I halt because her last words have an ominous ring to them.

“What happened?”

She lifts her eyes to mine. “The cute boy found a prettier girl than me, and soon I was left all alone. That pissed me off, hurt my feelings. Made me feel terrible and lonely. I thought about leaving, but then…”

Sela hesitates, gives a slight cough, and continues with more strength in her voice. “But then I had the attention of another cute boy. Older. College age, I guess. He flirted with me, told me how beautiful I was. Talked about college and frat parties, and hinted that maybe we could go out together. So I turned the flirting charm back onto him. I batted my eyes, stuck my chest out, did whatever I could to prove that I could hang with an older crowd. That I was mature and worldly, and it was so stupid, but I even thought…screw the boy I’d come with. He was just a boy. This was a man. A college guy that was interested in me. I even thought about how he’d take me to spring dance, and my ex-boyfriend would be so jealous. I let him kiss me, and rub his hand on my ass. I pressed into him, and although I really didn’t know what I was doing, he liked it and it made me bolder.”

“Not your fault,” I whisper hoarsely, and she gives me an accommodating nod.

“Maybe not,” she whispers back. Another clearing of her throat, and her voice is strong again. “At any rate, I don’t know how much time passed. I was given beer. We hung out. We danced. I was having the time of my life and all I could keep thinking was that this was the best birthday ever.”

She stops, her story hitting a wall. Her gaze drops back to her lap and her fingers work in a nervous twining around each other. I wait her out, knowing that she’s getting to the horror part of her story, and I swallow against the bile building up in my throat.

When she finally looks at me again, her eyebrows are drawn inward in frustration. “Then I don’t remember much of anything. Bits and pieces. Tiny flashes of images, sounds, smells.”

“I don’t need details,” I tell her softly. Begging her, perhaps, not to tell me the details.

“But you do,” she argues simply, and doesn’t give me room to argue back. “There were three of them. I can’t remember a lot, but I’m sure there were three.”

“Sela,” I whisper. A simple statement of remorse and pain that three men violated her. This was worse than I ever could have imagined.

She pins me with a direct stare, her chin coming up higher in a pose of absolute defiance of the horror that befell her. “The first one took my virginity. I was so out of it I don’t even think I felt pain, but I remember him grunting on top of me. The next one wanted me to suck his dick, but was afraid I’d bite him, so he raped my ass.”

“No,” I wheeze out, the air burning my chest as it’s expelled.

Her chin goes higher. “Then JT was on me while someone else held me down. I remember panties stuffed in my mouth so I couldn’t scream, but honestly…I didn’t have the strength to. I just laid there…and took it.”

I hunch over, hands to my knees, and stare at the floor as I swallow hard…willing myself not to scream or throw up.

“I only have flashes…snippets of scenes. He pulled out of me, removed the panties, and came in my mouth. Put his hand over my nose and mouth and made me swallow it. That is one of the clearer memories.”

I lurch upward, the room spinning and my vision going dark for a moment until I become focused on the front door to the condo. I bolt toward it, snarling, “I’m going to fucking kill him. Going to beat him to a bloody pulp.”

Sela flies off the couch and steps in my way, hands coming firmly to my chest. I look down at her, see the strength and resistance in her eyes, and my hands clap to her wrists. Not in an effort to push her away, but with burning need to pull her into me. My arms wrap around her upper back and I hunch my shoulders so I come protectively around her.

“I’m going to kill him,” I whisper, my throat burning and tears stinging my eyes.

“No, you’re not,” she says softly, her own hands moving to my lower back and pressing in. She rubs slow circles, willing me to calm down. But all I can imagine is my fists pummeling into JT’s face, until his nose breaks, then smashes, then becomes obliterated until he starts to drown in his own blood. I’m going to hold my hand over his nose and mouth and I’m not going to let up until his lungs suffocate with blood.

“Calm down,” she murmurs, rubbing harder at my back. “You need to hear it all.”

“I can’t,” I croak out, sniffing in deeply and blinking my eyes to clear the wetness.

Sela leans back, far enough so she can look up at me. “Let me get it all out, Beck. You haven’t heard the worst.”

“I can’t,” I implore her. Because it will only fuel me to come up with something even more heinous to rain down on JT’s head.

“Please.”

“Sela.”

“Please, Beck,” she says, then wraps a delicate hand around my wrist. She leads me to the couch, and my leaden legs don’t move for a moment, so she pulls on me harder. I follow numbly and she pushes me down onto a cushion, crawling right onto my lap to straddle me. My arms encircle her lower back automatically, hers going to my shoulders as she looks down at me.

“Somehow I got home. JT put me in a cab, paid the driver, I suppose. I was out of it, not really sure what happened to me…just those flashes that I described to you. I was starting to feel pain; I had bruises starting to form and while I was still stoned and drugged, I had this sort of deep understanding that I had caused this to happen.”

My body tightens but she continues, not letting me rebuke her for the blame game again.

“I got a utility knife out of the kitchen drawer. Went into the bathroom. I hated myself so much for what I’d let happen to me—for being stupid enough to even go with strangers to that party, for flirting and pretending to be a big girl—that I cut down into my left wrist.”

I suck in a startled breath before grabbing on to her wrist, twisting it so I could see. I had seen it before, I realized. My thumb grazes over the small, inch-long scar that cuts at an inward angle. It’s thin and red with a slightly raised and bumpy edge, but it’s so small I never would have connected it with a desire to end one’s life.

“I didn’t try hard enough,” she whispers, and I raise my eyes to hers. “I pressed down, and the minute it punched through my skin, I regretted it. There was a lot of blood, but it wasn’t a large cut and I didn’t hit a vein. I was still high as a kite and I fell to the floor, I think more wigged out over what I’d just done than anything. It woke my parents and they found me quickly. Called an ambulance.”