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She stared pensively down, before writing:

This is why I didn’t want anyone to know.

I know.

Although—I almost told Sarah.

What??????

She dragged me into a bathroom.

Blamed me for ruining prom.

I should tell her. I will tell her.

But—what if this happens to her, next?

She drew an arrow pointing toward my phone. Its screen lit up, like it’d heard us and delivered the latest text:

U should just kill yourself bitch.

And someone rapped on one of the windows behind us. We both jumped and turned, and Mason was there, alongside Bruce. Lacey turned back to the desk immediately, going pale, but I couldn’t look away. There was a phone in Bruce’s hand and Mason was smiling wickedly—Bruce was to Mason as Mason was to Danny—and he mimed hanging himself with a noose.

I flipped the paper Lacey and I had been using over and wrote on it quickly and in all caps:

THIS HAS TO STOP.

Then I walked over to slam it up against the window where they could see. Mason read it, and shook his head, walking backwards away from me, flipping me off with both hands. I could hear his laughter through the windowpane. When he turned the corner, I sat back in my chair and was so stunned I almost didn’t notice Lacey taking the note away from me.

She wrote underneath:

It really does. But how?

“I don’t know,” I said. “But there has to be a way.”

“Shhhhh!” Mrs. Frost demanded, and we sat in silence for the rest of the period.

I spent the rest of the day in classes ignoring lectures as I considered my options. What would it take to end things?

The easiest way would be to prove that Dannywasa rapist—only I didn’t know how much proof was out there anymore—or if Lacey would let me do anything if it was. And it wasn’t like proving that was going to make me a ton of new best friends.

How could I turn the tide? Was it even possible? I couldn’t see a way. After what I’d done for Darius I was fairly certain I could smear Danny’s name up one side of Redson and down the other, maybe even make the local paper print his name—but without something other than me just shouting, no one was ever going to believe what’d happened.

It was like he was getting away with it. Again.

“Fuck,” I muttered to myself.

“Excuse me?” Mr. Young looked over. I glanced up at him, and the clock. I really had to pee—and it wouldn’t be safe after class.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Young. My period just started. Can I go to the bathroom?”

Classmates tittered and Mr. Young seemed taken aback, but then strode over to his desk to hand me a green laminated piece of paper. “Sure. Here’s the pass. Maybe next time keep the news of your bodily functions to yourself?”

“I will, sorry.” I rustled through my backpack, pulled out my purse as pretense, and walked to the nearest bathroom.

My hand was pulling on the handle of the door when I heard, “Hey, Jessica,” from halfway down the hall. I turned and saw Darius there, and he jogged up to meet me, his own hall pass in hand. “How’s it going?”

Seeing as I probably had a bruise from how hard Chase’s backpack had hit me in the kidneys? “Pretty bad.”