Page 95 of The New Year's Party

Dear HR Department,

I attended IU from 2003–2007 and I’d like to report Professor James Larkin for grooming and rape. I was a student in his Art History 101 lecture class my sophomore year...

When she was done with her final read-through, she sat for a while, hands folded in her lap, looking at the email, not the individual sentences or words she’d agonized over, but the whole of it, sitting there, the black letters on the white background. Her story.

She thought about her years of oblivion, and that painful New Year’s five and a half years ago when she realized what had happened to her. The shame and depression that followed. The hard work of dismantling that shame. Now, the even harder work of trying to figure out what to build in its place.

Nothing had changed for Olivia this year, and yet everything had. She had the same husband and kids, the same house, the same job—but she felt entirely different. She was no longer behind the glass, in a zoo of spectators. She had stepped out of her gilded cage, and now the world was right in front of her in all its terrifying and marvelous immediacy.

She had no idea what would happen after this email went into the world, what balance of justice or healing or further hurt she might experience, but her palms were scorched from holding the burning embers of her past. She had to open her hands and release them no matter what happened, whether they would be doused, or smolder... or ignite a forest fire.

She was scared.

She was relieved.

She could finally breathe.

She hit Send.

* * * * *