I understand how hypocritical that sounds. I never thought that I was a levelheaded person. I’m saying Emery wasn’t, either, and you were unfortunate enough to be a victim. Twice.

Jesse, I love you. I also hate you, in a sense. You made me put up with your mother, and I think we all know how difficult she can be.

It didn’t surprise me one bit when they began to call you Snow White at school. I wondered—and more than once—whether your friends knew the whole truth. That you, too, had a wicked mother that was jealous of your beauty. That you, too, hid away from the world. Just with books instead of dwarfs. That you, too, took a bite of the poisonous apple.

That apple was Bane Protsenko.

He was supposed to wake you up.

Not to steal you.

We had a deal. I knew he would pull you out of your misery, with his beautiful face and ugly reputation. I didn’t know he would take it that far. I didn’t know he would fall just like the rest of us.

Jesse, I am going to ask you for something very important now.

Don’t forgive me.

Don’t forgive them.

Break the cycle, because there are too many bad men out there who need to be stopped, and the only way to stop them is to be a strong woman. So be one.

The truth is, Art was right to leave your mother.

The truth is, Bane was right to defy me and fall in love.

The truth is, this is the last thing I will ever say or write to anyone, and I will be remembered as the scoundrel.

But that won’t matter to me in a few minutes. Nothing will.

A bullet to the head is my choice of suicide. It’s messy, and expensive, just like me.

Go to the police, Jesse. Tell them about Emery, Nolan, and Henry. Don’t allow them to get away with what they did. God knows I got away with it for eight years, and I did not deserve one day.

With love, respect, and regret,

Darren Floyd Morgansen

THE CRACKLING SOUND OF THUNDER filled my ears and brought me up to Gail’s rooftop in the middle of the night.

It was late September. Rain had no business running down the hot roofs and dusty windows of my South Californian desert town. Maybe it was all a part of something bigger. Maybe it was a sign. Maybe it was my dad. Or Darren. Or Bane. Or just the bag of evidence lying in my duffel bag, a ticking time bomb.

Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.

I let the drops lash against my face as I blinked at the sky. Darren’s letter fell from my backpack not long after I came back to Gail’s house. She’d asked if I wanted her to be there when I read it. I’d thanked her, but said that the words were meant for me. I needed to face them alone.

The letter was a shock, but the simple, transparent plastic bag accompanying it was what shook every bone in my body. It was the evidence from the night of The Incident. My torn bra and panties. The semen and blood-covered shirt. My old phone they’d stomped on, with their fingerprints on it. It was all there. A Post-It note was stapled to the bag.

Kept it in my safe. Good luck.

My chest rattled as rain slipped between my lips. I let the last eight years sink in. I told myself that none of it was my fault. And for the first time in years, I actually believed that. I wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. Replacing them was anger, rage, and a profound sense of injustice. Darren had been sick. Pam was sick. Emery, Nolan, and Henry were all sick. Bane wasn’t sick, but he was a jerk, and the price of his mistake was divided equally between us.

And Mayra? Mayra was a manipulative bitch.

It felt strangely convenient that the only memory I’d blocked out of my mind was the one of what Darren had done to me. Sure, he’d forced me to drink until I’d passed out, but that couldn’t have guaranteed a memory loss. That’s where Mayra fit in, strolling into the picture mere weeks after Darren had raped me. She’d manipulated my reality, working relentlessly toward making me forget.

But now that I remembered, I was going to fight tooth and nail to rebuild my life.

This week, I’d walked into Book-ish, a local bookstore, and asked for a job interview.

“We aren’t hiring,” the dorky teenage girl behind the counter said flatly, her eyes stuck on the Marie Claire magazine she was flipping absently. I told her I was not leaving until I spoke with the owner. An older woman came out of the back room after a few minutes.

“You need to give me a job, and here is why.”

I’d told her my story. Openly, candidly.