What We Saw(69)

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.

The closer you look, the more you see.

Every now and then, a group wanders by the corner of the couch that Randy is filming. They shout or point or laugh.

Dooney. Then Deacon. Then Greg. Then Dooney again. Reggie laughing.

Randy shouting.

Will gasps.

I glance at him as he watches the guys paw at Stacey, climbing on and off her. Her head flops toward the camera, her eyes roll back in their sockets. Every now and then she grunts or groans. As Will watches, his face, set like stone only moments ago, is crumbling—first the contraction of disbelief, then the crinkle of discomfort, the wide smooth planes of shock, and now the heaviness of disgust.

“No more,” he whispers. He reaches up to pause the playback only a few moments past the place where Lindsey and I called it quits.

For the second time in a week, I grab his arm, stopping his wrist over the keyboard. I push his chin back toward the screen.

“No. We have to watch, Will.” My voice chokes with tears, and I see his eyes, shining and full in the glow of the laptop.

“We have to look,” I say. “We have to see what happened, so we can tell the truth about it. Stacey can barely remember. We have to help her. Not being able to say no isn’t the same as saying yes.” I look back at the screen as the video continues. “She didn’t deserve this.”

Will nods. He swipes at his eyes. “Nobody does,” he whispers. “Nobody deserves this.”

I ask him who he recognizes. I can’t make out for sure who everybody is. We point at different people, trying to identify everyone we can see as the video ends. A split second before the playback freezes, a guy steps in front of the camera. He’s facing away from the lens, watching Greg and Dooney, who are still taking turns on top of Stacey. The guy stands under one of the recessed lights so close to Randy that you can’t see anything but the back of his head. The iPhone tries to refocus, going completely blurry, then zeroing in on the closest point beneath the light.

The thing nearest to the camera happens to be this guy’s left ear, glowing under the halogen bulb directly over his head. He’s so tall, I can see he’s ducking a little to avoid scraping the low basement ceiling, and as the focus snaps sharp I see something else, too: an inch-long scar that I’d recognize anywhere.





UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE


HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................





forty


THIS VIDEO DOESN’T show you everything.

For instance, you never see the face of the young man who has the scar behind his ear. You never hear his voice. You don’t know how long he’s been standing there, watching what is happening on the couch, or what he says after the camera is turned off. You don’t know if he’s walking downstairs to say good-bye and stumbling upon the scene at that moment, or if he’s been there the entire time, looking on behind Randy, a silent witness.