Page 21

EIGHTEEN

I picked up another afternoon shift at the pizzeria. As always, having the extra cash won’t hurt, but there’s another reason I wanted to work today.

Due to the proximity to campus, Victoria is known to stop by on Fridays for lunch. She’s the only original member of the Mystery Maidens I haven’t yet investigated.

Investigated probably isn’t the right term, but that feels like what I’m doing.

Talking to each of them in an isolated setting, trying to determine whether they could be the person that killed Jessica Wilder.

Both Danielle and April have stressors outside of the group—the former’s admitted loneliness and the latter’s impending divorce—but I’m not convinced it’s enough to make either of them go on a crime spree, especially one that’s so clearly targeted at me.

My aim with talking to Victoria today is twofold: get an idea of whether she could be behind the crimes, which is doubtful, and find out more about Marley.

After all, Victoria knows the most about her because Marley is a student.

Victoria is the one who introduced her to our group, and because the crimes took place after her arrival, it’s most likely she’s the one who has been copying our stories.

She could be working alongside the black hearts stalker or have found out about them some other way and started using them herself.

In all the years I’ve played victim to this stalker, this feels like the closest I’ve ever come to finding out the truth, and that realization pushes me forward.

As expected, Victoria enters the restaurant right after the lunch rush dies down, which is around the time her afternoon class wraps up. When she sees me standing behind the hostess stand, she smiles, and I act equally surprised, as though I hadn’t been hoping this exact meeting would occur.

“I didn’t think you’d be working,” she says, standing in front of me.

“I can always use the extra cash with the holidays coming up,” I say, nodding to a booth at the back of the restaurant. “My shift’s almost over. Maybe I can join you for lunch?”

“I’d love that,” she says, genuinely, following me through the emptying restaurant.

I quickly take her order, adding on an extra entrée for me to eat. Mario never cares if we eat a meal during our shift, although he usually prefers we eat in the back. However, I need this time alone with Victoria to feel her out.

“How’s work?” I say, sitting across from her at the table.

“Busy, busy,” she says. “At least the semester will wrap up soon, which should give me some time to focus on my own writing.”

“When’s the next book come out?” I ask.

“Sometime after the first of the year,” she says. “I have an editorial calendar I try to follow, but I’m not sure I’ll meet my goal. That’s the beauty of self-publishing. If I need to rework the system, I can.”

“What you’ve been sharing in group has been great. I’m sure you’ll meet your deadline.”

“Thanks.” Victoria’s eyes survey the thinning crowd in the restaurant, before focusing on me. “I’m happy I ran into you, though. I’ve been wanting to talk to you,” she says, “away from the group.”

“Oh, yeah?” I’d thought I was the one with an ulterior motive. “About what?”

“The story you’ve been working on lately,” she says. “ The Mistake .”

My posture straightens. It’s the first time any of us have raised our writing in a one-on-one conversation. Is it possible she’s made a connection between the stories we share and the things that have been happening in my real life?

“The Layla story?” I ask, trying to keep my face from betraying my emotions.

“Not the most recent ones,” she says, her eyes getting big as she hurls a compliment.

“Those have been excellent, don’t get me wrong.

Your writing has been great, really gripping, but I keep going back to that first part.

The one that centered around an attack, where you introduced the Layla character at the end.

It felt so…” She pauses to find the right word, and my mind fills in the gap. Terrifying. Claustrophobic ? —

“Personal,” she says. The word lands like an anchor in the water, pulling me down, down, down.

“It made me wonder if you were writing it from experience.”

This wasn’t the confrontation I was expecting. My eyes are beginning to water. I clear my throat before I speak. “All writing is rooted in experience, right?”

“Sure. I just…” It’s obvious Victoria has rehearsed this, and yet she still fails to find the right words.

“You know, if you work on a campus long enough, you get familiar with the culture. Lots of students have come to me over the years.” She pauses.

“If you were assaulted when you were a student?—”

“I wasn’t.” I stop her before she can finish the sentence.

She nods slowly, her smile tight, waiting for me to continue.

“I almost was. Just like in the story,” I say, “and that was enough.”

