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Story: Electricity

Ididn’t hear her talking so much as feel it, as she whispered what’d happened into my ear.

Once I knew where the story was going, how things were going to turn out, that there was no way I could grab the wheel and somehow yank us both off to the side of the road to safety, a sharp and bitter taste raced across my tongue. The words coming out of her mouth were like little bits of freezing shrapnel. I could feel them jab their way inside me, lodging under my skin like splinters, one by one.

I pressed her hair out of her face as she kept sobbing, and I only had one question.

“Who?”

Because whoever they were, I was going to tear them apart.

Her head shook against my shoulder. “I don’t remember. I woke up—and it was happening—and I pushed them off—but everything was spinning.”

“You mean you don’t know?” The words had an accusatory tone without my meaning them to, and I felt her jerk like I’d slapped her. I pulled her close again. “It’s only because I want to kill them.”

“I know, I know.” She was quiet then for a long time, and I was uncomfortably aware of how my wet clothing clung to me, sticking in a hundred awkward places, clasping me like dirty hands.

“I could barely stand, Jessie,” she said, her voice so small. “But I knew if I fell back asleep there—” she said, and I heard her swallow.

“I know.” I closed my eyes, imagining her desperately pin-balling through the other drunk people in Liam’s living room, trying to get somewhere safe, like a broken-winged bird surrounded by cats. “How’d you get home?”

“I didn’t. I made it out to my car and locked the doors. My mom freaked out when I wasn’t home by midnight—and at 2 AM, I woke up to a cop breaking the passenger window. Found me in the backseat, covered in my own blood and puke.”

“Oh my God, Lacey. You’re lucky you didn’t die.”

There was a pause between us, then she croaked a bitter laugh. “Yeah. I’m so lucky.”

She knew what I meant, and I knew what she meant, so I just went on. “But you told them, right?”

“Yeah. But by then, the party was mostly over—everyone who was left was too drunk to be a witness—I don’t even want to know what stories they said about me.” She shook her head again, gathering herself, gaining control. “They brought me here and tested me and had to stitch me up.”

I pulled back and looked at her face again. It was still her, just tired and puffy, and she didn’t have a split lip. “Stitch you?”

“Down there. I tore.”

My jaw dropped in horror.

“Yeah,” she agreed.

I slowly closed my mouth so that nothing wrong could come out. I didn’t have any words that could encompass the situation. What I wanted to say was,Are you fucking kidding me?but thatwasn’t for her, it was for the world at large.Are you fucking kidding me that my best friend got raped?

Her breathing evened out and she turned away from me to face the ceiling. “Everything feels unreal. It’s like I’m floating, like I’m not even here.”

“You’re here,” I said, and put my hand in hers to prove it.

We lay in the bed beside each other just breathing after that.

CHAPTER 7

There were complicated patterns in the ceiling of Lacey’s hospital room. Irregular dots. In the shadows, if you squinted, you could turn them into topographic maps, or profiles of presidents, or pictures of famous internet cats. You could make them into anything you wanted, but you couldn’t make them disappear.

Lacey broke the silence first. “You can’t tell anyone, Jessie.”

“Of course not?—”

“I mean it. Not even Sarah.”

“I won’t. But—don’t some people know?”

“After the cops got involved, yeah. But if someone doesn’t know, I don’t want them to know, you know?”