When they returned to Ithaca for their senior year, Edie was tapped to be the student director of the Statler Hotel—a very, very big deal. When Edie told Graydon, she expected him to pick her up and swing her around like it was the end of the war in a movie; she thought he’d take a selfie with her and post it on his Instagram with the caption #girlboss. But right away, she could see…he was jealous and resentful.
It was right after this that Graydon started asking for things in bed, things Edie wasn’t entirely comfortable with—and eventually was mortified by—but she consented because she felt she had to apologize for her success. Graydon recorded everything they did—he told her that made it “way hotter”—and Edie, who wanted only to please him, did what he wanted and recited her lines.
As Edie stands before Alessandra and her half-finished mosaic, she gets a text from Graydon. It’s a picture of a box of Pocky, the long chocolate-covered cookie sticks from Japan, and Edie feels a wave of nausea roll over her. She rushes into the one-person bathroom and can’t decide whether to cry or throw up. She does a weird hybrid of both, desperately hoping that Alessandra will be gone when she emerges. Please, Edie thinks, pack up your mosaic and leave. The mosaic of Edie’s life would be cute around the edges—bits of rose-colored glass and hand-painted bone china—but in the middle would be a chunk of tarry asphalt, black and oozing.
When Edie steps out, Alessandra hands her a bowl of vanilla soft-serve ice cream topped with M&M’s, which is Edie’s go-to snack. Edie didn’t realize Alessandra even knew her go-to.
“Sit,” Alessandra says. “Tell me what’s wrong. I want to help.”
For two months, Edie and Alessandra have worked side by side, and Alessandra has only been a hostile nation, the Axis to Edie’s Allies. Alessandra’s unyielding coldness has caused Edie hours of anxiety and, she’s not afraid to say it, a little heartache. It’s not fair for Alessandra to be nice now, when Edie has finally grown immune to her being not nice.
But Edie wants to tell someone, and who else does she have? She no longer speaks to Charisse （thanks to Graydon）， she can’t tell her mother, she couldn’t possibly confide in Lizbet, and she can’t tell Zeke.
Edie picks up the spoon just so she’ll have something to do with her hands. “My ex-boyfriend is blackmailing me with videos I let him take of us when we were still together,” Edie says. “He sent me a Venmo request for a thousand dollars and told me if I don’t pay him, he’ll send the videos to my prospective employers. Before that, he threatened to send them to my mother.”
Alessandra nods ever so slightly. “Ah.” She doesn’t seem shocked or appalled—but then, she hasn’t seen the videos. She hasn’t heard the things Edie said into the camera; she hasn’t watched the acts. No one can see those things, Edie thinks. No one! She has to pay him the thousand dollars, even though that’s forty hours of work. “I have to pay him.”
Alessandra scoffs. “You do not have to pay him. You realize that posting revenge porn is a crime, right? A class-four felony? You can call the police.”
Edie thinks about calling the Nantucket Police and speaking to Chief Kapenash. There is no way. And that’s why women don’t turn in their abusers, she thinks. It’s humiliating—and the possibility of victim-shaming is very real.
“I can’t call the police,” Edie whispers. “He’s out in Arizona.”
“Phoenix?”
“Marana,” Edie says.
Alessandra’s eyebrows shoot up. “He works at Dove Mountain? I know the property. I’m sure the GM there would find his behavior very problematic.”
“I don’t want to…I’m not going to call his GM.”
“He’s threatening to post videos without your consent, is that right?”
Edie nods.
“And he’s blackmailing you. How much money have you sent him so far?”
Edie bows her head.
“Edie?”
“Fifteen hundred,” she says.
“What?” Alessandra jumps to her feet. “We’re getting that money back. Just give me his phone number and let me take care of it.”
“I can’t,” Edie says.
“Edie,” Alessandra says. “I’m going to scare the hell out of him. I’m going to pretend to be someone else. Now, I know I’ve given you no reason to trust me. But surely you have faith that I can be a convincing bitch on the phone and I can get this guy…what’s his name?”