Robin York - Deeper

He frowns at the pictures. “She’s too young.”

“She’s just trying it out. I was the same at her age. In a big hurry for bras and lipstick, all that stuff.”

“Yeah, but I doubt you had anybody sniffing after you in Ankeny. It’s different with Franks. She’s got to be smart, or some useless jag-off will get her knocked up before she’s even old enough to know what she wants yet.”

I watch him type out a text. Wash that shit off your eyes. You’re pretty enough without it.

“Heartwarming.”

“I’m her brother, not her boyfriend.”

He’s more like her father, though, I think. The closest thing she has to one.

Standing up, West stretches and drops his phone on the desk. “Can you hand me mine?” I ask. “I need to see if Bridge is going to breakfast before class.”

He does, then pulls on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. I watch his bare chest and stomach disappear from view, sad as always to see them go.

West is smiling when I glance at his face. “What?”

“You. You look like you’re ready to go another round.”

I swipe my finger over the screen of the phone. “I was barely awake for round one.”

“Oh, I don’t know. You woke up pretty good by the end. I thought I was gonna have to shove a pillow over your head, keep you from waking up Krish.”

“You’d probably accidentally suffocate me, you were so busy back there doing your business.”

“Doing my business?” He sounds offended. I love offending him.

“You know.” I stare at my phone, flapping a hand at him. “That man-business. Thrust thrust, pant pant. I swear, sometimes I’m not sure why I put up with it.”

I barely see him coming before he’s grabbing my ankle and yanking me down the bed. I’m all tangled up in the covers, thrashing and laughing, when he crawls on top of me and braces his arms on either side of my head. “Thrust thrust, pant pant? I should spank your ass for that.”

“I’d like to see you try.”

His eyes are blazing. “So would I. But I’m gonna be late for class.” He dips his head and kisses me. “You coming to the library later?”

“Yeah, but I have a group-project thing after lunch, so I’ll be downstairs.”

“Come up after.”

He means the fourth floor. Our floor.

I swear, we’re going to get caught, and then he’ll get fired.

He says it’ll be worth it.

“Sure.”

One more kiss, with tongue, a bump against my hip that’s a hint and a promise, and then he’s moving away. He shoulders his bag as I navigate from texts to missed calls.

I’ve got a bunch. I had the ringer off last night, my phone deep in my bag, and I didn’t realize.

They’re all from my dad.

“See you later, babe.”

One at nine o’clock last night. One at nine-thirty. One at ten. Ten-fifteen. Eleven-thirty. Six o’clock this morning.

My stomach sinks like a rock.

“What’s a guy have to do to get his woman to say goodbye around here?”

I look up. West is leaning in the doorway, hand braced against the jamb.

“My dad called six times last night.”

“That’s—that sounds excessive.”

“Yeah.”

Bad news, cunt , the Internet Asshats whisper.

I’d almost forgotten about them. I’d let myself forget. Let myself pretend.

Not ready to listen to Dad’s voice mail, I switch to email. Fifty new messages. I scroll through the list, seeing strange email addresses and threatening subject lines.

Seeing my dad’s name. Call Me. Urgent Matter.

An email from my sister Janelle. I NEED TO TALK TO YOU.

I don’t click on any of them.

I open the web browser and type in my name.

Caroline Piasecki. Advanced search. Limit to last twenty-four hours.

So many hits. All the worst sites. All the same pictures, all over again.

This isn’t supposed to be happening, but it is.

West is behind me, hands on my shoulders. The phone’s hidden from view by the fall of my hair, and I wish I had something better to hide behind. Some place, some world where I could take him, where everything wasn’t already being ruined.

“It’s bad,” he says.

It’s not a question. He can feel it. He knows.

“Yeah. It’s bad.”

But after that, it only gets worse.

I walk in to my dad’s office armed to the teeth.

West stays in the car, parked all the way down at the end of the driveway. I feel shitty about that, but he said I can only fight one battle at a time, and he’s got a point. Probably the day to reintroduce West to my dad and fess up to his being my boyfriend is not Sex-Picture Day.

Still. Just knowing West is out there, waiting. Knowing he’s on my side. It helps.

We both skipped class this morning. He called in sick to the library. I don’t think he’s skipped class all year, and he’s definitely never missed work, so I appreciate the gesture. Plus, I need him. He’s not much good with computers, but he’s good with me. He sat next to me for hours while I pulled up my spreadsheets, Google-searched until my eyes itched, ranted and raved as I uncovered layer after layer of Nate’s assault.

It’s worse this time. Way worse than before.

The pictures are everywhere, of course, freshly posted at all the meat-market sites along with my name, my school—yeah, yeah. I’ve long since lost the ability to find them shocking.

What’s shocking is all the other stuff.

Hateful posts on my Facebook wall. Personal notes to my school email from strangers who want to rape me, fuck me, punch me in the cunt. My Twitter account is sending out spam messages with links to my vulva. And somehow, God, my professors all must have been contacted, because I’ve gotten concerned-sounding email from three of them and a phone message from the Student Affairs office requesting that I set up an interview as soon as possible.

In six hours, I’ve cycled through hurt and anger, disgust and fear, resignation and fury. I’m a hundred-pound bag of flailing feelings. I’m sad. I’m mad. I’m a wreck.

But West is with me.

More than West: After her eight o’clock, Bridget showed up with Quinn. They called Krishna, who pulled his laptop, mine, and Quinn’s into a temporary network on the living-room coffee table. Within an hour, he was directing a search-and-record-keeping operation with Quinn and Bridget. They’re doing screenshots of everything, calling in favors with a MathLab geek friend of Krishna’s who has crazy computer skills, combing through the student handbook to figure out what kind of rules Nate’s breaking and what can be done about it.

I’m a wreck, but they’re all on my side, and that helps. So much.

Krishna’s friend is the one who figured out what started it all. Tucked away on one of those unmoderated sites where bros like to hang out and be dickheads together, there’s a thread about me. A link to the pictures, a standard complaint about what a frigid, evil whore I am, and then a call to arms: What can we do to teach this bitch a lesson?

Dozens of them took up their weapons. While I was at the bakery with West, sleeping in his arms, having sex with him—all that time, I was being attacked. By strangers. For no reason at all.

If this had happened to me seven months ago, I think I would have crumpled under the weight. Knowing my professors have been sent those links, that my sister and my aunts and maybe even my grandparents have been Facebook-spammed with naked pictures of me—it sucks. It hurts. It makes me want to cry if I dwell on it, if I think too hard about what it means for my future, what it says about the shape of the rest of my life.

But it also makes me so, so mad.

I’m ready to fight. I have a stack of printouts in my arms, a bag with my laptop in it weighing down my shoulder. I have West at the end of the driveway.