27

BROOKE

It happened three years ago. I was a freshman in college. Only eighteen, the same age Lucy was when she was murdered.

The plan was to meet him in the library.

I tried to calm myself down as I trekked up the barely used back staircase. He’s just a guy, I told myself, a few years older than you. And it was just a stupid story.

But I knew it was more than that. It was my first big piece for the Hudson Herald. The first time the editors had trusted me with anything more than a one-paragraph segment they would hide in the back pages. This was my big break, or as big as a break can be for a college paper in upstate New York. An interview with Eric Verrino, the captain of Hudson’s swimming team, which was predicted to win the division championships that year.

I followed the directions in the text he’d sent me after my editor gave me his number and weaved through stacks of old, obsolete books to a collection of three study carrels I’d never known existed. And there he was.

He had olive skin topped with jet-black hair and gleaming dark eyes, and he was dressed in maroon workout pants and a black zip-up windbreaker, the swimming team’s unofficial campus uniform. His smile formed a charming divot in one cheek, revealing a line of straight, ultra-white teeth.

“You must be Brooke.” His voice was kind, his beautiful smile laced through it.

I nodded, too eagerly. “Nice to meet you, Eric,” I said shakily, flinching at how thick my Kentucky accent sounded in the quiet library.

I’d never been this person, someone who lost their mind over a guy. But good lord, this was like seeing a Greek god in the flesh. I cursed myself silently. I was already nervous about the interview. I didn’t need this on top of it.

He gestured to the chair at the carrel beside him, and I sat. As I pulled out my secondhand laptop to take notes and my phone to record, I tried not to think of how close his arm was to mine or how the sound of his breathing made the little blond hairs on my arm stick up.

“So let’s talk about how you won the eight-hundred-meter freestyle at the semifinals last week. That was huge, and you were so—”

He held up his hands, laughing in a way that made his eyes sparkle.

“Why don’t we get to know each other before we start?”

My cheeks grew hot, and I cursed myself again. How could I be fucking this up so quickly?

“Sorry,” I mumbled sheepishly.

“No need to apologize,” Eric said, and I could feel him looking at me, even as I kept my gaze locked on the table. “I just want to get to know you a bit first.”

I had prepared all last night for this interview, thinking up questions, identifying conversation starters, but I hadn’t prepared for that. What about me could he possibly be interested in getting to know?

“You’re a freshman, right?”

I nodded, realizing how effortlessly he’d taken control of the interview I was supposed to be leading. But I didn’t mind. I could listen to his voice all day.

“What do you think of Hudson so far?” he asked.

I wouldn’t say I was enjoying myself at Hudson University. I had a roommate I barely spoke to, bullish professors, and omnipresent anxiety that I wouldn’t make the grades necessary to keep my full academic scholarship.

But it was what I didn’t have that bothered me the most. I hadn’t met a single person I felt like I connected with. It was as if the stigma of my mother’s trailer park had followed me all the way from Kentucky, clinging to me like a stench I couldn’t shower off. All the other female students, clad in their Lululemon leggings and perfect contour makeup, seemed to smell it on me, knowing immediately I wasn’t worth their time.

I planned to respond with a nonanswer: “Good,” “Fine,” or even “A lot of fun.” So I was shocked when my voice turned on me. “It’s been a bit of an adjustment,” I heard myself say.

“I get it,” he said, his words woven with understanding. “I had some trouble when I first got here too.”

I shot him a look that made my disbelief clear. I couldn’t imagine Eric Verrino feeling uncomfortable in any setting. He laughed, a sound that sent a flutter to my chest.

“It’s true. I didn’t click with the other guys on the swim team right away. I was so used to my friends and my team back home in Connecticut. It took me a few months to figure out where I fit in here.”

As if I wasn’t taken enough with him before, his vulnerability made me want to melt into the library carpet.

“Have you picked a major yet?” he asked, deftly changing the subject.

