Saying Goodbye, Part One (Passports and Promises Book 1) (16 page)

“Where am I?”

I climbed onto the narrow bed and held her as I told her what happened. I left out as many of the ugly details as possible. The image of her on Zach’s bed was imbedded in my mind forever, but no need for it to be in hers. What I told her was bad enough. She shook in my arms as tears streamed down her cheeks.

“I can’t believe this happened to me. I’m such an idiot.”

“No you aren’t. This isn’t the first time he’s done this.”

She looked up at me. “It happened to Gabriela, too, didn’t it? That’s what the fight was about at the formal.”

I nodded. “And a bunch of other girls, but we aren’t going to allow this to happen again.” I held up the journal and showed it to her. “I have names.”

“What’s that?”

“Proof. He very thoughtfully recorded the name of every single girl he slept with, and included the date, too. It goes back a whole year. Rather thorough of him, if you ask me.”

“Like a hunter. He recorded his kills, his trophies. He’s a monster.” She stared at the book. “How many?” Her voice sounded measured, strained, and very controlled.

I squeezed her hand. “Fifty-six.”

She let out a strangled little noise. “That’s a lot.”

“But your name isn’t in here, Emma. Remember that.
It’s not here
.”

Emma’s lips narrowed into a hard line. “If it weren’t for you, Sam, it would have been…” Her voice faded for a minute, then she straightened her shoulders. “Well, I have a little surprise in store for Mr. Zach McGaffrey.”

“What do you mean?”

She gave me a crooked little half smile. As soon as I saw it, I knew two things. First of all, Emma was going to be okay, and, secondly, Zach was in big trouble.

“He picked the wrong girl. He doesn’t know my grandfather is Lawrence Turner.”

I blinked. “As in Lawrence Turner Hall?”

She nodded. “And as in the Turner Library, the Turner Clinic, and the Turner wing of the psych hospital. Zach will regret he ever touched any of us.”

I handed her the journal. “Then I think this belongs to you now.”

She took it, holding it tightly in her arms, almost like snuggling a teddy bear, but the expression on her face was hard. “I’ll take good care of it. Promise.”

She fell asleep again, her little blond head resting on my shoulder as I lay in the narrow bed next to her, never closing my eyes. I couldn’t sleep. Instead, I waited, wide awake, rehashing the events of the night over and over again in my mind. The horrible fight with Dylan. Making out with Max. Seeing Zach pull Emma into his room. The feeling of worry and dread that I might not get to her in time. 

I stayed there, keeping guard over Emma and torturing myself with all the new and horrible things now part of my memory, until her parents arrived and I was able to go back to the Theta house.

I went up to my room, collapsed on my bed and sobbed my heart out. Even if I found a way to forgive Dylan for what had happened at the party, he could never forgive me for what I’d done with Max. I didn’t think I could forgive myself either. I’d been half naked with my ex within moments of our break up. There was no going back from what had happened. I just needed to find some way to move forward.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

A
soft knock woke me. It was early evening. I’d slept most of the day, but I needed it. I’d been both physically and emotionally exhausted.

I opened the door to see Bethany and Gabriela standing there holding a bag of bagels, which was a good thing. I was starving. They pulled me into a huge hug. “You’re our hero, Sam.”

I shook my head, imagining what I’d been doing minutes before helping Emma. “Not by a long shot.”

We sat on my bed. I took a bagel out of the bag and started munching. Gabriela handed me a tub of cream cheese.

“We saw Emma and her parents. They’re furious. Zach is in some very serious trouble now. He was arrested and fingerprinted and everything. He only stayed in jail one night, but it looks like the trial will take place in late January. Until then, he can’t have contact with you, Emma, or anyone else on that list he made. It turns out little Emma comes from a pretty powerful family. He’s not going to wiggle out of this one.”

I let out a sigh and put my bagel down. “He should have been in trouble a long time ago. He shouldn’t have had the chance to hurt you and so many other girls, Gabs. And it’s not fair you didn’t have any other options. It’s not right he thought he could do that to you and just get away with it.”

She gave me a sad, sweet little smile. “He didn’t, remember? He’ll pay. I’m sure of it. I only wish it had been sooner. Before Emma.”

“Me, too.”

Bethany put an arm across my shoulders. “What happened with you and Dylan last night?”

I blinked away tears. “Oh. That. Well, I guess you figured out we broke up.”

She nodded. “How do you feel about that?”

I gnawed on my lower lip. “I hate to say it, but I’m relieved. I’ve been thinking of breaking up with him for a while, but couldn’t.”

“Because of his issues?” asked Bethany.

“Yes.” I grabbed a bottle of orange juice out of the bag and drank it. “I wanted to end it, but felt…trapped.”

