Isabel gripped the phone’s receiver, stared at her bare feet on the kitchen’s linoleum floor, and wondered how it would feel to hang up. She watched Fish swim another lap in his fern-filled aquarium. A room in a room. And neither of them, not Fish, and not Isabel, could get out.
She curled her toes, then uncurled them, waiting. Should I talk to Jane? she asked Fish telepathically. Fish seemed to say yes, and Isabel had to agree. She’d worked up the nerve to call, she’d managed it, even though it was hard to breathe as she punched out the numbers, and she was so happy with herself for that. It was a real step. Isabel wasn’t used to talking with real people anymore, she realized, and that was silly.
“You saw our query?” Jane’s voice sounded nice enough, it did, and not pushy or aggressive. “Thanks so much, I appreciate it. Want to talk a bit now?”
“Yes,” Isabel said. Fish’s golden scales sparkled.
“Okay, great.” Jane’s voice seemed so kind. “How can I help you?”
This was the moment. The moment Isabel had not faced since … well, since she’d told her mother, and then Edward Tarrant, and then … no one else, like he’d instructed. Not ever, not ever. Ever ever. But this wasn’t telling, not exactly.
She chewed the inside of one cheek, acknowledging that tiny bit of pain. She wished she could see Jane. She was pretty sure Jane was the reporter she’d watched on the Boston Register’s video website maybe … a year ago? Brownish hair, TV-looking. Thirty-something. Like, famous. But she hadn’t been on the news recently, had she? Though Isabel had not paid much attention to the news over the past months. Real life was exactly what she longed to avoid.
“Yes, I saw the thing online. And it said—you won’t tell?” Isabel had to be sure the reporter’s query said “confidential.” If it wasn’t, she was hanging up, no matter what.
“Confidential, absolutely,” Jane said. And she explained who she was, and where she worked, and what they were doing.
Isabel listened. Balancing, deciding. Could she get through the story? Live through it again? That was a challenge. Because she couldn’t really remember, even though she’d tried to make herself do it, again and again, because she figured it must still be there in her brain somewhere. It happened, that she was sure of, and if she kept trying to remember, she’d eventually succeed. Wouldn’t that have to be true? Even if she had been drugged. Which she had to believe she was. Sometimes it felt like she remembered, but it was never more than a wisp, a fragrance, a sound—and then it would vanish.
But she was the victim. She was. And if she was ever going to heal, maybe now was the moment to begin. She had, what, eighty more years to live, maybe? Was she going to spend them all in fear, hiding? She wasn’t brave enough, or confident enough, to, like, carry a mattress to graduation in protest, like that girl in New York a few years ago. But sometimes there was a moment that changed your life.
Well, of course, Fish was saying. It’s already happened to you. But maybe this was another one, she retorted. Some part of her had died. But some of her hadn’t. She took a deep breath, turned away from Fish.
“Are you there?” Jane’s voice broke her reverie.
“I was at a party,” Isabel began. She’d tell the barest of facts. Just to see. Just to try it out. “There was a cute guy. Really cute, and nice. We talked about opera, we’re both in—anyway. And he offered me something to drink. Everyone was drinking, and I was, too, but that doesn’t mean…”
“Of course not,” Jane said. “Go on, okay?”
“I can’t believe I’m saying this.” Isabel heard the change in her own voice as she heard her story through Jane’s ears. “It sounds so…”
“It sounds true,” Jane told her.
“… abysmally typical,” Isabel finished her sentence.
“It sounds true,” Jane said again. “That’s exactly why you’re, forgive me, but so helpful. Because it’s so common.”
“So, okay. I drank it, not that fast, even, because I went to the bathroom in between drinking it. And he had a drink, too.” Should she say his name? No. “And then I … I don’t remember. And I woke up, in a dorm room, alone, his room, and the sheets were all … and I was all…”
She felt her voice trail off again. Felt her brain trail off, too. Saw the light change in the room. It seemed to dim, and go smoky-sweet, and close and dark, and smell like—and her skin was all like, it was all …
“Are you okay?”
“Give me a minute,” she said. She looked at the almost-invisible pale hair on her bare arms. Sticking straight up. She could feel each one. Every single hair.
“I know it’s difficult,” Jane said. “You’re very brave. I’m here. Long as you want.”
Isabel saw a glint out of the corner of her eye. Fish, her one solitary goldfish, swimming around and around. I’m like you, Fish, she thought. Trapped. And swimming, swimming, swimming. Swimming to nowhere.
“No one believed me, I guess,” she told the reporter. “Because no one did anything about it. That I know of, that is. And the guy who…”
She paused. Watched Fish, watched the water, watched her crystal in the window. Closed her eyes, briefly. And started again.
