IT WAS ONLY seven-thirty on a Sunday morning and barely daybreak. I’d already run more than five miles, but a new blister on my heel was giving me trouble. My running shoes needed to be replaced.
That would set me back another hundred dollars. Which I did not have.
I stopped running when I reached the outskirts of campus, slowing to a walk to cool myself down. I loved being alone so early in the morning, when the sun made slanting lines against the limestone facades. Thanks to my fancy new iPod and an overpriced arm band, bachata tunes pulsed in my ears. I walked slowly down the sleepy fraternity row. It was still cold enough outside that my breath made visible puffs in the morning air.
At that hour, I fully expected to be alone. It surprised me to hear a door slam on one of the wooden porches. My eyes traced the row of houses, but it was not a fraternity member who stumbled into view. A girl, her head bent down, made an awkward descent from the last porch in the row. As I watched, she grabbed the railing to steady herself. In spite of the chill, she had on skimpy clothing. And I couldn’t help notice that her arms and legs were strangely tattooed.
The drooping girl seemed to gather herself with a deep breath, and then shove off into the morning. But her feet weren’t willing to play along. She stumbled after a few steps, and then fell awkwardly to the sidewalk.
Shit.
Yanking my ear buds out, I draped them around my neck. Then I jogged forward as the skin of my heel yelped in protest. By the time I reached her, the girl was attempting to pull herself to her feet.
It was Bella.
For a moment I just froze there, my brain too startled to react. But her knees buckled again, and my reflexes came back online. I lunged forward, clamping one hand on either hip to steady her.
Bella let fly with a hoarse shriek of terror.
Shit!
“Bella, sorry. It’s just me. Rafe. Sorry.” I was babbling, but she was trembling in my arms, and it was freaky. I stepped around her body so she could see me. “Are you okay?”
As I waited for an answer, I took in more strange details and began to understand that she was not okay. Not at all. What I’d mistaken for tattoos on her limbs were actually words inked in marker. Some person — or people — had written on Bella.
FILTHY BITCH had been scrawled on her upper arm in black ink.
And on her leg? If I used any of those words, my Ma would slap me. My chest clenched just to see it. Acting on instinct, I stepped closer to Bella, leaning her against my chest. Then I looked up at the frat house I’d just seen her leave.
Beta Rho.
The house was completely still. And except for the slow creaking of a birch tree moving in the breeze, there was no noise at all. There were no faces in the doorway or at the windows.
What the hell went on in there?
My neck tingled, and I fought off a shiver. Bella was silent. The whole situation was creepy as hell.
I really needed to get Bella home before she fell over again. “Come on. Let’s go.” I repositioned her in the crook of my arm, my hand pressed against her hip.
Moving down the sidewalk, I was practically frog-marching her. Not that it was easy. Every few steps she stumbled. With my free hand, I grasped Bella’s other elbow. Her skin was cold to the touch.
Thankfully, it was only a few minutes’ walk from fraternity row to Beaumont. “Can you tell me what happened?” I asked once.
“No,” Bella whispered. The glassy look in her eyes gave nothing away.
When we reached our entryway, I hip-checked the laser reader, hoping for enough contact to unlock the door. I heard a reassuring click, and stepped up to open the door. Bella stumbled over the marble threshold, and there was an awkward moment when I thought one or both of us was going to end up on the tile floor.
“Whoa,” I said, steadying us. I peered up the stairs. “Come on, now,” I whispered. “Almost there.” With Bella still tucked under my arm, we reached the first stair step.
With a hand on the railing, she dragged herself up the first five or six steps. Then she stopped. “Just leave me here,” she said, her voice low.
“No can do,” I replied.
She actually gave me a little shove with her hip. “Go.”
There was no way in hell I would walk away from her. Maybe I hadn’t known what to say or do since our crazy night together. I’d probably handled things pretty badly. But I knew exactly what to do right now.
Instead of arguing with Bella, I stepped into her space. I bent my knees and wrapped my arms around her hips, lifting her into the air.
For one shocked second, she said nothing. I slung her over my shoulder, grabbing the railing with my free hand. Then I began to climb.
“Down,” she insisted to my back. “Put me down.”
“Nope,” I exhaled.
