Deeper (Caroline & West #1)(4)

I look like something out of a slasher flick. There’s blood all over my face, clumping up the ends of my long brown hair. My hand is covered in gore, and the formerly white edge of my shirt where it sticks out under my sweater has gone crimson and wet.

Got what you deserved, didn’t you? Slut.

My stomach heaves up, a sudden lurch that makes me close my eyes and suck in a deep breath.

I look at Krishna, but of course he isn’t the one who said it.

It was them. The men.

They follow me around. Their voices. Their vile opinions, now an endless stream of negative color commentary on my life.

I’d still f*ck her, they say when I turn on the tap. Fuck that bitch until she walks funny. I don’t care about her face.

I stick my fingers under the stream of cold water and wait for it to warm.

“You all right?” Krishna asks.

He looks uncomfortable. We’re friendly, but we’re not really friends. He’s closer with Bridget, my roommate, than he is with me. All four of us were on the same hall last year, Bridget and I rooming across from West and Krishna.

I like Krishna, but he’s not the kind of guy I’d ever choose to lean on. He’s kind of a manwhore, actually, and a slacker. I don’t imagine that standing here watching me bleed is high on his list of things he wanted to do today.

Experimentally, I take the paper towel away. The bleeding seems to have stopped. “I’m fine. You don’t have to stay.”

“I wouldn’t mind, except I have someone I need to meet. But if you want—”

“It’s okay.”

I’d rather be alone. My hands are shaking, and my knees still feel a little untrustworthy.

“I’ll tell West no harm, no foul, okay?”

“Huh?”

“I’ll say you’re not hurt.”

But I am hurt. Inside me, under my rib cage, hiding somewhere deep beneath my lungs, there’s raw, sliced-open flesh that won’t close up. It hurts all the time. My tender nose and the dull throb in my head have nothing on that pain.

“Tell him whatever you want.”

He still looks awkward, but he says, “Later.” When I say it back, he goes.

The door closes with a quiet thud.

I lean against the paper-towel dispenser, listening to the water run, and take deep breaths.

In. Out.

In. Out.

By the eighth breath, I’ve managed to banish most of the fear and tune out the pain. I’ve had a few weeks to practice. I’m getting good at not feeling things.

The key is to keep busy. To set goals and tick them off the list, one after another. I can’t stand here all day breathing. I have to get to lunch, because I’ve got a buttload of studying to do before my group-project meeting at three. I need to look at my email—I heard my phone vibrating during Latin, and I know I’m going to find a fresh crop of links in my daily Google alert. I have some time set aside to deal with them before the meeting.

This is what my life is like now. Always something to do.

Before, I was a diligent student. I printed out my color-blocked class schedule, with designated study sessions neatly labeled and shaded to match. I three-hole-punched all my syllabi and made special binders, one for each class, with custom dividers.

Now I pour all my diligence into designing spreadsheets to track my progress in wiping out my sex pictures from the Internet. I note the URL for each image, the site host, the date and time posted. I’ve mastered reverse image searching and developed mad skills at tracking down site owners’ contact information and bombarding them with legal-sounding messages until they remove every last photo of me from their servers.

The only way to succeed at this horrible game I don’t even want to be playing is to spend a lot of time online seeing things I wish I didn’t have to. I know more about file-sharing porn sites now than the average frat boy does. I have seen eleven lifetimes’ worth of veiny, erect penises. Whenever I lie down and close my eyes, my brain treats me to a clip show of the Day in Porn, and I hear the men accusing me from their dark, seedy corners of the Internet.

You’re nothing but a cockgobbling whore.

I’ll hold you down and f*ck those tits. See how hot you feel then.

I know what they think of me, because they won’t shut up about it. Some nights I can’t sleep, so I sneak out of the dorm room I share with Bridget and drive in circles around Putnam.

I hear those men because I don’t have a choice.

I drive because I don’t know what else to do.

But I don’t have to fall apart. I thought I did at first, when I saw the pictures. That life as I knew it was over, and I just had to deal.

I was wrong. I have choices. Not falling apart is my choice. Every morning, whether I’ve slept or not, whether I’ve made it through the day without crying or given in and sobbed in the shower, where no one can hear me—the sun comes up, and I make my choice.

Today won’t be the day this breaks me.

I throw away the disgusting wad of bloody towel and rinse my face off, drying it on a fresh towel. My sweater is a lost cause. I pull it over my head and toss it in the trash can. It was cheap, anyway, and starting to pill.

I stick the cuff of my shirt under the tap, trying to remember if you’re supposed to use cold water or warm to get blood out. I never get it right. I should look it up on my phone. I should—