“The guy who,” she said, “well, he’s, he’s in class, and in school. He gets new cars, and girlfriends, and ‘likes’ all over the place. Mr. Cool. Mr. Leading Man. He’s all happy, and nothing happened to him, and the school knows, I know they do, because I told them, and they all know and everyone knows and it’s not fair, it’s just not fair.”
And it should be all about fair. Isabel, frowning, almost getting a headache now, had never thought about it any other way. She knew she was right. This wasn’t fair. There were consequences, and there should be, but why should all of them come crashing down on her? She’d been turned into the haunted one, the terrified one, the little hiding rabbit whose life and career had been ruined.
“You’re so articulate,” Jane was saying. “I promise you all of this is confidential, absolutely, until you give the okay. But we’d love—very much—to tell your story. I hear in your voice that you’re—”
“Concerned,” Isabel said.
“Concerned,” Jane repeated. “And—”
“Angry,” Isabel said.
“Angry,” Jane said. “And I know you’re also concerned and angry for your sister students who may have been, or may yet be, in the same situation. You know…”
Isabel felt the muscles in her hand clutching her cell phone, its smooth plastic case pressing against her face. Jane’s silence felt like the reporter was deciding whether to say something. Relax, Isabel told herself.
“You know,” Jane went on, “it could happen to another student. Tomorrow. Tonight. You can be part of the solution. Go on camera, and tell us what happened. Could you simply consider it? Could we talk about it? I’m not trying to push you, and please take your time deciding. I’m only making sure you know the great extent to which you could make a life-changing difference.”
Go on camera? Isabel pictured herself on TV, standing up straight, in makeup, and a nice outfit, and telling the story. She turned to the now-opaque screen of her own little television. And yes, at that very moment, she could envision it. Yes. Yes. She would tell.
She stood up as she decided, her heart racing and the weight of her body disappearing. She could fly. She could touch the sky. She could shut down her computer and leave Facebook alone and never see his hideous hideous face again except behind bars, and she’d laugh as the jury sentenced—
She sat down, heavy again, on the flowered cushion of her kitchen chair. No. Absolutely not. Not on television, not in court. And, in about one more second, not on the phone.
“Hello?” Jane’s voice. “Are you still there?”
“I can’t,” she said. It was too silly, too stupid, even more life-ruining than her life was already ruined. What was she thinking, calling this number? She’d hang up, right now. But Jane seemed nice, and she couldn’t be rude to her. “I’m so sorry,” she began again. “I never should have called. I can’t come to your studio. I don’t like to go outside. I’m so sorry. I look terrible. I haven’t slept for—months. And I…”
“Listen.” Jane’s voice was low, intimate, as if Isabel were the only person in the world. “You don’t need to come to the studio—we’ll come to you. It won’t matter how you look, because we’ll electronically darken your face. It’s all in silhouette. No one will know who you are, but everyone will hear your warning. You could save the next victim. You could change someone’s life.”
Could that be true? But this woman, no matter how nice she seemed, only wanted her to be on TV. She had to remember that.
“Tell me your name again?” Jane asked. “And at what college did your—incident—take place?”
“Adams Bay,” Isabel said. She stopped. Had she said too much? Did they keep track of the reports, would the school have her name, could Jane learn about her “incident” now? The reports couldn’t be public. Could they? She whisked a stray lock of hair from her face. It fell back across her forehead. When was the last time she’d looked in a mirror? Very very good question. “I never said my name. And I don’t want to tell you. I just can’t.”
“That’s fine. Whatever you want,” Jane replied. “But so we don’t lose touch. Maybe just give me your number, and make up a name, okay? And here, take my cell phone number. Okay?”
“Okay,” Isabel said, and wrote it down. She didn’t have to use it.
“What you could tell us is so important,” Jane was saying. “Maybe call me tomorrow morning? Either way?”
Fish had stopped swimming. He hovered, motionless. Waiting, just like she was. But tomorrow would come, and then another tomorrow, and she’d cross off the days, and soon there would be no more boxes, and she’d graduate and have to go out into the world. How would she face it? What if she ran into—him—on the street? Or somewhere? What if he does this to someone else? Would that be my fault?
“Tosca,” she said, looking at her poster of the brooding Maria Callas, pale and misunderstood and vengeful and doomed. She’d sung some of that role, last semester, in a student show. “Call me Tosca.”
Her mother would appreciate that. She almost smiled. The Puccini heroine who threw herself off a balcony. I’ve felt like that, she thought, as she stepped to the window and looked down fifteen stories to the sidewalk below.