She gave my back a thump with her arm, but I only held her more tightly. I powered up the stairs. I didn’t want someone sticking his head out to catch us this way. It would look as though I was overpowering a drunk girl.
And I was, if you wanted to get all technical about it.
About a minute later, I was sliding Bella down my body and onto her feet in front of her fourth-floor door.
Her face had pinked up, and her eyes narrowed. I was glad to see it. An ornery Bella was much better than a stony-eyed one. She patted the pocket of her skirt, drew out a set of keys and then dropped them.
Before she could react, I snatched them off the floor and stuck the room key in the lock.
“Hey,” Bella argued. But I wanted her inside her room and off her feet. She still looked as if the slightest breeze might knock her down.
Behind us I heard the squeak of a door. Turning my head, I caught a glimpse of her famous neighbor’s face peeking out. Lianne’s eyes grew wide before she shut her door again.
Bella pushed her own door open, yanking the knob from my hand. She crashed into the room, stumbled over to the bed and fell onto it.
I shut the door behind me, then went over to kneel beside the bed. “Bella,” I whispered. “Are you hurt anywhere?” She seemed so weak and that was odd. I didn’t have much experience with alcohol poisoning, though.
In answer, Bella only closed her eyes.
I took the opportunity to examine the words marked on her limbs. Two or three different pens had been used. The lines weren’t all the same width, and some of the handwriting was different.
The only consistent feature was how awful it was. DANGER someone had written. And that was just about the only word in the bunch you could say in church. A lot of it wasn’t coherent, which may have been a blessing. But even misspelled, FILTY PUSSY was unfortunately legible.
As I looked her over, the creepy tingle returned to my spine. Someone had done this to Bella. No — several someones. It was almost impossible to picture. They must have stood around her passed-out body, egging each other on.
I tasted bile imagining it. And I couldn’t help wondering what else they might have done to her.
Shit. I’d gotten Bella home safely. But it occurred to me that the job wasn’t over. “Bella,” I whispered. “Do you need to go to the police? Or the hospital?”
Her eyes flew open again. “No,” she ground out. “They didn’t… It wasn’t about that.”
“Then…” I grasped for the right question. “What was it about?”
“EMBARRASSING me!” She sat up. “It worked. You’re staring!”
I sat back on my heels and took a deep breath. It wouldn’t be right to just let this go. “I don’t know what happened to you, but this is disgusting, and you need to tell someone.” I slipped my iPod out of its sports sleeve. I opened up the camera app and aimed my device at Bella’s leg.
“What are you doing?” she gasped, swatting at my iPod.
I held it out for her to take. “When you’re ready to talk, you’re going to want proof.”
For the first time since I’d found her on fraternity row, she squared her shoulders. Then, before I even knew what was happening, she grabbed my iPod and threw it across the room. I heard a sickening crack as it crashed into the plaster wall. Sections of my fancy toy flung themselves in opposite directions on Bella’s floor.
“OUT!” Bella yelled. She dragged herself onto her feet and pointed her body toward the little bathroom.
I stood up to follow because she still looked unsteady.
She gripped the door frame and swung an angry face toward mine. “Don’t you dare follow me into the bathroom.”
I heard the sound of another door opening. I looked past Bella into the bathroom and saw the neighbor’s face peering at me again, this time with shocked, wide-open eyes.
Fantastico. I took a step back, hoping to look nonthreatening. “Listen. If you don’t want me here, that’s fine. But who can I call for you? I don’t think you should be alone right now.”
Bella gave her head a single shake. “Just GO!” Bella’s head swiveled to take in Lianne’s curious gaze. “What are you staring at?”
The other girl’s bathroom door closed quickly. That was a shame, because now was really the perfect time for a girlfriend to step in.
“I’m showering,” Bella said, her hand on the bathroom door. The expression on her face was fierce.
I took a couple steps backward, still unsure what to do.
“Get out of here,” Bella slurred. Then she shut the bathroom door in my face.
Standing there, staring at the wooden panels, I didn’t know what to do. After a moment, I heard the sound of the shower. Still, I was not going to leave her alone here. Not in her condition.
I left Bella’s room, as she’d asked me to, but I didn’t go downstairs. Instead, I knocked on the neighbor’s door.
