I’m being ripped in half, my soul split in two, and I have no idea how to reconcile either decision.
Maybe this will blow over if they don’t have anything to connect the allegations with.
Resigned to my fate, I sit with Boyd and recount the entirety of the last twenty-four hours, creating a timeline and allowing my brother to offer me the only thing he’s ever been consistent with: security.
Because as much as I want to prove a strange man innocent… I can’t take that chance. Not when there are other people who might want to finish what my mother and her boyfriend started.
The fear inside won’t let me, even if I could get Boyd on board.
When I go to bed that night, even after he’s scrubbed the Internet of my picture and done his best to keep my name out of things, I go to bed knowing I’m the most hated girl in America.
If not by the whole country, then at least by one volatile gray-eyed man.
14
I used to think that outside hatred couldn’t touch you when your self-deprecation screamed louder.
Thought I was protected because I’d spent an entire lifetime despising myself.
Thought the opinions of others didn’t matter, because no one would ever be harder on me than me.
Then, I became an overnight Internet sensation—in the worst possible way—and learned that when you don’t have a buffer for yourself, negativity from other people acts like kerosene, fanning the flames you’ve spent all your time cultivating.
Eventually, you get to a point where all you want is to be doused in the fire.
Relieved of your sentence on earth.
In the days after the catastrophe that followed my class trip to New York City, I did my best to stay off-line. I swear I did, but the temptation to look and see if there were people on my hypothetical side always seemed to win out.
Every night before bed, I’d prop myself up against the headboard and scroll through social media on my laptop, scouring news articles who updated frequently, even though there was never anything new to report. Aiden went on an indefinite hiatus, suspending the rest of his tour and refunding concert tickets, until the investigation brought some sort of closure.
Because of who my brother is, not to mention his connections, there would never be any.
Sure, people speculate about the identity of the girl—even go so far as to pinpoint her as a tourist from Maine—but nobody is saying my name. And as far as us Kellys are concerned, that’s as good as a situation like this can get.
Still, guilt eats away at me, gnawing the frayed edges of my soul like parasites.
Maybe that’s why I check to see what people are saying; it’s as much of an honest form of punishment as my brother will allow, although if he knew I was searching the case online, he’d definitely revoke my Internet.
It’s been days, and still no word from the girl he supposedly raped? Yeah, okay. Red flag.
Just another groupie who got what she wanted and decided to exploit a celebrity. Shame, too—I love Aiden’s music. To Night And Fire are some of my all-time favorite songs!
I met Aiden James at Lollapalooza a couple years back. Nice guy. Don’t believe he’d do this.
Hope that lying bitch gets what she deserves.
A flurry of concern and empathy for the accused, and yet the support for the supposed victim doesn’t even compare.
Scrolling to the bottom of the page, I let their animosity soak to the bone, becoming one with my marrow until I can look at the next comment, no problem.
The shock of their magnitude of disgust never ceases to cut straight through me, no matter how many forums and articles I peruse. To these people, I’m not a girl caught in an impossible place, only trying to do what her brother says will keep her safe.
I’m not a starstruck teenager who had their dream night with their dream man completely ruined by a single rumor.
I’m subhuman.
Garbage.
Once again, proving my mother right.
When I shut down the laptop at night and shove my head beneath the pillows, it’s her whispering the comments in my ear.
Never letting me forget.
Not long after the incident—as those of us on my side are calling it—I ask Boyd to let me finish high school from home.
Most of my classmates at King’s Trace Prep seem entirely too suspicious of my identity, and while no one will come out and say it, I’ve been ostracized even more than I was before.
Nothing like adding social pariah to a résumé, right before you’re supposed to go off to college.
Boyd doesn’t approve of the idea at first, mainly because he works and thinks I need a babysitter, but eventually Fiona gets him to relent, and soon I’m spending my weeks learning AP chemistry and forensics online and fine-tuning my web design skills.
Some days, it’s easier than others to push the thoughts of Aiden from my mind.
But the guilt never ceases.
Unfortunately, my brother has set up some kind of protective firewall, so even if I wanted to contact anyone in Aiden’s life who could reach him, I can’t. At least, not electronically, and I have no clue where I’d even send a letter.
But that doesn’t keep people from contacting me.
It’s not long before an envelope shows up on my doorstep, the contents inside making me vomit into the kitchen sink.
More photographs of me and Aiden traipsing around New York—even though he’s got that disguise on, and I’m in those oversized sweats, I can tell it’s us. At the dry cleaners, again in the park, and finally in the tattoo shop.
They’re intimate pictures; ones that had to have been taken from a close vantage point.
Still, they aren’t the most unsettling thing in the envelope.
Evidence of my entire existence—my birth certificate, vaccination records, and itemized lists of every class and extracurricular I’ve taken, every website I’ve ever visited, my exact locations in New York City. They all fall out with the pictures and a note that only says “We know who you are.”
Tension notches against my sternum, permanently etching itself into my skeleton. I stuff the contents in the bottom of my dresser drawer, heart beating so hard that I’m afraid it might bust through my rib cage and splatter all over the floor.
Would serve me right.
I sit on the envelope for a few days in silence, trying to figure out what to do. If I tell Boyd, he’ll undoubtedly start a war with the James family, and feuds like that have a history of ending poorly.
On the other hand, I find it difficult to believe the James family would send such a cryptic piece of mail without having contacted me another way, or even trying to get me to confess.
Which means… maybe the envelope isn’t from Aiden’s people at all.
Maybe my mother’s ghost is haunting me in a new way, and the people from her past life are starting to catch up with me.
Not wanting to alarm Boyd, I set out with a plan—unsure of what I want the outcome to be, but positive in my convictions not to involve my brother.
The less he knows, the less he can be convicted of later.
I just want to put an end to all of this, and as I spend the next weeks living in fear, constantly looking over my shoulder, I realize there’s only one thing to do.
Blackmail is something of a trade in the town we live in; at one point, just about everyone in King’s Trace has fallen victim to extortion of some degree, and it feels like the most natural thing in the world when I finally dip my toes into that realm.