by Meli Raine
What’s that about? Mom’s never had a problem with Anya. The running joke about her being Daddy’s work wife was always just a joke.
So much has changed in four years.
President. My very own father is running for President of the United States. Leader of the free world and all that. The enormity of it hits me. My dad wants to be the most powerful person in the world.
But he couldn’t stop what happened to me four years ago.
Or seek justice for me after.
I stand in front of the coffee machine, my back to the table still, as Anya comes in with a small carton of light cream and sets it down on the table. Mom’s nose wrinkles in distaste. She clearly wants the cream poured into the little silver serving pitcher. Anya doesn’t care, long accustomed to work blitzes where the tables become littered with take-out boxes, hours of work interrupted only by coffee, pizza, and deli sandwiches.
And more crises.
“Marshall. You start,” Daddy says, nodding to him.
Marshall gives me an evaluative look, then launches into a PowerPoint presentation titled “LB Incident.”
My scandal has a title. A boring, bland name that conveys none of the pain. The terror. The horror. The clawing, blinding, wretched disgust of it all.
No—LB Incident. That’s it.
It’s named after me. Not after the crime itself, or the men who did this to me.
“Four years ago, Lindsay appeared on streaming television—and was video recorded—in a compromising position with three males of her acquaintance,” Marshall says, clearly reading from a script.
I pour the cream in my coffee. The first drop does nothing, absorbed neatly by the black liquid. Two drops, four, then a thin stream starts to alter the color, eventually changing it completely from a dark void.
Compromising position. The euphemism makes me gag. I stop myself by swallowing scalding coffee, barely feeling the burn.
“Investigations later revealed that no crime had been committed. Interviews with eyewitnesses indicated that Lindsay was intoxicated and consented to the acts depicted on camera.”
I feel Drew’s eyes on me, sudden and piercing. My throat seizes. Heat and wetness fill my eyes. No. I will not cry. No.
“While one of Lindsay’s friends, Jane Borokov, found her bruised, beaten, and tied with scarves that caused injuries, the testimony of Mandy Witherspoon, Jenna Marquez, and Tara Holdstrom indicated that enough witnesses present confirmed that although her condition involved significant injury, the injuries were of a sexual nature and that those were administered with her agreement.”
With her agreement.
Drew interrupts Marshall’s PowerPoint just as the screen clicks over from the words LB Incident, with bullet points summarizing his words, and to a new slide, which reads:
Reputation Management and Senate Campaign
I bury my face in my coffee cup and try not to react.
“Was Lindsay interviewed at any point in these investigations?” he asks, the question a challenge. I can’t look at him. I feel naked already.
Everyone looks at me. Ah. I see. This is how it’s going to be.
“No,” I say, most of the word echoing against my hot coffee in the mug. But everyone can hear me.
Loud and clear.
“Why not?” Drew is looking at my father. Not Marshall, not me, not Mom.
“That’s classified information,” Dad says in a tight voice.
“Classified? What the hell does Lindsay’s gang rape have to do with government secrets?”
Marshall flinches at the words gang rape and goes beet red. Drew stands in place, chin up, earbud with a wire leading under his collar. Silas stares straight ahead.
The room goes fuzzy for me. A tiny part of me cheers Drew on. The truth is refreshing, even if it has to come from the one man who could have stopped the bastards from hurting me.
“I hired you, Drew, because you’re good at personal protection. Not because you’re an analyst. Now shut up and let the experts do their job,” Daddy says, his voice extra calm.
Oh, boy.
Here’s what I expect to happen next: Drew says he was there and knows exactly what happened. Daddy says he knows Drew was there, and....
But that doesn’t happen.
In fact, it dawns on me that no one has said a single word about Drew’s presence that night. Why not?
I’m encased in cotton candy that someone has lit on fire with a flamethrower, but I still manage to walk across the room, carrying my coffee cup. As Drew opens his mouth to answer Daddy, I stand between him and Daddy, breaking their visual field, arch one eyebrow, and say, “May I have a word with you in private?”
“You can say anything you want to me right here, Lindsay,” Drew says evenly.
“I’ll say what I want in the hallway, Drew.”
And with that, I spin around, give Daddy and Mom a look they can’t read, and walk out.
Drew better follow.
Chapter 26
“What the hell is wrong with you?” he hisses the second we’re in the hallway, body language big and intimidating. I’m backed up against a wall, my only potential weapon a half-filled cup of lukewarm coffee.
“Wrong with me? I’m in there being talked about like I asked to be tied up, beaten, and violated by those three guys. What do you think is wrong with me, Drew?”
God help me, he smells so good. I look at his mouth. I kissed that mouth. Yesterday. Why am I thinking about kissing him now? No. I can’t do this. I can’t.
“You know damn well you didn’t ask for it.” If anger and compassion can blend together and live in a set of eyes, it’s happening before me right now, his words biting the air.
“And so do you. Why isn’t anyone talking about the fact that you were there, Drew? And why won’t anyone say the guys’ names? My name gets plastered all over the place. Tara, Mandy and Jenna are talked about. No one mentions you, or Stellan or John or Blaine. What the hell is going on?” I challenge. Our voices are barely above a whisper.