She opened it warily. “Hi,” she said through the narrow opening.
“Hi. I’m Rafe. I’m your downstairs neighbor.”
“I know,” she whispered.
Fair enough. “So… Bella is not doing so well, and she won’t tell me why. Are the two of you close?”
Slowly, the girl shook her head, a look of regret in her eyes.
“Okay.” I cleared my throat. “That makes two of us. She’s in the shower now I think.”
Lianne tipped her head toward her own bathroom door, and nodded.
“Can you just… check on her in a few minutes?”
“Okay,” she whispered. “What’s the deal with…?” She gestured toward her arms and legs.
“I really don’t know. I was out running when I found her. And she won’t talk about it.”
Lianne cringed.
“Just check on her, okay? Are you going to be home for a while? I’ll come back upstairs later to see how she is.”
I waited for Lianne’s nod before I turned away.
Still in my sweaty running clothes, I went downstairs to my own bathroom. I showered and dressed. Bickley was still passed out in his bed where I’d left him a couple of hours before.
This morning I’d almost slept in too, skipping the run. If I hadn’t gone, Bella might still be sprawled on the sidewalk somewhere. The idea made me feel sick.
I was hunting for a pair of clean socks when there was a tentative knock on our outer door. When I opened it, Lianne stood there, looking uncomfortable. “She’s still in the shower,” she said.
“Okay.” A long shower wasn’t the end of the world.
Lianne bit her lip. “She sounds really upset. But when I tried to ask her if she needed help, she just screamed at me. She doesn’t want me in there.”
Dios. “Do you want me to try to talk to her?”
Lianne nodded.
“All right.” I headed up the stairs followed by Lianne. On the landing, I caught her elbow. “Hey. Can you tell me who Bella does talk to? Does she have a girlfriend I could call? Someone she trusts?”
Lianne looked thoughtful. “Bella doesn’t have girlfriends. She hangs around with the hockey team.”
“Well…” I couldn’t exactly start dialing from the top of the team roster. “Anyone special?”
“I don’t know their names. One of them speaks a lot of French.”
I remembered that guy from Casino Night, but had no idea who he was. And for all I knew, he was the one who hurt her. “Can you let me into the bathroom?”
Lianne led me through her room. When I entered the bathroom, the shower curtain was only partially closed, and I could see movement. Bella was seated on the shower floor, furiously scraping at her skin with a bar of soap. “Damn it, damn, damn,” she chanted. I took one step closer. The skin on her leg was raw-looking and red.
“Bella,” I said. I think I startled her. She dropped the soap and folded over herself. “Come on out of there now,” I said as gently as I could. She didn’t answer me. She only hugged her bent knee more tightly, her face turned away from mine.
Jesucristo. Someone needed to help Bella get a grip. Since there was nobody else handy, seemed like that someone was going to be me.
I stuck my arm into the shower, turning off the water. Towels hung from hooks on the opposite wall. I grabbed the largest one and draped it over Bella’s dripping back and shoulders. “Come on now. Stand up.”
She didn’t move.
“Get up, princesita.” I spoke to her the way I might address one of my cranky little cousins who needed a nap. “Come on now. Get up or I’m going to pick you up.” I didn’t really want to make good on that threat. Luckily, Bella didn’t want me too, either. She gathered the edges of the towel together and rose, her back to me.
I gave her some space. Bella stepped out of the shower, avoiding my eyes. I followed her into her room, averting my gaze while she wrapped the towel properly across her chest and under her arms.
When she sat down on the bed, I noticed that although the skin on her legs was rubbed raw, I could still see the faded outlines of the words written there. The marks were still quite dark on her shoulders and upper arms, too.
Bella saw me looking and clamped her arms across her chest, hands over her shoulders. “I want you to leave me alone.” She spared me a single glance, and it was full of pain.
Instead of obeying, I sat down beside her on the bed, but not too close. “I’ll go if you call someone else to be here with you.”
She made an irritated noise. “I don’t want company, Rafe.”
“That’s too bad,” I said as gently as possible. “But it’s me or a friend. Because honestly, I feel like I should go get the house dean.”
