Black Swan Rising

by Lisa Brackmann

“What restaurant are we talking about?” she heard Diego say in the background.

  Were they living together?

  “Okay, we’re in,” Rose said. “I’ll call the powers that be and give them a heads-up.”

  “Just come to my apartment. You can film it so no one will know where I live, right?”

  Sarah lived in a part of Clairemont called the Western Hills, in the south, on the border of Linda Vista. The hills and canyons made the streets irregular, and very dark in places. Casey wished they hadn’t taken a station car. If someone had followed them here …

  No one’s followed us, she told herself. Don’t be paranoid.

  “See if you can get her to tell you something before we start,” Rose said as Diego parked the Prius. “So we can at least take five minutes to brainstorm some questions.”

  The apartment where Sarah lived was on the second floor above the garage. Casey led the way up the exterior stairs, needing to lean on Trusty the cane for the last few. Stairs were still a problem. The pain up and down her back and butt and leg were doing that taser thing again. Vape pen, she thought, as soon as I get home. She pushed herself upright, struggling to put on a smile.

  Sarah waited for them on the landing. She looked different than Casey had seen her before, wearing a Padres T-shirt with the interlocked SD and the swinging friar and a pair of snug workout shorts. She obviously worked out, there was muscle on that frame.

  “Hi, Sarah,” Casey said, smile in place. “Thanks for having us. You remember Rose and Diego?”

  “Sure. Come in.”

  If she wanted clues to Sarah’s personality, she wasn’t seeing them in her apartment. A couple of framed prints, things like the famous Seurat painting and a Chat Noir poster, some Ikea-type furniture, a solid but battered couch. A little clutter in the small kitchen, a plate, a cup, and a beer bottle on the counter.

  “Nice apartment,” Casey said.

  Sarah shrugged. “It’s a sublet. None of this is mine.”

  “We need to swing the couch around,” Diego said. “Room’s too narrow to get a good angle where it is.”

  “Sure.” Sarah picked up one end of the couch, Diego the other. She did it easily, Casey noted.

  “So, you’re a Padres fan?” Casey asked while Diego set up a light stand and his tripod.

  For a moment, Sarah looked confused. “Oh. The shirt. That’s not mine either.” She laughed. “It belongs to my boss. I borrowed it after the park. I really need to give it back to her.”

  They were almost ready to start. Might as well ask her, Casey thought. The worst that could happen is she’ll say no and we’ll be flying blind.

  “Look, Sarah … I know you only want to tell your story once, and I respect that. But in order for this to be a good interview … it would really help for me to have a little background, so I can think about what to ask.”

  Casey thought she could see that ripple of indefinable emotion on Sarah’s face, a little wave that came and went.

  “Google Beth Ryder,” she said. “If you don’t know who that is already.”

  Beth Ryder. It sounded familiar, but Casey wasn’t sure why. She got out her phone, opened up Google, and started typing.

  “Oh,” Rose said behind her.

  Rose always did type faster than she did.

  Beth Ryder. Of course.

  There were enough stories like this that they tended to blur together, but Beth Ryder’s had more staying power than most. It hit all the beats: college freshman, the debate about sexual assault or consent, the presence of a video and what it showed—especially what it showed.

  God, that video, Casey thought.

  There had been a trial, a lawsuit, threats. Long feature stories in print and on TV, several of which were nominated for awards. Casey couldn’t remember if they’d won. A few follow-ups for several years after, and finally, nothing.

  Beth Ryder was no longer trending.

  Casey looked up from her phone. Sarah stood there, waiting, almost tapping her foot.

  “So, is that enough background for you?” she asked.

  Casey nodded.

  37

  The video: A bedroom, dim lights, trance music on a Bluetooth speaker. She’s on the bed with the boyfriend she’d just started dating a month ago, and they are undressing each other. She’s a little chubby, voluptuous. You see her breasts as he frees them from her bra. Then he awkwardly slides off her underpants.

