A Harmless Little Game (Harmless #1)(21)

I look at the screen and swipe.

It’s Stacia.





Chapter 17





I stare dumbly at the screen. My stomach throbs, like there’s a pulse in there.

“You answering it?”

“No.” I turn the phone over and pretend my past isn’t chasing me.

“It’s not your father, is it?”

I look Jane square in the eye. “It’s my primary therapist. My manhandler. My babysitter from the Island.”

“The Island?” Her eyes are neutral, gathering information, curious.

“The mental institution Daddy’s been hiding me in all these years.”

“So it’s true,” she gasps. “I knew you were in there for two years, but when they told me to stop writing you letters, when they said you didn’t want to be friends any more, I...”

I pinch the bridge of my nose and look down at the shiny table top. The rest of my latte’s gone cold. “They said that?”

“Yeah. I figured they were lying, but I also didn’t know. Maybe you hated me like I imagine you hate Mandy, Jenna and Tara. I wasn’t part of that, though.”

This is so confusing.

“What did the girls actually say? What do you mean? I don’t know anything about this part. I know they did something. That’s all I know.”

“They lied to the press. Lied to everyone. They said you got drunk and high and invited the four guys in the video to, um...to have sex with you. At the same time.”

And now I’m twenty-thousand feet above this conversation, untethered in space, gasping for air.

“Mandy, Jenna and Tara all said that?”

“At different times, yes. About two days after it hit the news. You were all over the place, Lindsay. Major network news, cable news, the BBC, you name it. Online, too. None of the major news outlets showed the video. That appeared on tiny little websites slowly, like someone was trickling it out to each website one at a time. I know your mom and dad hired a company to get the copies taken down, but it was on enough sites that...”

“I know. I’ve seen it.” But I never realized my own best friends were the ones who started the rumors.

Her head jerks up from her cup of coffee. “You have?”

“I found ways to access the Internet without being monitored.”

Her eyebrow quirks up and she leans in. “Sounds like you outsmarted a lot of people.”

“I have some new skills,” is all I can say. “So my best friends conducted a smear campaign on me.” A wall of grief hits me.

Anger will come next. I know all about the emotional waves. Maybe Stacia was right. Maybe I’m not ready for any of this.

“They lied. I tried to talk to them but they shut me out.” Jane’s eyelashes flutter. “I was never part of your core group. I wasn’t best friends with them like you were. But I thought I was good enough friends—especially with Jenna—to find out what was going on. They blew me off. Sent their parents’ household staff to handle any call I made. I even tried to go to Jenna’s house. They wouldn’t let me past the gates. Her household manager told me if I tried again, they’d file a restraining order against me for stalking.”

My turn for my jaw to drop.

“What? That’s not Jenna!”

“None of this makes sense, Lindsay. But the shit they said about you...” Jane’s not one to throw around curse words.

The full impact of my nightmare is starting to hit me. I thought I’d come home to re-integrate after being abused. I’ve carried rage for four years because the men who did this to me were never prosecuted. No charges were filed. I assumed Daddy didn’t press charges because he wanted to protect his precious political career. But now...

“No charges were filed,” I choke out.

She shakes her head sadly. “Mandy, Jenna and Tara all gave statements to the District Attorney. Quietly, of course. Once your dad knew about that, he said keeping this a private family matter was best.”

“Oh, God.” My body feels like I’m hurtling through the air, falling from the sky without a parachute. My skin burns from the rush of free fall. No one is there to catch me. I’m about to break every emotional bone in my body and I’m helpless to stop it.

I am powerless.

“Lindsay!” Jane’s voice snaps me back, a little, to reality. “You look green. Oh, I’m so sorry.”

“No, no,” I say faintly. “It’s fine.”

“It’s anything but fine.”

“More of the pieces make sense now,” I whisper. “Why Mandy, Jenna and Tara never wrote letters. You did. You always did.” I feel my voice tear in two. I can hear it, too, in the way I say my words. “You did until they sent a letter that blacked out a sentence. After that, your letters stopped.”

She tilts her head in surprise. “Blacked out a sentence?”

“Yeah.”

“What sentence?’ She shakes her head fast. “Never mind. Of course you don’t know what sentence they blacked it out. Geez, Lindsay, what was that place? A prison?”

I shrug.

“Oh.”

“A very, very nice prison. With every drug and therapy you could imagine. No contact with the outside world except letters and net-nannied Internet access. I could watch all the Disney movies and 1930s classics I wanted, but heaven forbid I asked to see Buzzfeed.”