“Yup, journalism,” I said. There was never any question that was what I would study.

“Journalism,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “That’s a respectable profession.”

“I spent a lot of time watching the news when I was growing up. My mom raised me, and she…worked a lot, so usually it was just me and the TV at night. I kind of became obsessed with it.”

I didn’t tell him how much I came to rely on the people who reported to me from my screen, how they became the closest thing I had to friends back then. Some of the only regulars I could rely on. Instead, I felt my cheeks grow hot, realizing how much unsolicited information I was sharing. But Eric didn’t seem to mind. Instead, he listened, really listened, his eyes growing wide at the right times as I talked. And as we kept talking, he began sharing too, telling me about his family back in Connecticut, his friends on the team, the finance major he felt his parents had forced him into.

We’d been there an hour before I realized I hadn’t asked him a single question about the swimming team. But for the first time since I’d arrived at Hudson, it felt like everything would be okay.

The text came in when I got back to my dorm that night, hours after Eric, in a flurry of apologies, had ended our conversation, admitting he had to get to class.

Want to finish that interview at my place tomorrow night?

The first thing I noticed when I stepped out of the cab the next night was how quiet it was. There was no house music pumping from speakers, no kegs in the backyard, no scantily clad girls laughing on the front lawn. Just one light glowing from the ground floor of the house.

I knew Eric had said he wanted to finish the interview, but I had expected that was just pretext; I had predicted a party. Wasn’t that what seniors did on Friday nights?

I rang the doorbell, forcing myself to remember to breathe as I waited for someone to open the door. After what felt like several minutes, someone finally did. A girl with long, brown hair that had been straightened to the brink of death. Her bangs clung to her forehead. She looked me up and down, clearly unimpressed.

“Can I help you?”

“Um, I’m here to see Eric?” Suddenly, I was sure I’d made a mistake. Maybe I was meant to come over earlier, or maybe we were supposed to meet on campus. Did I misread his text?

“It’s for me!”

I relaxed as soon as I heard his voice. He appeared behind the girl and placed a hand on her shoulder. Her face warmed when she heard him, but her gaze still regarded me coolly.

“Brooke, come on in. You need to meet everyone!” Eric said, grabbing my hand and bringing me into the living room. A handful of people lounged on the couches, limbs intertwined, but the girl who opened the door sat by herself on an armchair. She and some of the other girls were holding red Solo cups, but the guys didn’t seem to be drinking.

“Everyone, this is Brooke,” Eric announced to the room, drawing none of the guys’ attention. Some of the girls looked up, intrigued, but returned to their drinks after an apathetic glance, except for the brunette from the door who hadn’t stopped looking at me. “Brooke, this is everyone. Can I get you something to drink?”

I told him sure in a voice that didn’t sound like mine. He disappeared and returned a moment later with a single can of Natural Light, which he handed to me.

“You’re not drinking?” I asked.

“Nah, it’s dry season for us. Our coach doesn’t want us drinking or partying for a month before championships. We’ve got two weeks left to go, and it’s torture.”

“It’ll be worth it,” one of the guys volunteered from the couch, a redhead with full, dark eyebrows. I recognized him from the photos on Eric’s Facebook page.

His comment sparked a conversation about the impending swimming competition. After a few minutes of lively discussion—none of which I participated in—Eric finally turned to me.

“Do you want a tour of the house?” He asked it quietly enough so that no one else would hear.

I knew what this was. It was what I’d been waiting for. An excuse to go up to his bedroom.

“Sure,” I said almost before he could finish asking. Because I was sure. I wanted to go upstairs with him. I ached to touch him, to feel his lips on mine. But still, my heart rate accelerated as I stood.

The guys whooped and cheered as we left the living room. The girls stayed silent.

At the top of the stairs, Eric led me down a narrow, wood-paneled hallway. The walls were empty of decoration except for a big whiteboard. I could see Eric’s name written on it in marker, along with the names of his roommates and some others I recognized from my research on the swimming team. Each name had a flurry of lines next to it. I tried to stop to look at it, but Eric pressed his hand against my back.