  They’d been drinking. There’s a loud snort of laughter, the person holding the smart phone, and the man-boy on the bed looks up, focuses on the camera.

  “You assholes!” he says, grinning. “I didn’t say you could come in here.”

  “What’s going on?” slurs the girl.

  “Nothing,” he says, and he does something that makes her gasp, turning to look at the camera as he does. The camera zooms in jerkily. You can see her face clearly. Some news sites published that image as a still, with black bars covering her eyes.

  And that’s where the narrative bifurcates. Did it hurt? Was she enjoying it?

  “I don’t remember what I was feeling,” Beth Ryder had said during the trial.

  A second man-boy enters the frame, already naked, cradling his half-erect cock in one hand.

  “That’s pathetic!” says the voice behind the phone, laughing.

  The second man-boy turns to the camera and flips him off, stroking his penis, taunting him. He too climbs onto the bed. The girl seems to smile, or maybe grimace. “Is that Harley?” she asks, slurring her words. It’s hard to hear her. Hard to tell what the emotion is in her voice. “What are you doing here?”

  “Do you want to change your clothes?” Casey asked.

  Sarah seemed to think about it. She shook her head. “No. My good blazer … I don’t have it anymore. I like this T-shirt.”

  Casey wasn’t sure what Sarah was talking about, but the Padres shirt wasn’t a bad call. It draped nicely, showing her curves and cut arms, and a little hometown sympathy couldn’t hurt.

  “Okay,” she said. “Then let’s get started.”

  They sat on the couch, the same basic angles they’d used in her previous interview. Part of the Chat Noir poster intruded into the frame, but with a little bokeh blur it would look good.

  “Do you want me to call you Sarah or Beth for this?” Casey asked.

  “Sarah. It’s my legal name now.”

  “Okay, Sarah. Let’s start with that. What led you to change your name?”

  “I was just tired. Tired of the harassment. The jokes. I mean, ‘Beth Ryder.’” Sarah managed a laugh. “You can imagine what that got to be like.”

  “But news organizations generally don’t report the names of sexual assault victims.”

  “Sure, most of them don’t. But their friends … they knew who I was. Everyone on campus did. And once my name got onto the internet … everyone knew.”

  “And when you say ‘harassment,’ you mean something more than jokes.”

  “Yeah. Constant phone calls and emails … some vandalism … rape threats. Death threats. There was at least one invasion board coordinating it.”

  “Invasion board? Can you explain that?”

  “You know, they’re chat boards. And they like to try to ruin people’s lives. Especially women’s lives.” She shrugged. “They pick a target and they go after you. I don’t know why they do it. They just do. For the ‘lulz,’ that’s what they say. They even called a fake police report in so a SWAT team showed up at our house. I’m sure they thought that was hilarious.”

  “Why do you think they were doing this, Sarah? What was their motivation, going after a person they didn’t even know?”

  “They hate me,” Sarah said. She said it without much emotion. Just a statement of fact. “They thought I ruined these guys’ lives … and I mean, they got off easy.
Second-degree sexual assault. Nine months.”

  “Even with the video?”

  “Especially with the video. They used it to argue that I’d consented. Well, I’d consented to sleeping with the guy I was dating. I was too wasted to consent to the rest of it. But they said I wasn’t ‘incapacitated’”—here she made air quotes—“and to the extent that I was, I’d done it to myself.”

  “But what about posting the video? There’s no question they did that without your consent.”

  “Their attorney argued intent and mitigating circumstances. Because they’d put it on Snapchat. It was supposed to be private, and then it was going to disappear. Except it didn’t. It got out. He even said that to me. ‘That was just for me and my friends. Not for anyone else. Sorry.’” She mimicked him, a slightly whiny, deep voice, which surprised Casey. She’d never seen Sarah so animated before.