Bethany and Gabriela shared a long look, and then Bethany turned back to me. “You do realize it wasn’t just his problems that held you back, don’t you?”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

“He controlled you, Sam,” said Gabriela. “Bethany and I were worried about it. It had become excessive. Abusive, even.”

I stood up and walked over to my window. My favorite kind of fall day. The sun shone brightly, making the brilliant autumn colors of the trees in front of the Theta house seem even more intensely beautiful, but some of the leaves had already begun to fall. They lay on the sidewalk in brown, withered heaps. Staring at them, I felt numb inside.

“It wasn’t about abuse. It was about control. He couldn’t make me love him, no matter how perfectly he behaved. No matter how hard he tried. And I couldn’t make myself love him either, as much as I wanted to, and much as he deserved it. We were stuck, and it hurt.”

Gabriela played with the bottom of her t-shirt. “If you say so.”

I ruffled her hair. “I do. And it’s over now, so it doesn’t matter anyway. I’d hoped to end it peacefully, just to drift apart when I went to Japan. But it didn’t work out that way.”

Max came to see me with Seth and Eric. We met in a private room on the ground floor of the Theta house. They apologized for what they’d done, and Seth begged for his cell phone back. He had sandy hair and freckles on his nose, and apparently his mom would kill him if she ever found out what he’d been doing with his phone.

“I’ll give it to you, but if you recorded Zach sleeping with anyone, you have to share that with the police. Are there any videos of Zach on your phone?”

Eric and Seth exchanged a glance. “Yes,” said Seth. “But we’ve never shown it to anyone.”

“Show it to me.”

Eric, a chubby redhead with acne, winced. “You might not like it…”

“Show it to me anyway.”

The video showed Zach raping Gabriela. He’d left the lights on in his room, so we saw everything. I forced myself to watch, tears streaming down my face. Even though she was obviously incoherent, one thing was very clear. She could barely speak, but she kept repeating the word “no” over and over again. And when Gabriela woke up in the middle of it, she cried and begged him to stop, but he just laughed in her face. It played out worse than I could have imagined. I froze the image when Zach stood up and pulled on his pants. Gabriela lay on the bed, sobbing.

Max looked shaken up, too. Eric and Seth hung their heads in shame. “You’ve never showed this to anyone?” I asked. “Why?”

Seth shrugged. “We only shared the funny videos. There was, uh, nothing funny about this.”

I wanted to slap him upside the head. “She was raped. Did you watch it as it happened?”

Eric shook his head. “We didn’t have live streaming back then.”

I froze, a terrible thought entering my head. “But you do now? Did you live stream what happened between Max and me?”

They nodded, faces turning red. “Yes. It was uploaded accidentally. We erased it as soon as we realized it happened,” said Eric.

“So other people may have seen it?” I nearly doubled over, like I’d been punched in the stomach.

They both looked at Max, who was fuming. “It’s possible,” said Seth. “I guess. Look, we’re really sorry about all of this. We’ll do whatever you want.”

“Go to the police. Show them the video you just showed me, and show them any other videos you have of Zach. They need it as evidence.”

Eric looked down at his toes. “I feel a little guilty about that. Zach is a brother, after all.”

I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard. Apparently, Max felt the same way. “He’s not a brother. Not anymore. And neither are the two of you.”

Seth and Eric looked at him in shock. “What do you mean?” asked Seth.

“You’ll never be brothers after what you’ve done. I promise you that. I’m meeting with the other Sigs today, and I’m sure I won’t be the only one to demand you both be kicked out of your pledge class. Immediately. You’re lucky you’re not going to jail, like Zach.”

Eric looked like he might wet his pants. “What do we do now?”

“We go to the police. Together. But not until you apologize to Sam.”

“And every other girl you recorded. In person. And if you don’t, I’ll find out and call both of your mothers. I mean it.” I glared at them and began tapping my foot on the floor. Max fought to hold back a smile.

“She means it, gentlemen. If I were you, I’d take that threat very seriously. I think it’s now time for a little trip to the police station.”

He stood up and I handed him Seth’s cell phone. He’d take it to the police and do the right thing. I trusted him on this one.

Seth and Eric walked outside, and Max turned to me. “Are you okay?”

I folded my arms across my chest. “I guess so.”

He held out his hand, like he was going to reach out and touch my face, and then seemed to change his mind. “I’m sorry, Sam. About everything. I really do love you, you know that right?”

“I do, Max, and I love you, too, but it’s not enough.”

“Can we be friends? Do you think it’s even possible?”

I nodded. “We were always friends. We just let sex get in the way of a perfectly good friendship.”

He grinned. “Or we let friendship get in the way of perfectly good sex. Better than good, actually, but you’re right. Maybe we both need to move on. It’s just…” He had to look away a moment to compose himself. “You’re awfully hard to give up. You realize that, don’t you?”

I nodded, trying really hard not to cry. “You, too.”