“Come on,” he murmured. “My room is down here.”

We stopped at the last door in the hall, which Eric opened to a dimly lit room with wood floors and walls covered in posters and stray clothes. It smelled damp and slightly chlorinated, the source of which I guessed was the pile of crunchy-looking Speedos in the far corner of the room.

He guided me toward the bed, and I sat down, seeing nothing but him. His face. That beautiful face.

And soon it was on mine. His lips soft at first, fleetingly so. Quickly, his tongue pushed my lips apart, exploring my mouth. I could feel the lipstick I had so meticulously applied smearing as his hands snaked around to my back and under my shirt, searching for my bra clasp.

What was happening? This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

I pulled my head back, pressing my palms against his chest.

“What’s the matter?” His tone was hard, cold. It didn’t sound like the voice I’d grown accustomed to in the library yesterday. “Isn’t this what you want?”

“Yes, but—”

Before I could finish, his mouth was back on mine. Once he succeeded in loosening the clasp of my bra, he grabbed my hand hard, shoving it between his legs.

“Eric, stop.” It came out garbled. His tongue was still in my mouth.

“Jesus.” Now he was angry. “What?”

I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. He moved his face back close to mine, as if he was going to kiss me. Instead, he spoke.

“Look, you were all over me yesterday. I didn’t waste all that time in the library for you to decide at the last minute that this isn’t what you want.”

I stared at him, my mind struggling to process his words. My emotions ping-ponged from shock to sadness to anger, and my thoughts wouldn’t calm down enough to figure out which one I felt most.

He didn’t wait for me to respond. Instead, he covered my mouth with his hand and whipped me around. I felt his other hand yanking my pants down. I tried to cry out, or at least I think I did. To this day, I’m not sure if I made a sound.

And then came the pain.

Every thrust brought a hot, searing flash behind my eyelids, as if he was ripping farther and farther inside me. I had stopped taking in breaths, his hand blocking my mouth and one of my nostrils. It was as if my body refused to do anything other than focus on the pain.

His hand twisted around my hair, yanking my head back. Heat burned through my scalp, a welcome distraction from the agony between my legs. I focused on it, picturing every little hair being broken, leaving behind ragged roots.

And as suddenly as it started, it was done. I felt him crawl off me, but I couldn’t move.

“That was good,” he said over the scratchy sound of metal on metal as he pulled up his zipper. “I’ll see you downstairs.”

And then he was gone.

I lay there for a minute, terrified. Wondering if he would come back or whether I was free to go. I knew every second I spent in his bed, I was begging for it to happen again. But it was as if I was frozen there, stuck to those crusty sheets, the smell of blood and something more sour flooding my nose.

I heard him clomp down the stairs. Then a few seconds later, his voice, jubilant.

“Twenty-six!”

Cheers followed. A mix of male and female voices. I had no idea what that meant, but I knew it had to have something to do with me.

When I finally got up, I didn’t have anything to wipe myself off with. I looked down at the sheets. They were covered in what looked like rust. It took me a minute to realize it was blood and then another to figure out where it was coming from. I collected my jeans from the ground and pulled them back up, thanking God they were dark, that they wouldn’t show anything.

I tiptoed out of the room, trying to make as little noise as possible. I could hear sounds from downstairs, laughing and muffled conversation.

I headed toward the stairs, stopping in front of the whiteboard. Eric’s name was listed at the top. Underneath were five groupings of lines, each of which had a diagonal line struck through it. Twenty-five.

My brain was cloudy. But not enough to prevent me from understanding what this was. I was number twenty-six.

When had the contest started? The school year? That month? Not that it mattered. I was just a number to him, and in a way, he was the same to me.

He was my first.

I stopped being quiet. Instead, I ran down the stairs, hitting each one as hard as I could. I turned my head toward the living room before reaching the front door.