“Because no one ever saw their faces. Or mine,” he explains.
“What?”
“I assume you’ve seen the video, Lindsay.” He stares me down.
“Yes.” I don’t mention the hacking on the island. Too much right now.
“Then you know my face is cut off. And the later part, well....”
“Masks. I know. The fuckers put on masks before they raped me. They planned for it.”
“And they put one on you, too.” He looks like he’s about to throw up or kill someone. Or both.
I sag against the wall. “Right.”
“Because they planned this all out. Made it look like some perverted sex game. Got Tara and Jenna and Mandy to go along with their media circus to smear you. Make it all seem like you wanted it.”
My gut contracts. Whatever he sees in my face as he searches it makes him frown.
“Your dad really kept you in the dark on everything.” His gaze shifts to Daddy’s office door. If looks could kill, Daddy would be a pile of ash.
“All of this is new to me,” I say, gritting my teeth. “Jane told me about Tara and everyone turning on me when I met her for coffee yesterday.”
“And that’s why you ran.”
“Yes.
He smacks the wall over my head, making me flinch.
This is not working. I am the one in charge. I need to know, before this farce of a meeting continues, why no one in that room knows the truth about what happened four years ago, and most of all, why no one is saying the obvious:
Drew was there that night. He let it happen.
My heart is going to explode. I can’t allow it, so I deflect.
“You know what, Drew? I am thinking about creating a new version of Bingo.”
“Bingo?” he asks with about as much incredulity as you’d expect.
“Yes. Bingo.” I plant my hands on my hips and lecture him. “The squares would include the following phrases/words:
Cone of silence.
Unreliable narrator.
Compromising position.
Damage control.
Bruised and beaten.
Reputation management.
Scapegoat.
Willful denial.
Slut shaming.
Consensual rough play.
Unfortunate choice.
Road to recovery.
Lapse of judgment.
“Get five in a row and you win...well, you win a bag of shit. Except it's not your shit. It's someone else's shit that everyone is willfully denying (B8!) the unreliable narrator (N7!) possesses. And because a massive distortion campaign (I2!) has made it impossible to say anything without becoming the scapegoat (G4!), you're fucked no matter what.
“Sounds like fun, huh? You ever played this game?”
“It sounds like anyone’s version of hell, Lindsay.” Chairs shuffle against the carpet in Daddy’s office. I’m running out of time.
“Welcome to my world, Drew.”
“I want to help you escape it.” He pinches the bridge of his nose and looks away.
“You helped create it, Drew.”
His nostrils flare and he inhales sharply, the gasp cutting off in mid-breath, his self-control reasserting itself. Whatever objection he was about to register gets shut off. Shut down. Shut up, all because of his internal process that regulates him in ways I cannot understand.
“I’m not wrong,” I insist.
“No. You’re not.”
I jolt. That’s the first time he’s admitted it.
“I brought you out here,” I remind him. “You’re going to answer my questions, or I’ll tell them you’re the guy in the video.”
He snorts. “You think they don’t know that? The government controls more than enough technology to figure that out. Hell, a fifteen-year-old with a basic understanding of programming could identify everyone in that video.”
“Then why did Daddy hire you to protect me?”
My voice is low and menacing. My heart pounds in my chest, blood smacking against every cell in my body, including between my legs. I’m repulsed and aroused at the same time. It’s not a pleasant feeling. My skin feels like it’s covered with live electrical wires everywhere, and I have no idea who I can trust.
I know I can’t trust Drew, and yet here I am, relying on him to give me information no one else will. That is how screwed up my life is here back home.
“I have no idea, Lindsay. If I knew, I would tell you.”
“Liar.”
Heat pours over my front as a very angry wall of Drew comes within inches of my face. “I am many things, Lindsay, but I am not a liar.”
“You’re just a coward, then. I’ll cross liar off my list of words I assign to you, Drew.”
He pales. “You think I’m a coward.” Eyes narrowing into chocolate triangles, he leans so close I think he’s going to kiss me. Or bite me. It’s about fifty-fifty which he’ll actually do.
I open my mouth to say yes, but something in his eyes makes me stop.
Chapter 27
“You really think that?”
His voice cracks, then goes low, right at the end, like a dying twig snapping in an ice storm, burdened too much to hang on and remain where it belongs. The heat from his hushed tones covers my nose and cheekbones, rushing down the rest of my skin like a dry wheat field set ablaze by a lone spark of flint.
Before I can answer—and what would be my answer?—Anya appears in the hallway, hurried and a bit horrified, judging from the look on her face.
“What are you two doing?” she hisses, plainly aware that something’s gone awry between us.
“Catching up on old times,” I say through gritted teeth.
“Your father is a busy man. We have forty-two minutes left for this damage control meeting, and—”
Daddy’s busyness has absolutely nothing to do with why she’s here, and we all know it. But this is a ruse. An important one.
“Damage control?” I bark, just as a wall of bright blonde hair comes into hallway. Mom. Great. Everyone’s angry. Angry at me, and coming to see what all the fuss is about.
