Chapter 1: Introduction
Their calls lapped at my back like annoying waves as I walked faster, heeled booties clicking an angry tempo on the old brick path. "Aww, don't be like that, sweetheart!"
One of them, a broad-shouldered guy in a too-tight polo, broke from the pack and jogged to cut me off, his face split in a grin that felt like a violation.
"Krissy, right? From PoliSci 201?" he said, feigning familiarity.
I stopped, hoisting my backpack strap higher on my shoulder. "My professor is a seventy-year-old feminist who calls out microaggressions daily. What's your name? Let's go tell her you're a star pupil."
His grin faltered. His friends hung back, snickering, but the ground had shifted.
My heart was a frantic bird against my ribs. "Look, Eric," I said, reading his faded frat letters. "I've got a thermo-fluids exam in an hour that’s essentially astrophysics in a blender. My brain is full. There’s no room for you."
I stepped around him, my eyes locking onto the Gothic arch of the library ahead. Then I heard his friend’s voice, lower, meant to carry. "Stuck-up bitch."
The words were a familiar sting, but today they ignited something. I pivoted on my heel. "You know, you're right." I let a slow, cold smile touch my lips. "I am stuck up. Because I’m up here," I tapped my temple, "and you’re so far down there it must hurt your neck to look." I turned back to Eric, his face now flushed. "And your president just got a noise violation for that pathetic Tuesday night mixer. The review board is next week, isn't it? Wonder what a report about public harassment would do to your standing." I held his gaze until he looked at the bricks. "Have a great day, boys."
I didn't run. I walked, the rhythm of my steps the only sound I allowed myself to hear until the library’s heavy door sighed shut behind me, sealing me in cool, quiet stone. I leaned against it, the adrenaline melting into a hollow, familiar ache. A red 'C' was scrawled on the cover of my thermo-fluids text. Last week’s failed quiz. My clever tongue couldn’t differential an equation, and my threats were hollow—I’d never actually report anyone.
The victory felt thin and sour, a performance that proved nothing, and the real test was still waiting.
The victory felt thin and sour, a performance that proved nothing, and the real test was still waiting. I flunked it, miserably. Two hours later, I stared at the crimson slash through my exam, the professor’s impersonal scrawl feeling like a verdict on my entire existence. See me.
Back in my apartment, silence screamed. I tossed the exam onto the growing pile of my failures, next to the maxed-out credit card statement for the boots I’d worn today. The lie of control I’d sold myself on the quad evaporated. Texting my roommate Chloe felt like admitting defeat, but my fingers flew anyway. Nightmare fuel. Need to drown it.
Her reply was instantaneous. The Vortex.10. Wear the black dress.
The black dress was a weapon—a slip of fabric that promised obliteration. I shed my campus skin, painting on a new persona with meticulous strokes. In the mirror, a stranger stared back, polished and impenetrable. At The Vortex, the bass was a physical thing, a thrum in my teeth. Bodies melded in the dark, a sweaty, anonymous mass. Chloe shoved a cold, sweating drink into my hand. “To forgetting thermo-anything,” she yelled. I downed it, the burn a welcome correction.
On the dance floor, I ceased to be Krissy-with-the-red-C. I was just motion and light and the approving gaze of strangers. A guy with good teeth and vacant eyes bought me a shot. “You’re stunning,” he breathed, his hand already on my waist. I laughed, loud and hollow. “You have no idea,” I said, and let the music erase the rest.
The next shot was vodka, cheap and sharp, and it didn’t burn so much as it dissolved things. The line between my body and the hot, shifting air of the club began to soften.
A third appeared in my hand from someone I didn’t see. I drank it. The music lost its edges, becoming a thick liquid I was swimming in.
“You can really move,” a voice materialized at my ear, lips brushing my skin. A different guy now, his hand solid on my hip, steering me. His cologne was a cloying cloud.
I giggled, a sound that felt foreign and loose. “It’s just physics,” I slurred, the word ‘physics’ tasting like ash and candy. “Angular momentum.”
He didn’t hear or care, his other hand coming up to bracket me. “Want another drink? You’re incredible.”
The room tipped pleasantly. I was a balloon, untethered. “I’m incredible,” I repeated, the statement hollow. Another body pressed close from behind, a wall of heat and denim. “Hey, save a dance for me,” a new voice rumbled.
Their words merged into a single, buzzing hum of validation. I closed my eyes, letting the current take me, a pretty piece of driftwood in a dark sea. For a while, it was perfect. I was nothing but a reaction, admired and anonymous.
Then his hand slid from my hip to the bare skin of my thigh, rough and possessive. The touch was a cold splash, a sudden, harsh focus in the blur.
My eyes snapped open. The grinning face was too close, his breath sour with beer. The music felt violent.
The hand on my thigh tightened, a claim. “Come on, you wanted attention.” His voice was all smug assurance.
The fog in my head twisted, thickened. “Don’t…” The word was a whisper, lost in the synth beat.
“You’re wasted. Let’s get you some air.” It wasn’t an offer. His arm hooked around my waist, steering me off the dance floor. The crowd swallowed Chloe. The cold night air hit my skin like a slap. My knees buckled. He held me up, his grip impersonal. “Easy there.”
“I need to… my friend…”
“It’s cool, I got you.” He was already walking, my body leaning into his out of necessity. His car smelled of old fries and pine air freshener. He buckled my seatbelt, his knuckles brushing my chest. The streetlights bled into streaks of gold. My head lolled against the window, the cool glass a minor anchor.
My head lolled against the window, the cool glass a minor anchor.
He didn't drive far, just pulled into the dark expanse of an empty commuter lot off campus.