And at that moment, I saw the girl who had opened it for me. Her eyes were locked on me without any sign of emotion. As if she were empty.

I’ve thought about those eyes constantly. Despite all the rage I felt toward Eric, what that girl did seemed even worse. Opening the door, welcoming me in, knowing full well what was about to happen. She sat there as Eric led me upstairs, aware of what he planned to do to me. And then she ignored it, denied any effort to help.

And the rage is relentless. I try to dampen it, but even at my happiest, it’s always there. A sour taste in the back of my throat. A dull ache in my abdomen. Waiting for me to lower my guard so that it can crawl like dark ivy through my veins, choking out every other feeling.

Even years later, I spent nights awake, staring up at the ceiling of yet another Eastern European hotel, fantasizing about how I would ruin them—both Eric and the girl who let it happen. But that was all it was, fantasies. I knew I would never be able to touch Eric. I’d monitored him on social media, his six-figure starting salary at the finance firm on Wall Street, his happy marriage—to Cass’s old roommate, no less—a newborn baby rounding out their perfect family of three. He has enough charm, enough money, enough pull to get away with anything, especially when his accuser is a mildly successful travel blogger with a penchant for bikini photos. And he has friends, like the girl in the swim house that night, who will do whatever it took to cover for him.

I’d kept tabs on her too, of course. I watched the stories come out about her, her family. Thrilled she was going to get her comeuppance, that she was being named everything I had called her in my own head. But then after everything that happened—everything that she did—she got off scot-free. I was enraged, sickened that she manipulated her way out of the terrible things she had done. And soon enough, it became impossible to find her.

Until several months ago. I was in a hotel room in Romania, scrolling through past blog posts by another travel influencer I follow, when something made me stop. It was a mundane post, filled with photos the influencer had taken of her first scuba experience. But there was one picture squeezed in at the bottom that seized my attention in a choke hold. It was a photo of the influencer and three others, gathered around a small table loaded with drinks, a beautiful landscape of white sand and turquoise waves in the background. “Celebrating being scuba certified with the amazing staff at the Koh Sang Dive Resort!” she had captioned the photo, geotagging it as the Tiki Palms Restaurant. I skimmed over the two men at the table—one with a mashed-up nose and dirty-looking hair, the other a redhead with a kind smile—to the only other woman, her expression surprised as if she wasn’t expecting the flash. She was different, of course: the blond hair, the tanned skin, the new name. But her eyes were the exact same as they’d been three years ago.

Empty.

It was the girl from the swim house. The girl from the newspapers. Her.

I spent weeks learning everything I could about her, scouring the resort website and social media pages for any crumbs of information I could gather, each realization expounding my anger. She’d left New York, started over. She had a brand-new life, a boyfriend, a job, a set of close friends on this paradise island. The unfairness of it cut me to my core. She didn’t deserve this, any of it.

So after a few months of saving and researching and planning, I spent everything I had to come to this island to find her. To see if she’d changed. And if not, to get revenge.

I went to the Tiki Palms the morning after I first arrived on Koh Sang, knowing we would cross paths eventually. I was so jittery I could barely sit still, my heart beating so hard I expected she would hear it as soon as she entered the restaurant. I thought for certain she would recognize me, convinced my plan would be destroyed before it even started. Despite rounding out my Kentucky drawl, my new hair color, and learning how to use makeup—thanks, Instagram—I still look like the girl I was back at Hudson University. But Cass was so guileless she never even questioned it, which only made my rage burn brighter. She’s the same person she was back then, desperate for the attention of those who shine bright, no matter the cost to others. And as a glittering new Instagram celebrity, I fit the mold pretty well.

I sit now, at the top of the hill leading to her house, because I’m consumed by the need to see those eyes that have haunted me every day since I entered that swim house. I need to see that she understands. I need to see that I’ve broken her as much as she did me.