  “I had to admit on the stand he’d said that, and then they used it as a defense. That he hadn’t intended it to get out and that he’d shown remorse. Besides … ” She shrugged. “Posting stuff like that is a misdemeanor in most states, if it’s even a crime at all. And it’s funny, if it hadn’t been for the video … I don’t think I would have done anything about what happened. I don’t think I even would have told anybody. It was bad enough what they did, but then they had to brag about it?”

  “And the harassment didn’t end after the trial?”

  “No. It got worse. Especially after the civil case. I guess I went from being a slut to being a whore.” Another short, bitter chuckle. “I didn’t even want to file it. I figured there was no way I’d get that much money, and why go through it all again? What was the point? But my dad … he was so angry. He wanted some kind of revenge, I guess. I ended up with enough for a college fund, basically. With a little left over so I could move out here and work on the campaign.” She turned to the camera. “Thanks, guys. I appreciate the opportunity.”

  Casey could see it in Sarah’s eyes, the tight rein she’d kept on her emotions starting to slip. Keep her on track, Casey thought. She suddenly didn’t want to see Sarah melt down, even though it might make for good television. Sarah couldn’t afford to lose it. Neither of them could. This wasn’t ending anytime soon. Casey was certain of it.

  She swallowed hard and cleared her throat. “Sarah, given your past experiences with harassment … given your employment by a Cason campaign that’s seen an attempted assassination and a lot of negativity on social media … what do you think will happen, once the public finds out who you used to be?”

  Sarah didn’t say anything for a long moment. Her eyes lost that anger, that tight external focus. She seemed to draw inward, shutting off those feelings once more. “I don’t know,” she finally said. “I’m pretty worried about it.”

  38

  “Of course I didn’t fire her. What kind of hypocrites would we look like if I fired her for being a victim?”

  Jane was as heated up as Lindsey had ever seen her. She paced around their living room while Matt and Lindsey sat on the couch. Well, she had good reason to be upset, with what had happened at her house on top of everything else.

  “I understand where you’re coming from,” Lindsey said. “I really do. But the fact is, she lied to us about her identity.”

  “No, the fact is, she did not. Sarah Price is her legal name. It was her legal name for her second two years as an undergraduate and for the master’s program that she referenced on her resume, along with her think tank internship and volunteer campaign work. She had no legal obligation to disclose who she was before that.”

  “Maybe no legal obligation, but come on, Jane,” Matt said. “Shit like this gets out.”

  “Yeah, Matt. It does. Like Jesse Garcia and Anbar.” Jane sat down in the club chair catty-corner to the couch.

  Matt’s cheeks flushed. “Anbar is total bullshit, and you know it.”

  Maybe the anger was good, Lindsey thought. Maybe that would get Matt’s head back in the game.

  It’s not your job to push him up that hill, she thought.

  “It’s complicated bullshit,” Jane said. She sounded calm again. “We need to come up with some preemptive messaging that boils it down to something simple. And it can’t sound defensive. We have to turn this into a positive somehow.”

  “Have you looped Presley in?” Lindsey asked.

  “Not yet. I want to make sure we’re on the same page first. I don’t know how much Presley knows about this. We didn’t ask him to do a deep oppo dive on you, just to come up with the obvious lines of attack so we could be ready with rebuttals. Once we tell him … it gets into the party ecosystem.”

  “Fine,” Matt said abruptly. “I didn’t do a fucking thing wrong, and I’m happy to discuss it.”

  “And Jesse Garcia? How could you not tell me about that?” Jane fixed her gaze on him, as though if she stared at him long enough, he’d be forced to make eye contact. Instead, he seemed to study his injured hand.

  “I’m sorry,” he finally said. “It was a long time ago, I was a lot younger and I was really fucked up. Which you might remember about me.”

  Jane smiled slightly. “That I do.”

  The two of them finally shared a look. Coconspirators, Lindsey thought. Jane had known Matt longer than she had. They’d gone to high school together. They’d been best friends for years. They had an intimacy between them that Lindsey had never breeched.