“Yes, it is.” She places her hand over mine and squeezes. “We all have close calls.”

My mind traipses through time, away from this winter of my adulthood, back to the summer of my youth, when all my surroundings felt shiny and new and full of promise.

You’re lucky if you have just a handful of days like that in your life, days where it feels like the entire world is at your fingertips. It’s the kind of effervescence Marley exudes now, the type of power I once possessed.

But with that promise comes naivety, and I can still remember the moment it all came crashing down, when I was made aware that the world is never as beautiful and promising as it might present itself to be.

I’d made a last-minute decision to accompany some classmates to a fraternity party.

It was out of character because, typically, I only went out with my closest friends.

However, one was visiting with a friend out of town, and the other had a date, so instead of staying alone in the apartment, I tagged along.

The girls I went with were nice, but I barely knew them. Good for conversations and laughs and drinks, but as the night wore on, we’d gone our separate ways. I spent most of the evening leaned against the wall of the fraternity house, wishing I’d never come at all.

Until he started talking to me. He offered me a drink, then another, all while entertaining me with light conversation.

That’s all it was. Idle chatter and party talk.

Nothing flirtatious or romantic, and yet, that’s the point of the night when my memory starts to get fuzzy, hazy, like my vision was pulled underwater and I couldn’t see through the waves and ripples.

What happened next came in flashes, sensory interruptions that brought me out of that haze and back to the present.

We were in a different room, and it was dark. Music continued to blare, but it was far away, beneath me, or so it felt. I was on something soft, a bed or sofa. My breathing was short and heavy. And I could feel his hands on me.

In the next second, my brain would fizzle out again, remembering nothing.

Then, like a ride I couldn’t abandon, I’d be back. Dark room, soft bed. His hands on my body. I felt him tugging at my clothes, and I couldn’t understand what was happening, how we’d even gotten here. Hadn’t we been in the basement, surrounded by Christmas lights and people, moments ago?

A single word escaped my lips in a whisper. “No.”

Then I was out again, back in that state of nothingness.

When I returned to the present, the room was no longer so dark.

A bright light shone inward from the hallway. And I was no longer alone with him. There were other people in the room. Shouting.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Get out of here, creep.”

“Are you okay?”

I could do little more than nod my head. Everything felt heavy. It was hard to move.

And then there was water going down my throat, washing life into my body. It came back just as quickly, sickening bile rushing out of my mouth and landing in a commode. How had I even made it to a bathroom?

“You’re going to be okay. He didn’t do anything to you,” a voice said. Now that my senses were coming back, I recognized her as one of the girls from my class. “Thank God someone came in.”

“I only had two drinks,” I said, my stomach reeling at the thought. My body braced for another round of regurgitation. “I don’t know why I’m so sick.”

“Someone must have slipped you something,” she said. “It happened to me once, and I was a mess. Just like you.”

I had the sudden desire to leave, but when I tried to stand, my legs were like gelatin, wobbly and useless.

It took two people—I’m not sure who the other person was—to hold me up.

Time has eroded my memories of the rest of the night, but, somehow, I eventually made it home, to the safety and comfort of my bed.

The next morning, when my roommates returned home, I didn’t say anything to them about it. And I’ve tried to stop thinking about that night for the past ten years.

Until I started writing The Mistake .

“I’m not sure why I decided to write about it now,” I admit to Victoria, shutting my eyes to hold back the tears. “I’ve been struggling with writer’s block lately, and out of nowhere, it all came back to me.”

“Trauma has a way of doing that,” she says. “It can lie dormant in the body for years, then return with a vengeance.”

“It’s why I don’t want to continue writing it,” I admit. It’s true, although the other reasons I want to drop the story, I can’t tell her. “You think the others picked up on it, too?”

“Probably not,” she says. “Like I said, I think I’m more attuned to those things after years of being on campus. I wanted to check on you. I know the only thing worse than experiencing an assault is feeling like you have no one to talk it over with.”

“I appreciate you coming to me,” I say. “Please, can we keep this between us?”

“Of course. I’d never tell a soul,” she says. “Besides, I have plenty of drama in my own life that needs sorting.”