Bella’s blue eyes widened with horror. “Don’t you fucking dare. I don’t need the dean. I don’t need you. I just need to…” She broke off, rubbing at a spot on her upper arm with her thumb. The ink was particularly dark there. She scraped at it with her thumbnail — the letter “D” in DIRTY BITCH. Still pink from the hot water, Bella’s skin looked tender.
While I watched, Bella made an angry red scratch across her velvet skin.
I wasn’t even thinking when I reached out, but I couldn’t stand to see her hurt herself any more than I could stand the words on her skin. I covered up the scratch with my hand, knocking her clawing finger out of the way.
She froze solid under my touch.
“Don’t hurt yourself. Please,” I begged.
Her face got tight, and her eyes began to redden. When she spoke again, her voice had an edge of hysteria. “But I can’t get it off.”
“I’ll help you get it off,” I promised. “Just don’t do that.”
She inhaled through her nose. I saw her fighting for control, and my throat got tight. I’d been operating on pure adrenaline up until this moment. But now it felt as if all the air had been sucked out of the room and replaced by sadness.
Bella dropped her head. Then she let out a sob so raw my gut clenched at the sound. And I wanted to maim whoever caused her to make that awful noise. She hunched forward, her towel slipping. Her back rose and fell with sobs.
I lunged for the blanket at the foot of her bed, which I wrapped around her body. Only then did I reach for her. Grabbing her shoulders, I leaned her against me.
She didn’t fight me, but her shoulders continued to shake. I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her close to me. I just wanted to make the shaking stop. “Shh, cariño. You’re going to be okay.” Dios, what meaningless words. But I didn’t know any better ones.
She didn’t acknowledge me. She turned her face away from mine and I could still feel every silent sob wracking her.
That would not do.
I swept her wet hair off her face and wiped the tears away with my thumb. “Shhh.”
Bella had always struck me as a tough cookie. There was just something so buoyant in the way she held herself. Even now, I watched her slow down her breathing, forcing herself to get calm. She lifted her eyes to the ceiling, blinking back unshed tears. “Sorry,” she whispered.
I gave her shoulder a squeeze. “Do you have any rubbing alcohol?”
She shook her head.
“Okay. What about nail-polish remover?”
Bella gave me the side eye. Then she shook her head again. “Not my style.”
I tucked the blanket around her and then slid out from under her. “I’m going to go get us some breakfast and coffee. And find something to get that ink off.”
Bella looked up at me, measuring me with her gaze. “You don’t have to.”
“Back in a jif.”
It took me thirty minutes to visit the pharmacy and the dining hall. Soon enough I was trotting back up the entryway stairs, passing my own door to climb to Bella’s.
“Knock knock,” I said outside. My hands were full.
She opened the door wearing sweatpants and a long-sleeved T-shirt. “You didn’t have to do this.”
I ignored that comment and walked in, setting all the booty down on her desk. “Do you want the bagel with smoked salmon, or the egg burrito? Or we could go halfsies.”
Bella cleared her throat. “The bagel?”
I passed her a cardboard clamshell container and a coffee cup. Then I moved a stack of books off her desk chair and sat in it, opening my own coffee.
There were a couple minutes of silence while we ate. I’d run something like six miles that morning, then carried Bella up the stairs. I was desperately hungry.
Across from me, Bella nibbled at her breakfast and snuck looks at me. “Nice work getting take-out from the dining hall,” she said eventually. The Beaumont House dining room was eat-in only, except for coffee.
“I work there.” I shrugged. “I know where the takeout containers are hiding.”
“That’s handy. And I guess you can’t beat the commute.”
“Sure. But it’s really all about the paycheck. The dining halls are unionized, so I get fifteen bucks an hour.”
“Not bad,” Bella said. “That’s more than I get as the hockey manager.”
I doubted that Bella actually needed the money. “It’s almost twice what an office or library job pays. And the weird thing is that very few students take dining-hall jobs. I guess people don’t want to be the guy in the paper hat, serving their friends.”
“But for twice the pay…” Bella took a sip of her coffee. She was looking more and more like herself now.
“The money is good. I’m not usually on the serving line anyway. I’m a prep cook, which means I chop vegetables, mostly. It’s the same job I’ve been doing in my family’s restaurant since I was ten. But now I get paid.”