  Good thing Jane’s gay, Lindsey thought. Though she’d never been entirely sure just how intimate their relationship had once been. Better not to dwell on that.

  “So we come up with some messaging and deploy as needed,” Lindsey said. “At least we had a heads-up.”

  She just wanted this conversation over with. She needed to go for a run, do something to tire herself out or she’d never be able to sleep, but with the police still watching over them and as late as it was, the best she’d probably be able to do was hit the treadmill in the garage.

  “What about Sarah?” Jane asked. “That story’s likely to break first.”

  “Does she even want to keep working for us?” Lindsey asked. “After what happened … and if she stays with the campaign, she’s just going to get more attention. Are we even sure that’s not what she wants?”

  As soon as she said it, she felt the weight of her words, what she’d implied, and in the silence that followed she asked herself, Is that what I really think? That girl who’s hiding herself in boxy blazers and sensible shirts?

  “I’m not sure she’s decided,” Jane finally said, watching her. “She offered to quit if it would be better for the campaign.”

  “Would it be?” Matt asked.

  “I could make a case either way.”

  Matt turned to Lindsey. “What do you think, Linds?”

  Both of them were looking at her, Matt and Jane, and there was something oddly similar in their expressions, something measuring more than questioning.

  “Oh, so I’m the one who has to make the call?” She was suddenly very angry, and fuck it, she had a right to be. “You’re the candidate, not me.”

  Then Matt did something unexpected. He reached across with his good hand and placed it on top of hers. “I’m sorry, hon. I don’t mean to lay this on you. I just want you to feel comfortable with the decision, and I know you’re not a big fan of hers.”

  “It’s not that I’m not a fan, I just … ” Don’t want you fucking her. “I don’t want any more drama than we’re already looking at, because I don’t know how much more the campaign can take.”

  “Understood,” Jane said.

  How much did she really understand? She drew in a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s leave it up to Sarah. If it’s going to be bad either way, we might as well let her make her own choice.”

  Matt smiled at her. “For what it’s worth, I think it’s the right call.”

  Lind
sey smiled back and hoped she wasn’t making a big mistake.

  She could hear cheers from the living room TV, even with the office door shut. It was a home game, so that meant something good for the Padres. Lindsey never had understood why a simple thing like a baseball game could make Matt so happy, but she’d long stopped asking about it. Baseball made him happy, that was enough.

  Then, silence. That must be the end of the game. She glanced at the computer clock. 10:49. Late for a game. Maybe it had gone into extra innings.

  A tap on the door. It cracked open.

  “Hey,” Matt said. “I’m going to bed.”

  “Okay. Be there soon.”

  The door closed. She turned back to her computer, deleted a few more emails. The lights in the office were low, and she yawned, thinking, I should shut this down and try to get some sleep. But she was exhausted and wired, a bad combination.

  Sarah Price was Beth Ryder. Jesus Christ, she thought. If things weren’t bad enough before, and now this.

  Of course she remembered the Beth Ryder case, that it had been more than usually ugly, that there’d been a notorious video. Jane had mentioned the harassment Beth … Sarah … had experienced, how it had been organized and persistent. If that started up again …

  Lindsey opened up Google and typed in Beth Ryder. Better to know what might be coming than pretend it didn’t exist.

  A half hour later, a headache had settled in behind her eyes. God, this was depressing. All of it. They were just kids, really.

  And Beth Ryder. It was strange, Lindsey thought. Maybe because so many of the articles didn’t use her name, but no matter how much she read, Beth Ryder remained indistinct. Undefined.

  She was a kid, Lindsey thought again. She kept clicking, all the while thinking, enough. What was the point of reading further? She knew what she needed to know.

  And then she found the video. A version of it, anyway. For a moment she stared at the screen, her finger hovering above her mouse.

  You shouldn’t look. There’s no point. It’s not right.

  But of course, she did.