“And maybe I need to stop some other things, too. You aren’t my only bad habit, Sam. I realized the night Emma was almost raped, the way I’ve been living; it’s getting out of hand. The pot, the drinking…everything.”

I gave him a kiss on the cheek. “I’m glad, Max. It’s time.”

“You’re right. There’s only one thing I’m worried about right now. Dylan. If he knows about what happened between us, if he saw the video, it could be really bad. I never wanted to hurt him. I never wanted to hurt anyone.”

“Neither did I.”

I spent the next few days terrified Dylan might call. When he didn’t, I plunged into my studies, filling my head with the black strokes of the kanji characters to erase the thoughts going through my mind.

Max had kept true to his promise. The video of Zach raping Gabriela had been shared with the police. When I told Gabriela about it, she handled it calmly, glad to have concrete evidence. When I told her how she’d said “no” over and over again, it made her feel even better. Sort of the final nail in Zach’s coffin.

The campus was abuzz with the news of Zach’s arrest. Everyone seemed to know about what had happened with Emma. Some called me a hero; others secretly called me a narc. The only person who hadn’t said a word to me about any of it was Dylan.

By the second week, when I still hadn’t heard from him and hadn’t seen him on campus, I started to worry. I texted him, just to make sure he was okay, but he never responded. At first, I assumed he was just mad at me, but then, as the days dragged on, I started to worry. Two weeks to the day after we’d broken up, I finally decided to go to his apartment and check on him.

Rain fell halfway through the long walk there. I’d brought an umbrella, but the rain turned into a storm, and I arrived soaked and shivering at his door.

I heard the TV blaring, but no one answered when I knocked. I pounded on the door with my fist, calling his name, but he didn’t respond.

He’d given me a key to his apartment while we dated, and I’d never returned it. I pulled it out of my pocket, hoping I was doing the right thing. He might not be alone. He might have another girl in there. He might be as much of a slut as me. But he also might be hurt or sick. I took a deep breath, stuck the key in the lock and turned it.

“Dylan. It’s me. I’m opening your door.”

I opened it slowly. The room was dark, and the only light inside came from the television on the wall. An odd smell, something sour and nasty, like old food or rotting garbage, hit me making me wrinkle up my face in distaste. I covered my nose and mouth with my hand, and stepped into Dylan’s living room.

The room was covered in garbage and half-eaten bits of food. I stepped over a piece of pizza lying on the carpet and looked around in amazement. Dylan’s normally neat and tidy apartment had turned into an absolute pigsty.

I found the remote and shut off the TV, plunging the room into semi-darkness. I reached for a lamp on one of the end tables and noticed something on the couch as soon as I flicked it on. I stood there a full minute staring before I realized the lump on the couch was Dylan. I sank to my knees in shock.

“Dylan? Are you okay?”

Bundled under a blanket, his hair matted to his head, for just a second I thought he might be dead. Then he opened his eyes slowly. Painfully. They were sunken in his face and just the effort of lifting his eyelids seemed to exhaust him. He stared at me like he thought I wasn’t real.

“Sam.” His voice came out as a soft rasp, like the sound wind makes as it blows through bare trees. I barely heard him, and he looked so fragile. So frail. So unlike the Dylan I knew.

“What happened? Are you sick?”

He just stared at me with those dark, haunted eyes. I touched his head. He didn’t have a temperature, in fact he felt cold and clammy. I rested my hand against his cheek and he sighed.

“I’m sorry, Sam. I tried. For you.”

He closed his eyes, and his breathing became shallow and strange. I shook him, but he wouldn’t open his eyes again, no matter how hard I tried. I searched the room, found his phone sitting on the coffee table in front of the couch, and picked it up. Thankfully, it still had a bit of charge left. I knew his passcode, his brother’s birthday. I punched in the numbers and dialed his mom. She answered on the first ring.

“Dylan. Thank God. We were so worried—”

I interrupted her. “Mrs. Hunter. This is Sam. I’m at Dylan’s apartment. There’s something wrong with him.”

For just a moment, only dead silence greeted me and I thought we’d been disconnected. When she spoke, I recognized the thread of panic in her voice. It sounded just like my own.

“Tell me exactly what is going on.”

“He hadn’t answered my texts,” I said. I didn’t want to get into the whole break-up thing right now. It seemed pointless. “I came to his apartment to check on him. He’s on the couch, and he looks awful.”

“Is he awake?”

“No. I don’t think so. He spoke when I came in, but now he’s sleeping and he won’t wake up. I don’t know what to do.”

“Stay calm, Sam. I’m going to call an ambulance from the home phone.”

“Don’t hang up. Please.”

“I won’t hang up. I’ll call the ambulance and I’ll be right back.”

I sat on the floor next to Dylan, my entire body shaking. It took forever for Mrs. Hunter to get back on the phone. When she did, I heard Mr. Hunter in the background. It sounded like they were in their car.