, and it’s all I can do to not bolt up and dive through the open window away from him.
“I had you first!” He seethes. “He’s got my trash, my discarded meal, my fucking garbage! You’re nothing. You’re nothing without me. I got you friends, I got you popularity, I fucking taught you how to smoke and drink and steal and not be a pathetic fucking loser. You’re mine! You’re mine, and to anyone else you’re an empty, useless bitch. Fucking. Useless. Garbage.”
With his every word something deep inside me starts to come loose. It’s hardened and dark, like old amber on the skin of a tree, and it wiggles free bit by bit. Will laughs, an insane sound.
“You liked it. I know you fucking liked it, you whore.”
And with that the dark thing pops free, off the bark of my insides, and floats up and away, out of me, out of the top of my head, and I suddenly feel so light and exhausted.
Whatever Will used to be in my memories, whatever he’d done to me in the past, suddenly lets its grip on me go, and disappears into the air.
“You never loved me,” I say hoarsely. “And I hated it.”
“You hate me,” He grins, maniacal. “You’ll always hate me.”
“No.” I stand, and sigh. “I feel sorry for you.”
It happens so fast I lose my footing and fall – Will lunges for me and pins me to the ground with his knees. Fear streams down my back, my spine, my face, like the ice-cold claws of a dread monster made of razors.
“Get off!” I scream. “GET THE FUCK OFF ME!”
“You think you’re better than me?” He sneers, spittle landing in my eyes. He grabs my flailing wrists and pins them to the floor, too. “You think you’ve got the fucking right to feel sorry for me? I’ll show you sorry. I’ll make you more sorry than you ever wanted –”
I spit in his face. It hits him on the eyebrow and drips down, and he looks horrified for a split second before he knees me hard in the ribs. I cry outand I try to squirm away, try to kick him and punch him but there’s nothing to kick and punch with, everything is weighed down by a heavy, furious weight.
It’s going to happen again.
It’s going to happen again.
It’s going to happen again and I can’t stop it.
No.
NO.
I can! I can stop this. I have to stop this once and for fucking all!
I twist my body around and kick hard, my foot meeting a soft bit of disgusting flesh between his legs, and Will wails and curls off me. It’s not a lot, his stubbornness clinging to my body, but it’s enough to give me the leverage I need to kick him off like the leech he is and race for the lightswitch.
“No!” He shrieks, the room flooding with total darkness. The only light is the faint streetlight from the window, and he scrabbles to sit on his bed and directly in that little square.
“You bitch!” Will snaps, shivering. “You fucking cunt! I’ll kill you when I find you. I-If you get near me I’ll fucking kill you!”
I stay low, like a panther. The tables have turned. I’m the predator, the wild thing in the darkness to haunt his nightmares. I have the power, and I’m drunk on it, seething with a smile that can barely contain my laugh.
“You’re pathetic,” I say. Will immediately lunges for my voice, but I sidestep him and when his fingers touch emptiness he recoils back into the light.
“You’re a disgusting human being.”
I sidestep again, farther back, and he swipes wildly at nothingness.
“Fuck you!” He screams.
“I pity you because you’ll never know what it’s like to be loved,” I laugh, dark and hoarse. “Your daddy never taught you. He taught you the opposite. And with that nasty attitude, no one in the world is going to try to teach you otherwise.”
“Shut up! Shut your whore mouth!”
“You’re going to rot forever inside yourself,” I whisper. “You’re going to be afraid of the darkness forever, the real darkness, the dark inside you. It’s there forever. And no one will ever care about you enough to try and pull it out. You will never care about yourself enough to try and pull it out.”
Will’s face crumples in the dimness, and I smile.
“I pity you, Will Cavanaugh.”
The door behind me slams open, light flooding in from the hallway. Jack, breathless and furious, tumbles into the room, takes one look at the situation, and strides over to me, holding me in his arms.
“Did he touch you?” He cups my face, looking it over with all the gentle intent of a doctor.
“No,” I smile up at him. “Not for long, anyway.”
Jack tenses, eyes solidifying to the most subzero temperatures I’ve seen yet. The room itself seems to go cold as he fixes his twin icebergs on Will. Will’s eyes dart around, focusing on the exit behind us, and he musters up a mad dash but never quite makes it, because Jack’s legs trip his and in two seconds he has Will pinned to the ground, his arm twisted behind him and his cries echoing.
“Fuck! Fuck you, you fucking bastard! Let me go!”
Jack looks up, and stands on Will’s arm, using Will as a footstool to reach the light on the ceiling. He pulls the bulb out, throwing it against wall. It splinters in fragments of glass.
“Isis,” Jack says calmly. “The lamp.”
I oblige, stepping over Will and maybe dragging my foot a little so it hits his face. He swears, but he swears harder when I yank the lamp out by the cord. I’m about to throw it at the wall when Jack stops me.
“No. The bed. I’ll hold him. Use the cord and tie him to it.”
“No! Shit, shit, fuck, no! You can’t do this! You can’t fucking do this to me! Isis, don’t let him do this!”
I ignore his teary pleas as Jack fixes his arms around the iron bedpost sunk into the floor. I tie the cord twice, and
Jack ties it a third time, yanking it to check the tightness.
“It should be about seven hours until sunrise,” Jack says. “And I’m sure we can persuade your roommate to spend the night somewhere else. Somewhere…quieter.”
“The window,” I say casually. “It should be covered.”
“NO!”
“You know, it really should,” Jack agrees, smiling as he pulls the comforter from the bed and throws it over the window’s curtain rod, blocking out all the light from outside.
“Isis! I-Isis please!” Will pants, tears and snot dripping down his nose. “You can’t do this! I liked you! I cared about you –”
Jack punches him so hard I hear the crack of bone. He leans in, grabbing Will’s collar and sneering in his face.
“You will never speak to Isis again.”
“Isis! Plea-”
I turn away just in time to avoid seeing the second punch. But then I look back, because I deserve that much. His bloody nose drips down his chin and mouth, and he pants, a thin sheen of sweat over his terrified face as Jack and I retreat.
“The joke’s on you, Will,” I laugh. “The keylog you crushed was a fake I made from a soda bottle. I can’t believe you thought I was stupid enough to only have one. I planted the real one when you locked the door, when we first walked in. And now you’re fucked. Really, really fucked.”
“NO! NO!”
“Ah, the noise,” Jack says. He rummages through a nearby dresser and pulls out a shirt, handing it to me. “Should I do the honors?”
“I will,” I say. I rip the flimsy cotton down the middle and walk up to the pathetic boy I used to love. Will whimpers, the threat of another punch keeping him from speaking.
“Tell me why,” I say, squatting at his level. “Why did you rape me?”
Will looks to Jack, who just nods. Will tries a smile.
“B-Because, Isis! I liked you!”
He struggles weakly as I force the cloth in his mouth. Not his throat, because I don’t want to kill him. I thought I did, but I really don’t. I want him to live. To suffer like I did.
I walk back to Jack, Will’s muffled screaming the last thing I hear before I shut the door.