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“And here’s the thing,” he says. “We can’t do anything about that unless you report it. We can’t stop your friends from driving drunk and killing themselves or someone else unless we know they’re behind that wheel ahead of time. Girls, we can’t prosecute that guy who spiked your drink unless you tell us it happened.
“And you don’t want to, I get it. It’s a small town. The person behind the wheel is your buddy. The person who touched you is your best friend’s cousin, is your parent’s coworker, is someone everybody trusts so no one is going to believe you. But I’ll believe you.”
The room is so quiet I swear you can hear people weighing their options.
“The truth will always out,” Nolan says, his gaze heavy on the crowd. “And I and the rest of the department will see justice served.”
“What about Comstock?” a boy yells out. “You guys never found out who did him in.”
There’s a spatter of laughter and some murmured agreements, but Nolan rolls with it, absorbing the slam. “I know, right? Only two murders ever committed in this town and we haven’t solved either of them.”
Sara leans in to me. “I thought Comstock was arrested for . . .” She trails off, nodding toward Alex instead of finishing her sentence.
I shake my head. “He was arrested but never charged, not enough evidence. They had to release him, and that’s when—” I draw my finger across my throat, although there was more to it than that. A lot more.
“Yep,” Nolan goes on. “Pretty funny, right? The cops can’t put a guy away so someone else takes care of it, serves justice on their own terms.”
“Hell yes” comes a call from the audience.
“Kinda cool.” Nolan nods. “Until you actually think about it. I’m assuming I don’t have to tell you what happened to Comstock.”
He doesn’t; it’s the stuff of slumber-party talk. The kind of party where nobody sleeps well.
“Think about it for a second,” he says. “There’s someone out there who can do that. They’re loose. They’re among us. And they’ll do it again. Hilarious, right?”
Yeah, nobody’s laughing. We’re all pillars of cement in our chairs. Except Alex, who I notice is lounged back, looking at Nolan the same way dogs do when they take each other’s measure. I guess hearing someone say they don’t heartily agree with what happened to Comstock might be kind of hard to take.
The screen behind Nolan suddenly lights up, the only thing on it an email address and phone number.
“That’s my info,” Nolan says. “I knew if I said come up and get business cards half of the people who wanted to wouldn’t, and half of those who did would toss them five minutes later. So get out your phones and take a pic. Everybody. Right now.”
We do. All of us. There’s a wave of movement across the auditorium and a bunch of camera clicks in stereo. I’m willing to bet some of the girls are going to use Nolan’s number for reasons other than reporting underage drinking and sex crimes, but it’s cool that we’ve got this moment, everyone with their phones in the air.
Except Alex. I look over at her and she shrugs.
“I don’t have a phone,” she says.
“I’ll email it to you,” I tell her, and she shrugs again.
I think about reaching over and taking her hand, or rubbing her shoulder. Something to show my solidarity with her over the fact that right now everyone in this room is thinking about her dead sister.
But I don’t, because much like a strange dog, I’m not sure if she’ll bite me when I do.
13. ALEX
We all walk out of the auditorium into the bright lights of the hall, blinking. It’s a harsh awakening that breaks the spell the cop managed to weave, quieting constantly running mouths and forever-lit-up phones. In the anonymous dark, the air was heavy with thoughts, the blond girl sitting next to me fighting to breathe normally when a boy suggested she’d be the one raped of the five of us who were called out. Out here in the light it’s harder for her to hide how badly that upset her. Her face is tight, her smile stretched too thin, and she pretends to have a wayward hair in her eye that explains the pooling tears.
The light is taking a toll on all of us, the deeply personal thoughts brought on by darkness whisked away as someone makes a joke, and then another, and soon all anyone wants to know is what’s for lunch. Not who will be a victim and who a perpetrator. A hand clamps on my arm and I jerk away immediately, down and with a twist so that they can’t keep their grip.
“Whoa, hey, sorry,” a male voice says. Jack is right in front of me, and I have to focus on stringing together the right words in order to seem normal.
“Are you okay?” he asks when I don’t say anything.
“You’re always asking me that,” I say, and part of me wonders if that’s because he instinctively knows I am definitely not.
“No, I mean . . .” He brushes his hand through his hair. “That assembly. It was pretty fucked-up. Sorry.”
I don’t know if he’s saying that he’s sorry that he swore, or that he’s sorry I had to sit through that, or if he’s sorry that he scared me when he grabbed my arm. I’m cradling the wrist that he touched, holding it against my chest because where our skin met burns so badly I’m sure it’s blistering, and I don’t want him to see how hard my heart is beating.