“I don’t know how to cook,” Bella admitted. “But it’s on my to-do list.”
“Yeah?” I finished my egg burrito and got up to put the empty carton in her trash bin. Then I plucked the pharmacy bag off the floor and took out a bottle of nail-polish remover and a bag of cotton balls. I punctured the bag and tried to remove a couple of them, but a bunch more came along for the ride, scattering in my lap and onto the floor.
Bella raised an eyebrow. “I appreciate this. But I can take it from here.”
I shook my head. “Let me see your shoulder. You can’t see that spot.”
She stayed put. “There’s this thing called a mirror.”
“Bella.” We had a stare-down. “Just let me see if this stuff works. Then I’ll leave you to it.”
“Fine,” she huffed. Then, in one smooth motion, she whipped off her Harkness Hockey T-shirt.
I practically jumped to stand behind her, so that my eyes wouldn’t drift down to her chest. A few seconds later the room was invaded by the smell of the acetone — the scent I associated with the nail salons that I passed on New York City streets. The dampened cotton ball that I rubbed against her skin began to turn a bluish-purple color as it weakened the marker.
“This is working.” I showed her the cotton ball. Then I worked to get the word SLUTTY off her perfect, creamy shoulder. Seeing the word there made me so angry I had to take a long breath in through my nose, just to try to calm down.
“Is the scent getting to you?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I muttered, my voice like gravel. Dios. Who would do this? “Bella. Would you tell me what happened?”
“No,” she said quickly.
I considered her answer for a minute. “Would you please tell somebody else, then?”
Silence was her only answer.
Meanwhile, I’d faded the word SLUTTY to the point where it was not quite legible. I tossed the cotton ball into Bella’s garbage can and dunked another one, going to work on the word CUNT next. Getting these words off Bella’s skin wasn’t that difficult. But I was worried something worse than marks on her skin had happened to her. And if it had, I was basically involved in a cover-up job at the moment. Some sicko was going to get away with this shit, and I was helping him.
“Bella,” I whispered. We were so close to one another that my nearly inaudible words were delivered right to her ear. “If something else happened to you last night, would you tell someone? It’s important.”
“There’s nothing to tell.” Her voice was flat.
“What do you remember?” I pressed.
She took a step forward and turned around. “Enough to know that it isn’t what you’re thinking.”
“Okay,” I said, holding a smelly cotton ball in the air like a moron. I could only hope she was telling me the truth.
“I’m sorry I broke your iPod.” Her eyes darted to the remains in the corner.
“Easy come, easy go,” I said. “Never really needed that thing.”
“I’ll get you another one anyway.”
“Don’t bother. Really.” I put the cap on the bottle of remover. It seemed that Bella was herding me toward the exit. And even if I still felt unsure about leaving her, I couldn’t force her to let me help.
“I can take it from here,” she said.
“Okay.” I picked up our empty coffee cups and shoved them in the bag. “I’m right downstairs if you need anything.”
“Thanks,” she said stiffly.
Feeling as though I hadn’t really done much to help, I left Bella alone.
That evening I spent hours in the library. At Harkness you couldn’t really say “the library” without qualifying your location. There were forty libraries, and everyone had a couple of favorite spots. Some libraries were good for people watching, some were close to the better coffee shops.
I didn’t go to the library to socialize. There weren’t enough hours in the day. So I favored the basement of the Central Campus Library with my business. Down there, a guy could snag a private study carrel. They were nothing but a built-in desk, a chair, three walls and a sliding glass door. We called them weenie bins, and that night I spread out my books and went to it.
Eventually, I fell asleep on a book for Urban Studies. I didn’t wake up until the midnight announcement that the library was closing. Shoving books into my bag, I staggered outside to walk home.
Harkness was breathtaking at this hour, with its old fashioned glass lamps making long shadows on the brick pathways. There was nobody else out on the street, and I could almost imagine that a horse-drawn carriage was about to round the corner from Chapel Street.
The iron gate creaked as I let myself into Beaumont gate. As I approached the entryway door, I tipped my head back to look up at the building. A single light burned on the fourth floor in Bella’s room.
I wondered why she wasn’t sleeping.