When the engine cut, the silence was heavy, complete. “C’mere, gorgeous,” he said, his voice all false warmth. He didn't turn on the dome light, and I felt feral suddenly, a shape trapped in shadows. I tried to focus on his hands as he reached over, turning my face toward his. His thumb brushed my jaw. Something in the cold utility of the gesture cleared a tiny patch in the fog. This wasn't a date. This was a transaction. The familiar smart-ass words congealed in my throat, tasting like bile. I was just scenery, like the dance floor lights.
Maybe if I played the part perfectly, it wouldn't matter that I felt split in two.
He leaned in, and the cloying cologne was suffocating. I braced for a sloppy, drunken push of his mouth against mine. Instead, he stopped an inch away, a predator assessing. "Just relax," he breathed.
So I did. In the dark, I let Krissy-with-the-C fade and became the only currency she’d ever really understood. I gave back as good as I got, a performative fervor that made him groan, my hands moving to the back of his neck as his tangled in my hair.Our teeth clicked. The kiss was a messy, chemical battle, my painted mouth meeting his with a force that left a faint, coppery sting. I threw myself into it, pressing against the hard line of the center console, because losing myself in the sheer, aggressive sensation was still easier than touching the hollow dread beneath it.
I threw myself into it, pressing against the hard line of the center console, because losing myself in the sheer, aggressive sensation was still easier than touching the hollow dread beneath it. He grunted approval. The seatbelt buckle dug into my ribs. There was a practiced mechanical quality to his movements, a checklist in the dark.
His nameless, impersonal weight pinned me there as the car windows fogged. Time untethered, measured only in his rough breath and the slick slide of fabric. I’m here, I’m not here, I chanted silently, a ghost haunting my own body.
He cursed, fumbled with a condom wrapper. There was a brief, clumsy struggle of clothes. Cold vinyl kissed my back, a stark, jolting slap against my fevered skin. I stared past his shoulder at the warped, pale moon through the fogged glass. I focused on it, hard, making it my anchor in the static void swallowing me. “Fuck, yeah,” he mumbled into my neck.
The pain was sharp, a bright, shocking line. I flinched, a tiny gasp escaping my frozen lips. It didn’t stop anything. He didn’t seem to notice, his rhythm insistent, a machine seeking its own conclusion. My hands, which had clung to his shoulders, fell limply to my sides, numb fists in the gloom. A strange, detached clarity cut through the chemical haze for one brutal second: This was the most intimate and loneliest I had ever been. Then it was over. He collapsed with a shudder, his sweat cooling instantly on my skin. He withdrew, zipped up. “You’re a wild one,” he breathed, a compliment that felt like a sentence.
The engine roared to life again, shattering the thick quiet. He drove back to the club, humming along to the radio. He pulled up at the edge of the lot and gave me a patronizing pat on the knee. “Take care of yourself, gorgeous.”
I stumbled out into the neon-drenched night.
The warmth on my leg was tacky, drying fast in the cold air. I leaned against the rough cinderblock wall behind a dumpster, the stench of sour trash and stale beer cutting through my numbness. Music thumped from the club, a muffled heartbeat for a world I’d just exited.
A sharp laugh burst from my throat, raw and ugly. What had I proven? What had I won? The after-image of the dance floor flashed behind my eyes—him steering me off it, him opening his car door. I let it happen. He didn't force me.
He used me. I knew it the second he pulled into that lot. And I let him. Not because I was afraid, but because somewhere between the exam failure and the vodka, giving this stranger what he wanted felt easier than figuring out what I did. It was easier to be a conquest than a failure. Just convenient terrain to walk over. Nothing special. I felt used like a cheap napkin you grab for a spill then ball up and toss away, never thinking of again.
I felt disgustingly hollow. All that fire from the quad, all that witty armor, it meant nothing because a single red letter and three drinks made me give up my whole self for a handful of drunk, sloppy minutes in a Honda Civic.
My phone buzzed in my clutch. It was Chloe. Where did you go???
A block away, a streetlamp buzzed and died, plunging a section of pavement into perfect black. A wave of chilled, pure loneliness washed through my chest, so vast it nearly buckled my knees. I stared into that black void, my heart a dull, used ache against my ribs.
I stared into that black void, my heart a dull, used ache against my ribs. My phone buzzed again, a frantic insect in my hand. “Hey,” I said, my voice strangely flat, a dead channel.
“Krissy! Jesus, where are you?” Chloe’s panic was a distant radio station.
“Behind the dumpsters. I’m fine.” The word was ash.
She found me two minutes later, her face crumpling with relief then tightening with concern. “Your dress,” she whispered, eyeing the twisted hem, the smudged strap falling off my shoulder. “What happened? Who was that guy?”
“No one.” I pushed off the wall, my body moving on autopilot. “Just drive me home, Chlo.”
In her car, the heater blasted, but I couldn’t stop shivering. She kept glancing over, her questions hovering in the air between us until they died, suffocated by my silence. The campus landmarks slid by, postcard-perfect and mocking.
Back in my apartment, I went straight to the shower. I scrubbed until my skin was raw and pink, watching the water swirl at my feet, clear and indifferent. I wrapped myself in a towel and caught my reflection in the steamy mirror—platinum hair dark at the roots, eyes hollowed out.
The thought wasn't a relief; it was a vacuum. The shame, the anger, the clever retort I’d craft tomorrow—all of it was just… absent. I was a bell that had been struck hard and now only echoed with silence. I mechanically brushed my teeth, moisturized my face, performed the cult of maintenance. I climbed into bed. The sheets were cold. I lay perfectly still, staring at the ceiling, listening to the hum of the fridge. My body was a loaner I’d returned in worse condition. My mind was a blank screen. I feel nothing. It was the most terrifying thing of all.