Drew takes a step back and goes stone faced.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Mom asks me, her mouth tight with displeasure, thinned-out nostrils trying to flare.
“Drew and I needed a moment to talk,” I say smoothly, ignoring the samba beat my heart has taken as its anthem.
“Save the kissy face for later, Drew,” Mom says coldly.
He doesn’t twitch. Doesn’t react. Silas comes through the doorway, brow downturned in a perplexed expression, his body halting comically as the scene registers. Unlike Drew, he hasn’t learned to bury his emotions. To make his face resemble a grey granite rock.
He will.
The political security guys always do.
Or they just disappear one day, replaced by another interchangeable part.
A chill runs through me. If people could be cloned, I think Daddy and Mom would find that appealing right now.
Replace me with the “right” Lindsay.
“Lindsay had a question for me about Internet protocol that related to an earlier problem with her smartphone, Mrs. Bosworth. I have answered it.” Drew’s eyes flick to me for a nanosecond. “We’re done here.”
“We sure are,” I assure her.
“Good. Get back in there and listen to the consultants. Do what they say.” Her cold, dry palm caresses my cheek. Damn me for leaning into it, soaking up the affection. Her eyes harden. “Do exactly what they say, Lindsay.”
The or else is implied.
I follow her, eyes on the back of one perfectly-arranged wave of hair, ignoring the stare from Drew behind me.
Exactly thirty-eight minutes later, the basics have been covered:
1. I was drunk and high and asked three men to have rough sex with me.
2. The videotaping of the event was not my fault.
3. They were never prosecuted because no one can see their faces.
4. My friends went public and claimed I asked for it.
5. Reputation management has been a nightmare, but Daddy won his election four years ago, so:
6. I am to be tightly controlled for the next two years, until he’s elected.
Two years.
Anya’s sharp intake of breath at that announcement morphs into a fake yawn, the movement so smooth you wouldn’t know she’s doing it on purpose if you hadn’t been coached to do the same. Mom hires a slew of public speaking professionals every year, though fewer as the years have passed. When Daddy decided to run for the U.S. House of Representatives when I was eight, my after-school fun wasn’t Brownies or soccer or swimming lessons.
It was etiquette tutoring.
Years of devoting themselves to this passionate desire to serve the public in national office has given me an appreciation for positioning. How people say one thing but mean another. The subtle ways you can make a point without being able to be confronted about it.
Passive-aggressive? Not quite. More like covert aggression, a stealth version of communication that is designed to be understood only by certain parties, and that is never, ever openly discussed.
I never did learn how to build a good campfire or drop kick from the goal, but I can suppress a laugh or an itch, and curtsy in nine different ways to meet cultural norms.
None of this was my fault! I want to shout, imagining the scenario in my beleaguered mind. Shouldn’t someone say it? Why isn’t anyone saying it? Not Mom. Not Daddy. Not Anya or Drew and certainly not Silas, Marshall, or the two women whose names I can’t remember in the haze.
We’re so focused on controlling what happened to me four years ago that we’re leaving out the most important part:
I didn’t do anything wrong.
I realize, as the room feels like we’re moving in slow motion, as if we’re all actors in a role-playing video game featuring political intrigue and sexual sadism and assault, that if I don�
�t say this—if I don’t at least say aloud this simple, obvious fact right now—then I’m complicit.
I am complicit in my own reputation destruction. By saying nothing, I imply that this is all true. That I invited those beasts to do unspeakable damage to me. That I wanted it. That it aroused me.
That my turncoat friends were right.
I didn’t do anything wrong.
Slowly, like I’m living inside someone else’s body, I stand and face the team of experts and relatives at the table who are assembled here to pick up the charred remains of my scandalous life, a burden they are dealing with. An obstacle to Daddy’s and Mom’s path to the White House.
There was a time when I thought I’d be better off dead. Stacia convinced me I was wrong. Buried beneath so many layers of pain, a piece of my pure self knew I was wrong, too. Right now, though, as all these faces stare at me like a crazy moon, full and bright, a little pinched and apprehensive about what I was about to say, I wish the world would swallow me whole.
The difference between wishing you were dead and wishing you weren’t here isn’t that drastic, but it is a difference. Still.
Drew gives me a look that says he knows what I’m about to say. I swear, it’s like we can read each other’s minds. Silas cocks one eyebrow, while the faces of the team designed to manage my failings remain impassive.
Except for Mom. She can’t help herself. Impatience oozes out of her like post-plastic surgery drainage.
“I didn’t,” I croak out, my throat closing on the words. I clear my throat, my pulse between my legs, like all the blood has retreated to the place in my body where the assault happened. Like it’s rallying for me, traveling where it once was needed most, to repair and recover.
Or maybe I just feel that vulnerable. Exposed. Shameful.
“I didn’t,” I try again, “do this.”
All the eyes slowly, discreetly, roll down. Pens become fascinating objects to scrutinize, like ancient artifacts found at a dig.
“I didn’t do this,” I say again, stronger. Drew’s eyelids shut and open slowly, like an owl, giving me support. His slight nod, chin to chest, says, You got this.
